Althouse: At the White Peony Café...

May 26, 2010

At the White Peony Café...

... be delightful all night long.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...: Something was eating our day lilies, so I went out with a flashlight the other night and caught a swarm of slugs munching away.

The next day we buried two pie plates up to their lips and left some dutch beer in them.

In the morning we had about a hundred dead (formerly drunk) slugs.

Did it one additional night and it appears to be all cured.

I guess slugs are really attracted to beer. (But didn't I already know that?); 5/26/10, 10:24 PM
KCFleming said...: I now have two college grads.
Neither have a job.

Heckuva job, Barry.; 5/26/10, 10:32 PM
KCFleming said...: Their unemployment only cost me about $145K.
What a deal.; 5/26/10, 10:35 PM
Caroline said...: My white peonies are snapping under their own weight. But that makes for nice smelling vases in the house, so I'm not really complaining.; 5/26/10, 10:40 PM
KCFleming said...: My grown children are snapping under their own weight.

They do not fit in vases.
They do not have a heavenly fragrance.; 5/26/10, 11:05 PM
HKatz said...: The flower on the right looks like it's juggling two red, green, and white balls.; 5/26/10, 11:13 PM
Anonymous said...: Pogo, Barry doesn't care. He's on a mission to fundamentally transform America, and your middle-class grievances are a mere blip on his agenda.; 5/26/10, 11:14 PM
JAL said...: I never saw slugs eat daylilies.

I used to live in the slug capitol of NC. My old backyard. There were some old reailroad ties making a terraced area and man, did those slugs love that, hiding in the crevices during the day.

We put our beer (any kind does the trick. We used the cheapest.) in tuna fish cans. As you say ... hundreds of completely soused and yukky dead slugs in the A.M.

I suppose for some that would be the way to die ... doing what they loved?

I gave up on planting marigolds. They all looked like something out of the Nightmare Before Christmas when the slugs got done with them.

But here's a factoid -- slugs do not eat impatiens. So in my shady damp yard and around my shaded damp old house, I planted a gazillion impatiens every year.; 5/26/10, 11:50 PM
JAL said...: Pogo. You have my sympathy. But take heart. It's only May.

wv plent
Will Meade plent the Professor some peonies?; 5/26/10, 11:52 PM
Stogie said...: Now that's a great picture!; 5/27/10, 12:47 AM
Caroline said...: @Pogo
Now I will not be able to look at my peonies w/o thinking of overgrown children with over-sized heads.

(Your comment made me LOL at the mental image it generated.)

My best wishes for you and your children.; 5/27/10, 12:49 AM
reader_iam said...: Pogo: Are you saying they're unemployed altogether? That is: Are you saying that not only are they not employed in career-related positions at all, they are also not able to get for-pay work, of any type, at all?

A serious query, Pogo. Not snark, a request for more specific definition.; 5/27/10, 12:57 AM
reader_iam said...: This economic situation is even worse than that in the late '70s/early '80s, for a number of reasons and also in a number of ways. However, acknowledging that is not to say it was a picnic back then. Let's just say I can relate to graduating as a young person, just starting out into a bleak time.

Let's also just say I'm not minimizing these times, for young people just starting out or for middle-aged people starting out over again. Young's an advantage, though (and I do not begrudge that, unless wasted): As I said, I remember then.; 5/27/10, 1:19 AM
Caroline said...: "I gave up on planting marigolds. They all looked like something out of the Nightmare Before Christmas when the slugs got done with them."

I've had similar experiences. I've found that marigolds only work for me in very sunny dry spots. Any shade or moisture and the slugs go to town.

"But here's a factoid -- slugs do not eat impatiens."

Impatiens are my go-to annual as well. But I have one spot that is too sunny in the mid-morning for impatiens (they wilt) but too shady in the afternoons for marigolds (the slugs eat 'em.)

Anybody have suggestions for an annual that might work in that spot? (I seem to recall I also tried petunias and didn't have much luck- I think it was the slugs again.); 5/27/10, 1:22 AM
reader_iam said...: I love peonies. I love our peonies. For a good chunk of the last decade (and two of the latter years in the decade before this one), some freak-ass storm has struck at one crucial point or another and screwed them up. For that reason, we've not seen the glory of our peonies for a very, very, very long time--for such a long time that this spring, we didn't bother to pay much attention to what the hell they were, or that part of our yard was, doing.

The "ha ha" is on us. This year--justlikethat--they're here. Here the peonies are. There they are! So beautiful. A gift and a reminder.; 5/27/10, 2:10 AM
KCFleming said...: One peony spent $80K-plus to work nearly full time in day care (not her field of study).

Peony number two is finding that all sorts of people want him to work for free (interning), but no one yet wants to give him any cash for his work.

I mean, why buy the cow, etc.; 5/27/10, 6:11 AM
Unknown said...: Pogo said...

I now have two college grads.
Neither have a job.

Heckuva job, Barry.

Not sure I can tell you be glad you're self-employed, given the war on entrepreneurship. I can tell you that trying to find a job at 60 is a probably lot tougher than trying to find one at 22.

JAL said...

Pogo. You have my sympathy. But take heart. It's only May.

wv plent
Will Meade plent the Professor some peonies?

