Category Archives: Flowers

Nettle-Leaf Giant Hyssop

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Nettle-Leaf Giant Hyssop

Anne started school yesterday, the day after her marathon turn as an election official. The students don’t begin until next week, so these are rather halcyon days. The first day’s schedule was filled with team building exercises, training workshops and lunch, let’s not forget about lunch or second breakfast either. If only this situation could endure, but those pesky kids, if not always demanding an education, at least needing one, will soon arrive.

As promised, I have been bicycling every day that I can. My legs are beginning to remember their cadence. I still need to ride many more miles, if I am going to be ready for Bike MS next month, but I should be able to get them in in time. 

Thistle

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Thistle

Thistle is a widely distributed plant of the daisy family that has a prickly stem, leaves, rounded heads and in this case red flowers. I love the spent spider web strung between its needles. This particular flower is down the road from my father’s place. We flew through Salt Lake to San Jose. Do you know the way? Then we drove to Monterey, leaving the sun-baked brown hills around San Jose for the still quite green ones, for California in late May. We are back here so soon again to celebrate my Dad’s 90th birthday. I think that he is worried that we might make him dance at his party, but I’m sure that it will be a rather low-key affair and nothing to fear. It will probably amount to nothing more than just dinner and dessert. Anne is our scoot lass and the thistle is in her honor.

Our Own Oddities

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Red Tulips in Forest Park

When we moved to Saint Louis, we first encountered Our Own Oddities. This local Sunday special was featured in the comics section of the Post-Dispatch. This strip always seemed to me to be similar to the syndicated Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. It frequently featured unusually shaped fruits and vegetables, such as a potato that resembled Richard Nixon. In addition to freakish produce the strip also featured peculiar local trivia, like a woman who lived at 1919 Montgomery St. and was born at nine o’clock on August 19, 1919. The paper discontinued this feature years ago, which is unfortunate, because I have some new entries.

I rode in the park this morning and while riding I encountered two noteworthy scenes. The first was a man on the bike path. This man was holding a log in his hands. This log had been cut to fireplace length and was about 8″ in diameter. He was holding it out in front of himself, with both palms pressed against the two flat ends. But what made this individual even more unique was that he was dragging a car tire behind him, laid flat on the path, by a rope around his waist. His homemade exercise regimen certainly set him apart from all us others.

The other scene of note was encountered while rolling past the Grand Basin. A dozen new moms were working out, each with their new baby in its stroller facing them. I guess that watching mom gyrate in front of them, must have been soothing or at least entertaining for the infants. It would have made a good pic.

Not to be outdone, Anne witnessed her own oddity, while walking home from school. We are not alone here, while suffering under the ministrations of the sewer district. There are many other streets that are also undergoing the same uncrossing of the waters that we are. While Anne was walking by one such site, she observed a driver attempting to exit their driveway. MSD had trenched out the road in front of the house, such that when the car exited the driveway, it first dropped into the dugout section of the road. Thump! Then it attempted to climb back out again and ran into an even steeper wall along the road’s centerline. Whump! Some back and fill ensued, eventually leading to the car’s escape, but not completely, because it had lost a bumper in all of that bumping and grinding.