A day of rest and flowers

I was off work Friday from the Empire and IRS both, the Empire because M’s day care was closed for spring break and L had meetings all day she couldn’t get out of, which left me to take care of M, and IRS because work all down the pipeline has dried up for some unknown reason.  Just two weeks ago we were being encouraged to work all the extra hours we could, and now we’re being sent home because there’s no work to do.

It didn’t turn out quite as I’d thought at first, because TxAnne came to visit on her way home from spring break, since she hadn’t seen M in several months.  That was fun and good.

It also meant that I had someone who could stay with M while I went for my annual physical this morning, instead of having to take her with me.  That was good too, because while M’s generally very well behaved, I don’t know that she could have behaved herself for an hour in a doctor’s examining room, while I was being prodded.  (My GP was fairly pleased with my condition, wrote new prescriptions for all my maintenance meds, and gave me a new referral to the lower-GI specialist I couldn’t afford to see last year.)

After lunch, L came home because her meetings got done early and she didn’t feel like going in to work for half a day; it was much more fun if we all ran around and did things together, which is about what we did.  We all four loaded up in the car and drove way, way across town to It’s About Thyme, so I could buy new herbs to set out for the season.  I found everything I wanted, and some I didn’t know I wanted until I got there.  I walked out with two six-packs of tomato seedlings, a couple of four-inch individual yellow pear tomato plants, three kinds of basil (African blue, lime, and Dark Opal), dill, oregano, Italian parsley, and English thyme.  Later today I’ll have to get outdoors and get them in the ground before they dry out.  I think it’s supposed to stay dry.

I also need very badly to put Piet up on the jackstands and change his oil; it’s been several thousand miles too long since I did, and I also want to see if I can see where the leaks underneath him are just exactly.  That’s also been waiting on a dry weekend day, so maybe I can get it done.

In my last entry (good lord, it’s been two weeks since I wrote anything here!  This business of working twelve or thirteen hours and sleeping five every single day is getting me down) I was going on about how everything had taken to blooming its little head off.  That’s still happening, so I grabbed my camera bag and went driving around the neighborhoods between home and the University, taking pictures of flowering things.  Some of them didn’t come out as well as I would have liked, because I don’t have a monopod and trying to hold a camera still when I have a 75-300 zoom lens on it is damned difficult, not to mention the problems of trying to focus properly while wearing bifocals, but enough were good that I scanned them in to post here.  This is the kind of stuff that always blooms about now in Austin.

I’ve always called this Carolina jasmine or Confederate jasmine, but I discovered it isn’t either one of those things and now I don’t know what to call it.  It’s all over the place in huge cascades about this time of year.

Western mountain laurel.  A tree in full bloom will be covered in clusters like these.  TxAnne says the blooms smell like grape Nehi.  I’m stickin’ with my description of “lots too much cheap Woolworth perfume.”

Flowering quince.  It always blooms on the otherwise dead-looking bare sticks of the bush, which seems really strange until you get used to it.  (Come to think of it, forsythia acts like that, too.)

Redbuds bloom on the bare branches as well, a week or so before the tree starts to put out its first tiny leaves.  They’re one of the first splashes of spring color we get.

Say what you will, irises are dependable for big, showy splashes of color about now.  The little brownish spot right in the middle of the white iris is the tiniest little red-brown spider you ever saw who’d set up housekeeping between the petals.

I never have been able to decide whether I like plain irises or Dutch irises better.  I think I like the plain ones for everyday, but the thinness and elegance of the Dutch ones has its appeal.

It wouldn’t be a real, legal spring without at least one picture of daffodils.

It prob’ly wouldn’t be legal without some pansies, either.  However, I successfully resisted pictures of petunias.  They always get scruffy and poor-looking so fast.  Maybe I feel as I do because when I was growing up, people in the low-rent, no-class parts of town always planted petunias in their tractor tires and old washing machines and what have you.

Awwwwwwwwww . . . .  Johnny jump-ups are just cute.

I have no idea what variety of tulip this is, except it’s obviously exotic as all hell.

I think this is some variety of mallow, but derned if I know which one.

Flanders red poppies are the prettiest to my mind, but I couldn’t resist that primrose-y peach shade.

It was a little early for the peach trees to be at their best (this week the one down the block looks just killer), but this one was such a nice explosion of pale pink against an unsettled spring sky . . . .

Hey, it was almost Saint Padraig’s Day, so I had to get something in that was at least vaguely shamrock-looking!

I like snapdragons.  I ought to plant them more.  I don’t know why I never do.

All right, it isn’t real living vegetation, but bottle trees aren’t all that common to find any more.  I caught this cobalt glass and wrought-iron example on Duval Street.

The gelatinous jukebox plays the back forty for Peter O’Toole.  Fnord.