I guess I come by it honestly

Howdy, folks! Sorry I disappeared on you for a bit there – my sister and I were helping my mom move. When I was first getting ready for this trip, I contemplated bringing various things with me: the camera. the work laptop... In the end, I brought neither, and a good thing too, since we were on the go from ~8:00 am every day until we collapsed, rigid and wired, into bed each night no earlier than 11 or midnight. Lordy.

 

There was a whole lot of this.

My sister and I are very different from my mom in a couple of ways that become very apparent during a move: neither one of us has much use for fashion, for one. I am, as I type this, wearing a t-shirt, track pants, and a flannel shirt ca 1991. My sister’s even more of an ascetic – she can’t abide buttons, for instance. My mom, on the other hand, has an extensive wardrobe featuring fabulous colors and textures, with more than one pair of shoes to match each outfit. She’s also got multiple sets of china and dinnerware, all of which she actually uses, and approximately eighty thousand wine glasses. She probably wonders where we came from.

I mention all of this by way of saying that despite the fact that I am a Simple Country Girl at heart, I am now the owner of two mink stoles and a full length Persian lamb coat. I couldn’t help myself – I got all sentimental: these have been in our family for decades. Where I’ll wear them is anyone’s guess. Probably not to the grocery store. I’d love to think of myself as eccentric, but I’m not that eccentric. Yet.

Another thing I am now the proud owner of is my grandmother’s botanical journal. Here’s just a preliminary sample of how she spent the summer of 1927, when she was twelve:

Wow. I guess I come by this fascination honestly, although it took longer to manifest with me. At age 12 I believe I had my nose in a book.

I got home yesterday afternoon and I’ve been busy recombobulating myself. Today was Reiki day at the hospital – that’s always restorative – and in the afternoon, Best Beloved and I set off for the mailbox. Here’s what we found.

 

Golden alexander (Zizia aurea)

Kevin proved to be a veritable jack-in-the-pulpit whisperer, conjuring up four separate flowers.

Check out those glossy leaves. Often, jacks don’t have flowers, and I can see how coming across their threesomes of leaves might make you wary that this is poison ivy.

This one’s encouraging, because it’s managed to come up from a swathe of gravel our neighbors dumped and smoothed on the banks of the stream in the wake of That Bitch Irene, who caused the stream to jump its banks and flood the meadow.

I found one on my own that hadn’t actually unfurled:

 

There was also this really cool, blond kind:

 

Kevin also scouted out some foamflower for me.

Tiarella cordifolia.

We have a stash of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sp.)

 

And some kind of grass in the lawn is flowering – same type that I found the syrphid fly on last week.

This is a Charlie-approved post.