Bull Feathers
Hello World,
Well, I don't know about where you are, but here in our little corner of Paradise, it seems that Spring has finally sprung, that is, if extreme and unpredictable swings of weather conditions can be considered the hallmark of the season, then this must be the place. Last week on Thursday, it was about 70 degrees, followed by 40 degrees on Friday. On Saturday, it was supposed to rain all day, but instead, it turned out to be full of bright sunshine and 70 degrees, so that when I was outdoors doing yard work, I was sweating up a storm, and that was without sawing any firewood for camping. I was picking up dead leaves from last year by our front porch, and finally got so tired of getting tangled up in the extension cords from the birdbath heaters, that I just pulled them both out and put the heaters and cords away for the summer. Obviously, I'm only telling you this so that when this rash action on my part ushers in a cold snap of record low temperatures throughout the region, everyone will know who to blame. On the other hand, it was on Monday that I saw my first robin of the season, and we even have early tulips, so that's got to give us some hope for the future and a reason for living, by golly.
Bill, who is not always recognized for his poetic nature and sensitivity, objected to the inelegant name of Blue Squill for some pretty spring flowers in our yard, but he was off the mark there. We have very few Blue Squill along our driveway, and they live up to their name by being small, drab and unremarkable, and they also do not reproduce themselves widely, like other spring flowers, which is probably just as well. I had bought a bunch of them years ago from a garden catalog, which assured me these would be the first flowers to come up in the spring, since as it claimed, "They laugh at snow!" Don't you believe it. I never see them until all my crocus and half of my daffodils are already done and gone, so in terms of their credibility, I consider them the used car salesmen of spring flowers. As for their name, ah, there's another whole kettle of fish, or as Bamboo Harvester would say, a horse of a different color. (An alert reader sent me a music file with the theme song from the Mr. Ed TV show, with the note: "Well, have fun with the attachment, and remember, it's not quite as good with, 'Hello, my name is Bamboo Harvester'!" He wasn't just whistling Dixie, because as we all know, a horse is a horse, of course, of course.) If you look up Blue Squill with our friends at www.wikipedia.org, you'll be directed to a "disambiguation" page which sniffs, "Blue Squill is a much over-worked name for a variety of plants" while it appears to be holding these ambiguous offenders away from itself at arm's length with a pair of tongs. And it turns out that the supposed Blue Squill along our driveway is really Scilla Siberica, and they're welcome to it, although nobody will ever convince me that "they laugh at snow" in Siberia, since as we all know, no one laughs in Mother Russia.
So, what then do we suppose are the pretty blue flowers all over the rest of our yard that so captivated Bill's attention? Darned if I could remember, that's for sure. Like the Squill, I had gotten them years ago, and planted them in a couple of spots, but these have really taken off, and now you're just as likely to find them anywhere. I'm sure at one time, I even knew what they were called, but those days are long since past, and I simply could not call to mind what they were, although I had no lack of names I could come up with, that I knew they weren't. I searched for them online, and finally turned them up at last, with the unwieldy name of Chionodoxa Luciliae, more commonly known as Glory of the Snow. (Don't believe that one either.) I'm sure even Bill would agree that's a pretty enough name for these pretty blue flowers, and while they're not the earliest thing to come up in our yard, they do put on quite a show once they get going, and that's good enough for me.
So now that we've sorted out these confused botanicals, that just leaves us with the yellow mystery flowers at church. No matter how I searched for them, I just couldn't come up with something that looked like them, although a few things came tantalizingly close, like Chrysogonum Virginianum. However, the only place that I could find selling the little darlings was a web site called The Gay Gardener, and the way things are going in the Lutheran church nowadays, I couldn't see that we would have bought any flowers from that source, and that's putting it mildly. I happened to be at church on Wednesday afternoon so the water company could replace its meter, and bumped into some people having Bible study downstairs, and while I was at it, I asked the Pastor point blank, what were those amazing yellow flowers all over the rock garden? Quick like a bunny, he said they were buttercups, and they were just weeds, they hadn't been planted, and spread by themselves all over the place. Now, in my family, this is what we call the Grandma Tango School of Folk Wisdom, which is that if you say something quick and decisive, people assume that it must be true. It happens that we have buttercup in our yard, and plenty of it, so I wasn't falling for that, because these little beauties look nothing like buttercup. The common form, known as Meadow Buttercup, has 5-petal yellow flowers on tall stems and digitate leaves (with points like a maple leaf) while the church flowers are short 8-petal yellow flowers with round leaves, and I ought to know, because I dug one up and brought it home for research purposes. Of course, we have a yard full of juvenile delinquent squirrels, so they dug it out of the flowerpot that I planted it in, no thank you very much not, and I had to replant it in the pot and then put the pot inside a Hav-a-Heart trap for safekeeping. I said to Pastor that they looked to me like violets, but he said they don't have tubers, and I was also leaning towards yellow vinca, except for the unfortunate fact that there is no such thing. But while I was looking up Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus Acris) I came across a distant relative called Ranunculus Repens, or Creeping Buttercup, that looked suspiciously like our mystery church flowers, and which is described in wikipedia as "invasive," so the Pastor might have been on to something there after all. He said he was very happy with them in the rock garden, because they come right up, do their thing, and then go away. I couldn't help but blurt out, "They're Protestants!" and I never thought a bunch of little old ladies at Bible study could laugh so hard.
