Asakiyume mita

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.)

I saw these fun salsa labels last time I was at my dad's. They were in a little corner deli in his town. I would read a graphic novel illustrated by whoever did the designs, a graphic novel about Hot Mama, Mr. Medium, Mild Child, and Auntie Verde. Hot Mama is a single mom, an artist and adventurer. Mild Child is her kid. Auntie Verde works for a big company and is always getting her sister and nephew out of fixes, but she's not really a corporate type: she loves to garden and knows the names of all the birds. Mr. Medium is a mysterious visitor to their town. He seems to have Powers. But what are his intentions??

The power of capsaicin will of course be key. Maybe each chapter will feature a different chile pepper. Like the Peruvian Aji Charapita pepper, which I think is what I brought back with me from the Amazon.

Click through to see the picture larger and zoom in on all the cute details. See the pepper on each of their outfits?



ETA: The scenarios I've imagined for them are pret-ty close to what Larry's Salsa has on their website (excepting Mr. Medium, who is much less ambiguous in their telling). Check them out HERE.

OMG, and the company was based in the town I grew up in! But the cute labels date from when the elderly founder sought an investor, himself being 72 and wanting a break. But the investing company is fairly local too, so that's good. Read more in this trade magazine article, where you can see the much more staid original labels.

I did a chalk drawing of an angel offering an apple to a fox (... if foxes can crave grapes in Aesop, then they can be offered apples)--I had the angel leaning out of a sky window because I love that conceit. The fox came out VERY wonky in the body, but I like his face.

The feet belong to the next-door neighbor girls






I finished right before a good, drenching rain, so now the angel is a ghost:



In other remarkable news, a plant grew in the pot I had planted calendulas in. It looked vaguely familiar--some kind of nightshade-family plant, but what? Not a potato; you can't accidentally plant a potato. The leaves were wrong for tomato, and they didn't match up with common nightshade that I see around. They were fuzzy and lovely. Recently it got buds, and finally a flower, and with THAT I was able to take to the internet.





It seems to be Physalis peruviana, known in English as Cape gooseberry or golden berry, and first encountered by me in Colombia under the name of uchuva. It was available as a compote every morning for breakfast where we stayed, and I bought a bag of them at the market the day we left.

It's a kind of ground cherry. A more common-for-here ground cherry is Physalis pruinosa--in fact, the first place we lived in western Massachusetts had those growing wild. And the flowers look pretty much identical--it would make more sense for P. pruinosa to pop up unannounced in my flowerpot than a plant that's native to Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

But the local ground cherry ... grows along the ground. It doesn't stand up straight. This is standing up, proud and tall--which is what P. peruviana does. And although it's not ***native*** to this area, it's **cultivated** all over the place.

Either way, it's edible. But I'm going to think of it as P. peruviana, and look forward to some home-grown uchuvas at some point.

Never mind: I remembered that the plant we had at the other house was a "clammy ground cherry," and THAT plant's botanical name is P. heterophylla and guess what. THAT is what I have. It stands up tall, too. Ahh, well. This one is edible too! Will see if I get any clammy ground cherries ;-)

It's cold today; the heater is chugging along, making my living space warm, and I feel so grateful. Outside, in the nearby city, the sparrows by the bus station are fluffed up like little feathered pokéballs. They're very tame; people feed them crumbs and things, either by accident or on purpose.

Around here people say "on accident," to go with "on purpose." How about the other way? By accident or by purpose.

Safe from the cold are these loquat trees I grew from seeds that 88greenthumb sent me. I've never eaten the fruit of the loquat--have any of you?





Their leaves are generously large and a rich green color, and apparently you can make a tea out of them, but I won't, because my trees are up against enough difficulties, growing in pots and kept indoors for half the year, without having their leaves plucked.

In China, and then by extension in Japan, the tree is called pipa (biwa in Japanese), like the instrument--maybe because the fruit look like it?

a pipa (source)

white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda)

It's in the woods where I walk, and I tried twice to photograph it, so startling with its white berries on their purple-red stalks, but my pictures came out blurry. But here is what Google offers:





The plant is also called doll's eyes, for the berries' creepy resemblance to the same. Eyes--poisonous eyes--growing on a red stalk. Yes, the berries are the poisonous part. Wikipedia says, The berries contain cardiogenic toxins which can have an immediate sedative affect on human cardiac muscle tissue ... Ingestion of the berries can lead to cardiac arrest and death.

So don't eat them. Have an autumn raspberry instead.