Asakiyume mita

It's cold here.

The water in the marsh froze clear--where it's deep, you can see all the growing things, the mud, the bubbles ... the tossed cans... frozen in it. In shallower places, you can see the marsh grass is frozen in it and on it, held down by hoarfrost stitchery.



On the paths in the woods, water in the soil has frozen in the formation known in Japan as 霜柱 (shimo bashira), frost pillars. Sometimes they look like ribbon candy, other times like tiny stalactite formations, and other times, as here, like ghost moss.



( Here's a microfiction from a couple of days ago )

I wrote a microfiction about Icarus the other day:

Sent out to gather feathers for his father's project, Icarus only picked up ones that birds had shed--he never harmed a single bird. And he learned the birds the feathers came from: osprey, gull, raven, jay, starling.

Later, when he flew too close to the sun and the wax melted, when the feathers were coming out one by one, when he was falling, the birds remembered his careful ways and came to rescue him, in flocks and bands and murmurations.

I also tried a pawpaw the other day, following fast on the heels of sovay. It was delicious! It reminded me a little of an Amazonian fruit I had, caímo-the same texture, the same big seeds. But the pawpaw's flavor and scent was all its own. Once upon a time I wanted to grow a pawpaw, but gave up the idea because my yard is small and already has as many trees as I wanted in it. But now I'm rethinking that. I've saved the seeds. The internet tells me they need to chill out in the fridge for 80–120 days, so I have washed them, wrapped them in a wet paper towel, placed them in a plastic baggie, and put them in the fridge. The last time I tried something like this was in 2006, when I tried growing Khazak apples. I ended up with two viable plants that made it past the one-year mark, but then something ate them. Ah, life.

Let's see how I go with pawpaws.

Pineapple
I discovered that a pineapple top I'd tossed in the compost bin was looking very healthy and green, not at all like something that was falling apart to make way for other life. Checking online, I found that yes, pineapple tops grow new pineapples.

You know what this means? I can have my very own bromeliad! I can have another ungainly, climate-inappropriate plant! In three short years, I might harvest my own pineapple.

So I have transplanted it.

( photos under the cut )

pepper
My Amazonian pepper, which I nursed along through the winter despite houseplant-plaguing little bugs, has come back with a vengeance this hot, wet summer. Look at all its peppers! They are about the size of the top part--the fingerprint part--of my middle finger. They're not ripe yet. When they're ripe, they'll be orange. And hot!



The word for hot pepper in Ticuna is meë.

charmed
Today, the prompt word for the daily prompt thing I'm doing was "charm"...

I am magnificent in infinitesimality.
I am a tiny fragment, but I partner--elegantly.
Come to me for symmetry.
I have been called "a magical device to avert evil,"
for I prevent unwanted decay in the physicists' theories.
Come to me for blessings.
I am not up, or down, and there is nothing strange about my nonduality.
You may find me enjoying my life in an accelerator near you--it's very brief, but charmed.



(Charm quark I do not understand the physics of any of this, but I do love the lingo and the quotes.)