between a rock and a hard place, or between...

[asakiyume]

Scylla and Charybdis

the devil and the deep blue sea

... any others?

In my personal experience, it's Between the Busy Road and the Poison Ivy



That dappled sidewalk may look inviting, but if you step from the curb YOU ARE IN THE PATH OF TRUCKS AND CARS and if you brush against the foliage on the right, you will have itchy ankles: it's poison ivy.

Two people can't walk abreast very easily there. One person could practice their balancing on the pale curb, or the other could practice elf-walking lightly over the top of the poison ivy like Legolas on snow, but...

... would you like another moonflower?

Comments

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the moonflower!
I don't know any other between phrases.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

As is often the case with common names for flowers, there are other blooms that go by the same name, including, in the case of moonflower, datura (, which I saw in Timor-Leste, and which you may have seen there too (or possibly where you are now). But this moonflower is in the morning glory family (Ipomoea--it's Ipomoea alba)

(Here's a datura photo from Timor)

(https://www.flickr.com/photos/86761435@N00/9541342429/in/photolist-fx8SFX)

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

:) Yes, I know that flower. Thank you for that gloriously sunny picture of it!
In the way of moonflowers, there's also the one in E. Nesbit's Harding's Luck:

It stood up, beautiful and stately, and turned its cream-white face towards the sun.

"The stalk's like a little tree," said Dickie; and so it was.

It had great drooping leaves, and a dozen smaller white flowers stood out below it on long stalks, thinner than that needed to support the moonflower itself.

"It is a moonflower, of course," he said, "if the other kind's sunflowers. I love it! I love it! I love it!"

I don't actually like Harding's Luck much - I read and lived The House of Arden as a child, and didn't read this linked story till I was an adult - but the moonflower is one of the good parts. (To be fair, there's quite a few good parts.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I've read a few Nesbit books, but I didn't know this one!