Chimera Song Mosaic
Friday, March 19, 2004
But just today, I have seen: the Hong Kong Orchid, which has stopped blooming for a few weeks and therefore disappoints, has now indulged me with a skinny loop of a beginning branch; everyone's Orchid Trees are in full flounce and blooming promiscuously, but our Purple Orchid has been a dry stick in the mud since we planted it a month ago, and we had little hopes of its recovery. Now, it has at least seven shoots! The peach tree: it has lost most of its blossoms, is spiky with green leaves ensiform, and is now studded with infant fruits! These pale pink and yellow fuzzies are the shape and size of dove hearts, and they look like dove hearts--or miniscule dog's vulvas. Everywhere the Wild Texas Olives are filled with brazen white flowers, but ours is little more than a stick, but now (at least) it sports vigorous green hearts, scratchy as cats' tongues. Also, the flies crawling over it are uncommon flies, just as the other trees have invited in spectacularly unfamiliar insects--flies and bugs and bees and mock-wasps (not to mention the fat spiders!). The Weeping Mulberry is throwing its new thin branches down to the ground and poking out red berries--and ripe purple ones so sweet! I have never tasted an actual Mulberry; they taste like debris*. The spicy Jatropha tree is, well, spicy hot with red blooms that the bees and flies like best. Last of all, the roses, closest to the house, have not surprised me in a long while; I can see their new, red leaves--but today! You really have to get close to plants to become intimate to their headlong mutability: these baby rose plants have buds. And if I look closely, so does my Panama Pacific water lily, imported from the old house, brought back from near death in the patio basin, struggling back to life with many fist size green and speckled leaves--red at the edges from the sun!
*Let it be known that Mulberries do not "taste like debris," but I find this collaborative mistype with Spellcheck to be intriguing. For posterity's sake, they taste like dewberries. My opinion. Spellcheck, although creative, is more of an idiot savant--he doesn't even recognize his own name!
