NULLA DIES SINE LINEA

The sweltering summer heat slows down garden work. Writing is a cooler occupation. I am thrilled with the answers I got from Julian Goodwin--please see his interview on my book blog, www.richtexts.blogspot.com--and I am looking forward to hearing from Laura Joh Rowland and Louis de Bernieres. Fiction work is progressing and a nonfiction project in English and Portuguese is taking shape. Bear with me, Blotaniacs. I am working on a review of Wicked Plants, Amy Steward's wonderful treatise on flora that kills. I can tell you upfront that no serious gardening library should be without her scholarly books.

That is not to say that scholarship is the be all of summer. I have to stay indoors pounding a keyboard, but during breaks I amuse myself with gems such as these from the Elizabethan Curse Generator,

"Thou villainous elf-skinned ruffian!
Thou mewling onion-eyed dogfish!
Thou distempered rug-headed snipe!
Thou surly pottle-deep whey-face!
Thou puking pox-marked skainsmate!
Thou gnarling earth-vexing hugger-mugger!
Thou rank sour-faced codpiece!
Thou bawdy tickle-brained coxcomb!
Thou knavish toad-spotted minimus!
Thou warped crook-pated apple-john!Thou dissembling folly-fallen gudgeon!

Thou currish clapper-clawed canker-blossom!
Thou weedy flap-mouthed rabbit-sucker!
Thou weedy pale-hearted gull-catcher!
Thou vacant hedge-born varlot!
Thou fitful fen-sucked measle!
Thou jarring rump-fed haggard!
Thou cockered dog-hearted crutch!
Thou spongy toad-spotted miscreant!

Thou grizzled folly-fallen codpiece! "

Know any person who's cruisin' for a bruisin' malediction? I don't. Everyone I know is so amazingly kind, polite, civic minded, so focused on the greater good, so intent on Tikkun olam. Still, it is good to have a supply of these on hand for educational purposes.

P.S. About that bridge? The price still is half mil.