Maybe the last plant I ever grew came from the husband of a school friend of my mum’s. He brought some stash up for us to share and I kept the one seed. At the time I had access to an overgrown backyard and behind a hillock formed of years of dumped mown lawn I grew single plants over a few seasons. I was lucky always getting female plants with seeds from here and there. And there was always concern over storm clouds and prayers before bedtime. This old guy came from the Riveriena and he’d got it from a next-door neighbour who had been in a lot of pain - apparently. And growing in one of Sydney’s older, down-at-heel western suburbs there was the need to take small samples prior to harvest in order to assess potency. So I grew it from delicate seedling and transplanted it under a mangled parrot-cage; old before I was born and discovered in my granddad’s shed. There was also the drying in a disused outhouse. I hammered nails into the walls and made an indoor string clothesline. When harvest time came I cut and tethered the individual colas to one another. During the last weeks I did the same thing with the branches. These were strung separated – one below the other – from nightfall to midday. From midday to nightfall pulled together to slow drying in the sunless heat of the long afternoons. All that was required was to even them up or pull one side down. After a week or so I hanged the material in a disused bathroom and the smell escaped through a window and down a windy lane. I used curing jars for about a month after that. At night I’d jar them up and leave them in the cool bath. About midmorning coffee time I’d re-hang them: sticky wet and sweet until they’d dried some or until the first night air.
Well, the last Green Goddess that spilled Her amrita on that sacred ground behind the grassy knoll was sickly pale and spindly. I fed it naturally, watered it with my own urine, and ‘I wept and fasted, wept and prayed’. I was about to pull the gangly thing out for fear of discovery and the conclusion it was male, but before I did I discovered my Princess was a sativa. I’d have never forgiven myself. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” So I began applying Flowering fertilizer and tying down the branches with plastic string and house bricks. I had heavy sticky buds.
Now this smoke seemed to mimic in a way different to its mother my very first prayer answered by Princess Sativa – memories came flowing and flooding my barren interior. The old husband of my mum’s school friend smoked a bit of that harvest. As he had arthritis I used to roll him joints he swore by. Off the train; six pack from the bottle shop he’d leisurely walk to our home alone, smoking in the shadows of the long late afternoon. One time there he thought he’d lost himself. Then he’d have a beer. And we’d talk – off and on – about this and that, snatches of life and soiled memories, close calls and synchronicities, the futility of politics and prior rumblings of revolution.
Other times, furtive cones just before he went out – walking stick in hand, lolly in the mouth, hat on head, joint in a tablet container and sunglasses. The pain was easing and life held some promise for him again. Apparently at home he didn’t get up until 10:30 and ate little if any breakfast. But while staying with us he was up bright and early, showered, shaved and shoe-shined so he could go on an early morning constitutional – which was just around the corner to buy the newspaper and to smoke a small joint on the way back, when there were few on the streets and no one would suspect an arthritic old codger casually watching the traffic whilst puffing away. Then he’d eat toasted cheese and poached egg with freshly groined pepper and a croissant with his pot-brewed tea. He was pretty quiet over those breakfasts. My mum’s long-suffering old school friend could not understand why every occasion he spent time with me her useless alcoholic husband’s life and personality changed – he’d put on weight, not drink as much or suffer the arthritis so bad.
Now as I said, this old guy came from the Riveriena. Go figure.
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Question
Al Fish
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose
(I think)
Maybe the last plant I ever grew came from the husband of a school friend of my mum’s. He brought some stash up for us to share and I kept the one seed. At the time I had access to an overgrown backyard and behind a hillock formed of years of dumped mown lawn I grew single plants over a few seasons. I was lucky always getting female plants with seeds from here and there. And there was always concern over storm clouds and prayers before bedtime. This old guy came from the Riveriena and he’d got it from a next-door neighbour who had been in a lot of pain - apparently. And growing in one of Sydney’s older, down-at-heel western suburbs there was the need to take small samples prior to harvest in order to assess potency. So I grew it from delicate seedling and transplanted it under a mangled parrot-cage; old before I was born and discovered in my granddad’s shed. There was also the drying in a disused outhouse. I hammered nails into the walls and made an indoor string clothesline. When harvest time came I cut and tethered the individual colas to one another. During the last weeks I did the same thing with the branches. These were strung separated – one below the other – from nightfall to midday. From midday to nightfall pulled together to slow drying in the sunless heat of the long afternoons. All that was required was to even them up or pull one side down. After a week or so I hanged the material in a disused bathroom and the smell escaped through a window and down a windy lane. I used curing jars for about a month after that. At night I’d jar them up and leave them in the cool bath. About midmorning coffee time I’d re-hang them: sticky wet and sweet until they’d dried some or until the first night air.
Well, the last Green Goddess that spilled Her amrita on that sacred ground behind the grassy knoll was sickly pale and spindly. I fed it naturally, watered it with my own urine, and ‘I wept and fasted, wept and prayed’. I was about to pull the gangly thing out for fear of discovery and the conclusion it was male, but before I did I discovered my Princess was a sativa. I’d have never forgiven myself. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” So I began applying Flowering fertilizer and tying down the branches with plastic string and house bricks. I had heavy sticky buds.
Now this smoke seemed to mimic in a way different to its mother my very first prayer answered by Princess Sativa – memories came flowing and flooding my barren interior. The old husband of my mum’s school friend smoked a bit of that harvest. As he had arthritis I used to roll him joints he swore by. Off the train; six pack from the bottle shop he’d leisurely walk to our home alone, smoking in the shadows of the long late afternoon. One time there he thought he’d lost himself. Then he’d have a beer. And we’d talk – off and on – about this and that, snatches of life and soiled memories, close calls and synchronicities, the futility of politics and prior rumblings of revolution.
Other times, furtive cones just before he went out – walking stick in hand, lolly in the mouth, hat on head, joint in a tablet container and sunglasses. The pain was easing and life held some promise for him again. Apparently at home he didn’t get up until 10:30 and ate little if any breakfast. But while staying with us he was up bright and early, showered, shaved and shoe-shined so he could go on an early morning constitutional – which was just around the corner to buy the newspaper and to smoke a small joint on the way back, when there were few on the streets and no one would suspect an arthritic old codger casually watching the traffic whilst puffing away. Then he’d eat toasted cheese and poached egg with freshly groined pepper and a croissant with his pot-brewed tea. He was pretty quiet over those breakfasts. My mum’s long-suffering old school friend could not understand why every occasion he spent time with me her useless alcoholic husband’s life and personality changed – he’d put on weight, not drink as much or suffer the arthritis so bad.
Now as I said, this old guy came from the Riveriena. Go figure.
Al Fish
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