One of the rarest flowers... Klaus Nomi.

Well, yesterday I did get to see the David Bowie Is exhibition, and wasn't disappointed except for the fact that photography was banned. That meant that I never got to take photos of any of those great costumes, and certainly not the one that had so marked Klaus Nomi when he was backing singer to Bowie's performance on the show, Saturday Night Live.

However, I did notice that as fantastic as all these clothes were, a lot of the time more statements and stage props than 'real' garments, they couldn't live up to the image they had created on record covers, posters, videos and my mind. So, in fact, the only thing really missing in the show was a place to dance... It was really hard to contain myself, and above all not hum along tunelessly to the music on the guide headphones!

Well, after three hours' viewing, I went off to the Jardin des Plantes to see what was on show there, in the immense flower beds that stretch out towards the Natural History museum at the far end of the grounds.

The elegance and beauty of the plants give no indication of the fact that the Jardin des Plantes had been transformed into a wind tunnel. I even tried to hold onto the stems of some of these in order to steady them for the photo. However, my favourite flower has to be the one that I have just acquired for my balcony. This plant is equally challenged by the high winds that arise with higher-rise accommodation, but that's another story.


A beautiful purple Passiflora... Here to go with it is a collection of the flowers, set along to some music from Klaus Nomi's unfinished opera Za Bakdaz.

I just wish that in his creative years, Nomi had benefitted from some of the breaks that Bowie had, and especially that he had simply lived longer to create more of his unique music...