stripes

I was so tired by mid-afternoon (a very patch night's sleep; up at the crack of dawn to go to Keck with Alice as the designated post colonoscopy-and-endoscopy driver; all went well).  These things - let alone the end of the semester - take it out of one.  So I did what I never do, and went to lie down for half an hour - and, well, evidently I was irresistible as a warm soft human surface.

 

other people's front steps

At the bottom of our street, today - but a street about which I felt very sulky, since we were told five days ago (notice tied to gate; notices on lamposts, etc) that it was going to be resurfaced with asphalt slurry, whatever cheap nastiness that might be; that we couldn't park on it, and so on.  Did that happen?  No!  Cancelled due to Unforeseen Circumstances! (a shortage of slurry).  Still, I got in an extra walk.

Yes, there have been a lot of photos of flowers recently.  For those of you skilled in translation - that means it's been Nonstop Admin.  But I have started to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel ...

 

a startlingly pink poppy

Not being the yellow-orange that you'd expect a poppy in these parts to be, this does rather stand out.  For all of that, it proved rather elusive to photograph, despite bringing both a camera and a cell phone to bear on its distinctiveness.  I think that when I threw out handfuls of seeds at the end of last year, some were for "California Wild Flowers," and even if the ones that make it through are habitually the Californian poppies, these are staking a claim to our Los Angeles meadow, too.

 

the matilija

This is just one of the many flowers on the magnificent matilija poppy.  When one looks down on it from upstairs, it's as if someone has been making lots of huge white and yellow paper flowers and tying them to bushes in the garden, very unconvincingly.  I'm hoping that this one - and one of its friends - has definitively taken, because they are finicky plants - native only to a relatively small coastal-ish stretch between San Diego and Santa Barbara, and either dying after a few months, or spreading and spreading - they are rhizomic.  But since not a great deal else (other than regular poppies) truly likes growing on the slope where this is, I'm wishing a long and fruitful family life for it.

 

to the point

Such a solid, respectable house; such a solid, respectable, direct message.  I couldn't agree more.  To be honest, when I turned into the street (I was on foot, walking to have my hair done, having parked a couple of streets away because all the possible nearer parking spots were occupied by serried ranks of waiting-for-collection Friday trash cans) I thought - surely someone can't have a banner celebrating T - ... and then I got closer, and found that no, indeed, these patriots didn't.

 

health care in LA

This is, I think, a pharmacy, but it seems to be advertising dental braces ... On the way to Keck (usual derm check - seven separate bits of my face/scalp frozen, but no biopsies: I'll count that as a win).  The balloons are a clear attempt at optimism, but somehow the whole scene was not only gloomy in itself, but a polar contrast to the USC hospital's shiny surfaces.

 

signed!

I'm delighted to say that today I signed the contract for the book provisionally/definitely known as "Habitatscapes: Environmental Futures in Nineteenth Century Art" - all 110,000 words and 100 images of it - to be published next year by the University of Chicago Press.  I have two and a half months to pull the manuscript into final shape ...

Many, many thanks to all of you - you know who you are - who have helped get the book to this point: reading versions of it; workshopping it; coming to talks and asking great questions; feeding me images and quotations.  I really wouldn't have reached this moment without you.