The copperleaf hedge is in bloom. Can you see the flowers? I shot this in the morning, as I was leaving for work, and so the color is true morning light, and the drops of water are, I think, condensing dew, and not late night rain. Click on the image to open a pop-up window at full (huge) size.

As ever, this is part of the Nature Notes meme.

I came home from work today to find the lawn crew hard at work. The recent month-long deluge has taken my parched and patchy lawn and turned it into a lush sprawl of green, and when I went out to fill the feeders this morning, there were purple wild flowers in the back yard that reached to my knees. They’d just finished mowing, and the scent of fresh-cut grass was heavy in the moist air. I flashed back to a Sunday afternoon when I was six or seven. I was in the back yard, on the swing my father had built for me. My brother was mowing the lawn and my father was tending a grill he’d made out of an old oil barrel, cut in half. I remember being aware at that moment, that life was full, and good. Perfect. I recognized that it was a memory I’d have forever.

Well, it’s fifty years later, and all it took was one whiff to send me back in time.

It’s been pouring, day after day. The poinciana tree can’t hold on to its leaves. The feathery fronds are shedding in the daily deluge. The water pools up in the driveway and then recedes, absorbed back into the earth, giving Florida a much-needed reprieve against the on-going drought. This is the detritus along that water line.

No. Just fucking no. David Carradine, dead. Time to break out the Kung Fu collection.

I’m saddened by this.

It’s never been much of a secret that Phil Spector was mad as a hatter, even at the top of his game. Still, in the category of how the mighty have fallen, seeing Phil get 19 to life for murder is right up there with Syd Barrett dying as an overweight recluse or Jocko Pastorius getting beaten to death by a bouncer. It stung me, is what I’m saying. Enough that Phil and his sentence has been a topic of conversation for me. To this end: Who? What? Because I work with fucking children. Once I reminded them that Phil Spector was the rock producer who was on trial (again) for the mysterious gun-shot death of a b-movie actress he’d met in a bar and taken home, the next question was: he was a producer? I said, uh, yeah, the “Wall of Sound” to which the response was “I never heard of them.”

After my co-worker removed my stapler from my hand and prevented me from stapling myself to death, I explained that the wall of sound was not a who, but a musical style. Still rang no bells for this kid. The Ronettes? Be My Baby? The Chrystals? Da Doo Ron Ron? Nothing. Nada. This traumatizes me to the point where I find myself yesterday retelling the story to the Number Two Surrogate Daughter (my own child in an alternate reality) and her friend. They both look at me with googly eyes. Phil Spector means nothing to them, either. Nor does the concept of the wall of sound. Now I had a hand in the Number Two’s musical upbringing and this is causing me much distress. She calls her boyfriend, a certified rocker. Zip. Zilch. Not a faint hint of a whiff of a clue.

So, the Number Two and her friend pull my head out of the oven, and I show them the Wikipedia entry on Wall of Sound. Uh-huh. Fine. Now we know. Will you please go back to showing up how to make a pie crust?

Gah!!!! What the fuck are kids learning in college these days? How can any self-respecting rocker NOT know about Phil and the wall of sound? I’m reading this out loud to the girls, and asking questions of them as I go along. It is painfully like the classroom scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

So if Phil called his sound “Wagnerian”, then it is a direct line from him to? Anybody? Anybody? (sweet tapdancing jesus, people, haven’t you listened to anything I’ve given you?) Jim Steinman and Meatloaf. Yes??? The girls roll their eyes. I put away the lap top. Kids. No sense of history.

One morning, you go outside and the poinciana is bare. You think it will never have leaves again. The next morning, there are tiny green furls on the branches. Within a week or two, the leaves have opened and there are masses and masses of orange and yellow flowers. In the tropics, there is truly and literally an explosion of color.

The Nature Notes meme, begun by Michelle at Rambling Woods, and embraced by RJ at Flamingo Musings.