Labor Day Weekend in San Francisco, Flowers and Fish

Labor Day weekend down in San Francisco, and the fog had the coast to itself. Started at the beach — flat gray water, the cliffs and their houses fading toward the point, one gull working the sand. Nobody in the water, which seemed right.

The dahlia garden was the opposite in every direction. End of August is evidently the moment for them: whole beds at full height, cactus types with petals rolled into spikes, reds shading to yellow at the center, a yellow one so pale it was almost green. One had white petals with a thin pink line traced around every edge, like somebody had gone over it with a pen. Stakes with variety tags leaned all through the beds, most of them unreadable.

Finished indoors at the aquarium, dark rooms after all that color. A lionfish drifted by with every fin fanned out, taking up three times the space of its actual body, and a big-eyed red fish hung level in front of the glass with its mouth turned down, looking put out about the whole arrangement.