Too Close For Comfort

MY INDOOR DENIZENS are foregoing social distancing just to bask in the sun on this backyard beach--er, nursery. It's quite a sight while I do horticulture work and polish repurposing the garage, while The Lettermen croon "A Summer Place" on my wife's radio. Are we really back?

The structure was retired from its original service as a garage, fenced off from the driveway, a private door cut on its side wall, and its window widened to convert it into a writing shed, still in progress under the watchful eye of a fragrant linden tree.

Group shot, clockwise from the rear: (1) the first F. philippinensis (jaundiced from having been indoors since last fall), (2) the latest F. philippinensis with an aerial root being trained soilward using an orange drinking straw, (3) the aged and pricey F. microcarpa with a branch being converted into an aerial root using a water bottle filled with soaked sphagnum moss, (4) the popular F. microcarpa ginseng (also called "mallsai"--go figure), and (5) the young tiger bark F. retusa, in training and experimental restyle. Joining the gang are two other Mindoro denizens in welcome company: (6) sampalok (Tamarindus indica) and (7) kalimumog, tsaang gubat or Fukien tea tree (Ehretia microphylla), both newly repotted.

The young tiger bark F. retusa out of the box.

The trunk was made horizontal by digging up and exposing the main root and propping it on a rock.

Wired and styled with new exposed roots.

The Death Of A Toad (Take N)

RE-REWORKED THIS OLD sonnet for this guy who breathes through the skin. Two viruses together: COVID 19 and systemic racism.

The Toad’s Elegy

What a season this is to be described:

the air is toxic, and noose poles arrive.

Shall I stay at home, as dumb as a fish

copped out because the sun air fries the skin,

no donned N95 to mask its hiss

exhaling voodoo that poisons the rain?

Let at breakneck speed the deluge run wide,

slay a sun breached by the mirroring tide,

genuflect before the crown, this burnt flood,

detox amphibious hearts fed with foul blood.

I shall wear this voice until it is gone,

hip hop on the death of a jaundiced sun.

I shall wear this hide that gifts me with breath,
kill with warts those viruses from the wreath.

Life In The Time Of COVID

TESS HAD TO GO BACK cutting hair when the virus struck and my Chinese barber closed shop in Elmhurst (she now avoids Elmhurst like the plague--ouch!-- including Chinese supermarkets and Pinoy friends she normally visits).  So she gave me this haircut to prove her styling prowess, the one she used on her visiting father (who happened to sport an easy Kojak style) before he passed on. Meanwhile, Andrea Wigert, matriarch of Wigert's Bonsai in Fort Myers, FL sent me this picture of the new Ficus philippinensis pre-bonsai, a diamond-in-the-rough, that I ordered from her before she shipped it from her nursery last Memorial Day weekend.  As soon as it arrived and was by my former garage, Tess volunteered to style it her way, and I must say my new pre-bonsai doesn't look too bad at all. Good job, Mom! Just wait till she gets it repotted and those nebari roots controlled.