Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Hosta dreamin'
On my walk the other morning I passed in a tiny front yard on a built up city street a collapsed mass of frost-killed hostas, the leaves in a wet hummock of squash orange and pale yellow. Hosta rinds, they looked like, falling together in a thick regenerative mass. The veins on some were prominent, as though they did not wish to go gentle into that good winter.
And why, I ask, should they? Why should we expect plants to be happy about this state of declining affairs, all this shutting down and collapsing. We attribute resignation to our vegetable cousins, but I wonder. Maybe they get really pissed off as they feel the first dry leaf fall prematurely on a hot September day, and say to themselves - the perennials, anyway - goddamit here it comes again, that whole retreat to the root, tough it out to April thing. I am fed up to here with this.
And then, how do they break the news to the puzzled annuals? They flourish for a time and then die, and maybe they're snappier than Solomon, but he got to see a few springs, dint he?
And why, I ask, should they? Why should we expect plants to be happy about this state of declining affairs, all this shutting down and collapsing. We attribute resignation to our vegetable cousins, but I wonder. Maybe they get really pissed off as they feel the first dry leaf fall prematurely on a hot September day, and say to themselves - the perennials, anyway - goddamit here it comes again, that whole retreat to the root, tough it out to April thing. I am fed up to here with this.
And then, how do they break the news to the puzzled annuals? They flourish for a time and then die, and maybe they're snappier than Solomon, but he got to see a few springs, dint he?
