For the past ten years, possibly longer — I can’t recall exactly — I’ve been ready for Halloween, sometimes with carved pumpkins, always with candy, and not one single person, one child, one unworldly spook has knocked at the door. I’ve lived in places where the houses were too far apart, where children were too scarce, and perhaps all the spooks were too content. So, every year at about this time, I’ve had a bit more candy than I should. My theory has always been, if you’re not prepared, you’ll fail. But failure has only convinced me through the years that the fewer the participants, the more candy there is to savor.

I just turned out the lights. It's almost 10:00. The market has been pushing Halloween candy and costumes and treats for the past six or seven weeks. An island in the rear of the store is loaded with Thanksgiving things, bottles of vanilla, stuffing and the like, and it’s been there long enough to need dusting. No one came tonight, which means tomorrow, in addition to half price candy sales, Christmas begins. Christmas, the happiest most meaningless two months of the year.
 


In 2009, a year that seems almost yesterday, I wrote something about Amie’s mother on Halloween and her “irksome inability to distinguish left from right.” The post was illustrated with Amie’s picture of her mother as the Wicked Witch of the West. It was all in good fun, of course. I post this picture today in recognition of Linda Barnett's death this past year. She was both irksome and interesting, strange but also loving. I think Amie’s photograph captures all those things. In Amie’s words:
Linda Rae Cadwell Barnett
March 20, 1942 – December 28, 2017
Loving Mother and Housekeeper
I’ll watch for her on her broom tonight. Peace be with you.

 


I passed this flower (or these flowers) on the way to dinner at the Vets Hall yesterday. It’s hard to tell if it or they belong to the hedge or to a plant growing through the hedge. It’s a peculiar bloom that I will now call a cluster flower. Daisies send out a stem with a single flower, and we all recognize daisies. This also sends out a stem, but with a cluster of competing flowers. They seem to go this way and that, forming a red blob here and there along the bush. The individual flowers seem interesting, but the cluster seems confused, overlapping, wasteful. Still, it captures the attention. It makes one wonder, but what one wonders seems almost as peculiar. With so few flowers this time of year, it seems like these should be spread out a bit, a tiny one here and there, instead of this. But this is their answer to that.
 


Hedges seem to have things under control this time of year. There are more surprises in hedges than in carefully constructed gardens. Here are two surprising blooms, or are they rather a hundred small blooms in two distinct packages? Little things that burst forth when everything else, or almost everything has died away and gone back to dirt. Here very quietly life continues, and with such shapes and coloration that one almost suspects it is springtime rather than mid-fall. Is this what happens when winter is a season that happens somewhere else? Things die back, but others bloom, and somehow the end never comes. The earth is not covered with ice and snow. Fog lingers until early afternoon, and then the sun comes out and sweaters come off in sudden warmth. Tiny blooms on hedges. Life upon life upon life.
 


This photograph is two weeks old. In the time it took me to think of what to say about it, the flower and the plant supporting it began to shrivel. This enormous flower lasted only a few days, unless the time just seemed to fly. The garden went from filled with happiness to almost dead and gone in a time that was disturbingly short. Without this photograph the memory would be suspect. I would wonder, was it as big as this or was it was really there? Memory sometimes embellishes. And sometimes it just forgets. Things that last all season are hard to forget. But things that bloom and die come to be doubted, like glossy pictures in magazines. Pretty, but unbelievable. In another week there will be no trace of this flower, and in a year, when my neighbor comes home with plugs from the nursery, such flowers will seem almost impossible.
 


In September I posted H Is for Hollyhock to celebrate the first hollyhock to bloom in the garden. It was a new plant for me, though I’d seen pictures of them and the name was familiar. But it was entirely my neighbor’s idea. In the month since that time we’ve had numerous hollyhocks sprout, climb to unreasonable heights and then die back. They seem very temporary. Beautiful, but somehow fragile. This is the first of the second wave. We have them in three different colors, each more beautiful than the next. But we are forced to enjoy them quickly, if that’s possible. In a month they’ll be gone. They will stun and then disappear. It goes against my nature to plant things so temporary. Of course, I didn’t plant them, so I don’t share the fault and can’t take the credit. I can only look at them as I pass by, gaze at them and hope they will be there tomorrow. They remind me that I myself am temporary.
 


