Temporary Fairyland

It's like The Mad Hatter's Garden as you enter the Back Forty of the Great Plotnik World Headquarters through the exclusive, restricted passageway. The white brugmansia has decided that June is its month to explode. As the nights have stayed warmer longer the scent is also picking up in strength. Is there a sweeter smell? Are there any better plants? Simpler to care for? Don't care where they're planted? Will grow twenty feet tall or be happily pruned to five feet? Will give off free suckers at the base that can be dug up and replanted?



But only Plotnik would walk out onto his deck on another strange and beautifully hot June morning and think about Bangladesh. He wonders if Bangladeshis are constantly thinking about the next flood which will come to wipe them out, or if they actually are able to enjoy the few moments between apocalyptic disasters? Plottie knows the fog will return. It's been a great pre-summer already, but when real summer gets here so will the cold, the gray, the overcast, the sweaters and the Plotzers' annual Summer Swoon.

The rest of the Bay Area will have heat, huge tomatoes and swimming. Saint Plotnikians will have leather jackets, snow peas and full fire in the hot tubs.