Edit
Get those persimmons early before the raccoons!
Did I tell you about the seven eggs outside the back window? Or that I did not know where the hen slept who sat on the eggs during the day? Something bigger than a chicken, braver than a kitten, climbed atop the roof that keeps rain from the water heaters and cracked open and licked out every single one of those eggs.
Fruit does not always mean bugs, but in an old house in the 9th Ward, where much is growing up and there are spots of space where air and life can get in, bugs will take full advantage. They come in and hide when you turn on the lights. The bigger ones are easier to catch and release. Last night we found a beetle in the shower and a cockroach in Nasim’s new room. I caught both of them. I’m pretty sure both were named Steve or Joe. Each seemed common.
One of the things I like about traveling is seeing new plants and also seeing the plants that I already know. Mimosa pudica grows in front of Lowpoint Coffee. Nasim said the same plant grows in Iran. She knows the trick. She said it’s called ghahr kon in Farsi. I asked her what that means, and she mimed a child huddled off to the side, unwilling to open up. The dictionary said “to be angry”, but we decided it meant something more like closed off. In English, we call this the sensitive plant.
It’s interesting to consider what exists around the world that is both the same and different. It’s interesting to consider how if a mad scientist were to cut into the tongue and voice box and throat of both me and Nasim, how these would be different.
How does speech originate? Why is there no equivalent for the sounds of third or thirty in farsi? Why is there no equivalent for ghahr kon or the hard roll of an R in Spanish?
This is one of the many details that makes the world an interesting place. Let’s take the black squirrels you never see in New Orleans, those that run ubiquitous on the campus of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and throughout the park in Toronto where you can feel the subway running underneath your feet.
I wonder why German cockroaches are called German. Or German chocolate cake for that matter. Ain’t nobody growing coconut trees in Germany, that I can assure you.
The world is round and yet there are mustard seeds everywhere. The bible only talks about faith, but I’d like to know what they might say about the actual greens. Did Mother Mary make these for Jesus with the fat of an anointed calf? Did Judas eat fat or lean? Who comes up with the unfolding of these kinds of things?
And who could have known that by opening the space in front of my house I would find a giant persimmon, orange and ready to be picked. I wonder where the raccoons have gone, for I have seen no evidence of them. I wonder if somebody might have shot those little guys with a handgun for knocking over trash cans.
It’s amazing how much can be done in an hour when I keep to what I am doing, and the way space opens to more possibilities. There is a box out front, filled with leaves and coffee grounds, and beneath this many worms. I added galangal to this box. I will add more wood chips. I will let the space tell me what to do, and in these moments, when I sit and listen to what exists between what already grows, I am able to hear directions for what will come next, and like a first draft, I can let the space sit for a week and come back.
Who knew you could edit nature?
