It continues to be toasty here with no sign of rain on the horizon. In such weather I tend to stay indoors until the sun starts to set which is thankfully earlier and earlier. But it’s not easy to get pictures of Penito and child in the shadows of the giant pine trees that line our property and block the setting sun.

This shot was taken at about 2:30 this afternoon. As you can see, lots more blossoms! I tried to capture the bee who was checking things out but he spotted me and took offense. Luckily I managed to escape his ire.

Mother Penito is now up to my eyebrows.

It’s hard to get a good shot in the blazing sun but, as the blossoms cascade up the stalk, the ones left behind close. They still cling to the mother but they will not reopen. Once the blossoms reach the tip, all of them will close. The bereft stalk will struggle to stay erect, and then, lay down to rest for at least a year.

After a moderate start (temperature-wise), August has started to heat up. I shouldn’t complain as the temps will only get into the lower 90s and it’s not supposed to last long but I don’t do well in the heat. However, my strange plant seems to love it.

The mother plant is now up to my shoulder – approximately five feet tall.

Over the weekend they started to bend over as if getting ready to strike.

And then this morning:

The first blossoms.

Update at 4:30: Well, it got to almost 100 miserable degrees here and isn’t cooling down any time soon. Supposedly tomorrow a bit of a cool down but we’ll see!

Not much to say as August slips away. So I’ll just share a few pics of Penito and baby

What a week this has been. There’s so much craziness going on in the world that I’m happy to have a garden to escape to, even if the drought has killed so many of my plants. Luckily, Penito and child seem to thrive in this climate.

Granted, this odd plant is not the ideal subject for a close up but boy, is it growing fast.

It seems unlikely, but I’m hoping for a glimpse of sanity next week. Just a glimmer, a speck, something.

Almost two years ago, this strange plant arose in the garden. We’d just had freakish lightning storms in the Bay Area which produced little rain but caused hundreds of wildfires. And, I just gotten word that my mother was dying.

At first I couldn’t imagine where it came from. Outer space? Then I remembered that years earlier, when Mother lived with us, my husband came home from the hardware store with a bulb that he’d proudly paid fifteen dollars for. He didn’t know what it was or how to grow it, of course, but had been intrigued by the size. Mother turned to me and said: ” Well, they saw him coming.” He planted it in the backyard and forgot about it. But Mother didn’t. It went on her list of reasons why he should never shop alone.

The stalk grew and grew until it blossomed magnificently and I had to quit calling it the “Penis Plant.”

Last year the foliage emerged but no blossoms.

The foliage stayed green for a couple of months and then died just before Christmas.

I didn’t know what to expect this year but, sure enough, after an unusual lightning storm hit this area, look who showed up again.

It was wonderful to wake up to the sound of rain. Wonderful to go into the backyard to see this unusual plant arise again. Now I just have to resist the urge to read the news.

Every Sunday I start the day by reading the obits of notable people who have passed. I started this peculiar habit one Sunday morning after I spotted the obit of a lovely man who was the partner of someone I once worked with. I’d heard through the grapevine he had AIDS but the last time I’d seen him, he seemed in such a jolly mood that I allowed myself to believe the disease wouldn’t take him. The obit, lovingly written his partner, actually made me smile. The best obits will make you smile or at least, make you wonder how such a splendid person could have existed in this dysfunctional world.

It’s always sad to read the obit of someone I knew decades ago and lost touch with. But, at the same time, it allows me to remember them fondly.

Here are examples from obits in today’s paper that are meant to make you smile. Two were written by professionals. See if you can match the sentence to the men being honored (below):

1. As people walked by, he would greet each one in his high pitched voice with “Hey, mama!’ Or “Hey, young man!”
2. From his Ted speech: “It isn’t the value or the size of a gift that truly matters. It’s how you hold it in your heart.”
3. [He] loved cracking jokes and carried around a card in his pocket with the word “JOKE” written on it to emphasize to friends he was just having a fun time.

And the men honored were:

A. Dr. D. Henry Cheu, a surgeon and member of the El Capitan Eating Club whose father was the first person of Chinese descent to graduate from Stanford University. Eating Clubs accepted students who were ineligible for membership in college fraternities for racial or religious reasons, e.g. Asians, Mexicans and Jews.

B. Willie Ellis, a homeless peddler described as “the Beloved Mayor of Lake Merritt.”

C. Werner Reich, a holocaust survivor who learned the power of magic in Auschwitz. “Having a deck of cards in Auschwitz was like finding a gorilla in your bathroom.”

The answers are!

1. Willie Ellis, the Mayor
2. Dr. Cheu, the Jokester
3. Werner Reich, the Magician