Daucus carota, my favorite trash flower

I don't believe in weeds.

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I remember the squinting face of some asshole not quite drunk enough to not notice me as he recommended that I take the Queen Anne's Lace bloom from behind my ear. I kept my eyes on him. What could he possibly be talking about? How ugly was this going to get?

A series of words I can't quite remember relayed to me that he thought my flower was poisonous.  I think I laughed, or maybe waved him away, or maybe busted some botanical knowledge, but I know I did not remove that flower from its perch. I definitely took another sip of my drink.

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Did you know that all the little flowers that make up the Queen Anne's Lace bloom are the softest thing? Find the biggest, flattest flower you can, check for bees and run it across your cheek. Now your forehead. Now your lips. You'll see.

++++++++ 

I am a child, alone and lonely, wandering through the abandoned tennis courts near my house, or the woods behind the high school football field, or the spaces near my grandparents' house in Trafford. I am looking for things to know. I am looking for secret treasures. I am looking for a world of my own. I find a little black dot in the center of the flower, a little black dot in the center of every big one. I pull up a few and see a little carrot. A little dot, a little carrot, holy shit.

And it is all mine.

++++++++

My Brooklyn is a bad place to find lace. It grows where other things don't, along with thistle and morning glory. It hangs out near fences and broken glass, underpasses and hidden places. It is a roadside gift; other people try to make it trashy but it just resists with all that airy whiteness. Or, perhaps, it is trashy and that just means something bigger (better) in the summer than it usually does.

++++++++ 

For more scientific words on Queen Anne's Lace, check out the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's weed of the month post.

Photo from Minnesota Seasons

"florists on the edge"

Nothing here is the thing I want.

I've been reading some back issues of Cactus and Succulent Journal that I picked up for a friend and never gave her. Succulent enthusiasts have a lot of drive. I've not been reading the comics and books I stocked up on to get through this long winter. I got to use some of my newfound cactus knowledge in an article I am writing for my day job, so there's that.

I am working on a series of collages for a zine about my friend Sally. Will it be done in time for _______? Will it ever be done? This is what I think about when I think about grieving or projects. It will certainly include a page of flowers. She loved flowers and I love flowers and flowers, flowers, flowers. I thought of this treatment while considering why I was so drawn to the Cactus and Succulent Journal, so there's that.

I've been listening to a ton of genre story podcasts. They get me through days working at home or puttering nights. Maybe not on the page, but I like ghost manifestations, fairy machinations, hodgepodge time and place, and such right in my ear. When I do venture out of my lair I read HAV by Jan Morris, which fits into my desire for wispy realities, so there's that.

sandy sandy sandy

I worked from home most of last week on a very frustrating project. One of the ways that I deal with being glued to the computer for most of the day, and the subsequent loss of reading time, is to listen to podcasts. I've been catching up with my Inkstuds and loved the Pat Grant interview. It starts off with a roadtrip elopement and goes so many places from there. Grant has a kickass process blog that all lovers of self-published comics should check out.

zzzzzzzz

I don't know how else to illustrate the word irresistible than this dollar rack find:

 With illustrations by Tanith Lee herself!

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I'm sure that you already know about the newly revived The Memory Palace, being the kind of discerning folk that hang out in tryharderland. But, if not, just know that little nonfiction stories about history are found there. (See also 99% Invisible.) 

zzzzzzzzz

This posey is made from some of the last of the flowers from the roof. Well, not the last, but probably the last untouched by Scary Sandy. With the storm a ragin' or whatever, let's write one another some letters and emails, ok? Ok.

"archive dust"

An excellent essay about letters, choices, writers, grandmas and Martha Gellhorn over a The Millions by friend-o-tryharder, Amy Shearn: A Goofy State of Mind

<<<>>>

The Vatican, yes that Vatican, has opened, and is sending out, a portion of their massive "Secret" archive. The real, live items will be exhibited in Capitoline Museums in Rome, but you can see some very intriguing tidbits here: Lux In Arcana

<<<>>>

I started buying magazines. So many subscriptions bought, forgotten about, then appearing, regularly in the mail. B did the same during the contagious fugue state where credit cards flashed to the sound of glossy pages flip flapping. It was a good idea: Cabinet, Gastronmica, wax poetics, bitch, BOMB, The Coffin Factory, and more now come to our door.

<<<>>>

I grew these and now they are gone.

The rest of the summer is waiting.

