Flowers, COVID, and Angel Lovers

It's the last day of May.  It occurs to me that we're just past the mid-point of this eighth of the year, and we're closer to the Summer Solstice than the May-Day past.  The poppies, yellow irises, and foxgloves are blooming.  I can hear the hummingbirds zipping around somewhere.

It's slowly dawning on me that, as of three days ago,  I'm now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.  It feels so weird.  On one hand, the CDC says I can do a whole lot without a mask, like go to the dog park.  On the other hand, it feels like going through an airlock without a space suit without one.  Stores and work are still requiring them, so it's not like I wont be completely maskless anytime soon.

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I've just finished reading, "Into This River I Drown," by TJ Klune.  Although I knew it was queer-friendly didn't realize it was a Lambda Literary Winner for Best Gay Romance.  It reminded me of Susan Trott's "Sightings," only with a kind of Iron John emphasis on fathers, and hunky gay angel sex scenes sprinkled throughout.  

It started out like a memoir, turned into a mystery/crime story, and by the end turned into a meditation on fathers, faith, love, and sacrifice.   The whole idea that love = sacrifice challenged me because it felt Old-Testament-Abraham-and-Issac, but it was consistent within the framework of the book's "my boyfriend/lover is the town's guardian angel" premiss.  (I would have preferred love = a gift, and sacrifice = a choice to not do something in order to do something else, but that's my preference.) 

The writing was excellent, although I did notice some of the romance tropes driving the main character, Benji's, decision making process -- he'd get mad at the drop of a hat and then fight with Cal, his angel lover, for what seemed like plot-driven reasons.   Also, there were romance genre moments of "I'm just a small-town, 21 year old mechanic; why would a 200 year old red-haired, hirsute, muscular, well-endowed, angel (with perpetual stubble) ever want me?"  On one hand, not having them would have given the book a wish-fulfillment-porn feel; but on the other hand, it felt like Benji picked up the romance-genre equivalent of the idiot-ball at various times.

The memoir feel gave Benji, the narrator, a way to go back and forth between the past and the present, effectively giving him a limited-omniscient POV.  It also enabled Klune to weave themes and phrases into the narrative that had quick pay-offs for the reader without having to start the story with Benji's parents' childhoods.  

I should read sections of it again and look more closely at the mechanics of the story. 

Season of Summer

I thought we were done with poppies for the summer, but more blooms have appeared.  These later blooms seem paler than the ones from earlier in the spring.    Decades ago, our landladies had a field of poppies in their other lot that seemed to bloom all Summer; if memory serves, they were orange, yellow, and red.  Maybe the seeds dropping from our pods will be viable and we will get a second round of the flowers in early September -- although I'm not sure how that works.


Tuesday, the temperature got up to the low nineties.  The house did not really cool down until something like 1 or 2 AM.  Mark had set up some air-conditioning units, but the one in our room wasn't blowing cold air; I guess the coolant had leaked out over the winter or something.  Luckily, the daytime temperatures have gone back to Summertime normals in the mid 80's.

I had forgotten how much infrared light gets through the writing pavilion after the sun visits the Solstice Station.  The trick to keeping it cool is to open up all the sides, even the west one, so that any  breeze cane come through.  It does mean that 4 PM does get uncomfortably hot.


I've been reading short stories of Philip K Dick.  Some of the more anxious scenes in "Bladerunner" put me off of the movie, so much so that I'd never had a desire to read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep."  The collection I'm reading contains "The Minority Report," (again, the movie didn't look interesting to me), which I finally read.

So far the stories I've gotten through are from the late 1950's and '60's.   The plots seem to be, Captain of Industry / Government Stakeholder encounters Cold-War-inspired McGuffin which threatens the status quo of a morally-ambigous-to-unjust social system, and must sacrifice to save an institution that isn't the best, but is the best we've got.  "It's not what you think it is," tone, not quite entering the "Jar of Tang" trope only because the characters are gravely mistaken about a great many things.

The stories aren't happy in a "good guy defeats the monster, saves the world, and gets the girl," kind of way; I'm waiting for one that doesn't feel so pessimistic -- but they do raise interesting questions like, "What would a justice system look like if precognitives saw you doing the crime before you did it?"... Which, now that I think about it, is sort of a secular take on Original Sin.  

