Resilience

A fair question Baby Sister asked: What’s with the PLANTS? Her emphasis, to be sure. The inquiry was rooted in my potting up 5 jade boxwood she ripped untimely from the womb of the earth—there a Macbeth reference, more specifically Macduff—and sent to me in a plastic garbage bag via our younger brother. 

They spent two days, bagged as it were, under a crape myrtle. The two on the right have been subsequently up-potted, the leaning mini-tower of boxwood is now in its final death throes. But, 4 of the 5 look to be candidates for bonsai—well, at least pre-bonsai. Nor would I choose the word topiary. Many folks here in South Carolina understand my reluctance to use that term: see Pearl Fryar in Bishopville. 

Let’s get an obvious gag set aside. If a boxwood limb falls in the hedge…?

So, the plant thing. 

I have said before plants make me laugh. Not fall on the floor, tears streaming laughs, but more wry chuckles, head-shaking guffaws, often those of the how did that happen variety.

My largest tomato plant this year is a volunteer I moved when about 6” tall. It promptly fell over but 3 days later rallied from forces within, and now a massive plant dominating a 4’x8’ bed. Makes me laugh. 

And the 2 rescue hydrangeas beneath that tomato jungle, they’ll survive, no doubt in my mind. 

Resilience.

Cut a Bradford pear to the ground, cut a Natchez crape to the ground, watch an oak tipped on its side by a hurricane, you’ll see. Watch perennial sunflowers come back from over-wintering—amazing, to me. Cue guffaws.

Just spend some time in the woods or walk along a rocky ledge or study beach dunes, you’ll see. Stuff wants to live. The biological imperative, I suppose.

Cracks in a sidewalk.

Not just flora, of course, but fauna, too. I’ll throw us into that second pile. From Savissivik to Tamdjert, from Warroad to Cocodrie, we survive—and we laugh.

Why? Maybe for a simple fact, we live.

Shoot the Moon

Were I Master of the Universe, Homo sapiens would be quarantined to their home planet with a traveling ceiling of 29,000’ above the surface. 

A precedent does exist for my conjuring that grandiose title. Several times in my teaching career, students brought up the notion of my candidacy for public office—the 2000 run for the presidency even produced a campaign poster.

Of course, I was then and still remain imminently unelectable—proudly so, I would add. However, I glommed onto the M of U role, offering, threatening, to straighten up some things within two weeks. 

No doubt former students, former colleagues, former administrators, friends, and family cringe at the thought. Okay, everyone I’ve ever known, fair enough.

Perhaps some savvy reader notes the ceiling I would impose is well below commercial flight paths. Well, that’s too damn bad.

Adventurous types might start whining about Everest’s summit being just 29' above the forbidden zone.

Well, that’s too damn bad, too.

In the greater cosmic scheme, Earthlings, y’all are grounded. No orbital flights, no satellites, no rockets, no space probes, no return missions, nada.

It’s all CGI now, kiddos.

But breathe freely again, of course I will not be, have never been, the once and future Master of the Universe.

Okay, fine. Then how about this gambit. I’ve got dibs on shipping all our garbage to the moon. Yep, all gazillion gazillion tons of the plastic, the glass, the metals, the clothing, the paper, shoes, broken toys, books—sadly, books—cars, cans, cast iron skillets. Radioactive material! Our refuse, our rubbish, the flotsam and jetsam our civilization generates.

Just payloads propelled by mighty rockets and gone. No permits, no property rights, no borders, just crash land the whole thing Anywhere Moon. Craters to contain our crap for time immemorial.

Harvest Moon, Blood Moon, Crow Moon?

Garbage Moon.