Where it's shady

Spared because they spend a lot of time out of the sun's direct rays, there are still delphiniums of many colors and even a few bachelor buttons. All the lettuces are bolting, but are still with us in their various colors and shapes.

Progeny producing

We bought an oddly pruned or straggly Pride of Barbados some years ago. It has never been pruned. I have given away seed pods to those who have asked for them and have planted seeds myself. I wouldn't say that the germination rate is high, but some plants do appear. One, not deliberatedly planted, sprouted in a pot. This is the first year that the offspring are producing flowers, a very exciting development. Many of the plants kept a lot of their leaves through the winter this year, which may have helped. Attracted to thse flowers are all sorts of bees and butterflies, plus hummingbirds, of which there are also many this year.

Community

Today, Austin seemed like the small town that it used to be. I love the Juneteenth parade and there just aren't enough ways to say why. Here are some videos taken by one who went with me to the parade. Another videoteer caught the wonderful giant H-E-B shopping cart (just search; there's a 19-minute spliced-together video by aymond somebody). The primary viewing spot was the usual: across from the Fresh Up Club.

Odd locution

Why "Windows is starting up"? Why not "Windows is starting" or "Windows is opening"? just wondering.

Sampling for ripeness

They don't eat the entire fig or tomato; they eat just enough so that others (us, for instance) no longer find the fig or tomato of much use. These are green figs, of an unknown sort common aroud here. The grow larger and larger and then within hours they've all been consumed. This has not happened yet, only the sampling.

Mysterious name of unknown origin

It's not a first name. It's "Mayfred." The person whose middle name this was came into this world in the 1880s. A search reveals that this name is out there (or in the past has been); I've just never met any of those other people. Is it Celtic? Is it the name of a Valkyrie (Maifried, perhaps)? Is it from a forgotten novel?

Intimations of mortality

The next time that my birthday arrives, I'll have had just as many birthdays as my own father had, and five more than his mother had. I'm not sure what to think about that and never had thought about it until reading Paul Burka's (Texas Monthly) investigation into the life of his own father. Burka was not quite five when his father died; I was about eight months old when mine died. I apologize to Wordsworth for the title of this entry.

Recognitions

The intention was to see the new Hindi comedy but when we got there we, along with many others, were surprised to find that a movie from a non-Hindi-speaking part of India was showing. In our experience, only Hindi movies have English subtitles; anyhow, whichever this was had no subtitles. We, along with other disappointed people, saw the Indiana Jones movie instead. It was clear right away that the supposed Nevada locations were in New Mexico. No locations were credited to the Grants area, but the production design appropriated the notion of the good old Uranium Cafe in Grants. And then there was New Haven, lots and lots of New Haven, with every street and every building a recognizable one. The Uranium Cafe used to serve down-home food and Chinese food. Obviously, the plan in the first place wasn't to see the Indiana Jones movie, but I'm not sorry that we did. Lots of it isn't good, but lots of it is plenty of fun nevertheless.

Proud of the pride

Pride of Barbados opened its first flowers of the season. There have been buds only for a few days. These have been growing well from seed, so we'll expect lots more.

Remainders

Astonishingly, we're still enjoying bachelor buttons and delphiniums. There's a lone Drummond's phlox in bloom and a lone stock. Grasshoppers abound, but they're still small.

Another favorite word

It must have been encountered in a nineteenth-century piece of prose: refulgent. There are variant forms that mean essentially the same thing, but I like the "re." Someone has bought refulgent as a domain name, but has no Web site. That's not strange; most one-word domains, no matter what they are, have been bought.

Dap?

Whatever happened to "dap"? Where did all this "fist bump" stuff come from? Where have people been? This is news? Just wondering.