Social Ism

So that I stay on message, here is a flowering pipe vine (Aristolochia elegans) from the back yard. Pretty impressive for such a tiny plant--the stem is about the size of capellini pasta and the leaves are heart shaped. I suppose you might say this looks like a big Sherlock Holmes pipe...

What's really on my mind is the call I got last night from Barack and how we had a good laugh, talking about things silly and serious, and the subject of socialism came up. A few right-wing nut jobs recently have called for a boycott of GM, calling it Government Motors and arguing that it should fail because, they say, socialism cannot be allowed to succeed. America, they say, is a country based on self-reliance, a place where individuals exist and the collective should not.

The problem with individuals is that most of them are not you. For instance, suppose you want to hire 24-hour security for your house and find that it is too expensive. You and your neighbors could get together and hire some security for the neighborhood, because you know how generous and reasonable your neighbors are.

But instead of waiting for these meetings to conclude, the government has decided that you and your neighbors can call 911 any time and you will pay taxes for it whether you like it or not because, as you must admit, your neighbors are idiots and are complete unreasonable and incapable of compromise, so you will never decide this on your own. Likewise, you and your neighbors can cancel your meetings about a fire department, the armed forces, the courts, schools, jails, social services, public transportation, medicare, animal services, medicaid, libraries, water, food inspectors, sewer, and so on.

How about a paved road to connect your neighborhood to other neighborhoods? Again, your neighbors would like to discuss this with you. Some of them don't even drive, they say, wagging a finger at you. And not just the roads, but what about sidewalks and curbs and drains and street lights and bridges and dams and parks?

How about if your farm is in trouble? (No, not you, small family farmer guy, you are SOL.) I'm talking about the collective of corporate farmers who get government subsidies to grow wheat, corn and soybeans and to produce milk, meat and cheese. We need this stuff, right? And you business collectives--steel, copper and so on--who get subsidies to stay in business. Not to mention you big shot corporations who can manage to get tax shelters because you can afford to buy influence and move jobs overseas, a purely socialist approach to advance your notion of capitalism.

Obviously the system could be improved, but let's be honest--this is a socialist country.

So now some of the neighbors have had a meeting and have decided that they won't buy GM products, for fear of socialism, though to be honest some are still sore about Obama and wouldn't be saying this if Bush or McCain or Sarah Palin were president. I missed the meeting (too bad).

Here's a good one.

Un-Gilding the Lily

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue...

Few if any plants have a more cool image than the sacred Indian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), a symbol for purity and beauty in eastern cultures, woven deeply into centuries of art and literature.

It's no wonder, considering my nature, that when I was told by the previous owners of this house that we had a lotus in our koi pond, I was quick to believe it and to repeat the fantasy to everyone, and I have been slow to finally take the time to verify the plant for myself.

The plant in our pond (pictured above) is actually a Fragrant Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata), or so I've been told by my CIA friend who knows about these things. And though the true lotus was once considered a Nymphaea, and though the Nymphaea have commonly been called lotuses, the distinction must be acknowledged. Our lily is no lotus.

The true lotus has a seed pod like this, perfect for Vishnu or some other Hindu big shot to sit upon and look serene. My lily flower has no such pod. The lotus leaves hang in air above the water while mine float on top like all Nymphaea lilies. These are obvious differences, but I never really wanted to know them, preferring instead to believe it perfectly reasonable that we would have a sacred Indian lotus in our back yard, something to tell our guests in an attempt to impress them. Such is the nature of self-deception and pride.

Though not a lotus, our white and fragrant water lily has a flower that is incredibly beautiful. It's native to Florida and perfectly happy in the small corner of our upper pond. The fish can keep cool under its broad and thick leaves, another advantage during the hot summer. So while it is not a celebrated plant, while it is not a spiritual icon, I like it very much. In fact, I like it more now that I did before, and I intend to apologize to it today for ever wanting it to be more than it is. Well, maybe I will just give its leaves a nice cleaning.

Sweet Viburnum

On Sunday I planted several new viburnums along the back fence, anticipating that someday (soon, I hope) these will rise up and create an even better sense of isolation for the back yard, not that we ever even see another human being from back there. The sweet viburnum (playfully classified as Viburnum odoratissimum) grows to 20 feet tall and 15 feet wide (less so for our unfortunate neighbors to the north--not that size is an issue), thick and fragrant and dense and perfect to block out all traces of the un-backyard.

Putting in new plants is an emotional process for me, as reluctant as I am to admit it. (Honestly, would you force me to say that I'm a wonderful person?) You start out with a plant, take it to the site of its new home, put it to the side, and then begin digging, which in this case was tough because the ground is cross-hatched with one-inch thick roots in all directions, letting me know that the neighborhood does not exactly welcome additional water-suckers.

The viburnum is not concerned, not complaining, not scolding me for picking a questionable spot; it is just waiting, maybe like a kid waiting to enter a college dorm room for the first time but thinking only about beer or boys or girls, not about the significance of the event itself, which for the viburnum is permanent--there's no going back to the store. It's show time.

For the next few weeks, the viburnum will be vulnerable and will depend on me for water. If things work out, the plants will become independent just as I get tired of fussing over them.

Meanwhile, Willow, who has no interest in botany or landscaping, is prone to displays of ennui, probably for attention since we are likely to say Oh Willow, why are you looking so sad, after which she will jump up and run around and lick us. I suppose she knows that we never tire of fussing over her.

The Corn Plant (Dragon's Blood)

The corn plant (Dracaena fragrans) in our side yard is in bloom just outside my office balcony--this one is nearly 20 feet tall. Most people buy this plant to grow indoors after being assured by the Home Depot lady that it cannot be killed, only to discover, several weeks later, that the plant is suicidal and singing songs from that Momma Mia movie over and over (only slowly and with a blank stare).

