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Month: April 2010

foxy fritillaria michailovskyi

Written by steve warrington on . Posted in gardening, plants, pretty!. 2 Comments on foxy fritillaria michailovskyi

Someone told me yesterday that they say that fritillaria michailovskyi smells foxy. I got what he meant. He wanted to make sure. You know, like sex.

First of all, major props to a working man for recognizing the flower, knowing its pain in the arse name, and for retaining this erotic bit of esoterica (or esoteric bit of erotica I suppose, depending on which team you happen to be batting for).

Secondly. As a euphemism for sexy, foxy is first rate. Sure, gents have been calling good-lookin’ ladies foxy for ages immemorial, but to have it connote not a look but a smell is to put a novel twist on the word that resonates with darker meaning when it’s used in relation to fox behavior. Think feral, think sweaty, think animal.

But. I clipped a few and stuck my nose deep up in them and… meh. They have a smell, but it’s not a musk or a funk. It smells like rot. I mean, I’m all for dirty girls, but pretty or not, this is beyond the pale. Turns out it’s a single compound to blame for the stank, a certain 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, which they say has a smoke-roast stink but I sez no way unless your smoke-roast has been sitting in the sun way too long.

fritillaria michailovskyi

by the by, everything worthwhile to learn about fritillarias can be learned here.

the only narcissus worth half a hoot

Written by steve warrington on . Posted in gardening, plants. No Comments on the only narcissus worth half a hoot

I can’t even bring myself to say daffodil, the word too much like a contraction of daffy and dildo .

The great majority of narcissus you find in civilians’ yards right now are yellow. We all know how yellow makes you crazy, not to mention nauseous. It’s a crappy color: the color of pus; of rot; of an old bruise; the color we have all been trained to recognize as a warning.

But even the white, orange, and yellow combos have too much going against them to ever win them favor within modern connoisseurship: gross proportions coupled with a palette of primary colors unrelieved by barely a drop of shade.

They do not move fluidly through space,  slouching there on their stems, that out-of-proportion probiscus gaping like a yokel’s jaw under the smarter flowers in the garden. Narcissus are simple, and for that reason ought to be culled from the pool. Literally.

Metaphorically neither do they stand in for a pure innocence nor a deep debasement, they are only a sign for mild pleasantness. They are a mild sedative, numbness in a non-opioid, mediocrity on a stem.

But! This one. Oh yes (mon)sirs and ma'(d)ams, this one is very different. For your consideration:

narcissus poeticus recurvus
Narcissus poeticus recurvus.

Gaze upon that complicated little trumpet with its hard red corona, caress with your eyes those elegantly backstretching pure white petals.

This is the only narcissus that would be allowed to survive on my personal planet. That and maybe this one, though I have yet to see it in person and so cannot vouchsafe its perpetuity.

Nine Out of Ten Banana Analysts Agree

Written by steve warrington on . Posted in gardening, not worth publishing, plants. No Comments on Nine Out of Ten Banana Analysts Agree

Musa ‘Ice Cream’ and Musa ‘Brazilian’ are the top two best-tasting banana plants on the banana analysts’ top five best-tasting banana plants list.

Speaking of ‘naners, I am so finsta hop the recent ravenolocavoracious mania and lassoo it to the ever-so-avante carbon-zero steamy hot wet planetism to make the first ever carbon-neutral neighborhhood greenhouse grocer growing a grossly abundant variety of effing awesome coffees, bananas, vanillas, mangoes, et al steamy hot wet tropical jungular fruit and flowers straight outta USDA hardiness zone 5 (crazy motherbleeper named Steve-cube).

Bananas, my friends, are the next heirloom mania.