There is Life Before Noon

I know you’re dying to find out how applying epsom salts to my plants worked out. This sort of news fascinates you. I am completely convinced that is why people come here every day.

Yesterday I bought 150 pounds of cow manure, plus 6 pounds of epsom salts. I buried my banana and plantain trees in manure, and I hit pretty much everything with the epsom salts. Sadly I put some on my sage, which I have now learned is a mistake. Oh well.

Epsom salts–I have to quit using the plural. Maybe it’s a Southern thing–are supposed to help plants grow bigger and greener, especially in certain parts of the country. And my citrus has been looking yellow, and so have my peppers. Which I have neglected. I need to move them into the ground so they won’t have to rely on my daily visits.

It looks like this stuff works. Big time. Today my tangerine and lime trees have a bunch of dark green leaves on them. It’s weird; some leaves are still yellowish, but some have greened up overnight. My older banana trees look dark, too. Maybe that’s from the fertilizer I applied a couple of days ago.

I believe the banana guy said the manure was supposed to produce something called humic acid, which kills nematodes. Whatever. I’m just glad to be done handling it. Cow manure is remarkably pleasant and inoffensive, as manure goes, but on the whole, I would prefer not to spend my days begrimed with it.

It may be time to consider composting. I hate doing anything hippies do, but Acidman used to do it, and he was no hippie. Although now that I think about it, he had certain hippie characteristics.

Supposedly one of the best things you can mulch live banana trees with is dead banana trees. And that’s convenient, because they only live a year, and they’re big, and you have to do something with them when they die.

It looks like the pups from my first pair of trees are going to be enormous. The first trees were maybe eight feet high, including everything. I have one now that’s considerably bigger and hasn’t even produced that thing at the top the bananas hang from. If they’re the variety the banana dude thinks they are, they’ll be anywhere up to 14 feet high. I may have to move one cluster; they’re getting so tall, they hit the tree above them, and they’re getting more shade than they should. Luckily, moving a banana pup is a ten-minute job.

He said that when banana trees are young, they look around to see what the deal is, and if the nutrition and water and sun are right, they decide to produce a lot of fruit. Otherwise, you get a long doodad with a few hands of bananas on it and then a big empty bit that hangs down below it.

I guess I sound like a banana fanatic, but I’m really not. It’s just that they’re cheap, easy to grow, very productive, and extremely useful. And they don’t take up much room. So why not have a few trees?

And talk about good for you. If, like me, you hate getting up in the morning and eating a big wad of refined carbs, but you want your fiber, bananas are a great thing. Without being too descriptive, let me just say they get the job done, and they don’t seem to give me the blood-sugar bounce and hunger rebound I sometimes get from cereal, and they’re way lower in calories. And yard bananas are much better than store bananas, which are mealy and low in flavor.

I’m not as excited about the health benefits of plantains. The ripe ones are pure sugar, and the green ones have a way of sitting in your stomach like a potato. But they’re very useful in the kitchen, and timing the ripeness of the ones from the store is hard, so it’s worth it to grow them.

The banana guy says my bananas are cooking bananas, so while you can eat them raw, they won’t fall apart when you heat them. He says they make great tostones. So I’ll have to try that again.

Okay, I just looked it up, and it turns out plantains have about 50% more carbs than bananas, per unit of weight. I guess my stomach does not lie. The fiber is comparable, but bananas have an edge. On the other hand, plantains have twice as much vitamin C.

Man, those cooking bananas may be the answer to a prayer. Not literally, but I may be able to make single-portion-size patacones with them, with less carbohydrate.

It has been an hour and a half since I checked the plants and trees; I was out there at something or other past eight. And I had been up for quite some time. I am training myself to get up early and prepare for the day, so I’ll be ready when the rest of the world comes to life. I may as well tell you about it. My Christian readers will like it.

My sister–I still cannot get over the fact that we’re getting along–turned me on to Perry Stone and his ideas about having private communion every day, and I gave it a shot, and I really enjoyed it. Some Christians think it’s a stupid idea; but at worst, it’s an excuse to spend time with God. It can’t possibly be a sin. If–when–I join a church, I’ll be doing it there, too, so I won’t be substituting wrong for right.

For a very long time, I’ve been spending an hour or so in prayer every morning, as soon as I get up. Literally lying in bed, because when I wake up, I always feel like I am fastened to the mattress. That’s not satisfactory; it’s no way to live. In the morning, you need to get your butt vertical. And a reader left a comment that made an impression on me; he said he knew a disabled woman who took communion every morning, and that it meant a great deal to her. So I thought maybe I should start rising early, doing communion, doing some study, and praying. In the quiet hours before the world can decide how, on a given day, it’s going to try to kill me and generally ruin my existence.

It’s a good deal all the way around. For one thing, I have to go to bed earlier. And in my opinion, nothing worthwhile happens after ten p.m. If you think about it, a lot of temptations and problems happen when people stay up late. If you don’t go to bars or clubs, and you don’t sleep around, and you don’t lie in front of the boob tube like a dead person, with your brain absorbing garbage, what are you doing late at night? Probably sleeping.

I believe today is my third day on the new schedule. I am determined to start getting up at 6 or 5:30; so far, I’ve managed 6:30. You really have to organize the last part of your evening if you want to get to bed early, and I haven’t gotten on top of it yet. Maybe tonight.

After my religious obligations are taken care of, I fix up the birds and go out and check the plants. My mother always said parrots were like babies; at their best in the morning. That’s when they want to talk and socialize. Plants are definitely at their best in the morning. It’s cool, and everything is fresh, and you get your first look at the changes that have taken place since the previous day.

It reminds me of Israel. I used to get up at 5 and get dressed and throw my grapefruit bag on my shoulder, and then I’d walk to the dining hall and hop on the wagon, and the tractor would start, and they’d take me and the other grapefruit guys on a winding ride to the fields, where we would find our ladders where we had left them, lying in the cool grass. And in the spaces between the rows of trees, the cubic-yard boxes we were to fill that day. Three per picker.

Now that I think about it, I have a grapefruit tree now! Not really the same, though. It’s five feet tall.

I better post this. It has been sitting on my screen for what seems like forever.