Old toothbrushes and elbow grease

I have been discovering crannies and nooks unknown to me. Spring cleaning is going on, a few months late by the calendar, a few months early by the weather. In my home, things are being mended and scrutinized, discarded and displayed. I am spending time alone with my (our) things, and being the sentimental type, this means spending time with my memories and attitudes. I prefer working on the present—the past is pitfalls and prattfalls—so, ways of being are being refined and defined and this is surprisingly rewarding. And, just like the freshened result of cleaning out the dryer's internal filter, you'd never know from the outside.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

It is planting season. I am too chilled to venture on to the roof, so my little plants and unpopped seeds are having an inside day:

In addition to my Gaia-like nurturing of food and beauty, I've been bringing home shopping bags of fruit and vegetables that, with their bright colors and healthy odors, amplify both my righteousness and sexual appeal tenfold.

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Best of all, I heard that Maureen F. McHugh will be coming out with a new collection of short stories from Small Beer Press in October 2011. It is called After the Apocalypse and you will preorder it now.

I am reading Half the Day is Night by her right now and enjoying its underwater murkiness, if not the other trappings of the book's world. More on that later.

haps

Sorry to ruin a Spring day, everybody, but I am hoping for rain. I want the grey clouds that are now bunching over Downtown Brooklyn to turn black and heavy and blow over this way. Which, of course, means that I've started my roof garden and that the hose is a situation. A frustrating, wet, non-working situation. A trip to the hardware store could probably fix that, but when will that happen?

I have fallen into a book recently sent to me by a small press. The world is recent past and I want to be there. I hope to write about it somewhere else soon. It is a love story and a sibling story--surprise!

The third thing, the third thing is that I owe you a letter. I really do. I promise to sit down this weekend and write you one.

Twitter has recently been absorbing thoughts like the above, but I wanted to pin them here this time. I am still unsure about Twitter--how it shapes my thoughts. As a delivery system, it's great, but when I post an essay like this one or this one, it is hard to say why they are important in just a few lines. However, with retweeting, the audience for such a pick is limitless--perhaps that makes up for it? I don't know.

dribs

Hi to new followers and twitter folk. Please comment when it moves you; like a network TV comedy and rigidly-defined gender roles, bloggers need comments to live.
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Speaking of twitter, through the feed of M K Reed, I found out about Tessa Brunton's comics. They looked familiar and it turns out a read a piece by her a few years ago. Good story, no? Anyway, I am loving these comics, especially Brunton's attention to the small pattern--polka dots, leave and wiggly lines are everywhere in her work and they add a sweetness to the work that I love. Plus, she has a favorite podcasts section on her site.

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Better than cut any day.

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My subway rides have been filled with The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. It took me about a third of the way in to get into it, but now I am enjoying the swirl of spices, plant names, opium smoke and righteousness that blows through the book.

I've been lucky with my reading recently. More reviews soon.

Six

Some things I did today:

1) Wrote about leggings and big rigs
2) Had several dreams about phone calls that never happened
3) Saw this:


4) Planted a second round of basil and fennel seeds
5) Forgot several things several times
6) Practiced my cursing

What about you?

back of my neck gettin dirt(y) and gritty

i've been meaning to tell you

1) L. Nichols (whom you may remember from her contest win) is making some great garden comics right now. I must confess to envy, over here with my unhappy cucumbers and stunted greens.

2) "Were I asked (and I never have been), I would have to say that William Gibson is my favorite science fiction author, mostly likely my favourite "genre" author of all time, across all genres not labeled "literary", though I think that after Pattern Recognition, anyone trying to keep his work in the science fiction ghetto is a fool." August C. Bourré is writing about William Gibson's work--all of it, which is making me think it might be about time for a long reread.

3) Mary Phillips-Sandy is right, as usual, about why we love books about "humdrum objects." Aren't you glad she started blogging again?

4) Speaking of tumblrs, Ira Marcks' Morning in the Atelier is a great photo blog that takes place entirely in his studio. Ink water spill, pen's-eye-view and more.
photo by ira marcks, of course

Good

*Click to enbiggen*

this...

turned into this

The roof is actually even more potty than this now that I've begin to thin and repot seedlings. Besides the vegetables you see here I am growing some sunflowers for B, and some zinnias for me. Between the two is nasturtium; I have several pots of those grown from seed. Will they actually flower?

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From my parents' basement...
It shoots popcorn! It jazzes up the counter with its wild lettering! It only smells a little like burning wires! Bonus: giving it to me makes my parents seem less like hoarders.

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This week was a bad one for stress, but a good one for art. My friend Pete not only brought his bad self to visit, he brought a housewarming painting with him:
One Day by Esther Pearl Watson
I keep going back and looking at it over and over. Especially the little socks.

&&&
More art arrived with Eva today. I commissioned a set of portraits for B's birthday awhile ago from Simon, and she graciously lugged them from Vienna to Brooklyn. They look so much like us that I had to redact! I thought that we'd put them in the bathroom so guests feel safe knowing that we are always watching.

