Floral exhaustion
Sunday, 25 June 2006
Is this a petunia? I can’t remember….
Today’s NYT has the obituary of Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway Smithers, who retired from being a spy for Britain in WWII, and later a diplomat and statesman, to grow a reportedly fantastic garden in Switzerland. During his spy days, he worked for Ian Fleming, and may have been a model for James Bond (or not). In retirement, he was quite the floral photographer, noting “What are flowers but sex in action? The bee performs the wedding. I take the pictures on the wedding day. Two days later, the flowers are exhausted.�?
I am not saying this has anything to do with why I enjoy taking flower pictures.
Speaking of plants, the best news in Big A-Town: rain. Rain most of the night, and most of this afternoon. Still, too much of it is running off, but it’s seeping in more than I had thought it would. As a result, JCB and I did some weed-removal this morning in between storm cells so they wouldn’t proliferate from the moisture inputs.