Looking for light in the dirt

Years ago I had built up a nice little garden of cacti and succulents on my porch. I collected odd (but not rare) specimens — unusual aloes, donkey’s tail, stone plants, watch-chain — and enjoyed going to nurseries and garden shops to find new residents. They did rather well, really, and it was a fascinating hobby for me, as I have never had much luck with making things grow. (Well, other than clutter. I have a green thumb when it comes to clutter.) For a few years it was great. I could sit and have my coffee in the morning surrounded by growth, and sometimes even bring out a lapdesk and write for a while.

I lost most of the tags, so I don't know what this is.

But time takes its toll on plants as well as people, and most of the original inhabitants of my photosynthetic menagerie have gone the way of all mulch. Those who survived have held on as best they can, withered or dwindling in most cases. It became depressing, and together with the mosquitoes of unknown provenance — I’m not leaving standing water, I am sure of it! — I chose to spend as little time on the porch as possible. Without a day job I was becoming a virtual hermit, going days not venturing further than the mailbox.

Zebra aloe (I think).

So I decided that in an attempt to break out of this rut I would rebuild my alien garden.

A new jade plant, as my old one has grown rather spindly.

The older plants the survived were surveyed as candidates for transplanting into new pots. The newly purchased specimens were moved from their cheap plastic containers into new (but still cheap) terracotta planters. (The plastic was recycled.)

If I don't kill it this will eventually grow to be 3' across. Maybe.

And it was good for me. When your work only uses your mind — particularly when you work with words — you need to keep a grip on the material world, or it will slip away. Since there’s little in my life to drag me out of the bunker, and my mediocre health precludes many of the physical activities I used to enjoy, finding something like this is important. Even getting covered in dirt up to my armpits and losing a pint of blood to the damned mosquitoes — not to mention the gallon of fluid I lost through sweat — I felt good when I was done.

I had help from Miss Fuzzy

I’m not really done, though, I just needed to stop and recover for a few days. I have a very large pencil cactus which needs to be removed from its pot and planted in the ground, and there’s some kind of cactus that’s replaced its spines with full-on daggers and over grown its own pot and started snaking around under the palm tree looking for victims. But given the continuing heat and humidity, that will have to wait for another day. Until then I’ll just admire the bloom of the royal poincianas.

Royal poinciana trees start the year as sticks, grow their blooms, drop their blooms, then grow their summer leaves.

And while I admire their flowers, I’ll try not to think about how quickly the fallen blooms become hideous muck.

When this is wet it looks like vegetable scabs.

By the way, I didn’t take any “before” project photos because, well, they would be embarrassing. Like I said, it had gotten a bit ugly out there. Between the junk and the dead plants and the dirt and the rank disorder it was not pretty. And after all, the point of the exercise was to improve my disposition. The darkness is still here, but I needed a moment of light.

Share/Bookmark