i’m taking a small break from finishing up a horribly horribly intense (and horrible? maybe) paper draft for my advisor. i wanted to share the joy of my mystery plant in the backyard. when we got back from christmas break, i noticed that some sort of grassy plant had mysteriously appeared on the very edge of this hopelessly random garden the last tenant had planted– flowers and some sort of (i’m guessing edible) root and a tomato plant scattered here and there. i haven’t done any weeding in that patch yet, and it was in an odd spot even for the last tenants’ crazy gardening style, so i assumed it was just that– a weed. but even weeds can have flowers, so i decided to take the advice of my gardening book and wait around til the seasons change to see what treasures from the past the garden may hold, or some shit like that. in any case, look!

it just opened the other day, after a week or two of preparatory fanfare; i watched the stalk and bud form, then elongate, and at some point i could tell what color it was going to be, and i was getting so very excited! of course it is facing the wrong way, since the fence is to the right. 😛

there’s also this tree i was 99% sure from the beginning was citrus, in part from the shape of the leaves and the height, but also because we had scale all over it. ants are good for nothing bastards– they crawl up my bathroom drains just so they can mar the floors and counters and showers with disgusting black specks, they invade the desk or the trash or even the recycling at the first whiff of a crumb or a speck of food (when i have a whole compost bin outside for them to enjoy, seriously), and now they try to compromise my damn plants. gah. i just found out yesterday they’re doing the same thing to my roses; could this be why they never seem to bloom?

and this poor tree has been trying to grow … something… for months now: