The Truth about Fairies

working with fairies

Being a fairy is no easy job, I tell you.  I know the truth. I have been one for years, and hated every moment. Every. Single. Stinking. Moment.

Oh, sure. Some fairies paint flowers, some water lovely green plants. Their primary job is to care for the planet, keeping all plants healthy. 

They flutter around with gossamer wings, whatever gossamer is.

Their soft skin shimmers with a fluorescent glow, their clothing is even cross-stitched with spider webs, and their boots are soft butterfly cocoons. 

They even have great hair. Damn them.

My job? My job??  I am the fairy in charge of slugs and carnivorous bugs.  

In fact, I am President of Chapter 207 Union of Scavenger Bugs. One assassin bug attacked me, put me in fairy hospital for a week.  Best week of my miserable life, the only best week.

If there were even one thing about my job that I loved, that would be wonderful.  But as it stands now, I live in fairy mud hell.


This a re-post-rewritten-upgraded from a "Wednesday Words" challenge for writers to see what they could do with the underlined words back in 2016.

I love taking an old post and changing it.  Also, it shows me where I was as a writer then.

The Disappointment of the Letter X

Source: dlritter

The Letter X

X...Y...Z   and then we are done!!

X is for Xanthium

My grandmother Amy Lucy Peck was a brilliant woman.  She surrounded herself with poetry books, biographies, theology, and books on science.

My Grandmother Amy, about 1916

She became a pharmacist in 1916, a difficult career move for a woman of that era.  When Grandma died in 1972, she left me a number of these collections.  Most interesting were the books on science.

In Gray's School and Field Book of Botany by Asa Gray, she assiduously (!) made notes in the pages and pressed leaves. A rather vague comment was on the page for "Xanthium".  Xanthium--such a lovely word! I thought. 

Source: caf.wva,edu

The definition of this delightful Xanthium is:

  A coarse and vile weed, with stout and low branching stems.
  
  Grows in barnyards and waste manured ground, about 1 to 2 inches high

  ....hooked leaves and the fruit is a burr fully 1/2" long, with 2 beaks at the apex

  ....numerous prickles with sharp bristles.

What!! What?? The Xanthium is a burr plant? The kind that catches on socks, pants, every fabric, and resists removal?

I was severely disappointed by this.  I am sure you are as well.

Please share your experiences and/or thoughts of the hated Xanthium.

Let's hear it for the....taproot!

Source: one heck of a taproot

The importance of the taproot is underrated.  Sure, carrots and radishes can hold their own in the garden, but what about the other taproots?  The unsung heroes of the lawn and garden?  Or, perhaps, what about the enemy taproots that fight and cling?

Such a strange topic, isn’t it?  This is my challenge for today: finding a topic that is unusual, while having meaning to all who have any sort of garden or lawn.

Many readers have amazing gardens.  Elephant’s Child amazes us with her photos and dedication to the beautiful garden she enjoys.  Gary Pennick’s delightful gnome and fairy grotto combines with some wonderful plants around his abode.  Inger is surrounded by desert growth which dazzles in the winter and spring.

And who can forget Joanne's sunflower at Cup on the Bus?  Talk about a taproot that really digs deep!

Please visit Joanne's site, highlighted above.

Native Americans appreciated the medicinal value of herbal taproots for their healing properties.

So why is the taproot so important?  And, for that matter, what is a taproot?

The taproot is the main root that anchors the plant.  From it dispatches secondary branch roots that seek out water and nutrients, as well as further anchoring the plant.  The taproot is vital to a plant’s survival.

Source

Whenever you are trying to pull a weed from the ground and having a hard time of it, it is the taproot’s fault. You aren't (or may not be) a weakling.  Just don't hurt your back.

There.  If you have read all this blog, then you have become all the more wiser.

Them that has...

Back in April, I helped Bright Eyes and Sunshine plant some tomato plants.  Honestly, I thought those plants didn’t stand a chance in the whole of God’s green Earth.  But, dang it, those eight plants are loaded with red and green tomatoes.

Such promises!

So simple, a child could do it!

I, on the other hand, bought a “Topsy-Turvy” tomato planter, and prided myself on the choice of an ‘Heirloom’ tomato plant, expecting a massive overload of tomatoes every day.

Ha! Ha! Ha!  My tomatoes!

So very nummy!

Ha, I say.  Ha.  I have had maybe ten tiny cherry tomatoes, but the rest of the plant is empty.  It did not help that I discover one of those tomato caterpillar worms chomping away at it. 

It did not help that the sun wasn’t adequate, since we could hang the thing in only one spot, which gets sun from 2 to 8 p.m.  It also has not helped that I got fed up with the care it needed.

Art mimics life.

With my granddaughters’ plants, the tomatoes sit happily in sun all day, get lots of water (the girls love to use the hose, any excuse will do), and had less expectations.

The girls love to take me out to see their plants, loaded nearly to maximum with lovely big tomatoes (Marion and Big Boy brands).  “Here, Grandma.  You can have some.  We have plenty,” they say to me.  I tried to show them how wonderful it is to wash the tomato off at the hose, and then eat the tomato warm from the garden, just like an apple.

All I got from them was, “Oh, we really don’t like tomatoes unless Mommy cuts them up in a salad.  Take all you want.”

Why don't I get any tomatoes?!

This weekend I will go and buy a flat of tomatoes, a cheap planter like I gave them, and set those things out.  Dang it.  I may even get some tomato food and a natural worm repellant.  I will get some tomatoes eventually.

So it is true, that old saying:  Them that has don’t care.  Them that don’t, care.  I have no idea where that gem came from, but it wasn’t from me.