I found a little serpent in the driveway of the farm last time we went out to walk the paths. The Catholic lawyers ran him over, and he was good and dead by the time I discovered his carcass lying still in the dirt.

No more than nine inches total, just a baby probably, a life cut short by an early-model Florida-plated Chrysler 300. Florida. Chrysler. Catholics. It does not get any worse than that.

But he was so near-intact that I thought maybe I could preserve him and put him on a shelf for looking and wonder and study. I brought him home and put him in a tupperware to bake him dry out in the sun.

Callous as hell, it probably seems, but really, I’m mostly sure he won’t really mind. And too, my goal is reverence, not profanity. Being as spirit-forward as he is, he can probably read my meaning better than most of you meatsacks.

There's a chance I may still get into heaven yet.

]]> http://stephenwarrington.com/2010/09/how-to-dry-a-dead-snake/feed/ 0 http://stephenwarrington.com/2010/09/sorry-toots-me-and-cornus-kousa-got-a-little-thing-going/ http://stephenwarrington.com/2010/09/sorry-toots-me-and-cornus-kousa-got-a-little-thing-going/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:50:34 +0000 steve http://stephenwarrington.com/?p=777

Mercy child, the geometry of these fruits has got me all sortsa intuned to a spilling-seed-into-the-soil, last-month-of-the-summer last-ditch effort at monoecious reproduction. So hot and yet so smart: so warm and curved and beckoning and still so cold and sharp and hard. Gracious y’all, the intensity of the ambiguity that this fruit pops and locks has got me more than just a little bit flustered.

cornus kousa fruit in varying states of undress

Dogwood, you have been inaptly named. You are a harder-to-hold pretty, meticulous, and remote kitty than a dirty sloppy hairy best friend. A change is in order, if I may be so bold. May you roll henceforth: Kittywood.

My two new mangosteen trees arrived from Hawaii today, looking wonderful. I had pretty low expectations for the size and health of the plants after all my searching and researching. Not only are they nigh-impossible to grow in the US, it seems they’re also pretty hard to come by.

Most of the tropical fruit tree nurseries I’ve been dealing with don’t carry it. And I was nearly tempted by an ebay seller who ships them from Hawaii bare-root, but I bought a rambutan from him a couple weeks ago, and it now looks like death warmed over — I’m not even sure it’s alive — so I figured there was a better route and kept looking.

I finally found another grower, Hula Brothers in Hawaii, selling them for $100/ea. or two for $150, shipping included. I figured what the heck, I’ll most likely lose one, might as well get two, improve my odds. I kept checking the door all day today, and they finally came at five pm. They were the best-looking plants I’ve gotten in the mail yet.

That’s probably a five-year-old tree there. Which means just five or six more years until I have a chance at some fruit.

It takes ten years for a mangosteen tree to fruit in favorable conditions, favorable being ultra-tropical always moist and never-lower-than-eighty-degrees kinda weather, preferably on a riverbank. There’s only one known instance of anyone getting one to fruit above the 200th parallel. Some feller in S. Florida got lucky. But I’m going to mimic Thailand/Puerto Rico in a greenhouse, and I’m going to get it to fruit. Mark my words. Check back in six years re: deliciousness.

The fruit is a beaut is the reason for my mania. I have never seen anything so pretty that tastes so good.

Dear universe,

I am trying to find a resource for tracking rainfall levels in ann arbor.

thank you in advance,

steve

she’s assures me it will make people take her more seriously.

My new favorite word:

Bowdlerize:
1 : to expurgate (as a book) by omitting or modifying parts considered vulgar
2 : to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content

Etymology: Thomas Bowdler, English editor (Bowdler published a cleaned-up version of Shakespeare’s works so tame even the ladies and kids wouldn’t read it).

As in:I had to download the explicit version of Jay-Z’s Dirt Off Your Shoulder since the bowdlerized radio edit was so cracker jacks.

I use pretty paper parasols to keep the sun off the tender little things just transplanted.

Everything, it turned out, is not all right. In fact, if you can believe it, my thumbnail fell off. I really thought it wouldn’t. Then I thought it would. Then I didn’t. Then I knew it would.

I updated Courtney periodically, the forecast ponging back and forth every few days, “I think it’ll stay” one day, “It’s definitely coming off” the next. And so she made fun of me, as she should have. “Keep me updated.” she teased after a month of wishy-washy prognostication. I started referring to it as “my journey” a week or so ago. There must have been something more profound than either she or I knew afoot to put a label on it like that.

And there was. Because it came off, (Or I cut it off. Or most if it, the part that was hanging from a corner, the part that was going to catch on something and make trouble for me. It had been pushed up by the new nail enough so that I knew the tender bits underneath was safe. It was just a matter of clearing the debris.), and when it did it was obvious, fingernails are just one more window into the soul. Add it to the eyes, tack it on to the mouth, that pearl-hard shell of shiny keratin is a prosopopoeiatic mirror. Remove it, and you’re looking at a zombie, a soulless mask, a face with no sense.

Lamp it yourself, nerds:

I think the whole Internet memed the F$@! out of this like all 2009 and $*#t, but I just got hepped to it, and can’t resist passing it on to all you other squares out there.