VooDoo Horticulture

I used to spend time with this lady from New Orleans, whom everyone called VooDoo.  I should have taken that as a warning, but I didn't.  Besides her brown eyes and her magical elven voice, my main purpose for keeping her around was that she was a professional horticulturalist and could identify any plant or tree I pointed to.  I tested her skills quite often.  She might have just been making up names for plants, but I believe she was pretty earnest and most likely very accurate.

She eventually discovered my ulterior motive (or she got a better offer) and invited me to no longer spend afternoons and evenings with her.  That left me with no way to identify plants and trees afield, but it left me with a desire to know what they were.  

For many years, I gave up on my quest and wistfully lamented losing my infinite font of knowledge about plants.  Then, the latest generation of smartphones came out, and a friend told me about an application called "Picture This" that could identify any plant and give you care guidelines for it.  For about six dollars, I could once again know the name of any plant I looked at without having to worry about the capricious nature of brown-eyed girls from New Orleans or anyone who even their dearest friends called VooDoo.

 

Okra in the Pants

 I've seen this painting making the rounds today and really wanted to know more about it.  It looks like a medieval painting, but it's not.  Its title is "Okra Smugglers" by Henryk Fantazos, who painted it in 2007.  Born in Eastern Europe in 1947, he now lives and works in North Carolina.

Addams Family Mansion

 Charles Addams and his wife before College Hall, the structure at the University of Pennsylvania that inspired the mansion seen in the Addams Family cartoons.  Known as a "ladies' man," Addams married several beautiful women, none of whom were murdered.  

That Super Bowl Party

So, every year, rain or shine or covid, they have this big party, so big they call it the "Super Bowl," and people put quite a bit of store into it.  They spend months and months prior to the party pushing each other back and forth, trying to secure an invitation to the party.  Even though they advertise it as the world's biggest party, they're still pretty dang stingy with the invitations.  

When I was little, pretty much everybody assumed that folks from Dallas would get an invitation to the party, and, sure enough, the years came and went and the folks from Dallas almost always got their all polished-up invitation to this dang stupid party.

In the last few years, though, things have changed.  They're having trouble keeping the lights on in Dallas, and the Senator who's supposed to take care of them just sneaks off to a Mexican beach vacation.  I don't know what happened.  Maybe they're not wearing the right kind of shoes.  Maybe they don't know all the right dances, but it's been a while since folks from Dallas were invited to this party, and they're getting just a little bit sore about it.

Last night, the folks from Dallas got in a scuff-up with some folks from Wisconsin, of all places, hoping they'd get somebody's attention and get invited to this year's Super Bowl party.  Well, it didn't work out that way, and the once mighty folks from Dallas will be staying home and ordering a pizza while the big party goes on.   I'd feel sorry for them, but to tell the truth, Dallas fans were always kind of jerks, so maybe this will help teach them some humility.