I’m a gardener now. I wasn’t before. well, being an urbanite its quite understandable. especially being from a brutal cold city most of my life before. my mother’s influence on this. her passion.

here in the south its sort of a part of life. and that’s one thing I do find quite nice about the locals here. they have an innate appreciation for aesthetics. one that city folk overlook + ignore usually. myself included at one point, when I was a serious brown thumb and would kill any house plant given me.

I’ve curated an interesting array of life. I have a banana tree now, Japanese sky pencils, snapdragons, abillia, leopard plants, purple hearts, silver ragworts, purple pear cactus (new!), elephant ears, solomon seals to name but a few and eucalyptus (an Aussie native). one Japanese maple (the other one died, sad). I also have bamboo in a container (my sister’s idea) and Japanese iris’s.

its indicative of this stupid state that despite knowledge of landscaping, they lack the artistry of it. they plant in pots and seldom in the ground. need to take some cues from Virginia which is a gorgeous place, and their gardens are vibrant + alive.

I just started planting some veggies + herbs in a box. they’re growing incredibly fast. better than I’d anticipated in fact: little gem lettuce, arugula, cilantro, dill, some other random shit I picked at from Walmart. eventually my goal is to drive out the mosquitos out of the yard, which is an ambitious thing. I have mojito mint patches planted throughout the yard. not sure if it does any good or not, but it does smell quite nice. makes me want to have a mojito actually. thats me now living lavita loca and getting pretty cray cray over here where I’m at.

the garden inspires my art + poetry. there is poetry in plants + flowers actually I didn’t know about. or the life that the garden attracts. from monarch butterflies to hummingbirds, spiders, dragonflies, you name it. at times I do have to keep vigilant for snakes, especially the dreaded copperhead. I found a decapitated one in my yard when I first moved in, and it was a big ass one at that. then there are deer, which is a nuisance in this state. and they carry ticks + disease and attract coyotes which are also normal here. nasty creatures. I actually saw one in Chicago once, right in middle of the park! Stupid city folk thought it was a lost dog lolz. after having been here I realize how estranged urbanites are, and detached from natural living. thats my word for it. people who aren’t estranged to nature.

deprogramming myself

after 1-2 yrs being uprooted, you begin to embark on a journey called discombobulated. for me, who is I admit most persnickety + fastidious ($5 word woot), you do a comparison analysis of what modern lifestyle inconveniences you are ‘suffering’ from. well you get tired of that shit rather quickly. no, they won’t have the same food options, or the same level of service you once had. people don’t know what good food or service is even about here much. and I found that I didn’t actually give two shits much anyways. service in Chicago was an illusion, it was undergrad students playing kiss ass to earn a decent tip so that some pretentious yuppies could feel special about themselves. I know, I did bartending + waiting throughout undergrad myself. a very respectable profession in the windy city actually.

I also had to grow accustomed to people here. they were a different breed entirely. aside from their horrific driving you could tell they grew up in a backwards ass place. they had a strange, stupid pride about having grown up here too. and a silent, subtle snobbery towards those that didn’t. if you were a yank (term for anybody not born + bred in NC) basically. if they don’t know your entire family history, for example they snubbed you. at best treated you like a stray dog. mainly b/c they couldn’t judge you or didn’t know shit about you. in this regard very strikingly similar to Koreans in a certain respect. after a time I found them to be naturally nosy, gossipy, judgemental and ignorant of life outside this state. they might of been somewhere else briefly, but only know very little of it. usually from military service or having had some remote work (which wasn’t actually remote remote, literal remote).