Three More Movies and A Blue Planet Update

Yes, we've once again managed to see three more movies in a real theater, not on cable or DVD. What can I say? It's hot and buggy, the wonderful Austin Film Society treated us to a couple of previews, and I can't resist Seth Rogen's voice.

As stated a few weeks ago, I'm no critic - just a movie fan who likes to talk about them. My children are adults so I no longer worry about ratings. Foreign films, bad language, interesting sex, nudity, inhaling, subtitles and endless conversations won't keep me from seeing a film that looks good, but excessive violence and lame dialogue might do it.

KNOCKED UP

A few years ago The 40 Year Old Virgin was pretty raunchy, and pretty funny, had lots of interesting things going on around the edges, yet was somehow sweet and life-affirming. The movie was directed by Judd Apatow and it featured Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell and a charismatic young guy named Seth Rogen. Once I read that Knocked Up was also directed by Judd Apatow and starred Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, I wanted to see it. So we did. It was raunchy, way too full of potheads, very funny, had lots of interesting things going on around the edges, and it was ultimately sweet and life-affirming. When the DVD comes out I'll probably see it again.

2 DAYS IN PARIS

Movie number two was 2 Days in Paris - written and directed by Julie Delpy. I couldn't find downloadable wallpaper for 2 Days in Paris, so the poster has Julie with Ethan Hawke in the Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise. She and Ethan were also in Linklater's Before Sunset, and in his Waking Life - did you see any of these?

Delpy has made a very entertaining movie about the relationship between a quirky Parisian-to-New York woman, played by herself, and a neurotic American man played by Adam Goldberg. It's been interesting to watch him evolve from one of Linklater's scruffy Dazed and Confused high school kids into a lead actor in this movie.

Julie Delpy's movie parents are played by her very real parents, who are actors in France but have different occupations here. The humor comes from the conversations, the interplay of personalities, stereotypes both French and American, the language problems and the collision of American standards with Continental attitudes, in both sex and cuisine. There is artistic nudity, and given a French woman at the helm, the nudity deals less with the female body than with the male. There are memorable scenes in taxis and train stations and markets.

SELF MEDICATED

The Austin Film Society hosted movie number three, which opens tomorrow. Self Medicated has won a score of film festival awards in the last year, but independent films can win prizes without ever landing a spot on a marqee. It's having a limited run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Denver, San Diego, San Francisco and Indianapolis.

From the title you can guess we're going into addiction territory - set this time in Las Vegas with trips to an adolescent substance abuse hospital. The story is intense and emotional with a surprising amount of humor stirred in. The lead character reminds me a little of Clint Eastwood back when he was Rowdy Yates- those eyes, those cheekbones, athleticism, an impression of intelligence and a quality of stillness in the acting. Like Clint Eastwood the beauty has brains - twenty-something Monty Lapica not only stars in the film but is also the writer and director. Diane Venora plays his pill-popping mother and you'll probably recognize others in the excellent supporting cast.

Philo thought the cinematography by Denis Maloney was outstanding and I found Anthony Marinelli's score quite compelling. There were some parts of the story that strained belief, but the movie is an impressive debut which deserves to be seen by a larger audience. I'd like to thank the Austin Film Society for letting us see it.

BLUE PLANET RUN ~ ALMOST DONE

While we've been watching fine movies in a cool theater, Mary Chervenak and her clean water team have almost completed their circuit of the globe. I wrote about Mary and the Blue Planet Run at the beginning of July. Since then Mary has run across Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China, and Japan, and traversed the width of the US to New York State. Mary's parents live in the Corning area so she brought the team there for an overnight stay. They're now heading in the direction of Washington DC, where there will be some kind of public event on the 31st. Here's a link to some photos taken earlier this week.

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend, and if you see any movies, let me know!

Painters Inside - Janitors Outside

For the past couple of weeks painting and rearranging the inside of the house has been more interesting than being outside or writing. I've enjoyed reading many of your posts but I haven't much to say about my garden right now.

Philo did most of the hard work - spending days balanced on ladders working on the raised ceilings and the gabled end walls while I puttered around at ground level, covering the color chosen by the previous owners - a mauve so pale it approached off white. This color looked fine with their stuff, but for three years it's been sucking the life out of our furniture. Now the stalactites of the sprayed-on popcorn ceiling have been banished, the floral pink stained glass skylight has been replaced with translucent white, the 'Belgian Waffle' paint is on the walls and for the first time the living room and halls feel as if they are entirely our own. It's fun playing house, reorganizing every bookshelf and cabinet, immersed in the details of what goes and what stays, swapping pictures between rooms, enjoying the harmonious effects.

Between the paint project and the August doldrums, our relationship with the garden has become janitorial rather than horticultural. We've gone out to prune bagworms from the pecans [as in the photo above], to mow grass, to water containers, and to prune trees so their branches clear the sidewalks. Although the tree guys did a fine job in March, record rainfall induced 6-to-8 feet of new growth on some overhanging limbs. I've watered borders and beds and new trees, but the grass has stayed green with no help from me - and it's so thick I can barely push the mower.

Even with few flowers in bloom now, some parts of the garden look fine because of the leaves. This purple foliage is prettier than many flowers - it's Persian Shield, Strobilanthes dyeranus.

You've probably seen Silver ponyfoot, a form of Dichondra, in the photos of Pam/Digging. Austin gardeners love this stuff! I brought a hanging basket of ponyfoot from the other house deck in 2004 and a few strands fell off and rooted near the herb bed in the back. They've gently increased and spread, and I like how the silver looks against the old sidewalk in the photo above.

