Yet

This photo of carambola flowers required me to get on a ladder

From this window a few lonely strawberry guava still hang on. The carambola rises past the top of the glass and on some high branches purple flowers have formed. I read that they fruit between October and February in Florida and throughout the year with June being the peak season. This tree died to the ground years ago and then had four trunks come up from the roots that I let keep going.

Surely somebody knows which winter we had twenty two degree days for days in a row. I bank on the notion that the world is getting warmer. I want to consider infinity. Ramana Maharshi might say this can be found in the space between breaths, for I am not this in and I am not that out. I am this. The pause between.

I have considered cutting the branches of the carambola tree to see if this might induce the starfruit to form and it would give space for the strawberry guava to reach out. This idea likely comes from the notion that I need to conserve space, that what I have is limited.

There are no straight lines in nature. Most of the cosmos is a spiral, and inside this spiral, I exist, and inside this spiral you exist, only there is no I and you, only us, and only this is a part of this spiral, the whole of creation.

If I cut the branches will this tree communicate? If I believe that beyond this yard there is space for more trees, maybe then I will be on my way.

I watched a man describe peanut butter fruit last night and what he said is true, that it really is the consistency of peanut butter but also tastes like there’s a bit of diluted strawberry jelly mixed in. I have five seeds planted from my tree, a seedling about two feet tall in addition to this and cuttings that seem to be taking inside the greenhouse.

I remember years ago, I made a design for this space where I now grow and I included what was here then and plans for the future. Some of what I started still exists. The green around the space that I own is a testament to what has been lost over the years, even the years since I have been here, but there are people growing nearby, on both corners of Urquhart and Lesseps.

There is possibility of cross breeding and interbreeding and more guava and other tropical fruit. And I must say that I wrote this before going outside to photograph the carambola flowers and finding my first pink guava. And even the peanut butter tree draws the eye with the bright yellow flowers and orange fruits that turn a dark red when fully ripe.

I understand and know the idea of mine, and it’s easy for me to say that we can all share the bounty of the fruit when I already have so much, and it is easy for me to walk through this neighborhood and think how there might be more. 

I collected what I called Needle Street Almost Seedless, a baseball-sized guava, sweet and sour white with only fifteen seeds. I wonder how breeding works. I know that the dominant fruits always turn out to be F1. I know that from there, from the next generation of seeds, a recessive trait can pop into the world. I wonder about colors and tastes and take great pleasure in knowing that I may be able to cross breed plants from Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal with seeds gathered in Cuba.

There need be no reason to cut any of this carambola, if indeed the whole journey is the journey, if the plan is that I will find other places to plant throughout the city and be paid for what I have found. I know that my greenhouse will be coming soon. I know that people will soon want the plants that I have and look forward to learning even more.

The native flowers and trees intermingle with the not-so-native species that grow along the same equatorial line. 

Outside the window, black swallowtail flutter within my vision. The ice cream bean has not fruited. Yet. This a word that might be applied to anything that has not happened. Yet. To the dive of the butterfly. Yet. To the seed of the swamp mallow I placed in Angie’s hand. Yet. To the high high rising of tithonia. Yet. To know how to use what grows without allowing this to take over.

To know the sting of cayradia on a rainy day is to know hands scratching the flesh of my back on a mattress in Toronto. The same way a sting knows a kiss and blindness knows vision. The same way loss might be a gift from a different direction. 

If you ask me today, “Why do you meditate?” I would have to say, “To see the purple flowers high atop the branches of the carambola tree.”