AD.


plant cat – foto by smith

I took our six foot ficus tree in its five gallon bucket of dirt for a walk and a bicycle ride yesterday. It isn’t easy walking a six foot tall tree balanced on a bicycle eight blocks. All the locals were smiling and laughing at me, with me. I hate to part with the tree because the plants are like our offsprung, but I’ve been slowly killing it these past six months–too much water, not enough water, too much sun, not enough sun–so I took it to its new daddy who might save it.

Lady keeps buying plants figuring I’ll keep them alive because she’s a plant Kevorkian, but she doesn’t realize I’m faking it – have zero sum flora knowledge in my brainpan.

Next I have to walk our 6 foot lime tree over. The ants are slowly stripping it of leaves. They live under the potted soil and run up and down the trunk constantly taking little tiny ant-bites of my leaves. I thought of spending the afternoon sitting by the tree killing each ant as it ran up the trunk, squishing it with my fingers, but I think that many individual murders would depress me, cloud my karma, so I’ll let our friend MadManMax kill them instead with his ant poison, put their little sufferings on his soul. Does farming out insect murder keep my karma clean?

I’m keeping the two cactuses, the other two succulents, the bamboo thing, the decapitated lily, the fern and the rose until we leave the country in 6 weeks because they bring us so much daily pleasure. The one succulent I keep slowly turning in the sun so it’s growing in undulating S-curved waves.

They’re all our children. I think the succulents take after Lady, while the cactuses look more like me.

here’s a plantish poem I wrote for Lady when we first took up:

Plant Shepherd

I water 3 plants at work

Just now went to each, thrust
My fingers through their leaves
Into their soil to check for moistness

And flashed on this morning
You on your stomach
My fingers deep
Sampling your wetness

None of these need water

Though I may need to sample you more
To see your need
So I’ve made an appointment
For you to be closely examined
Tomorrow after work in my sanctuary
In the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering

– Doc Smith – 10.4.2005


our Zapotec friend’s garden – foto by smith

One Response

  1. You may find 80% of youir blogs boring, but I think about 80% of then are NOT boring. Maybe you are bored because you know most of this stuff before you write it, but most of us don’t know what you know. Learning something you don’t know takes away the bore

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