Back in texas

And making the cotton candy... the greyhound ride back was at least as scheduled.  Did get to walk through the French market.  I didn't do. Bourbon street...  been there, done that,  I even have a t-shirt around here somewhere... I'm at an age where constant drinking just doesn't much thrill me anymore... and if your not drinking beyond two vodka & sevens, what's the point of Bourbon street?

Gonna rest up from my vacation this evening ... lol

Just some random pics

A few random pics from around... these two anoles have evidently found love...

Lets move on and 

give them some privacy...

heres a lovely magnolia blossom

And finally... here's a gargoyle on the clock tower at st vincents... i dont know who he is, or why he is holding a bunch of bananas, but you see him on quite a few chimneys and such around here. 

Spider lily

Just a pic of a spider lily/Peruvian daffodils in a little city park... tried to grow these in Texas, but they need more water than I could provide.  They do great here tho...

Guest House

I'm in New Orleans.   Due to the delays in fort worth what should have been an 11 hour trip took 21 hours.  I was supposed come in through Houston.  Instead, I had the longer want around... through Shreveport.   No stories match kneecap tho...
I arrived at my arranged accommodations, Saint Vincent's Guest House. 

St V's started out as a convent/orphanage in the 1860's, built to house children who were left wirhout parents by the yellow fever that periodically swept through New Orleans. 

 After the yellow fever was dealt with,  it became a home for unwed mothers, and closed in 1971.

Them it became a hostel, and now its a guesthouse. 

That history is all very American Horror Story,  and I couldn't help booking in.  

Do I recommend it to you?  Not really.

One section is still a hosrel, with 25 dollar a night beds... the ward where the children were kept if I'm not mistaken... but it's not a youth hostel.  There are several middle age men staying there right now and I've gathered that they vary from ex cons to working homeless.  

One, at 7 am,went on an impromptu tirade about transgendered persons in the courtyard.  

The are shabby, and its definitely seem better days, but its clean.  No phone in the room, no tvs, hideous curtain, ragged carpet,   there's ongoing improvements happening, andaybe. Itll improve, but for now, find someplace else, this is coasting on potential.

And it does have potential... an influx of money, close down the hostel, and youve got a jewel.

Greyhound

Well folks... I'm off to New Orleans. 

I was sitting in a greyhound station and the storm had made the bus late... and now I'm going to reveal one of my deepest, darkest, secrets...

I'm a hopeless eavesdropping.  Not on anyone I know... I don't wanna take the chance of hearing anything about me, but strangers who are talking in public are fair game. 

Turns out the three gentlemen I'm waiting with are all from the halfway house. 

I had suspected as much already. 

One had a backpack which had busted its zipper an was tied together with a belt.   The second had all his possessions in a box that had origionally contained a television.  The third had tripple  bagged everything in garbage bags.

They were all scrubbed clean... which gave the halfway house away.   The. "transitional facilities" do keep their guys clean. 

Their tatoos were interesting.

One of them, the cardboard box guy, has an elaborate skull on one kneecap that seems  to open and close it's mouth whenever he bends his leg.  For some reason I found this fascinating.

There were no teardrop tats under their eyes, so if they'd ever killed anyone, they weren't advertising it.  That's a blessing.  I''ve never understood the urge to advertise one's sins, but to each his own.

As it became obvious that we were going to be more and more behind schedule, they began chatting.  I can't go into the conversation here, my ability to type is seriously impeeded on an android, but as they began digging into possessions and trading jeans, shoes and such it became evident that there's each been given a voucher for goodwill and having been unable to find something that would actually fit them, they all just grabbed the best stuff they could acquire, in hopes of trading it off for something useful later.

One of them even offered to trade his reeboks to me... but they were too small. 

But I'm happy to report that cardboard box with kneecap tat was able to score a really great t-shirt bearing the legend, "WORK YOUR BASS OFF" And also sporting a wonderfully rendered image of the fish in question.

He was very proud of it. 

It would appear that he's been waiting for a very long time to go fishing with his dad. 

I hope he catches a whopper. 

Now I'm in Dallas, waiting for my next connecting bus to Shreveport,  and the Dallas terminal isn't half as interesting.  Actually, the Dallas terminal is a little bit seedy. 

Ex cons would be a relief. 

The great cabbage experiment, part 4

So... the cabages are definitely growing. The single head... who Im calling Clark,  has progressed from this....

To this....

Not too shabby, huh?  Of course, 

there's no sign  That clark onintends to actually form a head yet, but lets gove him time. 

The 5 headed core is now at this point... and im not too happy...  

So 

what i did 

was pinch off three of the growing points.  I just wanted to increase his chances of doing something.  And then i dubbed him Bruce.   

As stated, there's no signs yet of an actual head of cabbage forming, but, at least in the case of Clark, I do have a nice attractive plant... almost as attractive as those ornamental kale that you buy... so if nothing else a few may show up in the flower beds this fall...

Just some random flower pics

There is an empty field by the cotton candy factory.  I took some time at lunch to take a few pics of wildflowers for y'all...

Heres some black eyed Susan...

