Next Time You Buy Madonna Flowers, Remember This

Actually somewhat less diva-ish than I would have expected from Madonna. Maybe she's mellowing. (Plus I think she's also turning into Romy, from Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion -- check out the way she pronounces "loathe.")

(Via)

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XLI

I'm fairly close to being done with the Fittonia profile; I finally made some serious progress on it over the last couple days. So my blogging energy is going toward finishing that, for now. I'm hoping to have it up Thursday. [UPDATE: Thursday didn't happen, but the profile was finished.] Therefore, transmitted light photos.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Glycine max.

Liquidambar styraciflua, autumn.

Philodendron mexicanum. I realize this may not look all that interesting, but P. mexicanum leaves are green on top and reddish underneath (unusual for Philodendrons, or at least the commonly-grown ones), so the muddy color here is for a cool reason. I've tried to get a yearbook picture of the whole plant, but it's very hard to find an angle that shows both the green top and the red underside.

Chlorophytum x 'Fire Flash.' This pleases me, just because I've taken a lot of photos of 'Fire Flash' that were out of focus, or where the color was off in some hard-to-fix way. This isn't gorgeous or anything, but it's accurate, and I'll settle for accurate.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Splish Splash.' I'm undecided about whether the dead spots on the left of the photo make this image more interesting, or less interesting.

Quercus sp.

Hydrangea macrophylla Endless Summer 'Twist-n-Shout.' I'm uncertain how much of that is the actual variety name; it was all on the tag.

Begonia NOID.

Quercus sp., autumn.

Caladium 'Fire Chief.'

Pretty pictures: Blue

I'm writing this on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday hasn't been great so far. I woke up while having a dream in which a hairdresser was being really rude to me because I couldn't pay $60 for a haircut (Yes, even my subconscious is on my case about what a loser I am. Though, really, it's my subconscious's fault for taking me someplace pricey in the first place: it knows as well as I do that we don't have any money.), and everything's kind of been downhill from there. I was kind of stressed and annoyed anyway, for reasons we should probably not get into.

So I was toying with the idea of just posting a picture of a brick wall, because I couldn't think of anything else, but I eventually realized the stupidity of that plan. And so we have blue flowers.

Ageratum NOID. I have nothing new to say about Ageratum.

Tradescantia NOID. These are pretty much over now, but for a brief moment, they were blooming all over the place, in fairly substantial numbers, which was cool.

Hydrangea NOID. This is a really old picture, from the former job, that I only recently got around to dealing with.

Centaurea cyanus. This particular plant is growing in some cracked pavement here in town, probably not on purpose. The plant as a whole is not especially photogenic, and the background (somebody's junk shed, it looks like) is even less so, but the close-up sure turned out pretty.

Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue.' This is from a semi-recent visit to the ex-job. They're very pretty, but I still haven't forgiven 'Black and Blue' for becoming overrun with aphids the first time I met them (in the spring of 2008). Consequently, I can't look at them without seeing aphids. At least not yet. Maybe someday.
Tomorrow, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we'll have the first part of the Ananas comosus post, which is the not-especially-useful-but-much-more-entertaining part. (Footnote 5 is possibly my favorite footnote ever. And a while after that, there are stripper poles. So you know it will be good.) Since the bulk of it was written prior to Tuesday, it's much more cheerful than this. So . . . see you then? (UPDATE: And so it was.)