As one flower closes, another opens

There's a blink-and-you-miss-it quality to the southwestern spring. Two weeks ago the land beside the highway near Phoenix was orange with flowers that stretched as far as the eye could see, with bright splashes of creamy-orange poppies at the roadside; by this weekend, all that was gone. Last week's hedgehog cactus are almost over now, not worth using up any more bytes on, but the buds on the yellow prickly pears are fattening. This lunch time I noted the first knobby buds high up on tips of the saguaro columns, and the surviving boojums have burst into rusty-coloured bloom. A mockingbird was performing from a perch on the uppermost tip of the boojum tree. The fruit on the loquat trees -- which I'm told is edible -- has turned yellow-orange. I came home early in the day, to read some articles in peace, and stopped off at the grocery store. I had another crack at the prickly pear there, at the cost of embedding a small patch of hair-fine spines in my wrist when I brushed too close.

( Pictures )

K. J. Bishop, The Etched City

Well, that was strange. I'm not saying it wasn't good, but it was definitely unusual. This ambitious first novel is not your standard genre fantasy. For the first two thirds to three-quarters of the book, I wasn't quite sure it was fantasy at all, and I was seriously wondering if there was actually a plot. The world is surreally vivid, the characters distinctive if not exactly sympathetic, but nothing to any great purpose seems to be happening, and there's no evidence of actual magic.

( Possible Spoilers )