Good Medicine

The veil is thinning, and the mood it elicits is palpable. It has been years and years since I have costumed and gone out as my former alter-ego. There is no alter-ego any more, just me, the weird oldish lady with sigil tattoos on her arms who coddles plants and grows 'weeds' in the yard because they make good tea, good medicine, or good scents. 

The tuberose, silly cows, have actually begun to bloom, kind of in a frantic way, quickly because the season of cold came upon us early. I am finally convinced that my absence from the garden for two weeks in July is the reason it gave up the ghost in the middle of summer. When I left, it was thriving and providing daily, but when I returned, it looked half-dead, even though I was given assurances that it was watered daily and even given organic nutrients. The fact is, these people here, despite their professed expertise with holding a hose, don't know how to water. A squirt was all that they were giving deeply rooted plants that required drenching in the over 100F weather. It took almost a month after my return to get some of them back to health, but most of them never fully recovered. I lost calendula, chives, all of the 22 tomato plants, Thai basil, the summer squash, pumpkins, and nearly lost the tuberose. 

On the other hand, it spurred me to get some of the potted plants into the ground so there would be less potential for this to happen to them in the future. The elderberry is in the dirt and thriving. A sweet potato that I tossed into the potato bin decided it wanted to grow, and now there are sweet potato vines creeping over the edges of the bin and spreading out across the yard. The celery, planted in late spring, is sprouting up and growing like weeds. And the two feeble pepper plants, a bell, and a Demon are throwing late season peppers where there were none before. So it wasn't a total loss.