Puppies and Flowers -- Yeah, Beats the Alternatives

I've been trying to get decent pictures of our bottlebrush bush for years.

I love how the filaments are all the same length. What in nature would produce such a remarkable form, and color and function? The color is easy: red is attractive.

Function is also obvious: the plant is a source of nectar. Bees and hummingbirds and orioles love it. (I was entranced to find, the other evening, a beautiful Bullock's oriole sipping there, brilliantly yellow-orange amongst the red brushes.)

But why on earth in the shape of a bottle-brush? To inspire the first maker of a bottle-brush? To fulfill a mathematical truism of some sort?

As I say, I've been trying to get a good picture of the blossoms for years. My film camera (which now molders, unused, in a dresser drawer, with film of God knows what in it) took nice pictures, but not the details of intricacy that I hungered for.
The morning I took these pictures I knew that the light was just right for a good red. The sun had just come up, and I captured some beauty.

That's important right now. There is beauty in the world, and it should be savored.

Monday my mother was diagnosed as having Alzheimers.

She's very angry about her body failing her, and in her grief over that sad death sentence, she's lashing out against sympathy and support.

No one can help her, as she insists she needs no help. No one can help her cope, as she insists she needs no help. No one can help her get food, get to church, shovel snow, mow the grass ... everyone who offers to help the 82-year-old woman is just trying to weaken her and make her feel like an invalid.

Today she decided that I was trying to make her feel bad: when she told me that her doctor could find nothing wrong with her, I called her on it. "Mom, yesterday you told me the doctor said you had Alzheimers."

Now -- and I don't know how long that "now" will last, as this woman holds grudges basically forever -- I'm part of her "problem," that is, all the people who are trying to destroy her.

The wonder of flowers, and the amazing sweetness of a lanky 50 pound puppy snoozing in my studio are important reminders that not all is a wreck in the universe. There is still joy.

Alzheimers cannot be cured. I told Mom, "It's largely a case of learning to live with it." And although she pretty much told me to go to hell, I do believe that. My mother is pretty much gone. I just have to learn to live with the disease that manifests itself through her.

Thank God for puppies and blossoms.