This time of year there is still much to see, but far less to be inspired by. Hidden structures become visible. Without them life would not be the same. I think of the twine that supported a wall of sweet peas in the garden, but now catches the wind, sags and looks abandoned and forlorn. But without the twine there would be no future wall of sweet peas. We see dirt and rocks where before we saw layers of green and areas strewn with flowers. Things that buoyed the emotions and stimulated the imagination. While here we have only pipes and valves among concrete, dead leaves and dirt. This is what we are left with.
 


I’ve photographed a number of double blooms this year. For example, Four Different Directions, A Bug’s World, Five or Six Flower Names, And the Memory. One flower is interesting, but two flowers tell a story that I haven’t quite figured out. Of course there are thousands of such blooms. Here is an ordinary hedge with two extraordinary flowers — lavender with orange centers. The hedge itself is of no interest. If we could only hear what they have to say. Are they competing or are they working together? Are they happier this way, or do they feel constrained? If I had even the slightest idea what the answer is I might not be so drawn to them.
 


My neighbor tells me these are geraniums. We have six or seven pots of them suddenly in bloom. They don’t look at all like geraniums to me, but I’ve learned just how little I know about flowers. I know the flowers I know, but there are millions I don’t know, and a long list that I know incorrectly. But they certainly are gorgeous, whatever they are. They bloom with intensity, and their color warms my heart every time I go in or out the door. But they seem very temporary to me, late bloomers that are far too delicate to last long. So, will they surprise us next year when they bloom again, or are there things in store for us that we can’t quite imagine?
 


over a wall, through the church grounds and down to the ocean. Sunset under the clouds on my way home. A world seemingly upside down, where night is day, and day seems almost night. Somewhere over the ocean the sky is clear, but I walked home in darkness.
 


I posted a picture of this hedge in Airbrushed or Watercolored on the 2nd of January. I loved the photo, but couldn’t remember where I’d taken it. After that, I passed the same hedge a hundred times, noticing the flowers until they began slowly to disappear. It’s been a hedge without distinction since then. I looked, but found nothing… until today. A year hasn’t quite passed, but the seasons have. There was one flower the first time. There are hundreds of them today. Just when everything began to seem empty, everything began to seem almost full.
 


Something most of us understand but seldom think about is the strange fact that Nature covers the face of the earth wherever possible with vegetation. With enormous, seemingly infinite repetition it conceals the ground and builds a buffer between the earth and sky. But it does this so consistently and effortlessly that we fail to see that the green hills are green because of the infinite repetition of grass, shoots, plants and trees. The green hills become simply green. And when the hills turn brown, as summer dries them out, they become like the green hills simply brown.


Nothing blinds us like repetition. Until we see things up close. Until we see the minuscule repetition, the endless nature of it, as it were, in the palm of our hands. It takes a moment of unexpected thought to throw it all in perspective. To see that it isn’t just green hills, but the plants in front of us — and not always green — but always a tiny piece of the enormous and beguiling infinite.
 


On the alley half of a local street that is also an alley, the kind of thing that happens when tiny old towns have spurts of growth, it looks like ice plant grew over night. Until yellow flowers appear, I won’t be sure it’s the same kind I wrote about earlier this month. I found another patch a few days ago with purple flowers that looks somewhat scrawny by comparison. I’m willing to say it’s a cousin, if nothing more. You can see how aggressively this variety grows and why it was planted all those years ago to hold down the cliffs leading to the beach. There are many prettier plants, but it certainly does the job. Soon they will be trimming it back to make room for the car.
 

