Inconspicuous Flowers

I attended the first dragonboat practice last night. (My shoulder is sort of kind of okay, so I rowed. I'm icing it as I type.) There will be three races on the big race day, and each one will be 300 yards or about a minute and a half long.

The manager of our team came in third in the country last year in a different competition held at the festival: dumpling eating. He consumed 19. These are the big style dumplings. Woah daddy.

Vacationing Dr. Sue is consuming episodes of MI-5 (from the BBC) with similar abandon. I've watched a little. Characters die (are "disincentivized") like clockwork, and the music makes me feel like I'm at an uptight rave.

Anyway, this is a progress report on various plants. First, Viney the Vine.

JUNE 18


JULY 15


This is called Royal Ruby Hens and Chicks. I'm not so sure what happened. Under the heading, BLOOM TIME, the info card that came with it says: "Inconspicuous flowers". Ummm...

JUNE 25


JULY 15


One of our cucumber plants sprouted tentacle tendrils a few weeks ago, so I set up a bamboo tripod. The cuke seems to really like it. Now that it stopped raining so much and the sun is out more regularly, things are growing like mad. See in the second pic how it's lashed itself to the bamboo? Cool!

JULY 7


JULY 15


And this first pic is from Old Cedar Scraps on April 13. We planted Planty the Plant a week later on April 20.

APRIL 20


JULY 15


Last but not least... our burning bush is dead.

JUNE 8


JULY 15


BOOOOOooooo.