E-Weeds

or Finding Magic in Unlikely Places

     (All the phrases in italics—except for this one—are direct quotes.)

"Microcosm" is not a useful blog.  It's a pleasant one, I hope, but not one that offers detailed plant profiles or gardening how-to's.  So when a comment comes along that says, "I have been surfing the internet for hours and have never seen such a useful blog," I can pretty well tell that it's spam, even before it invites me to visit a website on refrigerators.

Lately the spam has been coming fast and furiously.  Most of it is nonsense paragraphs:  phrases that have been scraped from who knows where and jumbled together, with words like blackjack or casino or pay-day loans thrown in at random.  The scraped phrases are repeated a couple of times in different ways, as if they get run through a synonym generator.  The result is a cryptic, would-be communication, with oddly hypnotic rhythms that lead gently into the suggestion that you "feel free to surf my blog."

For the last month or so I've spent a fair amount of time weeding spam out of various posts and have become immersed in its surreal world.  Just like when you really stop to look at an actual weed and pay attention to its form and flowers and seed pods, the irritatingly flawless health of the leaves, and all the bees buzzing around it, and realize that it isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be—when I've really stopped to look at the spam...well, it has its good points.

I don't just mean the wisdom found in the depths of those random phrases:  the stern advice to Get rid of any unscrupulous mortal, or the good, plain truth that Marathons can exclusively be improved traveling frontward.  Nor the general rules for a happy life:  Don't utilize the essential vice licenses.  Do not demand a fully-fledged eating house.  Ne'er address any meat without perspiring.  Pay the sum required or else.  Also, visit my blog post.

I mean the poetry and whimsy that glimmer in unexpected places, the opening of imagination that happens when words get twisted out of kilter.  For the brief moment before common sense re-asserts itself, you live in a world with telecasting salamander machines, where good work gets rewarded with oak trees (Quercus marilandica bonuses), and people ingest in agreement.  You live in a world where magic can happen between one thought and the next. 

It's a healthy thing, good for the soul, that stretching of the imagination.

          Inwardly (no recreation).      Plainly that's not decent.
          Within (no communication).       Patently that's not decent. 

For those few seconds that you play along, it gives you a mental vacation, like a brief walk in the woods (one 60 minutes unimprisoned).

I'm sure that you, voluntary kinspersons, all join me in loving a brief walk in the woods.   
          One can be rather well-chosen there.  One can be elated.
When your soul is feeling a cent threadbare, you can meander around beneath a pristine sky and gently waving tree-branches and recall What You Ought To Be.  It is good to escape from hard urban surfaces into nature's beauty.

          Why should I see Car piles?  
          Why Should I muse on Car heaps?  
                    That is an inconvenience.

The thing with nature's beauty, though, is that it's full of weeds.  Weeds have an impressive diligence to bounce up in the land.  In the right context, they're not actually weedy, just charming, admirable wild flowers and grasses.  When they're dormant their textures enrich the landscape.

O Sunflower, how eternal your druthers to exist!

You can shape the effect of the prevailing wind.

During the growing season these eager weeds, as healthy and as symptomless as your boat, give nourishment to countless wild things.  If they do run into difficulties or die off, we worry and mourn and do our best to help them.

The parcel of land does not suffer a laugh activity.

Some of them we love so well that we bring them into our own gardens.  Even now blue grama grass is blinking its "eyelash" seed heads at the breeze from my central garden bed; the angelita daisies are waiting for just the tiniest bit of warmth to burst into bloom again.  The sand cherries—weedy shrubs across western North America—are among my garden favorites.

You, a mere edible fruit.  And rightly so.
You, a specific point in time.  And rightly so.

(You can swear on this finicky treat.)

One weed—maybe scarlet hedgenettle? I never did identify it for sure—was such a spectacular performer in the summer garden and had such vibrant autumn color that I'm not convinced you could even call it a weed.

We probably aren't amply homely.

All to say, if I were interested in online gambling or hedge funds or a tireless man from OH, I would doubtless be thrilled at all the spam.  It's a pity that I'm not.  (Meaning no offense, Ohioans.)  Still, just as you can ooh and aah over an attractive weed right before you yank it mercilessly from the ground, I have enjoyed trawling the spam for little gems right before hitting the delete button.  I highly recommend it, if you don't otherwise have sufficient activity to de-mental strain yourself.  It is a peachy vice.

Also, have a look at my web log.

____________________________

All quotes were found in spam comments this month.  I've deleted the obviously spammy words, tidied up the grammar, and put the paired phrases together.  Other than that, they are quoted as they appeared.

A Weed By Any Other Name

or Happy Accidents

No one likes goats heads.  I don't mean the heads of actual goats.  Most people don't get worked up about those one way or the other (unless they've lived with actual goats, and then they might have some pungent words to say).  No, I'm talking about that scourge of bare feet, that bane of bicycle tires, that painful thorn in the flesh, Tribulus terrestris, aka puncture vine, aka caltrop, aka goats head.  It is a weed.  It is a menace.  It is a trouble and a vexation, come to torment us.
 