I’m not feeling especially good today. I’ve had up days and down days, even a few up and down days, where I felt really good followed by basically crummy. All in all, crummy tends to win. What I need is a feel good pill, whatever that would be. I don’t need to feel dopy, just good, and good seems to be the most difficult state to achieve. I felt good on the bus the other day. The air was clean and warm. The countryside sped by with unusual charm. Even the oddball passengers seemed pleasant. But on the way home that night I struggled to keep my eyes open. Struggled to keep my thoughts in order. Dreaded the final walk home. A pill would be easy, but ineffective, depending on what the pill was. Maybe a few hits off someone’s joint. There must be good reasons for that. Naps can’t be the only answer. I wake from naps wondering what day it is, trying to remember why it was so important to crawl into bed, and what I was doing when that happened. When I’m finally awake, it seems like days have passed, and now there’s only night to get through, and night means sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking every two hours to make sure I drain properly. By the time morning arrives, dialysis has taken all my energy, left me slightly confused, tired enough that it’s a long walk to the bathroom, confused enough that making coffee is a chore, and the chance that feeling good is slim or none. There must be a cure for that, but I haven’t found it. I know it’s not coffee and oatmeal, but I also know that without the first step there are no others. So bleary-eyed I conclude, I’m not feeling especially good today, and realize I’ve had up days and down days, even a few up and down days…
 


Unless you double click on these, you will probably not see the underlying stickiness. These flowers have a don’t touch quality about them that must be attractive, if not to insects, then to some insects. From a distance they look like normal flowers, but up close they look… to me they look less inviting.


I snapped these pictures because the flowers were bright and colorful. It was only later that I cropped them and looked more carefully. The tiny camera in my pocket is a miracle device that allows me to see things that are no longer there. Henry Miller said something to the effect that he never used a camera, he used his memory, and with his memory the world he saw changed every day. There’s truth in that. But with a camera I now see, and continue to see, what I never saw. I see what was there to be seen, but was never noticed.
 


I started the month with the picture of a dead leaf on an old section of sidewalk. This is a cluster of dead leaves a few feet from where that was, not on the sidewalk, but on the pavement next to it. When you’re very close to it, asphalt becomes more interesting. It has an abstract quality, and dead leaves are more interesting sometimes than living ones. But together, unexpected, in bright sunlight, they say things that are hard to squeeze into words. They step back from reality and speak in a language of color and shape. They leave the world to become structure and design, where none was intended. The line between this and ordinary reality is difficult to see. Or perhaps this is just what we find hidden in everything.
 


Not a beautiful photograph, but a sort of lesson. Seed falling from dying flowers on the edge of the sidewalk. A profusion of seed. I wonder how many tons of it are produced along my walk each day, to say nothing of other walks and other communities. It’s a part of the process we seldom see. Seed in packets at the store aren’t quite the same. It seems artificial, conjured, made for sale, while these are a drop in the bucket of what’s going on around us. Humans reproduce so slowly that we don’t seem to notice the process as process. Pregnancy and babies are events — rarities. Whereas this is going on all year round, at least in these parts. A hedge is covered with flowers for the second time this year, while these flowers give their all and then die back. But how long before they reappear? How long until we are startled by fresh green and first blooms? All this going on around us as we trod the pavement continuing in our thoughts.
 


A ramshackle mess of red, green, gray, with a daub here and there of yellow. An emotional statement with no clear design. Why did I take this picture? It was not the design. I simply had no choice. I took the picture because it seemed bright and happy. Because it spoke to me. And if that wasn't enough, then I don't know what is.
 


Not exactly a seasonal picture, but one that does require seasoning. Vinegar with a splash of olive oil, and some salt, pepper, and Mrs. Dash, or a tiny portion of a million other ingredients. It makes me wonder who or how it was discovered that salad is edible. Cows munch on grass, but we don’t. At some point humans must have thought to be cowlike, only to find that we can’t digest grass and that straw does absolutely nothing for us. I, for example, see nothing edible in this picture. And yet, the salad in my bowl looks absolutely delicious. Has the history of salad been lost in the strange history of human progress? Is there anything obvious about salad? Apples and oranges are somewhat obvious… the sweetness on the tongue. I suppose roasted animal seems just as obvious, though much less polite. But how many leaves growing on the ground would one have to taste and regurgitate to determine what goes in the bowl before dinner? Or in some places after? It strikes me as completely mysterious, and yet invitingly tasty. The almost infinite depth and variety of salad.
 


A flowering plant that looms over buildings. A tree tall enough to go unnoticed. We would need a hook and ladder to get closeups of these flowers. I’ve walked underneath this tree almost on a daily basis without noticing. I keep my eyes on the sidewalk to avoid stumbling. But yesterday I took a break, turned my head heavenward and realized the spectacle above me. Nature, it seems, knows no limits.
 


