Something from the garden

This is one of the plants that appears every year on The Compound without any assistance from us. There used to be a bunch of them in the bed where the herbs are now. This past winter wiped them out. So I was happily surprised to see this one come up in a different flower bed. When you rub the leaves, they have a pungent odor, but the flowers have a sweeter scent.

Clerodendrum bungei, or Cashmere Bouquet.
They get much fatter and fuller. Hopefully by next summer we’ll again have a larger population of them.

ETA: Until Mark G. Harris pointed it out, I never noticed the lizard in the flower. When I shot it and even uploaded and cropped it, I was completely focused on the flower. Now I can’t STOP seeing him. The lizard is a photo bomber!

You can make your dreams come true

‘Nathan just tweeted the following:

NathanBurgoine Life goal update: have signing at @murderbooks

‘Nathan, I believe this will happen. And I can tell you from experience that Murder By the Book is a great place to have a book signing because the store, the staff, and its readers are the best.

Meanwhile, I have a photo that may remind you of Houston’s best little mystery bookstore:

And now, a word from a favorite author

I couldn’t have expressed it better than one of my favorite writers Tom Robbins did in an interview from 2000:

…you’ve traveled quite a bit.

I do travel. You have to keep moving otherwise you’re a target.

That’s cynical.

Cheerfully cynical. My view of the world is not that different from Kafka’s, really. The difference is that Kafka let it make him miserable and I refuse. Life is too short. My personal motto has always been: Joy in spite of everything. Not just [mindless] joy, but joy in spite of everything. Recognizing the inequities and the suffering and the corruption and all that but refusing to let it rain on my parade. And I advocate this to other people.

Eight more days!

I suddenly realized that it’s only eight more days until the return of my second favorite (and maybe the only one I’ll watch this fall) reality show, Lifetime’s Project Runway. It’s moving up an hour (9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, which means 8 p.m. Central–and I don’t know what time Mountain people can see it) on Thursday nights. The format is ninety minutes, but details haven’t been provided as to whether they’ll feature another season of Models of the Runway or are expanding air time for the design competition. This season has more contestants than usual–seventeen–and tonight I watched all their casting videos and picked my favorites to keep an eye on and my favorites to go home early.

Will I be playing along and designing for Mattel’s Model Muse dolls?

Does Barbie have a dream house?

I’m already auditioning my models. In case you think they’ve just been lying around naked in a wicker box all summer, you should know that some of them have joined together to form an all-model rock band, The Opposite of Math. As for whether or not my own personal muse Summer will return–stay tuned!

Button Sunday

I have absolutely no reason whatsoever for making this today’s button. Some things in life are just random and we have to accept that. Although if I were older than 35, I might remember a Christmas when I got Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads when they were still just things you stuck in actual vegetables and not inserted into plastic potatoes. Apparently those newfangled ones were safer. But could they smell like a rotting vegetable or piece of fruit that would make your older siblings gag? I think not.

In fact, if I were older than 35, there might even be photographic evidence.

In other matters, I greatly appreciate your comments to my previous post. I will try to fulfill all your requests over time. Thanks for giving me ideas for LJ material!