Category Archives: General

This is a bit of a mystery test post.

And as all should well know by now, life is a mystery.

To that end, I have little to offer in the way of hints, other than to reveal the color for this fall’s blog theme. 

A bit dark, but even in the midst of summer, darkness is present. 

As for the coming fall, I’m a little afraid.

But that’s when the best shit happens.

Right about the time when you’re ready to give in to The Sleep.

I have no choice, I hear your voice…

Get on your knees for something decidedly unholy. 

We haven’t had many Monarch butterflies in the garden this year – or maybe we have and I just haven’t been outside as much to notice. Both may be true. This week there were a couple of them flitting about the aptly-named butterfly bush as Andy and I enjoyed a couple of last swims before the pool season comes to a close. They danced in what remained of the summer sun and the suddenly-cooler breeze. Perhaps they were just waiting for the perfect weather. Beauty and warnings abound.

The last week of August has come and gone. It was an emotional doozy, one that required a lunch-time treat of the pistachio ricotta cake as seen below, but this blog runs on autopilot so that’s what it did. As summer winds down outside, this website continues on its journey. To that end, here is the weekly recap.

Trouble in the trees.

Pharmacists are the happiest people.

Birds and bees and hummers.

The office life.

It really is a confusing time.

Keep on treading.

The barely-pink candle.

Gratuitous clickbait in the form of shirtless male celebrities.

Boston birthday balm.

Glory of a coquette morning.

September swimming.

Dazzlers of the Day include Kaelan Strouse and Naomi Osaka.

Greeting September with a swim is the best way to remind the month that it is still summer, and it will be even after Labor Day is over tomorrow. School may begin (sorry kids!) but summer continues, and the pool remains open and heated. Donning trunks of coquette cherries (and leaving the Speedo to the Olympians) I step into the warm water, remembering… or trying to remember. 

Swimming is different in September, in the same way the light is different. It comes with the constant threat of cold – something that doesn’t happen in July or August. No matter how warm the water is, or even the air on a sunny day like today was, you get the feeling that you are right on the verge of being cold, like it might suddenly turn chilly and you’ll have to rush inside.

On this day, a pleasantly sunny throwback to the sunny days that this summer was kind enough to grant us, I swim in relative silence. The insects are buzzing and humming, and the air conditioner mumbles in the distance, but mostly it is quiet. There is no coquette music playing, no kids screaming and laughing. It is the end of summer and it happens in silence. 

The water is still too, matching the quiet. Even as I paddle into the deep end, the waves seem less rowdy, less active than they did a few weeks ago. Summer’s wind-down can’t help but be a little melancholy. 

The wind dances along the treetops, while the bees flit among the blooms of the seven sons flower tree. When the pool first opened, we swam beneath the blooms of the cherry tree – this is a more fragrant, though less showy, bookend of floral splendor. The promise of September coming soon has been answered with quiet confirmation. 

While the morning glory typically signifies the end of summer, this pink variety harkens to the early days of our coquette season. For the first day of September, this pink morning glory bridges our coquette theme with the continuation of summer, marking its final weeks while gently preparing the way for fall. Apologies – I shouldn’t even use the f-word when most of September is still technically summer. To that end, let’s head outside into the sun for another summer Sunday… while it lasts. 

The increasingly-tumultuous weather we’ve had of late has coaxed a couple of azaleas into bloom, far from their typical blooming season. The throwback to spring is bittersweet given the late hour of this summer, but I paused to look at this anomaly, enjoying memories of when it all began. Spring feels very distant. Summer does too, even if we’re still in it. 

There is danger here, especially if these buds were intended for next spring. I would never rob the future for a momentary jolt of pleasure in the present. 

The garden has been quietly busy of late, with our cup plants and butterfly bush providing fertile feeding and pollinating ground for the birds and bees and a hummingbird as seen here. Both continue in their long blooming period, allowing for enjoyment by these visitors that will last through the start of winter. The bees and insects will depart first for the season, then the hummingbirds will go – only the finches will keep coming back into the slumber time. 

