A weekend of vines and blossoming buds

“My son went away to college in London for a year and came home with an English sense of humor. Trying being around that all the time.”

Woman in line at the Cheesecake Factory at Macy’s, overheard by Dan San Souci

My glass slipper was at the shoemaker and my tiara was getting tuned-up, too, so we didn’t make it to the “Cinderella” ball festivities on Friday. We did, however, make it to Jason Moran’s Fats Waller dance party at SFJazz, where neither a tiara nor slipper was required.

Just sat there sipping and slurping with drink in hand, bopping my head, watching dancers in front of the stage and peering at Moran, who placed a puppetlike Waller head over his own and with that, melted his already loose-as-a-goose body language into fluid-as-a-shimmering-river notes.

As to where to go after Fats Waller, think “Honeysuckle Rose.” By the opening moment of the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society’s 46th Annual Plant Sale, there was a long line outside; by the end, although the exact amount hasn’t been tabulated, something like $75,000 would be raised.

Organizers of every cultural group in town want mixed ages and ethnicity; here it is, not only among the shoppers but also the more than 300 volunteers. The pleasure of watching things grow is universal, and the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park was crowded.

Don Mahoney, curator for the nonprofit, said that although native plants have been popular recently, what’s hot in botanica right now are vegetables and edibles, and in particular, new Andean food crops (oca and yacon), and ashitaba, which is from Japan and which is thought to extend life. So here’s to another year of seeing the succulents spread and the fern fronds unfurl.

At a small family-style dinner at MarketBar on Sunday night for San Francisco Film Festival Founder’s Directing Award winner Philip Kaufman, his daughterin-law Christine Pelosi recalled the first Philip Kaufman movie she saw. Her mom, Nancy Pelosi, took her to see the 1988 movie “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” the very first line of which, said Christine, is “Take off your clothes.” Mama Pelosi covered her daughter’s eyes.

A bit later at the Castro Theatre, where Annette Insdorf interviewed Kaufman onstage before a showing of his “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the Film Society’s Ted Hope introduced a clip reel that proved that Pelosi’s first taste of Kaufman was a valid sampling. The director loves bodies and relishes sex. His description of Henry Miller (whose life and loves were the focus of “Henry and June”), “a juicy observer of life and literature, and so excited by things,” is aptly applied to himself.

Hope told the Castro audience that Kaufman, who loves working in San Francisco, made easy one of his first Film Society chores, naming a director to receive the award created for festival founder Bud Levin. “I’m so thankful,” said Hope, “that it took so long to honor him.” Around town: John Shea, reminding me that the matter has yet to be decided, thinks that San Francisco Airport should be named after Steve McQueen, who starred as a San Francisco detective in “Bullitt.” Part of the reason this is sensible, he says, is that Jacqueline Bisset played his romantic interest.

P.K. took a walk at Crissy Field and stopped to see Mark di Suvero overseeing the installation of his sculpture. She thought it looked “fabulous” and at the same time “like parts of the deconstructed Doyle Drive.”

Jessica Simpson had dinner on Friday night at La Mar Cebicheria Peruana; and on Sunday morning, Russell Brand and a young woman walked into Vesuvio but didn’t order anything, said Tony the bartender, just looked around for a bit.

Walking his dog in Ocean View Park the other day, photographer Dwayne Newton looked down, saw a rectangular turquoise Myntz brand breath mint tin, picked it up and opened it. Inside was a folded piece of paper.

Handwritten on it: “Jade,/ Judicious and syracusean, likkamore and spaceships, scarlet muse and sunshine dancer, romancer/ within like lickety-split and sugartimes as if every way is a wander and dissolve,/ my tummy hurts and your smile is all the light I need, eye feel your focus in the other room,/ an anchor to earth and letting us fly …”