Apple Blossoms

Yesterday, Plottie brought Neighbor Ray over to show him the garden at World Headquarters. Ray was once a city gardener and used to be very interested in plants and trees. But then his wife died and Ray hasn't been over in a few years -- he's moving more slowly these days. This time he was more interested in his old apartment than he was in Plotnik's garden.

Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White -- are you old enough to remember the trumpet riff that kicked off that Perez Prado classic?

Plot has probably told you he worked, years later, with the one-time sax player in that band, who had blown his big chance by drinking himself out of a gig. They lived out in East Los and his wife made great home made flour tortillas. And so it goes.

This year Plottie has noticed all the maroon irises that are flowering are right next to the cobblestoned path. It's got to be the extra heat trapped in those stones that is pushing the flowers to bloom. So next year he's going to put extra cobblestones into the garden and see if that will push some of the others.

Old Ray walks up and down the street, twice a day. Other than that he sits in his front room with the TV on but little volume coming out. He fell in his backyard two weeks ago and couldn't get up for half an hour. He won't get a Life Alert.

Plot tries to involve Ray in conversation.

"Ray, what do you think about my idea about the irises and extra heat from the cobbles?" he said.

"That apartment didn't used to be so nice," Ray said.

It was Ray who gave Plottie the slip of this white datura that has grown into a large tree where the old wooden stairway once was. Plot has tried to pay that forward several times with Ms. Mush and Silent Bill but the plants he keeps giving them keep dying. He'd like to ask Ray what he's doing wrong, but...

Ray and two other neighbors, Tony and Carlos, used to come over on Fridays and play pool on Lamar Odom when Lamar was a youngster, freshly installed in the big room Plot and Duck had renovated just for him.

Then Tony divorced Pat and moved away. Then Carlos divorced Audrey and moved away. Then Plotnik hurt his neck and it was hard to bend to shoot pool. So he stopped inviting Ray over. Then Ray's wife Pat died. And Lamar Odom got traded to South San Francisco for a sofa and two chairs.

Neighbor Ray said one thing yesterday: "Ya gotta remember. Some years some plants do good. Next year they don't. That's just the way it works."

That fern in the corner, under the apple and datura, is creeping across state lines to try and colonize the stairway. It seems to be the way of things.