Passiflora caerulea, Campana's Ristorante and only with you

1. Last year I grew some passiflora caerulea plants from seed and have had them in a big pot in the sun room over the winter and into this summer. There have been a very few buds that seemed premature and never came to anything...and then recently a whole clutch of them...it's very exciting. Today when I got home from work there were two fully opened flowers. They are so incredible I had to share them here. What seems most unlikely is that they are white flowers and not the blue I expected. The structure is amazing, it almost defies explanation and so I'll just suffice with my photograph here and count it as another evolutionary miracle if that isn't a total oxymoron.

2. The people in my office got together for lunch today at Campana's Ristorante on Micklegate to celebrate Tony's 60th birthday and the acquisition of his bus-pass.The place is in someways unremarkable, the staff are friendly but not effusive, the food is good but not historic. There is little atmosphere (whatever that is) though it is a very easy and comfortable place to eat. I have never been there and come away feeling disappointed or less than satisfied.

3. There is a song by the Beach Boys from a lost album called Holland from the early 1970's when they were about to fall apart altogether, it's called "Only With You". It is one of my all time favourite songs, a bit like a hymn of love. It came to mind this afternoon as I was walking home from work through St Leonard's Place. My heart was pounding after a glimpse of someone beautiful and true I know through a window. There are few people it is easy to say that about, there are few people you can say "There are things, that we do, that I have only done with you". There are few people about whom that could be a honest statement made with love and the highest admiration. Of course some feelings we may simply have to accept as events that reside in our hearts and perhaps nowhere else. But that doesn't seem at all a bad thing to me, it seems powerful and more realistic than nothing at all, it seems more mature and realistic than ignoring the beautiful and believing that everything, every feeling is filled with possible danger. Today I am feeling it is possible that being human is a perfect state. I really like this song...