This morning Susan and Adele left for a two-day visit to Islamorada with friends, leaving the Hendroid and myself to “batch it”. We went over to bandmate Rob’s house where wife Stacy needed help with laying sod and removing unwanted clumping palms. Two adolescent boys were directed in the sodding and I went after the palms with Stacy’s shovel, much to the amazement of the assembled few. My answer every time one leapt from the earth in record time: “Practice”. I am a practiced, perhaps even skilled digger. As payment for my services, I was allowed to plant a tree on their property, and I planted one of these:
Pachira insignis (puh-kai-ruh), “Wild Chestnut”. It has lovely flowers, big green leaves, and fruit that is edible if you are very hungry. I went out in a thunderstorm with two pieces of bamboo taped into a huge pole with a saw blade taped to the end of that to collect the fruit/seeds of this one, which grows in a North Miami park that features security guards, who go inside when it rains. They were about twenty feet up, and the pod weighs about five pounds.
Later, later this planting, with Henry left behind playing at Rob & Stacy’s, I went home and collected some trees for another planting, in the swale along 19th Ave., in a drug-and-prostitution-infested section of our Parkside Neighborhood. I planted one of the Pachira, a different Pachira spp. from Montgomery Botanical Center, a Ceiba pentandra from Reunion Island, and two Moringa concanensis from south central India. While planting them, I was visited by Eric, another neighborhood plant fan, who brought me two seeds from an avocado cultivar that has actual flavor (our trees here make huge fruit with no flavor). This one was planted in a neighborhood yard, and he retrieved some fruit (he asked). I ruminated on Ted Hafer’s life-ending decision during this installation. Later, an across-the-street “neighbor” who I have nothing but spittle for drove by and stared at me, and I stared back. If any damage occurs to these plants, I know where to point my finger.
Susan called and they are having a marvypoo time. Henry and I went to the Hobby Superstore where he go an ultrasonic sound detector and I bought a small model airplane (Yak 3). We ate at Whole Foods (now infested with newly-”green” evangelical x-tians), returned home and watched tv while I glued and painted the model.
