Flowers for a Dame: Dame's Rocket

The highways and byways around here are gorgeous right now, as the roads are lined with flowers. If you drive around, you will get quite a show. Purple lovers, don't be afraid to hop out to take a picture or two, but be sure to pull over someplace safe first!

This is dame's rocket Hesperis matronalis, a flower that looks a lot like phlox, but isn't. A dame's rocket bloom has four petals; phlox has five. I found this one at the Scotia Barrens, but it grows everywhere in central Pennsylvania. They come in shades of purple and white and a sort of off-pink that is really lovely.

It is my custom to include a soundtrack tune, and here is some music for a real dame: Kim Carnes, with Bette Davis Eyes. (One of my most FAVORITE stories about a dame, though, is the 1944 film Double Indemnity. It boasts some of the best lines of dialogue ever written, and Barbara Stanwyck as the femme fatale, who wears "a honey of an anklet.")

Bonus Story: The Great and Secret Bunzini Show!
I wanted to tell you a story about our rabbits, two of whom you met in yesterday's blip. On this day, my husband mowed the yard. Every year, he mows less, and we let the rest go back to nature, and to flowers. But before and after the mow, we were sitting in the driveway and I was finishing up a book, the latest Pendergast story, to be exact. (We are both voracious readers, as well as loyal patrons of our local libraries and Bookmobile.)

Imagine my surprise when a very robust gray vole ran past, from one side of the driveway to the other, using my husband's Chevy Impala for cover. It felt like we'd seen a streaker! My husband and I just LOOKED at each other!

After the mow, all of the bunnies came out. As soon as my husband put the mower in the garage and closed the garage door (I was sitting outside), a sort of thinnish rabbit with rather scroungy fur ran right in front of me! It crossed the driveway and went into the yard.

Then out came two more bunnies! And suddenly the bunnies were running up and down the yard, and into the trees, and back, and two of them went across the road, and one of them ran straight at me!

It felt like when I used to change the bed sheets when I had a tabbycat in the house. You may as well pop some popcorn, pull up a chair, put on some calliope music, and watch the show! I have no idea now how many bunnies we have but they were all in motion. Yee-haw, bring on the Great and Secret Bunzini Show!