Yellow Jacket Soup

Paris' menswear week evaporates in record heat

PARIS (AP) — Paris' spring-summer 2012 menswear shows melted into the past on Sunday, wrapping up in a pool of perspiration on the year's hottest day yet.

The five-day-long menswear extravaganza kicked off Wednesday under cloudy skies and usually chilly temperatures for June, but by Sunday thermometers had soared to 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) — a nightmare scenario for a crowd of elaborate dressers reluctant to remove blazers, corsets or any other essential but asphyxiating element of their looks.

After the last show — a solid display by Swedish jeans-maker Acne — the fashion elite raced back to their hotels to pack their bags and get the hell out of Dodge before temperatures climb to a sweltering 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) on Monday.

The heat wrecked havoc on shows from Paul Smith — where listless editors, stylists and journalists gave up taking notes to fan their reddened faces instead — to U.S. designer Thom Browne, whose sumptuous velvet-walled venue was transformed into a sauna.

Lanvin showed early enough in the morning — and delivered such a gorgeous collection — that it was among the sole shows of the day where the clothes managed to outshine the beating sun.

Besides the weather, the other main topic of conversation throughout the week was the ongoing saga of disgraced former Dior designer John Galliano, whose daylong trial on anti-Semitism charges Wednesday coincided with the start of menswear week here. He faces up to six months in prison and euro22,500 ($32, 175) in fines for allegedly showering racist and anti-Semitic insults on a couple seated next to him at a Paris bar — an incident which cost him his job as creative director at Christian Dior, as well as at his own signature label.

In emotional testimony, Galliano blamed pressures of a pitiless industry for pushing him off the brink and into prescription drug and alcohol addictions. While he said he didn't remember the specifics of the incident or another alleged clash at the same bar, the once-flamboyant Galliano apologized for any pain caused by his words and actions.

Two days later, Galliano's longtime aide Bill Gaytten was named creative director at the Gibralter-born designer's eponymous label after a lackluster show there that felt like Galliano Lite.

Though the fashion elite might make a break for it now, many top editors, stylists and journalists will re-converge on Paris in a week's time for the city's rarified haute couture displays, where made-to-measure dresses start at the price of a small car and go vertiginously up from there.

Central Virginia Organic Gardener: Yellow Jackets: Not a pollinator

Yellow jackets are a type of wasp and are not pollinators (they eat fruits, flower nectar, and tree sap and chew up meat to feed to their larvae). These yellow and black wasps are mistaken for bees, which they are decidedly not. They nest in the ground and can be a nuisance, not to mention a menace, if they sting. Last night, my son ran over a yellow jacket nest with the lawn mower and was rewarded with a few nasty stings (they can sting more than once, unlike bees). My solution, that I have done in the past, is wait for the wasps to subside and, at dusk, pour a pot full of boiling water right down the entrance hole (not hard to find if you look for it during the day- you will see wasps entering and leaving- make sure to mark the spot or remember it). One time I needed to apply a second pot of boiling water the next day. Be careful, don't trip while carrying that pot in the dim light (I did once- ouch! My poor foot). As for my son, a thick paste of meat tenderizer applied to the bite marks did the trick. " If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.” Audra Foveo "The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies" G. Jekyll "What I like about gardening is that it makes a mockery of intentions" Mirabel Osler "The best place to find God is in the garden. You can dig for him there." George Bernard Shaw "A familiar irony of horticulture is that gardeners desire plants that are the most difficult to obtain." Judith Sumner, 2004 "A traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment." Ch. Darwin, 1839 "How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existance" Benjamin Disraeli, 1845 "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time." Georgia O'Keeffe "If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change" Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), 5th Century B.C.E. "Whatsoever whether great or small ugly or handsom sweet or stinking... everything in the universe appears beautifull to mee." John Bartram, 1740 "In my examination of orchids, hardly any fact has so much struck me as the endless diversity of structure for gaining the very same end, namely, the fertilization of one flower by the pollen of another." Charles Darwin "Who has ever dreamed of finding an utilitarian purpose in the forms and colours of flowers?

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