Overthinking Photography

June 4, the Full Moon was close to the star Antares.  I had been under the impression they'd be much closer together than they appeared--and as usual the Junuary clouds came to photobomb the show--but I was happy to get the two sky objects together.   Alas, the skies were not cooperative for the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon a few days later.

Every now and then I examine the process of photographing the night sky (okay, every now and then Mark seems a little dismayed by how many photographs of the sky I have floating around on local and remote hard drives).  Is night sky photography an attempt to own a particular moment?  Do I risk dismembering the cosmos in an attempt to measure it in a recording?  Have I somehow diminished the Moon by capturing its shadow in pixels -- bound in a 3 by 5 rectangle, is it now cut off from its greater self in the eon-long night?   I'd like to think that I'm not collecting the Moon and the Night so much as curating views of them.

Is photographing The Moon and Antares participatory?   On one level, it is, because in order to create the photograph I have to stand in a certain place at a certain time -- but the same could be said for a theatre audience.   On another level it isn't, because I have to remind myself to step away from the camera and be in the moment.   I suppose it's collaborative, and one could argue that I'm collaborating with my camera more than I am with the heavenly bodies.  (Now of course I'm thinking about that Celebes crested macaques selfie copyright issue.)  But then again, is observing (and appreciating) the alignment of the Moon and stars with photography any different than gathering at Stonehenge on the Solstice to observe (and celebrate) the stations of the Sun?  I suppose I'll have to burn incense the next time I take photos.

While I'm contemplating photo-paganism -- and moments of celebration, transformation, and communion -- does a photograph of the Full Moon over Antares have an intrinsic symbolic meaning, or does one have to know that the red dot in the photo is considered the Heart of Scorpius, which requires an attendant grounding in Greek mythology and western astronomy/astrology?   Is taking a photograph the same as marking a moment, and by marking it, does that make it a sacred or numinous one?  I guess I'd answer with "Scripture is everywhere; pay attention."

Hmm.  It occurs to me that now I can justify intoning "The ritual is complete!" at the end of a photo shoot.  (It also occurs to me that Mark may want more photographs of family members and less of inanimate objects.)

In other news, the Writing Pavilion is up.  In theory this means that I will be able to write outside more because the sun won't be beating down on me and/or light sprinkles won't get my writing space wet.   An added benefit of the pavilion, which the café umbrella before it also had, was that it reflects the sound of the fountain in a kind of surround-sound effect.   At night, I can zip up the netting and (mostly) be free of mosquitoes.

I've hung a griffin banner (the other one is packed up somewhere, and also some leaded crystals for scintillating rainbow splashes.

The poppies are mostly done, but we get the occasional late bloom.

Curb-side Poppies

Up the road a bit there are poppies growing out of a crack between the curb and an alley driveway.

They look like California poppies, except that they are red instead of the usual orange.

The neighbors aren't sure which is more amazing

• that the flowers are going there in the first place, forcing roots between the matrix of chemistry and stone,
• that no car has run over them, or 
• that no one has come along and picked them.  

I'm pretty sure the metaphor of flowers from a rock has been used on multiple occasions in sermons about faith.   The picking of the forbidden flowers sounds like a folklore motif, and now I need to find  a good on-line FolkLore Index.

The best time of day--okay, it occurs to me that I'm usually not up at dawn, so make that the best waking hours--to photograph them is around sunset.  Which is tricky and early, as they're on a east-facing slope.

Diverging Poppies

We have blooming poppies.



Looking at the date of last year's photos, they seem a little early; it's only the second week of May and they're blooming now--last year it seemed like they waited for the first week of June to bloom.  Perhaps we'll get more poppies showing up in a month.









This year's poppies appear to be reverting back to their hybridized roots.  Of the flowering plants, two seem taller with purple blooms and a decagonal symmetry; three are about the same size and mauve color from last year with octagonal symmetry; and four are half the height, with small pale mauve blooms with hexagonal symmetry.   Looking at photos from last year, the poppies had either decagonal or nonagonal symmetry.



They all smell pretty bad, though.

And the pedals only last about a day before they fall from the bud.



I wonder what it says that I'm looking at poppies and trying to "look into the seeds of time and see which ones will grow."  Does this make me a Mendelian curator of sleep and dreams and death?

