5 minutes on growing

[the parameters:  gypsymama provides the topic; we write unedited for five minutes and stop no matter what when it is finished.  today's topic:  growing]

I'm thinking of that caterpillar again.  The one that, this morning, before we were up, cracked open the chrysalis and crawled into a new life.  I'm wondering, again, if its old caterpillar self was bewildered at the bright wet burden unfolding behind.  Did it rejoice in the color, the delicate unfurling proboscis it boasted, antennae fingering fresh air?

Can a caterpillar puzzle?

Can it count loss?  Did it dread the future, dragging those wings it wouldn't know could soar?  So slowly they dried.  Did they lighten, then, to spread for the first, unfolding finest velvety black and vermilion and cobalt?

I never saw it leave the leaf; the rain started and we left it, a windowscreen to shield it from the torrent.

[time's up.  is it cheating to add a picture now?  hope not].

green things

It all started innocently enough with a banana plant. A good houseplant, we thought, and put it on a sunny windowsill with some optimistic seedlings (a guava on the left, I believe, and a papaya on the right). They prospered, and soon had outgrown a mere windowsill.








So we planted them outside, above our garden, with castor beans and sweet potato vines and cannas for company. They seemed to like it.







They grew so big that we never could pot them up again (although we did manage to overwinter a few, "dormant"). Fortunately there are always enough "pups" -- banana babies -- to keep us in winter greenery.




Here is that same papaya, at the end of summer 2005 (no, it did not survive our zone 6 winter):