Vintage chocolate

Here’s another one of those troubled members of the floral community, the ne’er do well that never does … well. The layabout. The deadbeat. The do-nothing. The idler, loafer, lounger. The hibiscus aridus:

Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds like ’em. And you can find them as far away as South Africa. Again, I found this one in the back parking lot of a little building almost half a world away from there. Needless to say, it has a wide range, which is impressive for such a malingerer, the shirker, slacker and slouch.

Or perhaps I’m being too harsh. Maybe that plant is doing what it is supposed to, being colorful and charming and contributing to the local ecology and all, but suppose it’s just hiding a bit of curbside garbage can holder?

Don’t you think it could be doing more than that?

I was given a candy bar today. It was pretty good:

The big celebration starts in a few more weeks. I’ve been wondering for almost three years how you celebrate something that’s 200 years old. What’s the appropriate sequence of events to mark such a big birthday of an important, and yet inanimate, institution? And all this time, the answer should have been obvious: milk chocolate.

You’d think a 200-year-old candy bar wouldn’t taste so fresh. Or maybe you’d be surprised that a 19th century chocolatier would be so prescient as to make such a treat. You wonder how far into the future his vision might have gone, and exactly where he warehoused those delicious things.

We enjoyed a little bike ride this evening:

We tried a new road, a partially tree-covered, split lane number. Nice houses, no traffic, a place to take a deep breath, or a hard pull. It was a good ride, not fast, but it felt strong, in my legs I mean. Didn’t even bother my foot, which has been a mild bother to me since April. But progress! Which makes sense, you know, at the end of July.

The solution, as ever, is to ride more.

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