A Fainting Rose

Here's a look at some of our blooming foxgloves. They're all very pale or even white, which is unusual in the foxglove world. I don't remember where I got the seeds, but they must have come from a pale hybrid that we bought at some point.

This one doesn't even have spots. (It does, however, have a little snail or slug sheltering in one of the blossoms.)

This is the darkest one so far. I still have another -- the one I rescued from the street -- that I'm sure will be of the wild variety when it blooms. So far it only has buds.

We've had rain all day yesterday and all night, and as a result we woke to some drama this morning. A large rose bush outside our back door has leaned over and appears to be in a state of slow collapse against the house:

I can't tell if it's simply leaning or if it's pulled out of the ground -- it has certainly never leaned this far in the past. We can barely get out the back door! We didn't prune it this year and maybe it's just too top-heavy. I think we can save it by trimming and then staking it, but when Dave saw it he said, "I wouldn't mind taking that f*cker out." So its fate is still unknown.

Why couldn't it be the hideous camellia that collapsed? You can see it in the background on the far left there, along with all the white and brown flowers it has dropped, now rotting on the ground.

OK, on to other news...

Remember how Dave signed me up for the Craft Gin Club a couple of years ago? Well, I got monthly shipments of exotic gin for a while, but I soon wound up with more gin than I could expeditiously drink -- because although I love gin I'm not that much of a lush. So I cut it back to every quarter, and now I get just four boxes a year.

The boxes typically contain bizarre snacks and little mixers as well as the gin. This time around I got something in a can called a "blueberry and blackberry martini," which didn't contain alcohol at all. Even before my recent gastritis flare-up I was cutting back on alcohol, and now I've really cut back, so last night I thought I'd try the fruit martini. I even put it in a martini glass, as suggested by the Gin Club. And it tasted...like fruit juice. Unremarkable, to say the least.

I have to issue a clarification regarding my grousing about Biden and the Democrats yesterday. I will absolutely, absolutely vote for Joe Biden. That is not even a question. My misgivings do not threaten my vote in any way. In fact I laughed out loud at a commenter on Bob's blog who said they'd vote for Richard Nixon if the Democrats ran him against Trump -- I said, "Me too!" And Nixon's not only a crook, he's dead.

(The common denominator with Nixon and Trump is Roger Stone, who is surely Satan incarnate.)

Finally, I'm starting to read "Little Women." Somehow I have made it all the way to age 57-and-a-half without reading this book. I see and hear so many cultural references to it that I think I need to finally do it, keeping in mind that Louisa May Alcott didn't write it for 57-and-a-half-year-old men and I may consequently find it a bit boring.