I think Meade is more interested in plenting the Professor.; 5/27/10, 6:24 AM
Hagar said...: It's getting pretty bad when Katie Couric is the least annoying of the network news anchors.; 5/27/10, 7:42 AM
MadisonMan said...: Ridiculous that the peonies are open before June.

We have a peony -- free, granted, but still, from Klehm's! -- that did nothing the year after we planted it -- it didn't even show up! Then last year, suddenly it was back, but not blooming. This year it came up nicely, but then completely trampled by people doing work on the house. But it came back after they finished, and the one slender stalk has a flower bud at the end.

They are hardy.; 5/27/10, 8:15 AM
The Drill SGT said...: Pogo said...
Peony number two is finding that all sorts of people want him to work for free (interning), but no one yet wants to give him any cash for his work

What's his field of study or career desire. I've got some openings.; 5/27/10, 8:17 AM
TMink said...: Really lovely photo Althouse. Wonderful color and composition. One of my favorites!

Trey; 5/27/10, 8:44 AM
As my whimsy leads me.. said...: Pogo, be glad the first doesn't turn up her nose at a day care job. At least it's working.

Interning-- When did all this non-paid interning get so common? Even at the biggest bulge of the baby boom, most intern jobs I knew about were paid.

Toy; 5/27/10, 9:03 AM
Michael said...: My oldest son graduated a few weeks ago and is headed to the beach for a job as a waiter with lots of non declared tips in the offing. Once he has tucked away enough he and a buddy are headed to Mexico and points south by bus. A better plan than graduate school and very good use of his time for the next couple of years.

Meanwhile the current president and his congress are doing everything they can to stifle investments especially in the areas of private equity and other carried interest enterprises that support job creation. Shameful.; 5/27/10, 9:13 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Ha ha. That author next door to the paranoid nutcase Sarah F Palin was invited to move there because her she ripped of her former neighbor. From Politico.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"No one is stalking anyone," Joe McGinniss, Jr., a novelist whose father is the non-fiction writer, wrote in response to an email from a Palin supporter who confused his email address and his father's. (He shared the email with me.) "A woman was renting her house and sought out the author because the Palins had crossed her (owed her money for renovations she had done at their request and never paid her for). So she knew McGinniss was writing the book and found him and offered him the house."

Ha ha ha ha.

"Sarah Palin's middle-school style reaction to an author renting next door is quite something. But maybe my father's grandchildren, when they fly up to visit, can make some new friends. They'd probably have a lot of fun together actually."

I'd keep my kids away from any Palins, were I him.; 5/27/10, 4:00 PM
KCFleming said...: Sorry, Drill; gone all day!
Son is a graphic designer.; 5/27/10, 9:03 PM
KCFleming said...: And even if he never reads this, what Drill SGT said was a remarkable kindness.

It renews my faith people.; 5/27/10, 9:14 PM
reader_iam said...: Pogo: When I wrote my peony comment--and remember, I wrote it, so I should know--it was a separate comment from those I addressed to you with regard to the plight of young people in this economy.

Yes, there was crossover--some crossover, anyway. But that crossover had to do with 25-so years later and older stuff.

Shorter: The peony comment didn't have to do with your kids, or anyone's kids.

That said:

1) For what it's worth, non-profit experience can pay off, depending on what a young person does.

2) At some point, forget the unpaid internship thing. Better to take a job at just a few dollars over at minimum wage, or even at minimum wage, do it very well and for many hours at a time and use it as an "in" for the skill you actually want to ply and for which you want to get paid. Even now (thought it's a much harder and more circumscribed thing than it was 50 years ago), a willingness to start at the ground floor, learn a business and then fly from there is a door-opening thing.

Especially if you're willing to live without stuff, even status stuff, for a while.; 5/27/10, 11:12 PM
reader_iam said...: It's an f'n struggle, these days, to live out in the microcosm the concept of rugged individualism and American exceptionalism, these days. First off, there are no guarantees, and that applies across the board--across all boards. Even education, as it's been defined for 60 years now, can't buy a guarantee and the amount of dollars you spent, or or are on the hook for, in pursuit of that goal can't change that (yes, there are some exceptions, but they are minuscule in incidence, in relation to the whole).

Perhaps we should be rethinking how we're viewing things, how we should approach education and--above all--how we're shaping our kids' expectations and how we've been indulging our own wishcraft.; 5/27/10, 11:34 PM
JAL said...: Pogo, has your son thought of doing web site design to start making some $? There are a lot of small companies which do not have big bucks for web sites...; 5/27/10, 11:48 PM
reader_iam said...: Is education an investment or a purchase? This is not pointed at anyone. This is something my husband and I have discussed many, many, many times. It's an ongoing discussion, now of several years' standing. It's something to think about it. And it's a sign of the times, I think.; 5/28/10, 12:10 AM
reader_iam said...: Let no thread be without some sort of (even if ancient) music link.; 5/28/10, 1:41 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: There seems to be more work around here than other places. Anyone looking for work might want to the check the offerings in Northwest Arkansas. Everyone who sells anything to Wal-Mart has an office here. Far more cultural offerings than the population size would indicate too.; 5/28/10, 12:46 PM