Now of course I'm imagining a story with a mystic gardener growing a rainbow collection of poppies cautioning the story protagonist to choose carefully from the growing beds.   One lavender flower brings prophetic dreams, two flowers brings deep sleep, and three slumber without waking.   One red flower rekindles a love, two flowers brings a night of passion, three brings animalistic insanity.  

One white poppy sounds like a perfume...

May Flowers

The last iris is blooming out front.  The ones in our backyard have finished their show and only show brown, translucent fists where the flowers used to be.  I do wish they had a longer season--and this year they seemed to be done blooming more quickly than in previous years.

I suspect this year I really will have to get my act together and thin, separate and fertilize the rhizomes instead of just talking about it.  I like our iris's deep purple color, and I imagine that they would be the sort of flower that appears on altars.

This year we have no California poppies in our yard, and I have to make do with the ones that grow up and down and across the street.  Several years ago, we had some growing on our back steps, and I took a time-lapse photo of them slowly opening as the sun rose in the morning sky.  

I like them because they are orange, and because they appear in the cracks in sidewalks, or alongside roads, or in alleys.  I like them because they have a long blooming season, so you can never be sure where you might suddenly come across them.

Some of last year's other poppies managed to self-seed in unexpected places--assorted pots, and a few odd corners in a planter.  They aren't blooming yet, and we don't know what color the flowers will be.  Last year they were mauve, with veins of darker purple shading upward from the flowers' bases.  

These are the more formal kind of poppies, and as I recall, the green outer sheath of leaves over the buds will split in the evening, and over the course of the night fall off.  If the blooms haven't properly popped out by the early morning, they will by mid-morning or so--dropping the sheath.   The color and the shape of the blooms last year was sublime, and put me in mind of flowers an enchanter might grow.

I also enjoy the seed pods afterward, with their secret chambers and hidden structure rattling with tiny poppy seeds

Camas grows in our part of the Willamette Valley, and I wish we could encourage it to grow in our yard.  It's all over a slope about four blocks away, and similar patches grow here and there along the waterways, or near the neighboring slough.   I like it because it's purple, and because the stem structure reminds me of cathedral spires.   Supposedly, you can roast and eat the roots--but I think they're difficult to dig out.

Larkspur, between the Autzen Stadium millrace and the Willamette River.  This photo isn't capturing the gestalt effect of the spiky purple (purple, again) flowers growing in a curtain between the grasses.

We've got some growing along the eastern side of our house, and I'm afraid it's much less striking than the splashes I saw along the jogging and dog-park paths.  It strikes me as the sort of flower a milkmaid or farm girl would gather in her apron and place in a pitcher set on the kitchen table.

Mark and I couldn't figure out what these flowers were.  He thought they might be cone flowers or echinacea.  They're cute, in a mod, 1966 kind of way.  I can see them being made into boutonnières, worn by groomsmen in a meadow wedding.

Poppies Revisited

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A couple of weeks ago, we discovered we had poppies growing in one of our beds.  I always liked the tons of poppies our former land-ladies grew (orange, red, white, and yellow).  Mark doesn't remember planting these and we think they might be volunteers.

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Our poppies came out a mauve color.  The buds' protective sheathe would pop off in the morning, and the blooms would furl open.  There were four opposite petals, which would last about a day before falling off.

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About every other day, another bud's stem would straighten, the sheathe would open, and a new bloom open.

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I thought it was cool that there were only four petals.  Most of the flowers I'm familiar with have three or six; apples and roses have five.

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What I didn't notice was that the seed head has a nine-fold radial symmetry.

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We had about ten days of the blooming cycle.  This provided many opportunities for photography.  I suppose if we had more plants I could have cut a few more blooms, put on some robes and twisted sheets and shot some wildly allegorical photos (Morphius and His Cat, Death Drinking Tea, "Poppies Will Make Them Sleep").  I do occasionally get Sting's "Children's Crusade" stuck in my head, though.

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Eventually, all the flowers had bloomed and dropped their petals.  I am not sure, but I think the seed heads would balloon out a little to a more spherical shape, then contract at the base.

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I knew they would develop little holes, but I couldn't remember if they would be in or just below the crown shape at the top.

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After about a four or seven days, we discovered the holes at the base of the crown.  The stems turned yellow and brittle a few days later.  Mark and The Child removed a seed head and scattered a few seeds in various places (our yard's soil chemistry is wonky, so who knows if anything will sprout).

