Art – Page 59 – Ellis Hollow

June bloom day scans

I’m late to the party again. Sorry. Seems like it wasn’t long ago that I had to scour the garden to come up with a single scan. Now I just pick a couple themes and fill three scans without covering half of what’s flowering.

Mostly pinks and purples: Peonies, bearded iris, bearberry, violas, dame’s rocket, pinks, willow.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

Mostly whites: goatsbeard, nectoscordum, persicaria, daisies, violas, bishops weed, arrowwood, anemone, columbine.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

Mostly grays: artemisia, Scotch thistle, verbascum, plume poppy, hosta, lambs ears, begonia.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

Good news about Pink Flamingos …

pink flamingos … that doesn’t involve John Waters.

According to the AP and Channel 9 in Syracuse, N.Y.:

The original pink flamingo lawn ornament, the symbol of kitsch whose obituary was nearly written after its central Massachusetts manufacturer went out of business, is rising phoenix-like from the ashes and taking wing to Central New York.

A manufacturer that bought the copyright and plastic molds for the original version plans to resume production in Westmoreland. …

The ornaments hit the market in the late 1950s when the color pink was in vogue, and America’s exploding population of suburbanites sought to add flair to their lawns.

But the birds also came to symbolize bad taste, and some residential developments even banned flamingo ornaments from lawns. The bird also became a target of pranksters, some of whom swiped the ornaments from front yards, took them on the road, and then sent photos to their owners showing the kidnapped birds in front of sights like the Grand Canyon.

pink flamingos Locally, I know of one garden tour that arrived with the host (who was along with the tour that day) to find the hosts yard filled with a flock of the pink plastic beauties. It’s called ‘flocking’. At least one Florida church youth group sells flocking insurance as a fund-raiser.

I’ve never had an authentic Featherstone flamingo. But when our new local garden center opens, I’m going straight to the manager and demand they carry them. Read more about pink flamingos.

Don Featherstone, who created the classic pink flamingo in ’57. Union Products sold more than 20 million.

Night fish

There’s more than one way to get a black background with PhotoShop. Click images for larger view

Honey, does this peplos make my butt look fat?

Venus Kallipygos Much discussion of sex and antiquities over at GardenRant this week.

Hank comments “Everything is sex. Either overt or covert. All sex. All the time.” (What, you can’t liveblog from Sweden Hank? They have ‘the internets’ over there I think. Or did you run into the Swedish Bikini Team?)

IfÂ IÂ couldÂ affordÂ it,Â I would buy classic statuary for my (less than formal) garden. But when I see Venus Kallipygos, I don’t feel a connection with the ancients based on sex. All I can hear is the most feared question a man is ever asked:

Honey, does this peplos make my butt look fat?

You can buy classic statues if you’ve got the bucks. (Page down. I have no clue why the golfer sorts to the top of that gallery. Ironic.) No thanks. I’mÂ stuckÂ withÂ a pink flamingo (theÂ kindÂ with the spinning wings) and a bowling ball on a piece of rebar.

saronged statuary I was searching for some images of the tacky modern nude garden statue crap that I remember gracing ads in gardening mags. You know the ones — a hybrid of Hustler and Gary Lee Price. Instead, I ran into this USAToday article Garden Center covers nude statues with velvet sarong.

Ummmm… Leave it to a Bible Belt nursery to make classic statues even more erotic in a tacky twins-in-bondage sort of way. (Yes. Sales increased and customers were caughtÂ ~~peaking~~ peeking.) Reminds me of John Ashcroft screening Lady Liberty.

In a perfect world, I’d have sculpture in my garden like what Nicole posted about in More Buddha Park. (She’s got another great slideshow of Asian garden sculpture and much more worth exploring over at her blog, A Carribean Garden.)

Lots more to blog about and lots of pent up pix to purge. But I’ve got to go make hay while the sun shines — or at least it’s not raining.

Update: Keeping with the classical them, Bill Kirchen (formerly of Commander Cody) is coming to town. His latest is ‘Hammer of the Honky Tonk Gods’ — a tribute to a Fender or one of those other classic guitars. I’m clueless, but I get his point:

It was born at the junction
Or form and function
It’s the hammer of the honky tonk gods.

Here’s a taste.

Saint Francis was right

st francis

Interesting article in this morning’s Washingon Post: If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural. It’s about some neuroscience studies conduted at the National Institutes of Health and their implications on moral behavior:

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, “For it is in giving that we receive.” …

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry — rather than free will — might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.

Read the whole thing.

Between work, gardening and holiday festivities, it’s been hard to find time to blog. Will start sorting through pictures tonight and be back in action soon.