Flower for the Day Sharpwing Monkeyflower 9-25-25

A week or two ago we were in  severe draught. We have a creekbed behind us which is fed by a small

spring which comes from a crack in the bedrock. As I walked  in the creakbed there was a patch of green with this gorgeous purple flower. It was, of course, a sharpening monkey flower. Say what? Sharpwing monkeyflower (Mimulus alatus) is a native herbaceous eudicot perennial which thrives in wet conditions. It has no scent. It has green foliage and purple flowers. Here is one emerging.

It has a two-lipped corolla and the arrangement of the upper and lower lip petals suggests a monkey's face. The winged stems together with the monkey face give the plant its common name. The flowers are bisexual and bilaterally symmetrical.

Here is a poem from Katie.

  

          Limits

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

Jorge Luis Borges