According to Wikipedia, the name Dianthus originates from ancient Greek, and basically means "flower of Zeus."
Ours came up nicely this year, by which I mean to say that the ones we bought last weekend at the nursery look amazing in their pots.
Something I've learned about gardening is that it's nice to put in the years of hard work, but sometimes instant gratification is a pleasure that can be appreciated all the more as a result of knowing how difficult it can be to make certain things grow.
You also learn things along the way. Last week a reader wrote in and told me that a quarter bar (not liquid) of Ivory soap dissolved in a quart of water will, when sprayed on a tree, kill aphids without harming new leaves; we tried it and -- guess what -- it worked.
I couldn't believe we didn't learn about this treatment until now, but better late than never. Now free of aphids, the garden could relax.
By "relax," I mean that the plants made an effort not to discuss politics.
We prayed for a future without Facebook, but it seemed unimaginable. What if they start making cars and television shows? It seemed likely that in a few thousand years, historians will reach a consensus about the turning point of our society, much the way smallpox wiped out the Incas. "Soon everyone was on Facebook," they will write, "which was the beginning of the end. Nobody liked this social media platform, but there was a sense of resignation that soon pervaded all levels of civilization."
We had other things to worry about, however. Like parents of real children, we couldn't understand why Clio, unlike the rest of our cats, never wants to sleep. She literally glows with energy and curiosity, notwithstanding the saying about what curiosity does to cats. "What's so bad about being curious?" Clio asked. "It's not like it's going to kill me."
Dante: I miss being young and naive.
Zephyr: You mean you miss being young. To be fair to Clio, I didn't really want to sleep, either, if it meant missing even a few seconds of the azaleas, which were just beginning to bloom.
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04/30/2016
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.