From the monthly archives:

September 2010

on the internet

September 17, 2010

“On the Internet, an ancient New Yorker cartoon caption observes, nobody knows you’re a dog. But everyone assumes you’re a sucker, susceptible to the pleas of hard-luck Nigerian royalty or eager to enhance your sexual prowess. You can have so many friends, fans and followers that you might not grasp just how radically alone you [...]

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winter garden

September 16, 2010

I accumulated so many tropical plants this year that I couldn’t fit them all next to the big front window, which is north-facing anyway. Plus the tot and his adventuresomeness. So I bought a 1000-watt metal-halide grow light and fixed up the closet in the basement, and stuffed as many pots in there as would [...]

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nutmeg and mace: myristica fragrans

September 9, 2010

I just learned what fresh nutmeg looks like. Here are some visuals to aid in blowing your mind: What you buy in the store – if it isn’t ground – is the dried seed (which is inside the brown part inside the red web). But I don’t care about the spice any more. I just [...]

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how to dry a dead snake

September 3, 2010

I found a little serpent in the driveway of the farm last time we went out to walk the paths. The Catholic lawyers ran him over, and he was good and dead by the time I discovered his carcass lying still in the dirt. No more than nine inches total, just a baby probably, a [...]

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sorry toots, me and cornus kousa got a little thing going.

September 3, 2010

Mercy child, the geometry of these fruits has got me all sortsa intuned to a spilling-seed-into-the-soil, last-month-of-the-summer last-ditch effort at monoecious reproduction. So hot and yet so smart: so warm and curved and beckoning and still so cold and sharp and hard. Gracious y’all, the intensity of the ambiguity that this fruit pops and locks [...]

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the impossible mangosteen (garcinia mangostana)

September 3, 2010

My two new mangosteen trees arrived from Hawaii today, looking wonderful. I had pretty low expectations for the size and health of the plants after all my searching and researching. Not only are they nigh-impossible to grow in the US, it seems they’re also pretty hard to come by. Most of the tropical fruit tree [...]

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