Blackberries

Several of the orchids that I rescued from my neighbor's garden waste bag a couple of years ago are putting out flushes of flowers now. All the plants from that batch have blossoms this color. Not too shabby, right? I'm happy with them!

Also, in a sign that we are definitely in the midst of high summer, our blackberries are out in sufficient quantity that I can pick them for my cereal:

I didn't think we'd get any blackberries to speak of this year, because the gardeners who came to clear our ivy in February decimated our stand of blackberry vines. But no, blackberries are resilient. They're back with gusto.

I spent yesterday morning reading in the garden. I finished "The Flâneur," Edmund White's book about roaming the streets of Paris, which was OK. I found it a little dull, to be honest, and it's hard to make Paris dull. Fortunately it was a short book.

I spent some more time tidying the garden. I noticed our new upstairs neighbor closed his French doors overlooking our patio with part of the window curtain hanging out. I'm not sure the doors were even really closed because this was not a small amount of fabric exposed to the weather. I thought, "The Russians would lose their minds if they could see that!" Fortunately he came home and fixed the problem before we got the barest whisper of rain last night. Overall, we're still dry as a bone.

Last night I watched the movie "Project X," which was a sort of "Risky Business" on steroids -- teenage boy makes bad decisions, winds up hosting a gigantic house party, repercussions ensue. Dave and I watched an episode of the show "Trainwreck" on Netflix that focused on a real-life "Project X"-type incident, and that prompted me to watch the movie, which I'd never seen (or heard of) before. I enjoyed it, but it made me glad I'm not a teenager now. A house party in my day was a much less risky proposition -- more John Hughes and less Grand Theft Auto.

The other day, Catalyst from "Oddball Observations" used my Blogger profile photo in one of his blog posts. It made me take a closer look at my profile pic, which I've pretty much ignored for years. It's a cropped version of the picture above, which was taken on Nov. 3, 2006, when I went to Key West with my friend Sue for my 40th birthday. So, yeah, it's a very old picture. I was much more buff then, even though I look a little like Hugo Weaving in "The Matrix" (but bald and less menacing). I suppose I should update my profile pic to something more current! I'll think about it.