AAAAAAAAUGH

“Oh, hey, who needs a pond? I can just lie, face up or face down, anywhere at all on the local landscape right now, and drown very adequately.”

I’ll lend you a greenhouse moat (now widening by the hour…) if you want to pop over…:)

Puts me in mind of the old Bill Cosby monologue, on Noah building the ark.

::hugs::

Ok. This may be a really really dumb question but she will flower more than the *once* won’t she??
Sympathies and chocolate heading your way.

I shall tell you again: WE ARE NOT GOING TO KILL YOU. Don’t make me get Mr. Dickinson involved.

Perhaps such delicate flowers require too much work for one stressed-out, gardening writer to stand. Maybe it is better to bow to the inevitable. And maybe not.

…this comment is totally unrelated to your blog entry, though I’m sorry for your roses.
I don’t know where your tastes in art lie, but it occurred to me to link you to one of my very favorite painters, James Jean. He designs the covers for a comic book/graphic novel series called “Fables” which I keep on buying for the covers, though the interior artwork, writing, plots, and characters aren’t very good (no offense to any Fables fans stumbling upon), and the fairy-tales-in-modern-setting concept has—as I’m sure you’re aware—been worn too close to the bone (I might be mixing my metaphors) by now to withstand any mediocrity. Luckily, a cover collection is being released soon!
Anyway, enough nerd-critique: the point is, he has a blog— which isn’t updated often enough to be totally addictive but is fascinating insight into how he works, particularly in creating the Fables covers— his paintings are beautiful and perfect, and you might like him: http://www.processrecess.com/
With best wishes,
Stella

The weather gods are a notoriously uncooperative lot, but I don’t know why the predictions always err on the wrong side. “Chance of rain” seems to be chancy only when you actually want rain, the rest of the time it can be a guarantee of a downpour. Poor Souvenir, she was trying!

My husband is retired and home most of the time, and when we go out we generally do not have lively dinner-table conversation, either. I’m not a big fan of restaurants with televisions, but there are times when having a ball game or tennis match on the screen comes in handy.

Today I bought a couple of bottles of an Australian red wine called “Bitch.” One is for me to sample, and the other (if it’s good) will probably go into our Dane club’s raffle. I bought it for the canine reference, but if you wanted a drink while contemplating the weather, it might be appropriate.

May you see the sun before you forget what it looks like.

*sends sunlight*

Supposedly we’re going to get some rain on Saturday (I never believe them until I see it), but they threaten sun the rest of the weekend.

Yesterday, Jeff was getting a haircut. I stayed in the car and read. It was hot, of course, so I opened the window to let the breeze in…and got a tan on my arm. Just the one arm. I’m glad he wasn’t in there any longer, or it would have burned…on the one arm. ;D

I felt the same way this morning. We had frost in Michigan the last two nights, which caused me to dash out with a tarp and some old sheets after dark to prevent my basil from dying. The tarp worked. The sheet was only partially successful, and a few purple ruffle plants are dead.

In reply to your last reply on “wet wet wet” (since comments there are closed):

The guest stars are patchy. There are the good ones and then there are the BAAAAAD ones. I think most of the guys are icky–I like Leo, and of course the original Demon Lover, speaking of a face you see elsewhere–but I think I’m probably too old to be allowed an opinion on this. :)

I meant more the single-use sort of guests, the demons they vanquished each week, sometimes the innocents, that sort of thing. Those actors tend to show up in the most amusing places - the demon from the episode with the sins was the shy geeky tech guy on Alias, the shapeshifter who killed that annoying whitelighter lady was an ME on Crossing Jordan, etc etc etc. Half the time I look at a movie or tv show and say “who is that person? I know I know them from somewhere!” it turns out they were a demon (or whatever, but usually a demon) on Charmed. It’s just funny.

Once again I agree with you though - I wasn’t a huge fan of a lot of the girls’ boyfriends. Leo…he comes and goes. I like him as a whitelighter, but he can get kind of annoying as a human and an Avatar. Cole is yummy, of course (is it bad that I like it when he’s mad? The episode with him and Adrian Paul - speaking of yummy - is one of my favorites).

One of my favorite guest boys was Billy Zane. He’s just so much fun! And he has a fantastic smile.

Also, you’re never to old to have an opinion on that :D

Well, you have a very nice flint wall to look at. You may be consoled by reading Henry Mitchell’s essay on the inevitably hellish weather endured by gardeners and the indomitable spirit which allows us to transcend the said hellish weather….its the one that starts taking about daffodil shows.
I do love Mitchell, he has such a fellow-feeling for the ghastly mistakes and misfortunes of gardening……The deer just wandered along at dawn and ate most of the buds off Oklahoma, so I know where you’re coming from. (Yes, Oklahoma reblooms so its recoverable, which Souvenir doesn’t, but contrariwise you only get one shot in Ohio at good roses before the japanese beetles hatch and writhe in disgusting orgies over every bloom you have, for week after week after week, until the intense heat sets in and nothing flowers till October. So its more of a theoretical rebloom than an actual one. And Souvenir may have buds which open after things dry off, you know. Or the buds may go moldy instead. Relish the suspense.)