Heres a wild petunia... actually a native ruellia...

Here's Indian blanket, galliarda...

And that's all i had time for today...

Dreadful

I've been watching the Showtime series Penny Dreadful. 

It's very steampunk, and I do applaud the writers having the guts to rewrite the classic horror and gothic tales.  It's quite a good, entertaining show... but some of their set and/ or prop people need too be taken to task... I know I'm being too picky.  And I know that the vast amount of the populace probably wouldn't notice...

But in the third episode... the child Victor Frankenstein is shown walking thrown a field of daffodils until he comes upon the corpse of his beloved pet dog.  It's a scene that sets up his decision with death That feeds his character later... the corpse of the dog was very gruesomely executed by the FX dept, complete with living maggots crawling out of its eyes... What was bothering me was the daffodils that the poor deceased animal was found among.

They were fake. 

It's not like they were incidental,  I could forgive that.  They were important... the whole lead into the scene was a Woodsworth poem... the one with the line about finding eternity in a... you guessed it... daffodil.  There were some rather lush shots of said daffodils...  I didn't notice it at first. The photography was overlit and shot through a filter to make everything seem prettier before it all got ugly, Then I noticed that the daffs didn't look right.  There were no buds.  Just open blooms.   The leaves were what were really bothering me...daffodils grow there leaves from an underground bulb and the foilage comes directly from the ground...these leaves seemed to be coming from a stem about 4 inches above the ground.  And they were light green, not the dark green you'd expect.  And there weren't enough of them.  And yep... that leaf has some obvious wire showing.  Damn. 

Now... I've been on movie sets.  There are a lot of fake flowers on the interior sets, and filling in on the exterior sets too... let's face it, real blooms don't hold up for several weeks of shooting under hot lights.  But when said flowers are featured that closely,  you gotta take some extra trouble.

You got in excess of 2000 dollars tied up on a fake dead dog, and daffs that came from a dollar store.  I'm not even going to mention that daffodils seemed to be blooming in mid to late summer except I just did... oh well.

Now... I got past it... the plot was distracting... until the next episode.

In the next episode there mysterious Vanessa Ives was semi stalking the hypnotic and magnetic Dorian Gray at the botanical garden.  Now, I will forgive cultivars and species growing in the background that weren't known in the Victorian period.

I'm not THAT picky.  

But when Dorian shows Vanessa a plant that he insists is the poisonous Atropa Belladonna... it should somewhat resemble Atropa Belladonna. 

It most definitely NOT be a bunch of silk ficus leaves with a few silk orchids scattered about.      

For God's sake, your in a bloody Botanic garden.  There's gotta be a real live atropa around there somewhere.  If not, these are a few real live horticulturists around who could, with a couple days warning, find you one.  Or a reasonable substitute.  At least a real plant... if a character is going to be sniffing a plants fragrance in closeup, it has to be a convincing plant dammit.   I'll forgive Dorian snorting the fragrance of a phalenopsis orchid, even though it doesn't have a fragrance.  I'll forgive him later saying that some other orchid is a rare Siberian species that only blooms once every 15 years, even though it looks like a hybrid that you can occasionally find at Wal-Mart,  but at least they were real plants. 

Grrrrrrrt

The great cabbage experiment, post 3

The great cabbage experiment is proceeding in a rather satisfactory manner.  In the space of six days my cores have grown rather spectacularly.  The single crowing point has grown from this...

To this...

While the five pointed core had gone from this...

To This...

The 3 days following planting outside were graced with mostly sun, but occasional rain, which no doubt contributed to the plants general happiness.  I'm guessing that they've about quadrupled in size... they've rooted pretty solidly, and are so firm in the ground that the cores... stems... trunks... whatever you wanna call them are so firm  it would take a shovel to get them out.    There also is a chance that they'll bolt to bloom in the heat.   That's all right... cabbage blooms can be interestimg to see... 

Anyway,  there we are...

Flea market drama

Who would think that a bunch of people having what is essentially a glorified yard sale would have this much fuss?

Ms. M, the concession lady it's no longer at the flea.  They tried to evict her and her boyfriend, who is a separate dealer over something that happened well over six months ago.  Actually, happened with her boyfriend not her... managers were caught bending the truth, boyfriend is still there, they asked Ms M to return and she told them 'most certainly not' but not that politely... (if there's anyone who can out cuss a Tezan it's a Louisiana Cajun, just saying)  They offered me the concession stand... I said hell no.

1) I know for a fact that it has never turned a profit.
2)  I refuse to take over a kitchen until it's been scrubbed and sanitized, which is going to take a week
3)  I don't have a health permit anymore
4)  there's no running water in there and I'm not up to hulking in twenty to forty gallons  every day
5) I'm also not dragging pots,pans,etc home every night to clean them...

Well I could go on.

Just rest assured, its not gonna happen.

Needless to say with this cloud of angst looming overhead, business has been challenging.  I am a firm believer that anyone in sales should leave their crap at home.  Honestly, a foul mood can reverberate across the parking lot and repel customers.

So,  I do my best ignore it, But other dealers keep camping by my booth to discuss events.

Grrrrrr