Red things I have successfully watered

My sister’s clematis is lush and robust and spreading quickly

If I’m really nice to her, I might get some too.

Can we all just agree to agree that geraniums are stupid?

Their “blooms” look like either '80s prom scrunches or gloopy blood clots, their leaves are so dense that they divert water from the watering can to the outside of the pot instead of to the thirsty, thirsty soil beneath, and they smell all over like cadaverous spider farts and dusty boredom.

Happy 116th birthday to Grandma Ester!

She could sew a set of matching pajamas for her grandchildren (with cellophane-wrapped quarters in the neatly turned besom pockets), roll out crisp sugar cookies so thin you could read through them, make homemade raspberry-apple jelly sealed under paraffin in individually labeled jars, braid a gorgeous—and perfectly symmetrical—rug out of scrap fabric, grow a garden of snapdragons in a spectrum of fascinating colors, and patiently, politely lose endless games of Clue with her matching-pajama-clad grandchildren—usually all in the same day. We had four wonderful, loving grandparents, but our grandfathers died when my sister and I were very young, Grandma Marie lived in Colorado, and Grandma Ester lived only two hours away—and ended up living with us as she started declining late in her long, remarkable life—so I knew her the best. We’ve finally outgrown our besom-pocket pajamas and spent our last cellophane-wrapped quarters, but we now have a fourth generation of her descendants reverently making paper-thin sugar cookies on her well-loved baking sheets.

If my sister had done some damn alliterative planning when she landscaped her back yard, I could title this portrait Bridget and the Begonias. But nooooooo.

So we’ve had to rename the dog Prudence.

Dear sad little variegated hosta that suddenly couldn’t while all its neighbors very clearly could this spring:

I’ve given you grow lights 
And mineral supplements.
What do you want from me,
BLOOD?

I always think of daisies as breezy, insouciant harbingers of a carefree summer

until I get close to them as I pick weeds and remember that they smell like yesterday’s feet.

Well someone had to say it.

Racing ahead

Among the many, many helpful suggestions people have offered me about conquering this STU! PID! FUC! KING! headache—I’m actually quite humbled by your mass outpouring of concern and the sheer volume of suggestions and I’m sorry that I haven’t personally thanked you all—is trying a mega-dose of caffeine. I’m currently five and a half months pop-free and I’m not about to break my sobriety streak now and I’ve never been able to choke down coffee so I just chugged a 5 Hour Energy even though I don’t feel tired so I’m totally about to live that episode of Desperate Housewives where Felicity Huffman mainlines her kids’ Adderall and stays up all night organizing the toothpicks and doing her kids’ science projects for them—WHICH IN RETROSPECT WAS A SIGN WE ALL MISSED WAKE UP, PEOPLE!—and I still have to work a half day from home to make up for the negative-PTO deficit my NYC canceled flights caused and I really want to pull the weeds and fix the flappy visqueen and displaced pea gravel in our side hosta bed and find more things to clean with my awesome new happy-Mother’s-Day-to-me vacuum and paint my room and finish the build-out behind the house and fix the deficit before the sun goes down and hoo boy I’m off and running where did I put my running shoes oh there they are I’ll see you when we all get to Narnia look out toothpicks here I come!

Pretty pansies

Three things I’ve done tonight:

1. Photographed a tree:

2. Split a hosta:

3. Purchased a gorgeous new tablesetting and grippy placemat for Bitch Kitty to replace the ratty old plastic bowl she kept pushing next to the litter box and presumably filling with poop dust every time she buried a treasure: