Sample: hot Spanish redheads.  Hot Spanish twin redheads.  No, don't thank me.

why are you still here?

GO THERE NOW.

It is perfectly happy in a large container though if you can get away with it climatically, I do recommend planting all tree aloes out in raised beds for maximum growth and vigour.  Speciosa is supposed to attain 6m in southern Africa.  In the short time they've been cultivated in NZ quite a few have got up to around 3 m, so we may well see some monster examples in the next decade.  It confers its beauty, flower size and tenacity when hybridised with fussier species (forming spectacular crosses with marlothii etc) and I grow a number of speciosa-x-? that have yet to blossom.

We recorded the emergence of the first flower in some detail, lol.  As you can see, it ripens to a candy pink and then turns a lovely creamy ivory from the base as the individual florets open up and reveal their saffron pollen.  This is the first time I've noticed pink stippling on the lower flowers but it's hardly something to complain about.  If you're keen to try a tree aloe, start with speciosa.  They're usually quite readily available, possibly the hardiest variety in a winter-rain area and certainly beautiful enough to warrant the space in your garden.

1st day of Summer down here.  Feels like the arse end of winter still with all the hail and stupid, stupid rainy wind fucking up my Souvenir de la Malmaison.  I've had one shitty flower off it.  One.  
Oh well.  Louise Odier is hitting her straps and tis a pity there's no smellovision. >> >

Reading the Book installments?  I hated dealing out any kind of physical misfortune to Susan when I began writing TBO because she seemed so defenceless compared to everyone else, but then she morphed into a scrappy little juggernaut who would attract exactly the same kind of grief her contemporaries have been fending off forever.  So now she catches a lot of shit, especially in the second book where sh... never mind.  That would be telling.

I suppose a lot of us will be heading into an xmas break soon.  The Lovely R is counting down the days.  We're staying home again, something which tends to make some people uncomfortable for some obscure reason; maybe we missed the mandatory trip away directive.  

What happens if you don't go away?  Do TripAdvisor nazis come round, rip that dusty suitcase out from under your bed and stuff it full of just the knickers that ride up your arse + the shirts that cut into your armpit fat before booking you into a family-friendly camping ground in a treeless berth right beside the toilet block that plays a tinny loop of Elton John's back catalogue and acts as a vector for explosive dysentery?  For a month?  

We look at staying home like this- aside from not being able to afford to go anywhere worthwhile (we have strict criteria), we put in a lot of work all year to make our place nice over summer.  Xmas is in summer here so... why depart just as all that fucking effort pays off?  Puffing on a fatty in a nice bit of shade in the rose garden with some smoked mussels and sour cream and chives chips and a bowl of pistachios and maybe some white Lindt is ten thousand kinds of awesome, totally the spirit of xmas and is in no way location-dependant.  So consider staying and appreciating where you are over the holidays.  Unless of course you're somewhere shitty- then you should definitely monopolise someone else's spare room for two weeks.  Just do your share of the dishes and tell them that leafy half-ounce was all you could score on short notice :)

BELOW  Remember music videos?  This is the only version I could find for this song and they cut the best bloody lines, the chickenhearted fahdoobiddahs!  


My inner fourteen year old slash love of truth and beauty compels me to inform you that at the end of the last verse it goes...  I miss America, and sometimes she does too / sometimes I think of her when she is fucking you. 

See?  I complete you.  It's my life's work.