In other religious news, of course, the Pope is in town, which may account for those rare moments when the Mets and Rangers both win on the same day, although I wouldn't count on that. One event on the Pope's itinerary for this visit is celebrating Mass at Yankee Stadium, and I said to a coworker that it was nice for the Pope to be a part of the stadium's swan song, since they'll be replacing the stadium next year, so having the Pope there would be a fitting highlight on the farewell tour of The House That Ruth Built. He said that it would be a little crowded to have the Pope there while they were trying to play baseball, so the Yankees would have to get out of town beforehand. On the contrary, I said, the way the Yankees have been playing, it could only help for them to be there with the Pope, and in fact, they should probably ask him to bless their bats and gloves as an added inducement to success. I call it a Papal Bull-pen.
Meanwhile across the river, the Mets have been clawing their way back up to respectability, after a sluggish start, to the delight of their devoted fans throughout the region, and especially in our house. One day last week, the Mets game was on television at the same time as the Rangers game, so we had the TiVo record the replay of the Mets game the following morning, so we wouldn't miss it. We watched the replay later, and it was just as entertaining as it would have been live, plus it had one curious feature that we were not expecting. It was later in the game and the Mets first baseman, Carlos Delgado, had struck out to end the inning. There was a commercial break, and when they came back to the game, here was the Mets second baseman, Damion Easley, at the plate. Hold the palominos! I said to Bill, "What happened to the Phillies? They didn't let them have a time at bat." Now, I will be the first to admit that I often fall asleep during baseball games, which does tend to make the contest seem confused and disjointed, but that's not what happened this time, because I was wide awake through that entire sequence. And I don't mind saying that I'm in favor of a revised game plan whereby the opposing team doesn't get a chance to hit (especially the Phillies) because I think that would really work in the Mets favor, what with their questionable pitching at the moment. We found out later that this replay was a truncated version of the original broadcast, and the game in its original form did include both teams coming up to bat in equally alternating half innings, which is only to be expected after decades of baseball tradition. But I would be less than candid if I said that I didn't prefer the new and improved version, where only the Mets get to hit, and the heck with tradition. As long as the Pope is in town, if we can get His Holiness to swing this one, that would really be the kind of Papal Bull-pen that I can live with!
Well, I don't know about where you are, but here in our little corner of Paradise, it seems that Spring has finally sprung, that is, if extreme and unpredictable swings of weather conditions can be considered the hallmark of the season, then this must be the place. Last week on Thursday, it was about 70 degrees, followed by 40 degrees on Friday. On Saturday, it was supposed to rain all day, but instead, it turned out to be full of bright sunshine and 70 degrees, so that when I was outdoors doing yard work, I was sweating up a storm, and that was without sawing any firewood for camping. I was picking up dead leaves from last year by our front porch, and finally got so tired of getting tangled up in the extension cords from the birdbath heaters, that I just pulled them both out and put the heaters and cords away for the summer. Obviously, I'm only telling you this so that when this rash action on my part ushers in a cold snap of record low temperatures throughout the region, everyone will know who to blame. On the other hand, it was on Monday that I saw my first robin of the season, and we even have early tulips, so that's got to give us some hope for the future and a reason for living, by golly.
Bill, who is not always recognized for his poetic nature and sensitivity, objected to the inelegant name of Blue Squill for some pretty spring flowers in our yard, but he was off the mark there. We have very few Blue Squill along our driveway, and they live up to their name by being small, drab and unremarkable, and they also do not reproduce themselves widely, like other spring flowers, which is probably just as well. I had bought a bunch of them years ago from a garden catalog, which assured me these would be the first flowers to come up in the spring, since as it claimed, "They laugh at snow!" Don't you believe it. I never see them until all my crocus and half of my daffodils are already done and gone, so in terms of their credibility, I consider them the used car salesmen of spring flowers. As for their name, ah, there's another whole kettle of fish, or as Bamboo Harvester would say, a horse of a different color. (An alert reader sent me a music file with the theme song from the Mr. Ed TV show, with the note: "Well, have fun with the attachment, and remember, it's not quite as good with, 'Hello, my name is Bamboo Harvester'!" He wasn't just whistling Dixie, because as we all know, a horse is a horse, of course, of course.) If you look up Blue Squill with our friends at www.wikipedia.org, you'll be directed to a "disambiguation" page which sniffs, "Blue Squill is a much over-worked name for a variety of plants" while it appears to be holding these ambiguous offenders away from itself at arm's length with a pair of tongs. And it turns out that the supposed Blue Squill along our driveway is really Scilla Siberica, and they're welcome to it, although nobody will ever convince me that "they laugh at snow" in Siberia, since as we all know, no one laughs in Mother Russia.
