Today I Stayed Home

Wild and crazy weather today, so I just stayed home.  First sun, then rain, then sun, then rain -- and all day long a roaring wind, with a brief burst of gale-force gusts in late afternoon.  My hopes for having my Monkshood stand up straight were blown away with that wind.  Every year I mean to stake them, but then I forget.  And then I regret it.  I do love the blast of radiant blue they add to the garden, long after every other flower has faded.  This is IT, folks: the last of this year's flowers to bloom.

 

I'm not sure which species of Monkshood I obtained from a wildflower nursery years ago.  It could be New York Monkshood (Aconitum noveboracense), since, floppy though they may be, the stems are stouter than the sprawling, weak stems of Wild Monkshood (A. uncinatum).  Or perhaps it could be a cultivated species I've never heard of.  Whatever the species, they're all extremely poisonous, I've read, and should never be planted where children or pets could get at them.  The same goes for cut flowers in vases.  On one alarmist website I read today, I was warned that I could be gravely poisoned if I just touched the plant with a cut on my hand.  Uh oh, my cuticles are always ragged and bleeding, and I did grasp this flower stalk to hold it up for its photo.  So far so good, though.  It's been hours, and I'm still alive.

I did wash my hands carefully, though, when I came inside.  I sure would not want to poison my darling kitties, and I can't keep my hands off them, they are so snuggly and soft.  They're getting very big now, nearly quadruple what they weighed when I stole them away from their feral mom almost two months ago.

I realize I seem to only post photos of the kittens sleeping.  That's because, when they're awake, they're never still, flying around the house like cattail fluff in the wind, always zooming out of focal length.