The Ides of May

This will probably the the last picture I take in the garden for a while. Luckily, Ixia viridiflora bloomed just in time, and I got some decent pictures. With it, as usual, firecracker flower, Dichelostemma ida-maia, which I have not managed to photograph, though you can just see it in the background of this shot.

I looked into the name of D. ida-maia a few years ago, and read somewhere that it was named after a lady named Ida Mae. But I was never totally satisfied with this explanation, because it always blooms on May 15, which is the Ides of May, a date newly significant to me. So with the help of the internets, I tracked down Alphonso Wood's original 1867 description of what he called Brevoortia ida-maia:

This plant was first noticed by Mr. Burke, stage-driver, in his daily route, and by him my own attention was first called to it. He had given it the name of "Ida May, in affection for his little daughter,"—a name quite appropriate, moreover, as on the Ides (i.e., the 15th) of May, the plant begins to flower.

The type locality was on the stage road from Shasta City to Yreka.

Crack Kills

I was waking from my nap on Friday, contemplating a delightful evening of my patented "moroccan chicken" and Ribiera del Duero, and listening to my wife wash something in the sink. I heard her turn off the water -- and I heard the water continue to flow.

Did you know FUCK can be a six syllable word?

The water, we discovered 17 hours and several hundred dollars later, was gushing from this tiny pinhole in an elbow between floors [the crack noted above refers to what people were smoking when they decided that galvanized steel was a suitable material to deliver your water supply.]

Since Saturday was devoted to plumbing, Sunday was spent on the painting we were supposed to do Saturday, and gardening did not happen, despite an auspicious break in the rain yesterday.

I did have time to note a few developments, primarily monocotyledonous:

• Calochortus catalinae has started to germinate in its ziploc in the fridge. I should probably start checking these things at the beginning of the weekend.
• The rains persuaded Dichelostemma ida-maia to finally send up some leaves. Possibly Erythronium californicum too. Keep your fingers crossed: it lives almost directly under the site of the unfortunate PVC cement incident of September '06.
• Speaking of shame, the asphodel is shooting up virtually from the grave of the Deppea splendens, because I was totally unable to locate the former when I planted the latter in a location it obviously wanted nothing to do with.
• Other excitements include the emergence of some hybrid tulips; various flowering succulents -- including one that is going to BLOW YOUR MIND, as soon as I figure out what it is; and approximately 100 gazillion Nigella seedlings in the lawn. Maybe they'll slow down the bermuda grass.