So, what then do we suppose are the pretty blue flowers all over the rest of our yard that so captivated Bill's attention? Darned if I could remember, that's for sure. Like the Squill, I had gotten them years ago, and planted them in a couple of spots, but these have really taken off, and now you're just as likely to find them anywhere. I'm sure at one time, I even knew what they were called, but those days are long since past, and I simply could not call to mind what they were, although I had no lack of names I could come up with, that I knew they weren't. I searched for them online, and finally turned them up at last, with the unwieldy name of Chionodoxa Luciliae, more commonly known as Glory of the Snow. (Don't believe that one either.) I'm sure even Bill would agree that's a pretty enough name for these pretty blue flowers, and while they're not the earliest thing to come up in our yard, they do put on quite a show once they get going, and that's good enough for me.
So now that we've sorted out these confused botanicals, that just leaves us with the yellow mystery flowers at church. No matter how I searched for them, I just couldn't come up with something that looked like them, although a few things came tantalizingly close, like Chrysogonum Virginianum. However, the only place that I could find selling the little darlings was a web site called The Gay Gardener, and the way things are going in the Lutheran church nowadays, I couldn't see that we would have bought any flowers from that source, and that's putting it mildly. I happened to be at church on Wednesday afternoon so the water company could replace its meter, and bumped into some people having Bible study downstairs, and while I was at it, I asked the Pastor point blank, what were those amazing yellow flowers all over the rock garden? Quick like a bunny, he said they were buttercups, and they were just weeds, they hadn't been planted, and spread by themselves all over the place. Now, in my family, this is what we call the Grandma Tango School of Folk Wisdom, which is that if you say something quick and decisive, people assume that it must be true. It happens that we have buttercup in our yard, and plenty of it, so I wasn't falling for that, because these little beauties look nothing like buttercup. The common form, known as Meadow Buttercup, has 5-petal yellow flowers on tall stems and digitate leaves (with points like a maple leaf) while the church flowers are short 8-petal yellow flowers with round leaves, and I ought to know, because I dug one up and brought it home for research purposes. Of course, we have a yard full of juvenile delinquent squirrels, so they dug it out of the flowerpot that I planted it in, no thank you very much not, and I had to replant it in the pot and then put the pot inside a Hav-a-Heart trap for safekeeping. I said to Pastor that they looked to me like violets, but he said they don't have tubers, and I was also leaning towards yellow vinca, except for the unfortunate fact that there is no such thing. But while I was looking up Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus Acris) I came across a distant relative called Ranunculus Repens, or Creeping Buttercup, that looked suspiciously like our mystery church flowers, and which is described in wikipedia as "invasive," so the Pastor might have been on to something there after all. He said he was very happy with them in the rock garden, because they come right up, do their thing, and then go away. I couldn't help but blurt out, "They're Protestants!" and I never thought a bunch of little old ladies at Bible study could laugh so hard.
In other religious news, of course, the Pope is in town, which may account for those rare moments when the Mets and Rangers both win on the same day, although I wouldn't count on that. One event on the Pope's itinerary for this visit is celebrating Mass at Yankee Stadium, and I said to a coworker that it was nice for the Pope to be a part of the stadium's swan song, since they'll be replacing the stadium next year, so having the Pope there would be a fitting highlight on the farewell tour of The House That Ruth Built. He said that it would be a little crowded to have the Pope there while they were trying to play baseball, so the Yankees would have to get out of town beforehand. On the contrary, I said, the way the Yankees have been playing, it could only help for them to be there with the Pope, and in fact, they should probably ask him to bless their bats and gloves as an added inducement to success. I call it a Papal Bull-pen.
Meanwhile across the river, the Mets have been clawing their way back up to respectability, after a sluggish start, to the delight of their devoted fans throughout the region, and especially in our house. One day last week, the Mets game was on television at the same time as the Rangers game, so we had the TiVo record the replay of the Mets game the following morning, so we wouldn't miss it. We watched the replay later, and it was just as entertaining as it would have been live, plus it had one curious feature that we were not expecting. It was later in the game and the Mets first baseman, Carlos Delgado, had struck out to end the inning. There was a commercial break, and when they came back to the game, here was the Mets second baseman, Damion Easley, at the plate. Hold the palominos! I said to Bill, "What happened to the Phillies? They didn't let them have a time at bat." Now, I will be the first to admit that I often fall asleep during baseball games, which does tend to make the contest seem confused and disjointed, but that's not what happened this time, because I was wide awake through that entire sequence. And I don't mind saying that I'm in favor of a revised game plan whereby the opposing team doesn't get a chance to hit (especially the Phillies) because I think that would really work in the Mets favor, what with their questionable pitching at the moment. We found out later that this replay was a truncated version of the original broadcast, and the game in its original form did include both teams coming up to bat in equally alternating half innings, which is only to be expected after decades of baseball tradition. But I would be less than candid if I said that I didn't prefer the new and improved version, where only the Mets get to hit, and the heck with tradition. As long as the Pope is in town, if we can get His Holiness to swing this one, that would really be the kind of Papal Bull-pen that I can live with!
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:41 PM
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