200 shades of blue - 200 irremediable conditions - 200 thin shadows - 200 fidgety words (surrounded by leaden clouds) - 2 adoring eyes

Consensus

Juan de Bermudez and a marauding band of merchant bankers discover a mysterious island, where out of limestone cracks and crevices spring scattershot cedars that grin and growl.

They soon arrive at the uneasy consensus that they are too late to claim the devil island as a new territory (the houses were not their first clue, but i do not wish to trouble the reader with the myriad of delusions that trouble the sleep of these brave men).

Physicist Martin Archer offers new proof of subatomic particles traveling faster than light. The known laws of physics are in a tizzy (will my microwave still work, i wonder), but how do you explain Monadenium ritchiei?

did not exist

This is like deja vu all over again

Don't you just hate it when cruise ships double park? Darned meter maid, dreaming meretritious dreams, missing what is as plain as the nose on a tourist's puffy, sun-flecked face.

re-return of the prodigal gal

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.

Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893

You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style.

In a princedom by the sea. Oh when?

Colville's Glory

Colvillea racemosa on the Isle of Devils.

Pycnostachys reticulata - witch's hat

"pyknos" means dense - "stachys" means a spike - "reticulata" means a network (describing the underside of the leaf) It is a South African sage plant. It grows in swampy areas (I found out about this later... mine grows in a dry place!) .

remedy (beyond reasonable No. 225)

poison

how improbable

Ceropegia stapeliiformis var stapeliiformis

A garden imagined

Finnegan Quidnunc cried in anguish. He had lost something which he was certain he would never regain. But what was it? A lithesome butterfly coquetting around the garden landed with such portent that he was inclined to think that it meant something. He studied meticulously, both day and night, a hance on the index finger of his left hand, and though slight, it made him believe that he was not the same person he was a fortnight ago. The gaunt shadow of a leafless tree swayed on the sun-bleached planks of a once russet shed. Scud and dark-lined clouds, late for their next appointment, dashed overhead. Finnegan Quidnunc was an optimistic chap; he stretched his arms, rubbed his wiry beard, and sat on an old tree stump with a conquering air. Later, when a few drops of rain would stipple his broad forehead, he would seek out his easel, his chalk, a sanguine crayon, and begin to mercilessly imagine the world.

Hidden Lily

Curcuma roscoeana

lilith, dark moon

What thaumaturgy existed the day x met y? The sun moved listlessly athwart the sky as it had done for millennia. Was it all so different that day?

flowers glowed unattained

Persephone picked a pomegranate (while ending up having a recurring date with her parole officer) and other tongue-twisters from the underworld.

And, as it so often happens in cases of anthomania, i dreamed of Tillandsia

The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter

daughter of nothingness

Words like conscience, tenderness, and autumn light have already disappeared.

"...but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool."

mixolydian etude

wits' end