MoCCA, cha cha cha

Because I need to sleep, and also need to be late for everything, yesterday at MoCCA was a bit of a wash. So, in lieu of a detailed rundown of people and things, here are some photos from this morning:


MoCCA walking shoes


First day's haul


window gardening- nasturtium seedlings

See you at the armory!

Two friends of Try Harder are losing it at The Nervous Breakdown:
Amy Shearn is looking for a place to lay her head.

Amanda Miller is fully dressed, these days.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Weekday Worrier is at his place explaining why there are such terrible sounds coming out of our apartment recently.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

So, Spring Break has so far been sitting inside, wondering when we moved to Scotland and could we please move back now, ok? But today the sun is out, I've got seeds and pots on my mind. It's too bad that I had to say goodbye to my garden, but now I have sun!

3 smells

On my table sits a single-stem of lily that, now that it has opened, sends the fragrance of B.O. throughout my apartment. Perhaps, in the wild, smelling like something rotten would draw exotic pollinators to this dark purple flower. In the apartment, it makes me laugh to get a whiff of something so unexpected as I whirl around trying to get something done.

It was given to me at my birthday party by friends, who actually showed up, unlike the Philly contingent, and who could not know that that smell reminds me of the city I left behind.

It smells bad, but it’s complicated.

***

Speaking of Philadelphia smells, when the wind blows my backyard is filled with the ancient stench of ginkgo trees making babies. That dragged-through-dog-shit smell is shuffling through bright yellow leaves on close streets in the fall, making teenage mistakes and having teenage fun. It is cold noses and smoky scarves and combat boots on pavement. It is empty and full at once and I wish certain people were here to share it with me.

Fun fact: Green or yellow, ginkgo leaves are one of my favorite things.

***

Apple without the blossom means delicious food and cold mornings and unexpected abundance. It means green and read and yellow. It is a joke and a gift. It is another year with you.

Let's stop talking about hair and maybe talk a little bit about homework. Not my homework, which is amorphous and mounting, but the homework that high school and college kids hope to finish by googling the title of a book and copy n pasting. This type of thing is one of the uggles one must put up with when putting writing on the internet, but still, when combing my stats, it still annoys me. Actually doing the reading is much more interesting, though I will admit that what qualifies as interesting for me may not correspond with the average teenager.

$$$


Tonight as I cycled home from school, using avenues with bike lanes, I had yet another confrontation with people who just can't bear to be on the sidewalks with all those other people. I believe this inability to view a biker's safety as a higher priority than walking faster than the sidewalk allows is a sort of egomania.

As I was tearing up Eight Avenue, after making my way through the laneless nightmare that is 40th-42nd Sts., I pulled over to the mushroom head emblazoned track and soon encountered a flock of douchebags, khakis pressed and ties flying, in a vee formation spread over my lane. I said to them, "Hey douchebags, nice walking in the bike lane." They waited for me to pass a ways and yelled a rousing, "Fuck you, dyke!"

Class incarnate, they were.

$$$

I got my first graded assignment of grad school back today, an analysis of LibraryThing's cataloging abilities.
I got an A.
Hooray!

Today is Fall

The first toad lily of the season. Pretty, but, a harbinger of cold weather.


A letter to a friend. You should write one too.


Making barley iced tea. Delicious.

Before I head off to MoCCA, I wanted to share some pics from my rain-weary garden:

The first lily! A lollipop lily to be exact.

Herb garden

Yellow digitalis (foxglove)

Impatiens and ferns and bleachy sunlight

books to the back

link-smackin' good

Maud Newton has two events coming up that sound really great. Both are at the Housing Works Cafe & Bookstore.
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A week of groceries on $30? Here in New York? These folks are doing it and making really good food too. (Except for the nasty raw food week. Raw food dinner is a-ok. Raw food breakfast is not for the hedonistic, to say the least.)
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Science and life and being a lady--all the good things, no? Thesis--With Children is great writing on all of those topics and more. I have especially been enjoying the posts on race and academia.
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Speaking of science, here are some great posts on depression, courtesy of Neurotopia 2.0. Read the entire enlightening series.
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I've also been doing a lot of art snooping these days. If a poor person buying art is wrong, I don't want to be right!

Pickles!

I always crave pickled onions with my rice and beans. Now I needn't be left wanting. These were pickled with cloves, allspice and a bay leaf.



Carrots pickled with garlic and dill. I needed to do something with these CSA beauties before they turned to mush.

My first time pickling anything certainly turned out surprisingly well. What new things are you trying during this long winter?