That's 13 feet, 3 inches. (4 meters)
So the tallest one of them all, Chief Sequoia, is also known as Lurch, and Lurch has finally bloomed!
(And if I'm lucky they won't grow any taller, so that I don't get in trouble for violating city ordinances for scaring people.)
When you stand next to these things, you kind of get this odd feeling like you might be in a prehistoric forest.
Actually this past week, you might possibly have heard on the news that there were some tornadoes and crazy storms that passed through Chicago. I missed the 90mph winds in downtown Chicago as I was in the suburbs when the worst hit there -- then just after I left home to visit a friend in Plainfield, the storms hit our area. But situating the sequoia monsters in a corner proved to be fortuitous -- they got rained on pretty heavy, but were protected somewhat by the house itself -- and that twine stuff, tying it around them, helped.
The junior varsity team got hit a little harder, but if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger, as the saying goes. This is a rare shot of one of the junior varsity flowers actually leaning back and gargling. Or perhaps it is in the act of swallowing one of the wasps that wandered too close. (The one on the right is spitting out a small rat.)
This is a slightly odd thing for a train station to say so early in the morning.
No modem. Ok.
To give the station credit, it was just after all the storms and mayhem had passed through, after the electricity had been shut down all around, and so on.
A modem is what a computer used to have so it could dial up other computers and engage in meaningful conversation.
And to bring crowning glory to Chief Sequoia and the mighty band of warrior flowers, the Daily Herald article ran today. It made me laugh out loud. I needed that; I've been taking myself so seriously lately.
Looking at this picture I realize that at the time, I wasn't really paying attention. It appears that Gigantor was leaning down to give me a playful bite on the shoulder, to teach me a lesson about not keeping my guard up.
Sometimes while I'm tending to them, they like to reach down and pick me up by the nape of the neck, and shake me around a little and pretend I'm a muppet. One or twice they've actually ganged up on me when I've been weeding, picked me up by the feet, and tried to shake my cell phone out of my pocket. (I've lost several phones in this manner, so I always get the replacement insurance.) I think they just like the taste of cell phones.
(Click on image to see larger version)
