Twisting the TextTwist

For some time, I've enjoyed that Yahoo game, Text Twist. You get six or seven tiles, and a form is supplied on which the words you make with those tiles are inserted, in some order; three letter, four letter, up to max, and the order stays the same. While the game can be timed, I chose to just play at it, untimed; and I discovered that it can be stored at any point and resumed later. Finding the longest word guarantees another round, so if the first three words include that longest word, there's a good point to exit it!

It was convenient to look at the stored words when I hadn't found every word that some group of six or seveen would afford. Deduce that the four letter word that's missing must begin with a certain vowel, and that word usually comes to mind.

Playing Text Twist was probably improving my ability to anagram longer words. Unfortunately, I've now realized the order storage is arranged in. Upside down, or sometimes right side down, the longest word is spelled by the initial letters. My whole tack has changed. Now I happily churn out small words rapidly and if that longest word hasn't come up by haphazard churning, I'm using that left-hand side to tell me what that longest word is. Result: great laziness of anagram mindset. It's becoming a problem to "get" the five-letter words because nobody's giving them to me. While I could justify playing so often as maybe improving some ability, now I'm rapidly deteriorating. May need a new tile game. Suggestions?

Midwest green leaves

I got back to Illinois on a really hot day and it was truly only eighty degrees. Just more impressively warm than the East Coast.

Are there anymore cannas up? Well, no. I think I probably haven't got a gift for growing them. The dahlias seem fine, although some of them are very much nibbled; I believe rabbits rather than slugs. Maybe one particular kind of dahlia is truly tasty?

The Stone asian lilies are blooming, upright and showy. The fragrant white ones are lovely too, this year. Trumpets are beginning to bloom along the ramp, pretty early for them; they are accompanied by brilliant asians that are leaning but haven't yet opened, and it seems like the asians should have had a few weeks before the trumpets.

At least, the beds all have graceful leaves so that the lilies aren't just standing up looking phallic.

Spring crosses from West to East

Now, why is that? Pacific Northwest had spring weeks before Illinois; now here in the Northeast, peonies have barely come into bud. I wouldn't be surprised to spot a lingering daffodil, there are loads of iris in Vermont, and it's June!

Truly, I even think of the Pacific as a far warmer ocean, but it seems like I should have studied a bit more geography sometime.

Short Bloomtime

Once I visited a very large botanical garden and out of all the yellow kind-of-daisies, one took my heart. I had to go to the identification booths to find out what it was -- leopardbane. This year I've been able to buy four teeny little plants of it; the warning is that they might go dormant in hot weather, give them deep shade.

Well, this is Illinois. The shade I had was pretty good. One bloomed, with one bloom, just like one flash of a credit card, to show its name. And today in mounting Illinois heat (really torrid) it looks like dormancy or death is setting in. Hope for dormancy. The others haven't bloomed nor have they crumpled. Be here the days I bloom, I won't last, huh?

No Patience

Well, there are only four canna in the whole little strip that have poked their leaves up and said Hello. I finally dug holes in the bed, pulled out a perfectly nice tuber and set it someplace else where it might get earlier sunshine; the other day, some animal had uprooted one, that went elsewhere as well. Yes, I put the variegated annual artemisia that seeds itself so much into the holes...

The false indigo did indeed bloom this year, not effulgent blooms, just pretty ones. I remember seeing a far more mature plant once, but this one's right here to admire every day, and as long as it's succeeded this far, it'll get bigger and older every year now. And the other one, that I moved last fall, has survived the move and put up one good sprig this year, marked by its protective cage.

The little white bleeding heart is still blooming and growing; that lamium in its bed is gorgeous and blooming white, too.

If my seedlings are still doing well next month, I'll have annual heliotrope, and a shrubby little guy who also blooms purple. Maybe I'd better learn how to keep heliotrope over the winter?