The gardens have been wanting to go to sleep for a while now. I stopped fertilizing and feeding them a few weeks ago. Once the ostrich ferns take that turn to brown, it is senseless to try to keep things going and growing. The only things I keep feeding are the container plants, as they will require the nutrients for as long as we want them to be presentable. Let us not be too quick to overlook the importance of these plants in the fall. Cool nights don’t mean an instant end to the pageantry. Not yet… 

In the meantime, the birds and the bees are still humming along…

A rustling and a scuffle, held high above the ground where such things usually take place, drew my attention to the crux of the Eastern white pine and a coral bark Japanese maple tree. A pair of squirrels quarreled or played in the arms of the latter, sending a few maple leaves fluttering to the floor, before they charged into the feathery planes of the pine boughs. What could have caused such a tussle? The curiosity into the lives of squirrels takes me blessedly out of the day, and anything that takes us out of ourselves is a good thing. How many hours have I spent self-fucking the ego? Surely enough for a lifetime. 

Let us look to the trees, and beyond to the sky, to figure out ourselves through detachment and distance. It all goes around and comes around, and around and around we go…

Surviving another year on this crazy-ass earth is no mean feat, even if most of us still living have done it for as many years as we’ve been here. Saying a great deal of nothing with a maddening cadence of words has become this blog’s stock in trade. On with this post-birthday recap of the week that I turned 49…

A coquette cradle song fit for a fit of crying. 

A gratuitous Glen Powell armpit post, for those who admire such scenes. 

When fall arrives, a coquette summer departs.

Helianthus wet and wild – little faces of sun that refuse to be drowned. 

Bark and structure – the architecture of the garden.

Coquette queens.

A birthday on the cusp of many things.

Feeling all of my 49 years.

The post-birthday sigh of relief.

Dazzlers of the Day included Catherine O’Hara, Tim Walz, and Todd Alsup.

I made it through the wilderness… somehow I made it through. Another birthday finished, assuming things go relatively well (at the time of this writing I am still a baby-like 48) it’s a day to take pause, and the only thing blue is the color of these salvia blooms. Let’s have a quiet Sunday morning, and bring that calm into the week. 

The body is weary.

The body is worn.

The body is bruised, achy and torn. 

This is 49, and it comes after a ferocious summer that took my back out, strained my neck, gave me a second go-round with COVID, and battered me down in numerous other ways unnoticeable to the naked eye. The body betrays us the older we get, even as we struggle to protect it. 

After revisiting this date 49 times, one would think I’d have a better grasp of how things should go, of what I’m supposed to be doing. Strangely, with each passing year, I’m discovering that the older I get the less I understand – and there is growing wisdom in that realization and acceptance. 

And so I look back with the indulgence that only a birthday can socially sanction (not that I’ve ever denied myself an indulgence on any of the other days). It begins with #48, the uneventful birthday of last year, during the end of a summer that didn’t feel like it would ever end. For #47, it seemed fitting to slip into my birthday suit – a tradition that was part of #46 in a quieter way. During the quiet first year of COVID, #45 stripped things down to basics, harkening to a vintage-tinged past. 

Donning a different sort of birthday suit for #44, and the traditional one, and following a couple of summers (and birthdays) off from blogging, things picked up as we skipped to the joyous #41, and the equally-lovely #40. Ten years ago found birthday #39 quietly passing in a New York night. A most basic birthday suit post formed the entry for #38, and that seems as fitting a way to end things on this day. I’m tired. 

Seeing old things from new vantage points is one of my favorite things about having friends visit. When Missy was here this summer she stayed in our guest bedroom, where we’ve kept the blinds closed to the front yard for privacy, even if we don’t spend much time there. She raised them in the morning, and when I walked in and saw the room in brighter form, it made all the difference. I didn’t realize how much light was being blocked out, even with the white and diffused format of the blinds. Such a simple change, such an unexpected realization. I’ve been keeping them open ever since, and it’s added a lightness to that end of the house that I didn’t fully fathom was missing in all this time. 

