…photographed yesterday by Don Heiny:

I’ve been remiss in updating you on the floral situation here in the Bay Area while completing practicum applications. It’s amazing how much work goes into requests to donate 20 hours a week for a year.

Two weeks ago my girlfriend and I walked around Mosswood Park in Oakland. A few days later we visited the local rose garden, so more pics are coming.

Today is Chlamydia Monday in Sweden, yet another reason to keep that country on your list of emigration possibilities in case Boehner and McConnell take over this one in November. Go here to see the Official Chlamydia Day Videos (try saying that fast five times in a row). The clips are not limited to just the one sexually transmitted disease, nor to a species-specific method of transmission.

To you it’s just another lousy tree peony, to me it’s a miracle. Five years from seed, and it finally bloomed.

I couldn’t get the second tree to hold still; it was anxious to go out and play with the wind.

Just to prove to skeptics that the Bay Area isn’t, yet, rosed out.

As expected the rose hedge has begun to brown around the edges, but there are still some nice views available.

Week 3, and it’s hard to believe it can go anywhere but down from here.

Last week I was thinking, “This is gonna be amazing in a week or two”.

So here it is today, exactly a week later. I make no attempt to replicate the shot angle…

And a bonus closeup.

Does anyone recognize this plant?

Sorry for the difference in color, these are from my BlackBerry. In real life these are instances of the same plant only a few feet apart.

From a review in The Guardian of McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers, by Misha Glenny:

Glenny correctly identifies the contradiction of the Wars on Drugs and Terror, in which the illicit trade created by the former sustains the enemy in the latter. ‘If the UN is right and drugs account for 70 per cent of organised criminal activity,’ argues Glenny, ‘then the legalisation of drugs would administer by far the deadliest blow possible against transnational organised criminal networks.’

…because I can’t:

Let’s take a break for old time’s sake with the inimitable Cab Calloway.

Damn, I let Valentine’s Day slip by again without sending you all cards. Oh, well…

Since Jerry is always doing flowerblogging, I'll vary the theme a little. So here's Petunia.