In the nursery (like the picture to the right) the corn plant looks more dead than alive, like some reject from an artificial plant assembly line, little more than a stick chopped off at the top with a flurry of big leaves. Move it to the outside, though, and plant it in partial shade (then leave it alone), and it transforms into a thing of beauty

The genus name Dracaena is the key--these are an exotic group of plants that includes the dragon's blood tree (or Dracula's blood tree, according to the original accounts) discovered on the Canary islands in the 15th century by horrified explorers who described a tree dripping with blood, which is actually a red resin that drips from the tree and that later served as the magical ingredient for varnish used by the early Italian violin makers. Dragon's blood made its way into the Americas as an ink used in voodoo rituals for writing portents, seals and curses onto paper that is then folded away in a dark place.

The Latin Dracaena literally means "she-dragon" and references to dragon's blood can be found in popular literature, including this exchange in a Harry Potter novel, propping up the fabricated rumor that Dracaena resin might be a sort of cure-all (though the blood below is oddly described as greenish):

“You’re not going to eat that, are you, Hagrid?” said Ron, leaning in for a closer look. “It looks poisonous.”
“It’s s’posed ter look like that, it’s dragon meat,” Hagrid said, “An’ I didn’ get it ter eat.”
He picked up the steak and slapped it over the left side of his face. Greenish blood trickled down into his beard as he gave a soft moan of satisfaction.
“Tha’s better. It helps with the stingin’, yeh know.”

But don't be fooled. These blood references all trace back to the vampires and their big-fanged dogs that were once feared and known by the name dragon before they were, as the result of an ancient curse, transformed into trees on the island of Socotra.

The Arborvitae (Crepe Myrtle)

Nothing about this is not confusing.

Several months ago my wife and in-laws were driving through the neighborhood and my father-in-law spotted what he said, in his Mississippi accent, was an ar-bo-vi-tuh, and my mother-in-law demanded to know where, to which he replied right there, to which she countered where, prompting my wife to back up the car and park beside that yard, which was filled with a variety of plant species, while a volley of where?/right there rocked back and forth within the car until it reached equilibrium, having the potential to continue into perpetuity until, that is, she responded Do you mean that?, to which he said No... that!, though the that was not clear in either case since they both pointed in some general direction at the yard, and this (if you remember your high school geometry and if you take into account the relatively small length of a person's finger) provided for a high degree of uncertainly as to the that being pointed at.

That, he continued, still referring to the object of his pointed finger, is an arborvitae. No, it's not, she replied with incredulity, as though he had mistaken a pig for a cat. That, she said, still pointing at the yard, is a crepe myrtle. No, it's not, he came back, either in disagreement with the plant or her finger, though the latter is much more likely since every person born in the south knows what a crepe myrtle looks like--it is a snobby sort of big bush that likes to be cut back to a stump every year or two. I say snobby because when I was a kid in Arkansas our snobby neighbors had several crepe myrtles. The picture (at the top) is a crepe myrtle from our side yard (taken from my balcony if you're wondering about the perspective). In December I cut it back and now it seems pretty happy (though I suspect it believes it is better than the other plants).

According to physicists, the true nature of matter is a paradox. Electrons, for example, are both a particle and a wave at the same time. They are neither this nor that at any one moment, but they exist. It's possible that, after several years of marriage (and as I am beginning to learn first hand), two people can communicate at such a level: one person seeing an arborvitae and the other seeing a crepe myrtle, both looking at the same thing and at different things at the same time, leaving the observer (me, in this case, though I wasn't even in the car at the time) to sort things out imperfectly, just as the experiments of Heisenberg's principle have borne out.


The Arborvitae.

Late update: Cheryl says that she was not in the car when this happened and that my account of this story is completely wrong (if, in fact, any of this actually happened at all).

The Biobots are Back

The Sri Lankan biobot weevils are back, attacking our swamp hibiscus plant just as it prepares to show off its scarlet flowers. The weevils are making their way up the plant, chewing scallop holes into the leaves and attempting to violate the nascent blooms by burrowing into the pods, which causes the pods to tighten up and refuse to flower. We first saw this plant in a south Florida swamp--they are impossible to ignore when in bloom. A nice one (above) burst open this morning, but there may not be many more.

This weekend we brought in an environmental scientist from the CIA to see what, if anything new, could be done. What we know is that these pesty weevil bastards are white, just about the size and shape (but certainly not the cuteness) of a lady bug. They have no natural enemies, probably because they are not really organisms but rather are biobots engineered (by Sri Lankan terrorists) out of some neo-organic material that must have no taste at all (and may well be poisonous since even our koi will not eat them, and koi are not exactly discriminating eaters). Some people fear that these robobugs are part of a new and still mostly unpublicized terrorist campaign to disrupt food supply around the world. Our scientist friend confirmed some basic facts but would not elaborate, and at times the weight of the world appeared to rest on her shoulders. She did confirm that the bugs were totally gross, which may portend, like, serious consequence for sure.

The biobots are programmed to appear hopelessly stupid--they allow themselves to be captured and will happily crawl around on your hand, or they might take flight and buzz around in the air and then land back on your hand, like a pet eager to learn new tricks. Brilliant, right? To get rid of them we could fire bomb the back yard and turn everything to a white ash, or we might build an earthen berm around the property and submerge everything under water for a few years. Instead, we've decided to bring in a certified weevil wrangler from Phoenix next month. His methods are secret, possibly mystical. No matter--I just hope the plants can survive until then. Our Turks Cap is also under attack, and it concidentally also has a nice scarlet flower.

Meanwhile, the koi have accepted me back into their confidence. (They are whores for frozen peas.)