And a spot of red. Some vegetation seems boundlessly energetic and endlessly repetitive. Where does it start, and where will it end? An infinite texture that knows no limits.
 


These are like flowers on steroids. They have too many blooms. The nursery has spiked the Growmulch or done something pretending that if you plant these in your garden they will continue to flower at unrealistic rates. They are so healthy they look artificial.


And here they are in a different color.


And here in yet another. Grocery store flowers, shamelessly blooming. They say, “Buy me, buy me.” It’s a clever trick and I wonder what it is. But I’m not falling for it. It’s obviously wrong, but I spent the longest time staring at them. How in the world did they do it?
 


The interesting thing about this photograph to me is that none of the ingredients belong together. They come from different parts of the world. Which parts exactly I don't know. The green leaves are pumpkins in the making. As I type this, the leaves are dead and nothing but a curled mass among vines and pumpkins. It didn’t last that long. But it was bright and beautiful while it lasted. The yellow bumps at the ends of flowers turned out to be orange pumpkins, which I recognize. They have a season and leave enormous fruit. They also have a name that I easily remember. The others are foreign, both in name and origin. To give them names I would have to make them up which, of course, someone has already done. But it is not the names or points of origin that strike me, it is the color and the shapes. They fit together, strangely, in an instant of time. Like people in a crowd forming a vast humanity. Ever changing. Always the same. Different people on different days. The picture warms my heart, but my thoughts seem vastly complicated. Should we make everything the same, or should we allow the differences to blend together in unforeseen ways? I feel completely incapable of creating this on my own.
 


Not all flowers are big and beautiful. This is the tiny bloom of some sort of vegetable planted under the staircase and gone to seed. It provides cover for a spider that would otherwise have nothing more than the seam in the staircase to hide in. Some blooms are magnificent. Others are almost like afterthoughts. Of course, they all accomplish the same end. They all produced seed that produces more plants. But like the beautiful and the disfigured, plants go through the motions with varied degrees of perfection. Some stun with their beauty. Others simply do their job, as if beauty is an unnecessary ingredient.
 


I’ve posted several pictures of this flower, or rather flowers within a foot or two of this one. They’re a sorry lot this time of year, straining to bloom. But if nothing else, they’re also tough and not yet ready to give in to the inevitable. Here one orange flower squeezes through a screen. Six months ago the screen was almost solid orange. Today it has one flower. One very determined flower that has my complete attention.
 







 


When I was a boy the slopes leading down to the beach were covered in ice plant to hold down erosion. Wikipedia says there are “135 genera and about 1800 species [ … ] of dicotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as ice plants or carpet weeds.” I haven’t seen those slopes in years, or rather decades, but I recognize these as exactly the type I used to walk through on my way down to the sandy beach. Not pretty, always a bit forlorn, but highly effective. I found this patch in the front yard of a house on the way to dinner at the Vets Hall. It brought back so many memories that there isn’t time enough even to outline them. Ice plant was a part of summer for me. It grew only at the beach and nowhere else, though it must have grown in all sorts of places. When you’re young you tend to accept things as given more than later when you develop the capacity to pursue things. Ice plant was simply part of the beach, and the beach was part of summer, and summer lasted almost forever. And now there’s a patch of it in the front yard of a house not far from here, and I wonder if it means anything to anyone but me, because it seems to mean absolutely everything.
 



 


When my kidneys failed I asked a neighbor to drive me to the hospital. Not for my kidneys, which I didn’t quite understand at that point, but because two things happened the night before. At about 3:00 I was lying in bed listening to the radio. The commentator gave a colorful report of Melania Trump checking into a Washington D.C. hotel to redesign all the military uniforms. Apparently she needed quiet and privacy. I remember thinking to myself that that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. Military uniforms aren’t designed merely for looks, and it wasn’t her job to… Then it occurred to me that I don’t actually have a radio in the bedroom, or even a radio that wasn’t packed away somewhere. I don’t listen to the radio. I also had a somewhat self-serving conversation with my mother. Though I was willing to have that conversation, I was also aware that she was dead and aware that it wasn’t actually my mother I was talking to. But it was a conversation. I very carefully came to the conclusion that I wasn’t functioning correctly.

