Sexy flower time

As I expected, it's not yet July, and I want to cry when I leave the house in the morning. My glasses fog the second I walk out of the house, like I just opened a steamy dishwasher (Related: there is nothing that makes me feel like a dorky-ass kid as much as fogged glasses. It makes me feel like Velma.) I also cannot walk into my yard without 45 mosquitoes jumping my shit, and my electric bill is half my paycheck.

I find myself wondering WHY THE SHIT PEOPLE LIVE HERE.

Then I see some pretty flowers, and I think, "maybe this is why?" But that seems stupid.

Nonetheless, I feel like I need to know the name of every gorgeous plant and flower I fall in love with. Lately it's been these intense, hot-pink flowers that have exploded all over the ornamental trees that grow at my work. They have this gorgeous, pantyhose-nude colored bark, and these orderly, symmetrical leaves.  They're like robot leaves. Part of why I'm fascinated by them is because they just look like they could never grow in the high desert. I'm no botanist, but these trees somehow look ... hot. Basically the opposite of the Central Oregon icon, the juniper. Exhibit A:

(image stolen from this weird site)

See that gnarled old beast? That's a juniper. They have a distinctive smell that makes me homesick, though some crazies say they smell like cat pee. Now look at the kinds of trees I'm looking at these days:

They're all exotic and shit.

I pointed the sexy pink trees out to Roomie to find out what they were called, and he gave me the wrong answer. (jerk). Nonetheless, I was somehow able to figure it out through a series of internet clicks--which really is a hard task when you don't know how to describe botany accurately. Sexy flowers? Pantyhose-colored bark? Weirdly robotic leaves? Yeah. Not great search terms.

But it turns out the trees are "Crape Myrtles." I have a hard time typing that, however, since I don't know the word "crape." I know the word crepe though. I've been informed that "crape" is simply the southern spelling of "crepe."

Right. Because they do that here. There's also a flower named "Confederate Jessamine." It's a type of jasmine, but southerners decided that pronouncing the word crazy wasn't good enough.

Anyway, in my sexy pink flower research, I discovered the best website ever.

Go, click.

Did you catch that?

Yes. It's sexy people posing in front of trees. Are they Russian? Or gay? I can't tell.