For perhaps 100 years, we've looked down on our dwarf Chinese dogwood with pride as it slowly spread across the garden, but also a little disappointment as each season it failed to flower.
Then this morning, the clouds broke apart and like a single star, the first bloom appeared in this sky of green.
I mean, it's not exactly a triumph, given that it's the only one -- the specimens in the garden catalogs are always covered with flowers -- but it's a start.
I went outside for closer look and was dismayed by ugly air conditioner in the background.
As so often happens in the city, I willed myself not to look at it. The flower glowed in the sun, and that was more than enough.
Not everyone was as impressed as I was with the dogwood.
Meanwhile, our double-white azalea could be comfortably featured in any garden catalog.
This one has done so well that we decided to order another one. We're already fantasizing about an endless bank of white azaleas.
There's never any guarantee with plants, however; underneath the verdant facade is a story of destruction and mayhem. It's a good thing plants don't have emotions, because even the survivors would probably hate us. Not far away on the veld, a big cat drank at the watering hole.
After quenching her thirst, she moved into the trees to hunt for flying snakes.
Thanks to her markings, she is barely visible against the outline of the wild bush.
The intensely variegated leaves of the Eskimo Sunset rustled in the breeze. The clematis slowly unfolded.
Another first for us in the garden: cones on the dawn redwood. There are hundreds (or at least tens) of them, each one hanging like a green pearl.
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05/24/2014
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.