I really got sucked in.

A tour with the San Francisco Succulent Society turned out to be a short history of plant collecting.

Our first stop was the Arizona Garden at Stanford. Back before Stanford was Stanford, when it was just the estate and future home of Jane and Leland Stanford and called the Palo Alto Stock Farm; they hired landscape architect Rudolf Ulrich to design a garden of exotic desert plants. As was typical of the day, they sent crews down to Arizona to rip up plants and bring them home.  Up the road – in what is now Menlo Park – James Flood did the same thing and – in what is now known as San Marino – Henry Huntington sent a train down to Arizona to get his plants.

As an aside, they also kept exotic animals on their estates, so Michael Jackson was is good company. End aside.

Anyway, after the Stanford’s son died and they started Stanford in his honor, the garden slowly fell into disarray. It has only recently been restored. This time in a more conventional botanical form with plants from both the Old World and New World. We were give a tour by one of the main restorers and then left on our own to look at some of the blooming plants.

This being the San Francisco Succulent Society, the next stop was wine tasting at a local winery.

Then it was on to a exotic plant grower. People no longer rip plants out of the desert – at least they are not supposed to – now they buy the plants at Home Depot or a nursery. Increasingly, the plants are not grown from seed, but from plant tissue culture. The plants are propagated in laboratory conditions to  produce exact copies. Plants that used to be rare are now easy to find.

I am not sure that I am ready for thousands of identical plants, then I see a South American cactus from Argentina blooming and fall in love.

According to Tom Ricks and, now, The Daily Beast, her name is Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari’s abd she is missing. Picked up by Syrian security forces.  According to NPR, she might not have real. I don’t know which truth I would prefer. I hope she is real and as brave as her posts made her seem and I hope she will be OK.

While we were frolicking in the desert, people in Syria were dying. I have no idea if they are going to be sucessful in getting rid of their president – dictator, really –  Bashar al-Assad. Iran would indicate that they might not, Libya indicates that they might have a chance.

Syria is so far away and seems so alien that it is hard to relate, but there is a blogger who is there and is she is fascinating to read. The blog is A Gay Girl In Damascus. A Gay Girl In Damascus is a real person and the tagline on her blog says An out Syrian lesbian’s thoughts on life, the universe and so on …

For the last couple of months, the so on has been a front seat on the Syrian revolt. It is fascinating and horrifying day to day chronicle from a woman living in Damascus.  On some days, I think she is Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google manager; on other days, I think she is Ann Frank. Either way, she is smart, sophisticated, on the run, and punching back with her blog when ever she can.

Here she talks about her father standing up to some thugs. I think that was about the time that her mother and sisters left the country and she and her father went underground.

For awhile, her blog has been optimistic, then fatalistic when she has post titled We won’t be forgotten, then defiant when she says  And when we mourned our dead, they tried the only language that they know, of force and blood … and more died as martyrs for our freedom. But we will not stop until freedom.

Going out into the streets and not knowing if I am going to be killed or worse, picked up and tortured is inconceivable to me. But this blog makes it real, gives it a very human face.

Please give it a read. Gay Girl in Damascus.