Pussywillow

The event I'm at is at the Sheraton Gateway in Los Angeles, which is my least favorite hotel in California, if not the entire United States. (Oh, wait, no, there's the Briarwood Motel in Longmont, Colorado which is next to the drive through liquor store and across the street from the cemetery. The denizens of the latter are quieter.) At any rate, I am particularly glad I chose not to stay there, because they had a water outage all day yesterday. The restrooms quickly became pretty disgusting. But I could go back to the comforts of the Courtyard by Marriott and pee to my heart's content.

Anyway, the Courtyard has an arrangement of pussywillow in the room, which reminded me of how many years it's been since I've seen pussywillow. It used to be a very common element of floral arrangements. And we used to have it growing at the side of our yard, next to the blueberry bushes. The latter were a challenge because we had to be fast to get the blueberries before the seagulls did.

The other plant that seems to have vanished since my youth is what we called the money plant. It had flat seedpods that looked sort of like coins. I don't think I've seen one of those in a good 35 years.

I'm in my mid-50's and I don't feel old, but it amazes me how much has vanished since I was growing up.