I ended up in the Emergency Room and was transferred to a small cottage hospital in England where the nurses spoke with accents that were strangely American. All but one from the Czech Republic whom I thought might be the ring leader. It was a very interesting time.

Earlier this week I attended the Nurses Clinic at the dialysis center. I took half a pain pill before walking up to the park to catch the bus. I also took two kinds of insulin, a phosphorus binder and a handful of regular pills. At the clinic I was given a flu shot, which I reluctantly agreed to, my third hepatitis shot, an Epogen injection in the flab of my arm, and an IV iron injection. I could be wrong, but I think that’s too many things in too short a time. I also gave four vials of blood. I did not walk back to the bus. My head was spinning. I got hot soup and cold water at the hospital cafeteria and sat for an hour and a half until I felt I could make it to the bus and then home.

We take the brain for granted. That we have a brain is like saying the world is real. It doesn’t mean anything. But when we mess with our body chemistry, whether by failure or on purpose, or even through good intentions, the world changes, and we change with it. My brain is obviously the main ingredient in these posts. The strange thing is that I tend to listen to the words that come out with a sense of wonder and surprise. I allow my brain to do the work it was designed to do, or the work it randomly ended up doing, to keep atheistic scientists happy. It does the work much better than I do, so long as I feed it correctly, keep its fluids balanced and don’t stress it too much or expect more than it's prepared to give. It’s just a brain, but it’s also the whole ball of wax. Without it, there’s nothing. No world. Not thoughts. No posts. Nothing.

I’m telling you this because it seems necessary. Or else I’m listening to it and reading it because it seems interesting. But what will any of us think tomorrow?
 


This is a pot that looks like it may have been forgotten. Or else it’s just growing into obscurity. There’s a tendency to plant too many things in the same pot. This is not an example of that. Here it seems everything started out very simply — a little of this and a little of that — until this strange perfection was achieved. It has a very distinct not recently planted look, which only happens over time. And as far as time is concerned, there is also that odd moment when things that have been perfect too long become overgrown. This is just on the verge of that. Now it’s perfect, now it’s not. Just like all of us.
 


There must be limits to the variety of flowers, but in human terms, I suspect that limit might be infinitely large and infinitely far away. There are so many flowers and so few days to absorb or experience them. We walk in a garden of infinite delight, but a garden mixed with horror, disease and ugliness. Perhaps we should see all those things as part of the fullness of life, as part of the pleroma surrounding us, and not just the flowers that go on and on. But, how to do that? How to reach out and pull back the infinite?
 


Cactus (or cacti or cactuses) are messy plants, and sometimes dangerous, but this photograph shows that they also bloom. To be honest, that never occurred to me. I thought, like nasturtiums, they just expanded indefinitely. Of course, very slowly. I suppose I also thought, and it might be true, that you could just plant pieces of them and they would grow. A neighbor showed me a plant on my walk today that was brought over as a shoot wrapped in a damp napkin from Belgium in the early days (or maybe not so early days) of air travel. Her grandmother did that, and various people in the family got shoots from the resulting plant and they are all healthy and happy and ready to offer shoots to others. Do cactus really start with seed?

Cactus seems like a reluctant visitor. Usually it’s an accent to a garden, rather than the garden itself. I don’t think I’ve ever assumed that people plant them. I usually assume they just ended up where they are from somewhere else, somewhere where they grew at their own speed, in their own time, mostly alone. So, if you’re looking for answers, you’ve come to the wrong place. I still think cactus belongs in remote places that one remembers driving through. But piece by piece by troublesome awareness, I’m figuring it out.
 


This is a sort or timeless garden where things seem to grow in complete cooperation with each other. It has a random, artistic quality where nothing is in a row, where nothing predominates and everything seems essential. It took someone with a good sense of design to place each plant and then leave the assemblage to itself, to grow and mix. Some tiny things seem entirely accidental. And yet, without the accidents it might seem contrived. Without the accidents it might seem unreal. A garden laid out by someone who understood that the person laying out the garden is its least important ingredient.
 


Of all the photos I’ve taken this year, I think this is my absolute favorite — a dead leaf on a dirty sidewalk, but so much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.