The march of progress

Instead of composing something intelligent, I've finally caved and harnessed the useless technology of twitter to the stupefying march of time in my garden. You will find updates under "gardening and telecommunication" on the right.

When they come to take me away, I'll be out back texting in today's low temperature.

One notable update is that it has yet to rain again.

And the first crocuses bloomed. The white one is C. pulchellus 'Zephyr', and the purple is either C. sativus 'Cashmerianus' (Russell says it's "freer of flower" than regular old C. sativus) or; its wild ancestor C. cartwrightianus is notably more beautiful. I kind of planted everything together, so it took me a while to sort them out. [updated 11/15].

That is all.

Amateur hour

The mystery Penstemon is blooming again. I went out and abused it with the macro lens in another attempt to ID it. I also enlisted the magnifying glass (OED), metric ruler (Keroppi), and even the fancy pencils my mom gave me (Faber Castell 4B) in an -- ultimately vain -- attempt to understand what was going on with the thyrse , among other things.

It's amazing how hard it is to look at a plant and really see it: I was surprised that my previous flailings in this area were relatively accurate.

Now, in addition to the apparatus just enumerated, I own both the best book about Penstemons and the definitive articles on the Mexican species published by Richard Straw in the Boletin de la Sociedad Botanica De Mexico in the '60s, and I still can't figure it out. After many travails I managed to key it out (sort of) to P. skutchii, a species Straw named but never saw, and which is now apparently regarded as an invalid synonym of P. gentianoides. Fine, you say, leave it at that. Believe me, I'd love to. But P. gentianoides has blue flowers.