Euphorbia

After waffling for a few weeks, I finally gave the go-ahead for a partial bailout of the Detroit car makers. You'd think that congress could do something without getting my advice. And now that I have some free time on my hands I really don't have an excuse to ignore them.

I'm reluctant to expand my own gardening theories beyond the limits of my back yard, especially when it comes to notions about economics, but sometimes these analogies are all we have (lacking any formal training in economics). Someone has to decide these things or nothing would get done.

Consider our Euphoribia, at least that's what I think it is (the CIA hasn't gotten back to me yet). (Click on the photo for a better view.) Cheryl and I bought it in Arizona years ago, kept it in a pot in the blazing sun, carried it in the back of a U-haul to Florida, finally put in the ground and now it's over six feet tall. We bought this one from a Hopi woman who claimed it possessed the soul of a extra-terrestrial who visited her over the years and finally died in a burst of flames when he touched the plant. Euphorbia have stickers like a cactus and a milky sap that is extremely poisonous and, apparently, flammable to some life forms.

A strange plant grows in the shadow of the Euphorbia, and I suspect it is the reincarnated Hopi woman, or possibly just an old girlfriend. The CIA is on this. Frankly, I am losing confidence in the new C23X department there. Do I have to do everything?

The Euphorbia loves our sandy side yard but is growing now at a slight angle and is getting so big that I'm afraid it will topple from its own weight. I could tie it up, but it might stick me (and I might explode). Instead I'm trusting that it can survive without my intervention.

Why, then, bail out the auto industry while ignoring my Euphorbia? Because the Euphoribia won't harm anything if it falls over. OK, it might take out the weird little plant.