Photo credit Steve Hurst @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

When my parents were newlyweds and had started their first vegetable garden, they found an unknown but charming plant coming up in it, and cherished it like a wildflower.  (It wasn't goats heads.  They knew better than that!)  They made space around it, watered it, mulched it, and let it grow, until my grandpa, who'd grown up a farmer, came to visit and said, "Why on earth are you growing wild lettuce?"
 

Not wild lettuce.

The thing with wisdom passed on from previous generations, is that mostly it's reactive rather than proactive.  If Grandpa had said, "Beware the wild lettuce, my children.  It looks like thus-and-so," my parents would never have grown it.  But you can't anticipate everything, so Grandpa never thought to warn my parents and instead waited until they already had grown wild lettuce, and then said, "Why did you do that?"  I think he assumed that genetic osmosis worked, and that my parents must already know what he knew.  He was mighty entertained when they didn't.

My parents told me how silly they felt to have grown wild lettuce, but they've never told me what it looks like.  So I know not to grow it, if only I knew what it was, which I don't.

All to say, weeds are an adventure around here.  I don't actually have many, thanks to our dry climate (and a lot of mulch).  Even if we have enough moisture in spring to encourage weeds to sprout, the seedlings don't usually make it past early June, when the sun gets to Smiting strength.  With the survivors, I like to tempt fate and see what happens.  (Unless they're goats heads.  I know better than that!)   It's my own way of living dangerously.  What wild lettuce equivalent will I cherish and then be embarrassed about?  Last year's Weed of Note was a common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis).  This year's seems to be...

even more attractive.  It's certainly a member of the mint family, with that square, chiseled stem, like a cowboy's jawline, only longer.  (And greener.)  My guess is scarlet hedgenettle (Stachys coccinea), but I don't know for sure.  I sure did enjoy wondering about it as it grew taller and those tantalizing buds started to form, and I sure enjoy it now, when dusk turns it to embers beside gaura's bright sparks.

 
Nothing teaches you how to set priorities, to see what's important and what isn't, like weeds.  They're not all the same, you know.  Some are goats heads—noxious irritants, with few redeeming features.  They are the kinds of things grandfathers warn children about, and that no one makes the mistake of growing twice (or even once, because they've been warned).   You rip them up as soon as you see them, because otherwise you'll be ripping up a lot—painfully.

Then again, some weeds are wild lettuces—harmless enough, but not worth wasting resources on.  You don't need to rush to pull them, but you sure don't need to bother mulching them, either.  The only price you'll pay for them is a little embarrassment, so why stress about the wild lettuces in your life?  (Unless Grandpa's coming over, of course.)  And some... Well, some are happy accidents, aren't they?  Scarlet hedgenettles that you would never discover if you didn't let a few weeds grow now and then, if you didn't allow a little room for surprise.  As long as the weeds you let grow aren't goats heads.

We all know better than that!

Mistaken Identities

or Comedy Tonight

For low-brow humor, it's hard to beat well-placed weeds.  Not that weeds are usually knee-slappingly funny all by themselves, but it turns out that they're mighty fine prompts for funny behavior in others—as good as a ladder and a bucket of whitewash to a clown.  When I wrote last month about wanting to see what would happen if I let an unexpected evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) go to seed in the middle of the desert olive tree where it's been growing, my expectations were really pretty feeble.  I mean, I thought that perhaps new seedlings would come up in other unlikely places.  Is that lame or what?  What's actually happened is that the primrose has turned my little garden into a nonstop Vaudeville act that has had me laughing for weeks.

The primrose itself is about six feet tall, growing up through the ten foot desert olive.  Its stems stick out through the tree branches at unlikely angles; on random days they bloom at the tips.  (I've been taking some plants out, so the ground in the photo is embarrassingly bare.)  The upper stems blend into the tree—even those of us who know what we're looking for don't find it easy to tell where one ends and the other begins.  For those like, say, the two families of fledgling lesser goldfinches who hang out in the trees and who haven't yet learned that things are not always as they seem, it's flat-out complicated.

The thing about a tree branch is, it's sturdy.  When you're not entirely sure of your wings to begin with, sturdy is good.  But when you land on what you expect to be a sturdy tree branch and get a flexible primrose stem instead, things can get a little slapstick.  Down bob the stems—whoops!  Frantic flapping.  Up bounce the stems—surprise!  More frantic flapping.  Squawk!  Squawk some more!  Bob, bounce.  Equilibrium returns at last, and then along comes one of your siblings, to land on that nice, sturdy "tree branch" with you.  Bob, bounce, flap, squawk. 

Over the last few days, the goldfinches' balance has improved.  They've learned that the primrose stems have tasty seed pods, and all is well again.  Perhaps half a dozen of them, juveniles and adults, are seated on the stems or in the tree at a time, yellow feathers radiant, looking like fluttery primroses themselves.