Three years ago I bought another small pot of the Silver ponyfoot to put in this terra cotta bowl near the front steps, letting the ponyfoot drape over the edges and touch the ground. It tip-rooted and has spread into a silver carpet between the rocks and containers, softening the edges of the concrete drive.

When I lived in Illinois, flowering oxalis was grown as a houseplant or as a summer annual. Here it stays outside all year, both in the ground and in containers. But in many summers the heat and dryness overcome the white-flowering Oxalis, causing the leaves to fall off and sending the small bulbs into dormancy. This summer the oxalis has stayed green and it hasn't stopped blooming. I always tuck in an impatiens plant or two, ready to take over once the oxalis is asleep. That impatiens has had to fight for space and light in 2007.

The triangle bed is not showy but the plants please me when I go out to fill the birdbaths each day. On the obelisk the Blue Butterfly Pea keeps blooming by day, and the white moonflowers open in late afternoon. The purple at the left of the photo comes from the 'Black Knight' butterfly bush. Against the housewall in the background blue plumbago flowers harmonize while the rusty brown undersides of the 'Little Gem' Magnolia look ready for autumn.

I guess August is ending in green and purple, blue and silver and white - but wait until next month - September should arrive bearing gifts of red.

My Cottage Has A Name

I'd been playing around with the idea of a name for our place ever since we moved here three years ago. We'd never named any of our four previous house-and-gardens, but living here felt different. Was it the single-story cottage-style house that called for a name? Are there too many English novels on my bookshelf? Perhaps it was the combination of a long, covered front porch and an enclosed fenced garden with a wooden gate?

Last spring inspiration struck, and my intention was to paint the name on the top board of the green bench in the new Pink Entrance Garden, take a photo and write a post about it. The paints sit unused next to sketches and print-outs of fonts, so there's no decorated bench to photograph as yet, but Carol at May Dreams has asked if our garden & house has a name, and my answer is Yes!

In October 2004 we bought a 'Forest Pansy' redbud tree for the shaded area at the far right of the front yard - the photo at the top of the page shows the newly planted sapling. After a few rough summers our young tree is becoming established, and so is the American Beautyberry/Callicarpa americana to its left in the photo above.
In 2006 we bought a Texas Redbud/Cercis canadensis var. texensis and planted it to the far left of the front yard, then added the Pink Entrance Garden this spring:

Because we lost a tree this year - the immense Arizona Ash of my YouTube song- we decided to plant a new tree in the left center of the front yard. It seemed like fate at work when we walked into a local nursery right after some small trees of the white version of the Texas Redbud were delivered. I'd always wanted a Whitebud!

So here we have them, left, right and center - three Redbuds chosen from the genus Cercis, growing in the garden of someone who loves to sprinkle her pages with botanical Latin ... what else could the name be but

What do you think?? Is it a keeper? Maybe I'll get around to painting the name on the bench one of these days.

Every circus needs a Sideshow, so step right up to the obelisk and see the moonflower in close-up just before dark:


In the daytime the Butterfly Peas open blue flowers, with the long white buds of the Moonvine poised to work the night shift.

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day for August

Today is bloom day, but where are the flowers? To the south there are deep green shadows under the pecan trees, with the only color coming from a bright yellow chair. The shade is welcome since Austin has had several weeks of normal dry summer weather with temperatures hovering near 100º F.

Around the corner to the right, past the green settee, is the 'Incense' passionvine, star of the August 5th post. A hungry Gulf Fritillary caterpillar takes the place of the purple flowers that hung there a week ago.

From the patio I can see two red flowers - a Cypress vine~Ipomoea quamoclit, and the faithful native Coral Honeysuckle~Lonicera sempervirens, entwined to form a hummingbird's delight.

The vines cover the top of the metal arch - how could there be a bloom day post without a photo of that arch? Through it a spot of red is visible along the long back fence...

I called this tropical tree a Plumeria when I showed you the buds ten days ago, but Kerri knows it as Frangipani, a beautiful name that means both the flower and the fragrance.

Crossing to the gate and looking forward to the northeast brings the length of the North fence into view, with a few flowers remaining on the two 'Acoma' crepe myrtles, a 'Bengal Tiger' canna, and the tall self-seeded sunflower at right on the back fence.

Looking to the right while standing at the gate, one sees a bed along the housewall. The Brugmansia finally bloomed and the expanded Angel's Trumpets are yellow - very pale and lightly fragrant. Even with flowers the Brugmansia plant looks like a big weed to me, and the blue tumble at its feet has a weedy habit, too.

This flower is the semi-tropical Plumbago auriculata - grown for that wonderful blue color.

In the front of the house, Impatiens and Oxalis bloom in baskets along the veranda, and a small pink crepe myrtle leans into the picture.

August Lilies/Hosta plantaginea bloomed in my Illinois garden, spilling fragrance near Grandma's white phlox. I brought some of the phlox to Texas and in some summers it's looked happy. But this year's rain nearly drowned my phlox - it finally made one flower this week.

The fragrance no longer comes from August hostas, but from Hedychium coronaria, White Ginger. After I brought one tiny root back from Hawaii, six summers in Texas turned that root into several plants, enough to share with MSS one recent afternoon.

Fragrance also comes from Cestrum nocturnum, the Night-blooming Jasmine, which has a demure and dainty appearance in the daytime, but whose evening personality is rated at least PG-13.

It's evening now, and the jasmine scent insinuates itself into the landscape as one last flower uncurls - atop the obelisk the Moonvine has climbed over the Blue Butterfly Pea and raised one white disk to the dark sky.