I haven't been around here much lately. There are about 500 reasons for this, but I tend to wrap them up in one big pre-packaged excuse: It's August.

August has always been a bad month, as far as I'm concerned. When I was a kid, it was always too hot and my friends and I were usually lost in a pre-back-to-school torpor. In college and thereafter, August was not kind to my university town; friends moved away (a tradition that still continues), hordes of clueless freshmen and their ill-informed parents drove badly through the neighborhood streets, and old couches and bins of trash lined the streets as people moved in and out. Finally, one August I moved away, too.

In recent years August has traditionally been a month for overwork, and that is what is happening now. So if it's a little quiet here, it's just because I'm taking care of business elsewhere in the best way I can. Don't hold it against me; I'm struggling through August.*

One good thing has emerged from this chaotic month:

Back in the spring, my dad sent me a box of caladium bulbs. I planted them in May without much hope, because they're tropical plants and my climate is decidedly non-tropical. Nothing happened in June, but in July we began to see a few brave stalks poking their heads up. And this month we've seen even more. Here are two of the latest:

* Unfortunately, early September doesn't look like it's going to be much better.