Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

This has long been my favorite sculpture in downtown Charleston for its natural curves and soothing affect (in the psychological sense). But the fountain above, found on the plaza beside the Roman Catholic Co-Cathedral on the corner of Leon Sullivan Way and Virginia Street, is coming on strong. Its rectilinear homage to Euclid and nod to the Naiads, is so inviting that on a wicked-hot August afternoon one must say a silent novena to resist stripping off one’s clothes for a baptismal plunge into its inviting coolness. Wishing to avoid a venial sin, one resists the urge.

P.S. Former altar boys and freelance nuns, can you translate the Latin on the base?

Click to enlarge. Photo by Walker DeVille

If there is one plant guaranteed to life the spirits, it is the sight of a passel of sunflowers in bloom. (A snatch of sunflowers? A flock of sunflowers?) How apt to find this most curious and pleasing of flowers fronting one of Charleston’s most curious and pleasing of knick-knackeries, the Cornucopia shop at the top of Bridge Road.