Letter
“G” is for Gardens; in this case “Community Gardens”.
To be even more specific, our very own V. M Ybor Neighborhood
Association, which to clarify, is an historical association, not one
of those ass-hat associations that won't let you have pink flamingos
in your yard, or any of that nonsense. Hey, if you want that
chartreuse house, just go right ahead. Just don't be surprised to
come home one evening to find all the doors glued shut or have your
house full of angry bees, just kidding. At least, we're not like
THOSE guys on the other side of Nebraska who will just burn it down
around your ears, if you dare to paint it puce. M'kay?
Anyway,
they do things their way, and we do things our way, which is with
brisk efficiency and it runs like clockwork, from what I understand.
I'm not allowed near the garden, because just the shade thrown by my
form has been known to kill plants, so I admire the pictures.
Everyone is invited to participate and because we live in Florida and
from my own experience, I know that tomatoes are the first to be
planted. There are work days and days where they plant cover crops.
Kim Headland and now, President Kelly Grimsdale, periodically send
out links to the University of Florida's Planting Almanac.
Kelly
allocates the plots or half-plots to interested parties and they go
out and “farm”. The community garden does put out a lot of
vegetables, but they do plant bulbs for flowers and plant some trees,
I believe.
I
went looking for some picture of our Garden and I didn't find any. .
. *
*Everything from here on out is made up whole cloth, except for the part about Daddy and his Venus Flytraps.
At
this point, I've not heard back from Kelly, and I believe the reason
why is she is planning one of her fabulous porch parties for this
evening. So, from here on out, everything you read is shit I made up,
since I really am kryptonite to growing things, unless I am
accompanied by an adult over the age of 21.
We
grow a variety of things in our Community Garden, the most prolific
of these are Venus Fly Traps and those hideous Corpse Flowers that
bloom every 100 years and smell like a dead human corpse. We're all
still waiting for a crop of those, since we only planted some 55
years ago. I wouldn't know, since I was only 5 years old at the time
and living in Muskegon, Michigan, driving my Daddy crazy, as he was
my primary care-giver at that time.
courtesy:flytrapcare.com
Venus Flytraps. Lovely to look at and pretty fascinating. They'll be really still, and then one will just snap shut.
They
already look rather ominous though. I particularly like the Traps.
Did you know that if there are no flies around, you can feed them
bits of hamburger? I know this, because I got one for my Daddy once
for his birthday. It thrived for years on his desk at work – true
story – and we fed it mealworms, live. Flytraps get most of their
nutrients from the sun, however, and we found that you cannot
fertilize them or use tap water, so my Daddy kept distilled water at
his desk, along with a few meal worms to feed his traps. They never
got very big, but they were pretty neat. Anyway, I digress.
courtesty:www.9news.com
The aftermath(?) of the Corpse Flower bloom. You can see why it attracts flesh eating insects and beetles. Ick.
The
Corpse Flower is a nightmare that grows taller than a man and blooms
every 36 or 100 years; wiki is fuzzy on that. This is either because
no one can stand to be around it to count the years, or the smell
just kills anyone instantly in close proximity when the bastard
finally does bloom. The reason it does stink to high heaven is
because that stench draws beetles and other insects that eat flesh!
That's really special!
courtesy:listverse.com
This is the flower in bloom. Still not a fan.
We
also have some Skunk Cabbage, which got planted because someone got
confused and ordered those seeds instead of “Small Cabbage”
seeds. These charmers have some edible parts, but most of it
is poisonous and it smells like a skunk on steroids. The poison is
particularly nasty, in that the calcium oxalate is extremely
corrosive and it burns into the flesh and causes organs to shut down,
WITHOUT ingesting it. Ooooh, fun!
courtesy:listverse.com
This looks pretty, but it's basically napalm in plant form.
Then,
in our Garden we have the “let's fake out the tweakers and druggies
and play practical jokes on them at the SAME TIME!” group of
plants. We have some Giant Hogweed, which looks suspiciously like
weed; da ganja, or mary jane. However this little number can destroy
a human being through the cooperation of an extraterrestrial agent –
the Sun! The Hogweed is photosensitive, and it oozes a thick sap upon
contact and almost immediately, the sap reacts with the sun and
basically becomes napalm. This leads to necrosis and formation of
massive, purple lesions that can last for years. The Hogweed can grow
up to 8 feet. I can just imagine some of these potheads around here
stumbling around and finding this gem at night and rolling a doobie.
Gives a new meaning to “lit up”.
courtesy:listverse.com
Last,
but not least, we have a lovely patch of Angel Trumpet vines, which
truly are lovely to look at. On it's own, it's the least dangerous of
the “practical joke” plants, but in the hands of someone who
knows what they're doing, it's a dark and heady brew of toxins –
atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine. The scopolamine can be refined
and used on people who remain conscious, but have no recollection of
what they are doing; they become “zombies” and it was originally
used as a “truth” serum, but various agencies and may still be
used as such. As an aside, it was used by anesthetists until safer
drugs were formulated for use during surgery.
courtesy:alamy.com
Us'ns on the way to the "Farmer's Market, Gun and Knife Show". My Wallace photography gene has gotten so bad, everything comes out in sepia tones, now.
Anyway,
we grow these wonderful crops, and when they're all grown up, we
enter our Garden into the “Better Guns and Gardens” competition
and invariably win. We then harvest – carefully – everything,
throw it into a Conestoga wagon, hitch up the oxen and haul it off to
town for the “Farmer's Market, Gun and Knife Show”. After we
we've emptied our wagon, by selling, bribing or threatening the
patrons in buying our wares, we head home. It's been a long day. . . Tomorrow? Hysterical Buildings.
2 comments:
Wow! You guys are all set to kill trespassers, aren't you? Least no one is going to mess with the garden.
And if you have to skip letters or double up to catch up with the Challenge, it's cool. Glad you're back.
@Alex,
This has been some month! God laughs when I plan, that is why I usually do everything in an ad-hoc manner. I had a theme last year, but Shostakovich had other plans. This year, it's been drunks, Internet swappage (without my knowledge) that has slowed the little engine that could.
Yes, we like to pretend that we're all a bunch of milksaps around here, that way when the bad buys get up to something, we can whip out our poisonous plants/blind canes/walker and beat the living shit out of miscreants. It gives us all a tremendous sense of satisfaction, plus it helps with the paperwork for the TPD, too <3
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