***because we haven’t got anything to talk about. This has been known to cause comment at neighbouring tables. [In loud stage whisper]: I don’t think that couple has said a word to each other all evening. ****

I’m always slightly relieved when other long-married couples confess to struggling for conversation sometimes. We’ve been married for nearly 30 years, and witty dinner-table repartee, such as it ever was, is now quite rare. We seem to natter away quite comfortably at each other at home, I suppose because there are other distractions around, but when focused on each other when Out To Dinner, I find myself desparately searching for interesting topics of conversation, and frequently failing. I don’t know why I feel the pressure of the opinion of other diners - I don’t know them, so why should I care if they think that we’re a boring couple? But I do, so I resort to small talk. Rob is a bit deaf, so I have to raise my voice to repeat my inanities several times, and nothing kills a conversation faster! We often do a crossword together over lunch at home, but haven’t taken them to restaurants yet. I’ll suggest it next time - good idea.
Susan in Melbourne

Hey, I remember that … when God says to the reluctant Noah “Just how long can you tread water?” In college (1968!) a group studying/performing the miracle plays did The Second Shepherds Play, Noah and the Fludde and then the Bill Cosby skit.

So it looks as if this rose is growing on a south facing (flint) wall. How about a permanent little roof over it, enough to keep the rain off, maybe with drop down plastic curtains for times when the rain comes in slantwise? Or a sunny niche, as in a place where one might have a statue?

Me, I glory in roses which don’t fuss … I save agonizing for the general overall effect of the landscape (along the lines of “since that tree blew down the rhoddies get too much sun,what should I replace it with which won’t cost the moon, or block the view of said shrubs, and will actually provide shade, and purple foliage would be really nice …). Roses pretty much have to be on the list of “what survives” from the University of Vermont or come with a strong personal recommendation from someone who grows them. Rainbow Knockout hasn’t got an evocative name, but it blooms and blooms, it survives six feet of snow, and I love the coloring. I also enjoy going to the UK or botanical gardens to see the fussy ones, but for “everyday” give me happy campers!

I seem to have absorbed the gardening attitude of Bob Flowerdew’s books. Do what gives you pleasure, don’t let your garden drive you nuts. Of course I could just be in love with his name.

So next year :) when the weather will have reversed, you will have the forty degrees with humidity we had yesterday and we would have some of that lovely cooling rain. Think of it like this: no rain, but your lovely roses wouldn’t have a single bud at all :( Am I banished? Spam? Sorry, always was the kind of person who wanted to step over lines in the sand. I never did it as a teenager, but I have been doing it more and more recently. So many bad influences on the web…

You know, these photos have the feel of those French flower and garden paintings — I wish I knew more about art so I could tell you WHICH ones, but, alas, I don’t. When I first tuned in, I thought they WERE paintings. Even when blown up, they have that look and feel. Interesting.

Judith

Blogging over going out to dinner? Oh dear….

I’m a big fan of going out to dinner, myself, and one of the worst things about this continuing damned stomach virus is that I can’t go out to eat this week. Unless, you know, I can find a place called Mom’s House of Gatorade, or the Saltine Hut.

Nah, went straight (more or less) for ginger, my tried and true stomach aid. In tea, in candy, and in gingersnap form. Seems to have helped somewhat; my only solid food in the last 48 hours has been saltines and gingersnaps, actually. The up side is that I’ve lost 5 lbs in the last week, and the tuxedo I am wearing for a wedding on Sunday is going to fit less snugly than I’d feared it might….

Waitwaitwait–did you just tell me to try taking arsenic? Have we been READING the same detective novels??? :)

When we go out, we tend to bring our sons (and sometimes older son’s girlfriend) along. We don’t much like to go out by ourselves. We’ve been married 30 years, but we had a late child who is 13. What we do like to do once in a while is to go out on a “lunch date” which usually is just the two of us. But evening time is family time. We’ve been known to turn down party invitations (sometimes very swanky ones) because they’re for adults only. It’s the way we are, and it works for us. As far as silence, we tend not to be, mostly because hubby is such a talker. He also is an inveterate researcher and tends to dig up very interesting stuff on the Internet that he just wants to share. And when sons are with us, he tries to use the time to tell them a little more about our family history. Since hubby’s Japanese family extends back (in legend) to about 21 B.C., there’s a lot of family history to cover.