Phenology: Flowers and Head Cold

On Saturday morning I thought my sinuses might be reacting to a generic mildew-remover product I'd used (similar to Tilex), so I got out of the house and went to the computer center. That didn't help. I wasn't unable to work, but my body was telling me that it might be best to avoid anyone who's around anyone who's immune-compromised.

No meetings with Grandma Bonnie Peters. She has geriatric patients. No business lunch with Adayahi. He has a sick family member. Not even a weekend odd job, although I needed the money. One of the customers is fragile.

I didn't even know that it was safe to pet the cats...although the cats usually avoid me when they smell flu on me, and Heather kept wrapping herself around my ankles every time I walked through the yard all weekend.

All it was was a head cold--but it was a wonderfully messy head cold, while it lasted. And it worried me. As a child I seemed to have a chronic head cold for most of the year. As an adult I don't normally get colds. But at least it's going away now.

Meanwhile, blackberries bloomed, wild roses bloomed, and the front of the Cat Sanctuary has shifted from its yellow theme to a white theme, with the white roses, daisies, cleavers, and (surprisingly) white violets still blooming profusely. Kind of rushing the season; the honeysuckle and privet haven't bloomed yet.

Yellow irises are still dominating the view of the west side of the house. Some blooms are about two feet high, as usual, but as of this morning four blossoms were above the four-foot mark. It's pleasant to report that lots of ordinary Iris germanica in Scott County have been shooting up three and four feet, this year. Something about the weather must have agreed with them.

Now I'm off to skim through the 500 unread e-mails that have piled up in three days...