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Mark also bisected the head, which is when we realized the interior is nine-fold.  I cut open a few more and dragged out the camera to try to document in interior structure.  I should have included a ruler for scale.

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The seeds, I think, form on the inside ribs of the seed head and eventually fall off into the chambers.

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The inside had about a half teaspoon of seeds, which I scattered along the side of the house and around the Sphinx.  Fingers crossed that the soil works.

Solstice Flowers

Last week, flowers in our yard provided some good photo opportunities.  I enjoyed the mystery of the poppies; each day was slightly different as the blooms shrugged off their protective sheathes, flowered, and then disrobed--casting spent petals--and held up ripening seed pods.  The bed where they grow looks like a scene from an Egyptian frieze.

This week, there's one poppy bud -- the last -- rising up toward flowering.  We're not sure how long it takes the pods to have viable seeds, or if the seeds will only grow in the raised bed or all over the yard.

I'm hoping they'll bloom in more than one place, although, given the history of the yard, it's unlikely in the eastern bed and a slim possibility in the western one.  It's possible they might do well out front.

Writing Weekend

Some poppies sprouted up in the back yard.  Mark's a little mystified as to how they got there.  We weren't quite sure what they were at first.  The flowers started blooming last Tuesday or Wednesday, and they must have done their thing because both blooms have dropped their petals.  More blooms seem it be in the works.  The flowers are a pretty lavender shade, and we're hoping for more volunteer plants next year.


Gym Report:  Skipped Friday and went to the gym Saturday.  I dialed back the weights to my original values, but youch, I've definitely pulled a latissimi dorsi on my left side -- possibly when I lifted Smokey in a cat carrier on the way to the vet -- which doing any kind of press quickly revealed.  I'm managed to do everything, and the exercises seemed to help loosen up where I was tight.

The universe it trying to tell me something, I think, on three separate occasions the last few days, someone has told me a variation of "Getting old means putting on a sock and pulling a muscle."


On the writing front:  Mark and The Child went with some friends to the coast, so I managed to get some work done.  Some of it was actual re-casting exposition into action.... and I'm finding it helpful to think of a recently critiqued manuscript as a detailed outline.  Or something.   Looking at the word count... not stellar progress (not quite 1000 words).   But... there was some back-story filling going on, and also some research (space beer and aereospace composite materials).  So, not a total loss.

In related news, I Did All The Laundry, made crustless quiche, diagnosed a solar LED string, created three glass tiles, watched "Age of Ultron," and administered cat meds to a cat that hates cat meds.

I got a contest rejection Friday night, which I suspected was going to happen because the market usually contacts folks about a week before the winners' announcement date, and I hadn't been contacted.


Dreams have been kind of weirder than usual, lately, with long, complicated plots.  Unfortunately, I haven't been motivated enough to arise and write them down as I wake, so I only remember the odder bits.

Last night I dreamt someone was trying to silence witnesses by driving pencils up their noses in order to make them lose the power of speech.  In a typical dream-logic hole, I don't know why this wouldn't prevent them from writing down messages.   In another dream, I was looking through a camera that made all the microbes in one's mouth light up... it was sort of a cross between a macro-lens and a microscope, and I was looking into a celebrity's mouth. . .

Time-lapse Poppies

I discovered I can make time lapse videos.

I've been saying that I wanted California Poppies growing in our yard.  I've always liked the little yellow, orange and red flowers that pop up alongside various buildings around the neighborhood, so I figured they'd grow in our poor, clay-rich soil.   These are some volunteers that got away from me when I was planting their fellows in peat pots and sprouted up on the soil stairs/planters that Mark made last year.  

Poppies

 This spring we broadcast various California poppy seeds around the yard.  Alas, only one plant reached maturity, and it is in an awkward place on our backyard steps.  Mark is hopeful it will self-seed in a more out-of the way place next season.

It's possible a few will show up next year in various spaces around the yard.

Not to be daunted by the lack of random broadcasting's success, I made a concerted effort to plant seedings in peat pots in the late spring and then place the established plants about the yard.

This Saturday, the first of the plants flowered.  These appear to be a darker orange variety.  Our soil isn't the best,and the first bloom appeared in the best soil.

There is something cheerful about California poppies.  They make a nice contrasting plant to the foxglove Mark has established, and I'm hoping we can have some more blooming next year.