Seasons – Arnold Zwicky's Blog (original) (raw)
Archive for the ‘Seasons’ Category
It’s the polar bears
December 6, 2025
A Glen Baxter cartoon in the latest — 12/8/25 — issue of the New Yorker:
The scheduled event will go on, complete with umbrella to shelter the picnickers from the blazing sun, even in the snow; even when polar bears arrive (attracted by the smell of food) to steal bites of avocado toast, the way jays and gulls do in the summer
It’s a feature of local life (on the SF peninsula) that temperatures drop about this time of year to chilly nights and daytime highs hovering around 60, while some guys — I am one — persist in going about in short pants (low today 47, high 59, I am in rainbow flag gym shorts), but with a warm shirt (fleece-lined flannel if necessary); I do not, however, picnic in this weather.
And we are unafflicted by polar bears. Chipmunks, roof rats, squirrels, ground squirrels, jays, crows, gulls, hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, the occasional lynx, every once in a while a mountain lion, but even the tantalizing scent of Safeway’s jambalaya heated up in my microwave has failed to lure polar bears south from Alaska to Palo Alto. But then we are woefully lacking in ice floes and meaty seals.
Posted in Clothing, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Seasons | Leave a Comment »
Entertaining raunch
September 11, 2025
(Plain talk about male bodies and man-on-man sex, so not for kids or the sexually modest — though raunchification is pretty much the apex of funny for early-teen boys)
☹️ 😢 😡 sad weeping furious on the anniversary of 9/11/01 , also on the day after the assassination of Charley-Horst Kirk-Wessel, occasions whose stench can only be properly countered by the celebration of small everyday human experiences that bring moments of delight, joy, and pleasurable physicality — not to take us away from the wreckage falling around us, but to assert and nourish what’s best in us, and not in any grand gesture or powerful speech, but in simple, everyday, silly, and earthy acts. Kharkiv Opera, but on a more intimate scale. Darwin had considerable reverence for the earthworm and its doings; let’s look to Darwin.
Two Facebook exchanges from yesterday, in which I write innocent comments (boldfaced below) that can, if you have the mind for it, be raunchified — understood as a raunchy double entendre:
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Seasons, Taboo language and slurs, Taste | Leave a Comment »
Blend and chill, witches will
June 20, 2025
The cold hags of summer cackle over a cauldron of fresh vegetables in this Roz Chast cartoon from the 6/23/25 New Yorker:
The Three Chilled Sisters crush and grind, crush and grind
Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Seasons | Leave a Comment »
Withering away, or not
May 31, 2025
🐅 🐅 🐅 three tigers for ultimate May, and locally (here in the middle of the San Francisco peninsula) the tigers are blazingly summer-hot — in the 80s F yesterday, which made tending to my garden even in the early morning a challenge; the blooms of my cymbidium orchids (which thrive in our cool rainy winters) are withering away faster than flies dropping in a mist of Raid
Two flower stalks went down yesterday morning, and by 2 pm two more needed removal (although mad dogs and Californians will go out in the midday sun, this exotic Swiss transport from the green farmlands of Pennsylvania Dutch country will not), a task that awaits me as soon as the sun comes up — it’s only 4:30 am as I write this — by which time more will probably have succumbed, and they might all have gone down by the time the rabbits of June appear tomorrow. That would not be unusual. The plants will use the summer sun (and my daily waterings) to fortify their root systems, develop new pseudobulbs, and (eventually) send up fresh shoots as the rainy season begins, in December.
Meanwhile, the grasses and other plants on the hillsides will wither from lack of rain. The hillsides will turn golden brown for the hot dry summer, only to revive in fresh bright green when the rains come again; the world is renewed in green for Christmas and New Year’s Day, a transformation that never fails to delight me.
Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Gender and sexuality, Language and plants, My life, Seasons | 2 Comments »
The last days of spring
May 13, 2025
Locally, the signs that spring is coming to an end here in Palo Alto CA accumulate around this time; I suggest that Fred Astaire’s (1899) birthday, on 5/10, would be an appropriate occasion for looking forward to the arrival of summer. The plants in my immediate environment have sent the signals:
— the magenta Pelargonium peltatum (“ivy-leaved geranium”) plants by the entrance to my condo are suddenly covered with blossoms
— the cat’s-claw creeper vine / cat’s claw trumpet vine, Dolichandra unguis-cati, on the arbor over the entryway went from a few bright yellow flowers to a solid bank of yellow overnight (which will drop to the ground in a few days, to be replaced, eventually, by long seedpods)
— the calla lilies on the street, a few doors north of me, have finished blooming and are now dying back, to go into dormancy until next spring
— on my patio, the last cymbidium orchids are still blooming, for maybe a few more weeks, when their blossoms, too, will drop off in the summer heat and the plants will go into dormancy
— and also out there in the container garden, the first big-leaved hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) flower cluster is about to open into bright pink, in two or three days (that cluster, on a great big plant in a great big pot, now stands at my eye level)
Posted in Events and occasions, Language and plants, My life, Seasons | Leave a Comment »
Flowers! Music!
December 25, 2024
🎄🕯 Christmukkah Day, with flowers and music
Flowers and music in a digital greeting card; winter flowers out my window; and then the gift of more music, jazz Beethoven.
Posted in Art, Holidays, Language and plants, Music, My life, Race and ethnicity, Seasons, Signs and symbols | 3 Comments »
Rogue Yellow for Thanksgiving Eve Eve
November 26, 2024
Or: the first flower of winter.
Today appeared the first fully open flower on my cymbidium orchids, on the plant I named Rogue Yellow last year, when its buds opened fully a month early, in the second week of December:
Rogue Yellow’s first two fully open (slightly greenish) blossoms, in December 2023
So: this year even earlier, in the last week of November, on Thanksgiving Eve Eve. Its flower stalk shot up, two feet in two days, at Halloween, then gathered itself up to burst, today, into floral fireworks heralding winter. (Meanwhile, chilly rains have come.)
Posted in Holidays, Language and plants, Seasons | Leave a Comment »
Briefly noted: the halls of ivy
October 28, 2024
From Nathan Sanders on Facebook on 10/26:
(#1) [NS:] I love when ivy changes colours! — at University of Toronto.
— AZ to NS: That is indeed lovely. It’s Parthenocissus tricuspidata, so-called “Boston ivy”, a vining plant in the grape family closely related to Virginia creeper, and not related at all to English, or common, ivy, Hedera helix (which I have growing all over my little patio). English ivy is evergreen; Boston ivy is deciduous, its leaves turning color gorgeously in the fall before dropping off.
Posted in Language and plants, Names, Seasons, Taxonomic vs. common | Leave a Comment »
Signs of spring
February 5, 2015
While more snow is afflicting the northeastern U.S., out here on the left coast there are signs of spring. In my neighborhood, the spears of tulip shoots have now broken ground: spring flowers on the way! And the songbirds are now vocalizing like crazy.
In ten days or so (mid-February) the first trees will start to leaf out: the California buckeyes.
Posted in Language and food, Language and plants, My life, Seasons | Leave a Comment »