More than that, I got to look outside into the front yard, and the little bit of landscaping that was there from the time we moved in – starting with this Japanese maple (please do me the courtesy of ignoring the soaker hose that remains unburied). Earlier this spring, I pruned the bejesus out of the maple, cutting out two-inch-thick limbs and opening it up to show off its wonderful branches and gorgeously-mottled bark. 

A peaceful little corner, it inspires calm and contemplation – the perfect nook from which to watch summer transform into fall. 

Harbinger of fall, and signifier of the end of summer, this Helianthus comes into bloom just as some of us have grown tired of summer’s happy monotony. It makes me sad to say it but I never quite got into the summer spirit of things, try as I might. I don’t remember having a stretch of hot and sunny days where I simply sat out by the pool listening to a summer playlist, idly popping into the kitchen for a BLT or some other glad food fare between swims. Of course I managed some of those moments, but not enough to bake in any lasting memories.

Maybe some summers aren’t meant to be remembered. 

This Helianthus, even amid its post-rain wetness and wildly uncultivated form, is a reminder that summer still lingers – it simply burns differently in its last few weeks. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step out and see if I can’t find a little ore summer magic.

Just kidding. 

We won’t be dragging our coquette theme into the next season. As Emi correctly predicted, this household has grown tired of the pink, and this fall will be a complete turnabout into a very different realm, and while I’ve been assembling ideas and images for it, not even I am quite ready for the dramatic shift about to take place. That means you’ll get to attend the tumultuous journey with me in relatively real time, which always proves messy and moody and every-once-in-a-while magnificent. 

Fall came to mind this morning when I stepped out to leave a letter in the mailbox; for the first time in a few months, there was a decided chill in the air – a marked delineation separating yesterday’s mugginess from this start of something else. I thought I was ready for the turn but it still came with a jolt. As for what’s on the agenda for the beginning of the burning season, I’ll throw out just a couple of foreboding hints as to what’s coming this fall: it will not be demure, and it definitely won’t be considerate. Fasten your seatbelts…

“It was not as if I was not myself – oh no, I was myself, I was my other self, the self that wishes to carry on a secret dialogue with all that is evil in human nature. Some men do not struggle with this in themselves. They seem to have a certain grace. They are happy – or rather, they are content. They swing tennis rackets in the sunlight and get the oil checked regularly and laugh when the audience laughs. They accept limits. They are not interested in what might come up from the dark, cold hole of human possibility.” – Colin Harrison

“In my experience, men and women who have a kind of brutal fortitude have been made that by a sequence of events, until the person passes beyond a point of no return. They learn that life requires the ability to coldly stand pain of one kind or another… They will do what is necessary to survive; they will conceal and protect their vulnerabilities, except from those who cannot hurt them. Above all, they will press their advantage when it presents itself.” – Colin Harrison

The week was marked by a turn – a few turns in fact – the first being the turn of the sun as we veer closer to fall. The second being a turn in my health, as I came down with COVID and missed out on a wonderful wedding weekend with dear friends. And the third turn being this cup of hot matcha – the first since the chillier days of early spring, and a foreboding signal of the fall to come. This week will mark the turn of ny life from 48 to 49 (see this birthday wish list before time runs out, or this one). At such turns, perhaps its best to stand still and pause, and go through the previous week in our typical Monday recap…

It began with the post silly pronouncement that powdered sugar makes almost every occasion better. As if life could ever be that simple.

Like a lily but still not quite.

Words of wonder.

Zac Efron, shirtlessly pumping.

A coquette apology.

A destination date, suddenly postponed.

Our BroSox Adventure was, as ever, a bright spot in the summer season. It was such fun it took more than one post to fully capture.

An infuriating interruption.

Madonna celebrated her 66th birthday, and in case some of the new people aren’t aware, I still love her. So if you’re going to trash her, or say how much you used to love her but don’t anymore, put that shit on your own social media page, not any of mine. Seriously.

Tom Daley retired with no word on what he’ll do with all those Speedos. 

A glimpse of Pete Buttigieg shirtless.

The Republican Party is just weird. Let’s stop pretending it’s not, and let’s vote for sanity this November. 

The demure and mindful coquette.

The lone Dazzler of the Day was male model Tobias Reuter, because sometimes being pretty is enough.