I’ve got a kickass crop of Shasta Daisies. They are edible but mine have little tiny black bugs living on them and also Shasta Daisy petals have no flavor. Subtle is putting it mildly. Get it? Mildly? K doesn’t think I know what a pun is, but I do; I just don’t think they’re funny. Anyway, I couldn’t even taste the 130 flower fleas (or whatever the hell they were) that went down the hatch with the blossom so I’m not impressed with the culinary possibilities here. I suppose you could decorate a cake if you had some on hand that weren’t infested. I’m not even going to bother trying to make a cocktail with them, although It’s likely the leaves have more flavor. I’m too grossed out to investigate that right now.

The weather is finally starting to turn and watering is becoming less optional. You would think that would motivate me visit the Marvelous Plot of Awesomeness daily but I just keep sitting here on the couch reading about teenage vampires. Last time I was there I noticed the choi was bolting which was decidedly not awesome. Tomorrow I’m pulling up the spinach even though it’s still kind of small because I see the writing on the wall.

there was a time when i would follow you into a storm and all i wanted was someone to keep me warm but now i m torn by my tolerance i fight with my head i don t need to pollinate a flower that s dead.

Google this and you find my blog which is how it ended up in my keyphrases stats for June (right between “is forsythia dangerous for cows to eat?” and “deer poop in pool") but what the hell is it? Bad Poetry? Good Poetry? A song lyric? A message? Folk wisdom? I am all ‘et up with curiosity but the internet is no help. Also why does my spell check insist that “internet” be capitalized? Damn these puzzles!

Tonight I want to blog but can’t be bothered to go outside to take a picture. The yard is going gangbusters so it’s too bad. The goumi bush must be twice the size it was last year and the daylillies are really coming into their own. The shasta daisies and firecracker flowers are competing to see who can overtake my towering 5′7″ stature first. I like it when I can’t see out of the yard, mainly because it usually means other people can’t see in which leads to fewer awkward conversations with professional gleaners. Did you know that I let some of the cherries rot on the tree last year? Three separate people, none of whom I’d ever spoken to before in my life, have taken me to task for this so far. The cherries are ripe and if I don’t get them down I’m going on some sort of list. Possibly I will be issued a citation but I’m too tired to do anything about it right now.

I worked several days this week siding a house in North West Portland which is probably why my ass is glued to the couch. Despite my nearly 3 year on again off again stint as a construction laborer, I have almost no carpentry skills which means I make twice as many trips around the job site looking for mysterious cutting and pounding implements as everyone else due to sheer incompetency. I have a really hard time reading a tape measure and sometimes I don’t cut straight lines even when I do manage to take the right measurement. I find the nail gun exhaustingly heavy and often my arm shakes when I use it. I’ve yet to master holding screws in my mouth. I’m pretty damn useless, truth be told, but my ineptitude ensures that I get a nice workout during my 150 trips back and forth to the van with the wrong tools. I should probably fire myself and get back to gardening.

Yesterday we went to Johnson Creek to see a family of beavers. One of the beavers is named Flubberpuss which is a pretty unfortunate moniker. Flubberpuss was busy swimming around with branches in his mouth looking silky. There were a couple of babies that were hard to see without binoculars and a mama beaver who sat on the shore scratching her belly and being immodest. B Rabbit says a nutria lives there too but we didn’t see it. Angsty tried to take pictures of the beavers but they were too far away so she photographed the sky instead. The dusk had that end of the world, light against dark quality to it that always makes me glad to be alive.

On the way home we bought Mexican cokes and PBR at a curiously spacious market which also sells numchuks and playing cards with naked men on them. Someday I’m going back to try the Mexican and Italian fare prepared by gumptious South East Asians. I bet it’s good.

I spent the weekend immersed in a crazy beautiful fog bank drinking Barenjager and looking at wildflowers. Who knew rhododendrons could thrive anywhere other than in front of a turn of the century Portland home with banal landscaping? Not me. They appear to be an understory shrub that also does well in clearcuts and I read in a pamphlet that the Pacific Rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum) is the Washington State flower. All I know is that they look ten times better dotting a hillside than holding down a lawn. I also saw bleeding hearts, little yellow violets, red flowering currants, and one trillium. Damn that fog makes colors pop! Sadly this was not apparent in most of my photography. Here is a nice shot of Bagpipe Man fake pooping on some wildflowers.

We were in the Umpqua National Forest but I will not reveal the actual location because despite the existence of this publication I’m thinking of it as my secret hideaway. The weather didn’t bother me one whit, holed up inside a cozy cabin with Best Friends, about a hundred dogs, and my new favorite libation barenjager with half and half. We also experimented with barenjager and white port(yum!), barenjager in coffee(nice!), and barenjager in kombucha(bleck!) and I even accidentally brushed my teeth with barenjager-water but that’s a good way to get a visit from the Cavity Creeps so don’t do that!

Many thanks to D and EDWARD for putting this trip together. We had a smashing good time.

After letting the pond dechlorinate for a few days, I headed down to the stinkiest pet store I’ve ever been in to purchase a few new friends. Goldfish were 39 cents apiece for the choosy and $1.00 for 4 to 6 if anonymous specimens would do. I got 4 slow guys who couldn’t outrun the net but now I wish I’d gotten 6 because 2 of them disappeared completely upon release. The other 2 swam around near the surface making cute kissy faces at me but later seemed to become suspicious of my hulking presence. Now if I want to see the fish I have to sneak up on the pond by lying on my belly and inching through the grass. It’s hard to feel meditative in that state.

It had been a while since I’d been in a pet store because all the cats and dogs came from the pound and I’ve never really gone in for rodents or fish. Incidentally, have you all noticed that no one says “pound” any more? It’s all rescue this, and shelter that and free sessions with doggie behavioralists and samples of gluten free dogfood. It’s all much too precious for my taste. I like to make it sound like I sprang my guys from the slammer. Anyway, this pet store, my it was fragrant. And humid. Waves of gerbil funk hit my nostrils as soon as I walked through the door yet the cages looked clean and all the incarcerated vermin seemed in good spirits. The rats were super cute with their little wiggly noses and giant testicles. Actually, the giant testicles were more disturbing than cute but still the rats were surprisingly cuddly looking. But that smell, man, it was an olfactory assault. There were 3 employees seemingly oblivious to their horrid working conditions while I on the other hand had a hard time not pulling my shirt up over my nose. My fishies are lucky not to live there anymore and they are hiding so that I won’t take them back.