No Words

As part of Arts Walk weekend, the day after the Luminaria Procession was the The Procession of the Species.

The opening banner.

This procession has no words, no slogans, no advertising. It's just a celebration of nature, Olympia, friends, art, and a love of the silly. Pick your favorite species, season, or element and get in line.




Our friend Shari has been planting giant flowers in the Procession for years. This year she showed her newest native bleeding heart, complete with leaf costume!

More of her giant flowers proceed on - hiding here behind a frog.

Of course wherever there are flowers there are bees on bikes! They are one of my favorites in the Procession and every year the swarm seems to have grown. It was hard to get a good picture, they move so fast.

Luminaria Parade

Olympia's delightful spring Arts Walk weekend opened last night with booths of artisans and food and artists with their work on display in business venues all over town. Come nightfall, many gathered for the Luminaria parade from the Capitol Theater to Capitol Lake.

This was one of my favorite of the lanterns. There is a person inside the skirt moving the arms and head like an Indonesian puppet. It was wonderful.

There were several other lanterns, opening and closing as they moved down the street.

The pea and the pepper were a lovely surprise.

And Mr. Puffin looked adorable.

This sea creature was a top three favorite.

But no surprise, the hummingbird was my number one!



In spite of the misty rain that came and went, it was still a starry night.

Where Velvet Comes From

These are my favorite kind of primroses. These dark purples are the first to bloom, but I have some pale periwinkle ones and some yellow ones that are so sweet looking and highly fragrant. These were the only plants I dug out of the ground when I left Vashon -- gifted to me by garden pal, Mary.

Primrose (An aberration, primroses are usually pentagonal) and fawn lily: hexagonal symmetry in the garden:

S-x In The Garden

Ok, now that I am working on a book called "S-x In The Garden" I have become very aware of my shy side. I am not usually comfortable mentioning the title without a little explanation that it is a plant book. Also, I am not very comfortable with the title. I am sure those of you who know me are saying to yourselves right now "she has a shy side?" So that explains the dilemma. I am an introvert and an extrovert. And while the book was totally about plant reproduction before, I will let you in on something: condoms are now part of the design creation, and this is only the beginning....

I can't write about s-x in the garden without mentioning trilliums.

We are very, very lucky to have so many trilliums in our yard. Because this land was logged so long ago, without earth scraping the entire area, we have many native plants on our property and in our neighborhood. Every spring we count the trilliums. About now some of the flowers are aging, and others have just begun blooming. It's nice long season. Bill counted right around 400 trilliums inside our property line today! It's amazing to us.

Why am I talking about trilliums? Well, this is something I didn't know until I met Bill: trilliums bloom white, and when they are fertilized they turn pink and then red. Though he said it differently. Something about how they are white till they have sex and this makes them blush and they turn red.



I can't say this is true of all trilliums, but it is definitely true of our local native ones.

I think this is a very fun thing to know. And when I first began thinking about S-x in the Garden, I thought it would be full of this kind of thing. But then I wanted to create a different kind of book. I wanted to get away from facts and information and get into something more subtle. So the book is happening, I am making it. I just didn't know I would be so shy to write about it!