Make that scruffy primroses.

But as entertaining as the finches are, they are just the warmup act.  Our star comedian is this young fellow, a black-chinned hummingbird:

Doesn't he look gullible sweet?  He's spent quite a lot of time exploring the garden the last couple of weeks.  After making the rounds, he comes to rest on the lowest branch of the olive by the patio, maybe five feet from where I sit.  He makes himself comfortable:

Lately he's been trying—successfully, so far as I can tell—to impress this little charmer:

A hummingbird needs some serious feeding to support all that activity.  Fortunately our hero is an enthusiastic, undiscriminating eater.  He has been taste-testing every blossom in sight—the 'Wild Thing' autumn sage (at last!), agastache, gaura, dwarf plumbago, 'Blue Twister' allium, arugula, basil, the primroses...  The primroses.  To the hummingbird, the primroses grow on what is apparently a primrose tree.  And there are two other trees just like it in the garden.  He checks them over regularly for flowers.  He doesn't find any.

What he does find is a lot of goldfinches.  Primrose-colored goldfinches.  In the "primrose" trees.  If they are primrose-colored in the primrose trees, they must be primroses, right?  You can practically see the "Q.E.D." flashing through his mind.  He dives in enthusiastically for his dinner.

And lo and behold, his dinner objects.  When I wrote last year about a hummingbird trying to feed off a goldfinch, I thought that was a fluke.  Apparently if you're a goldfinch it's just an occupational hazard.  As the hummingbird—not a quick learner—tries to sip at every single finch, each one swats him away with the kind of bored irritation you or I might use on a housefly.  But some of them are still sitting on those flexible primrose stems, which the swatting sets in motion.  Bob, bounce, flap, squawk.

They've been performing this routine at least once a day.  Sometimes the squawk comes before the flap; otherwise they don't really vary the schtick.  Is it wit?  Is it irony?  Is it subtlety?  Well, no.

But when you want a good laugh, sometimes you just can't beat a pratfall.

Pride and Prejudice

or On Pigging Out

You will never catch me saying in public that I like to eat pigweed.  Not even in private.  I don’t even think it in private. 

Burgundy Amaranth seedlings

On the other hand, I would love to drop into casual conversation, “Amaranth?  Oh, yes, one of my favorites.  Lightly sautéed with just a soupçon of garlic and a little spritz of lemon—or perhaps with a béchamel sauce—it’s too, too mahvelous, dahling.”
 
Amaranth.  The word just rolls off the tongue.  It evokes sundrenched climes, pungent spices, complicated and subtle cuisines.  Mmm.

redroot amaranth

Pigweed is (believe it or not) a weed that happens to be good fodder for pigs.  Amaranth, on the other hand, is a highly edible plant much loved in warm climates, its leaves eaten raw or cooked in stews, its seeds prized for their nutty flavor and nourishing goodness.  The seeds have a nearly complete amino acid profile, making amaranth a valuable source of protein—in fact, it boasts more protein than wheat.  The leaves are rich in more vitamins and minerals than you could possibly want to hear me enumerate (just trust me, they’re there).  Amaranth grows well in hot weather and needs minimal water, making it an invaluable summer green in a place like Albuquerque.  And as an added bonus, it’s an incredibly easy plant to grow.  It grows almost like a—well, like a weed.

By an astonishing coincidence, the Latin name for our local, native pigweed is Amaranthus retroflexus, otherwise known as redroot amaranth.  (Bet you saw that coming from a long way off, didn’t you, gentle reader?)  It flourishes in vacant lots and disturbed places and incites people to roll their eyes and make irritated sounds if it grows in their neighbors’ yards.

Tiger-Eye Amaranth seedlings

One of my neighbors, who is not overburdened with the domestic virtues (but who is otherwise a lovely person), has had it growing in her weed-patch of a yard for several years, where it casts its thousands of seeds far and wide.  I roll my eyes and make irritated sounds at it, and this summer, when I found it coming up in one of my containers, I came very close to uprooting it.  Fortunately, a little irony came along and smacked me between the eyes just in the nick of time.  The very day I was about to yank out the pigweed, I was also planning to plant Burgundy and Tiger-Eye Amaranth (note the capital letters—they make all the difference) from seeds I had purchased from a pricey little heirloom seed catalogue…
 

redroot amaranth

I decided to leave the redroot amaranth (as we shall now call it, though alas, without the capitals), and it’s actually turned out to be a beautiful plant.  Granted, it’s growing in good soil and getting regular water, so it’s probably more attractive than it would otherwise be, but its coloring and symmetry are wonderfully ornamental.  I just harvested six cups of leaves from it.  And dahling, sautéed with a soupçon of garlic and a little spritz of lemon, it was too, too mahvelous.  (But you will never catch me serving it with a béchamel sauce.)