Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Floral Procrastination

I've been a bit spotty about posting because the new quarter is revving up and I'm co-teaching a new-to-me course. I'm almost on leave from teaching this quarter; I'm don't have my usual Women's Studies course but am helping out as a discussion leader for a class called Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. I'm really sort of a glorified TA, which feels like a welcome break, since it'll give me time for an upcoming translation project and a scholarly article I probably should've written over winter break.

I'm sure this class will inspire a slew of posts once I pull my head out of my butt and get up to speed with the reading. For tomorrow alone, the readings range from Sufism's dichotomous view of gender to Old Testament texts on women and purity; from Buddhist renunciation of fleshly pleasures to Mary Daly on footbinding.

But I'm already behind with all that reading for the best of reasons. Today was a gorgeous day, a short respite from the grey skies and rain that have clouded any chance of preparing my garden. And my new camera arrived in the mail today. Lucky me! So I spent the afternoon outside cleaning up garden debris, pruning my clematis, and trying out my new toy. Here's a first taste of last year's planting, my spooky blue rock iris, which have been in bloom for the past couple of weeks.

5 comments:

Sugarmag said...

I have irises like those! Mine are purple. Have you read Snowflower and the Secret Fan?

Smirking Cat said...

I adore flowers, really any plant, and find just the sight of them calming and peaceful. I have a book called Botany for Gardeners that amazed me, the wondrous things plants do, all the while looking like they're not up to much!

I had a gorgeous petunia that made a vigorous comeback, a huge carpet of purple flowers...then some neighborhood dog started peeing on it every day, and now it's as good as dead. Just another reason I'm a cat person...*grumbling to self as I walk off*...

Sungold said...

I'm glad if you guys like plant pictures, because now that I finally have a decent camera, I'm sure I'll post lots of gratuitous flower photos.

Sugar Mag, I don't know the book. What's it about - in 100 words or less? :-) You know I almost always like the same books you do.

Smirking Cat, I am sorry about your petunia, though also a little envious that you were able to overwinter it. I had some nice silver tidal wave petunias that I'd grown from seed, and the roofers trampled them to death last October, well before they would've frozen. I think roofers are canine, not feline, even if they do climb like kitties.

Sugarmag said...

http://www.lisasee.com/snowflower.htm

the foot binding parts were interesting, it was even worse than you might imagine. Sometimes girls' feet got infected and they died. It's a good book.

Sungold said...

Uff da. I just finished reading Mary Daly on footbinding (for class, it's a chapter in her book Gyn/Ecology). Upsetting stuff. Daly is often one notch too far over the top, for me, but here she didn't have to play up her evidence *at all* - footbinding was a brutal practice, pure and simple.

How'd we get from my iris to here? This was supposed to be a light post. :-)