Harvest, Schmarvest

A few posts back, I was reveling in the large crop on my orange tree.  Now, I revel not.  The oranges were worthless: lots of seeds, lots of pulp, hardly any juice.  On the plus side, they were easy to peel - a plus that rapidly became meaningless as, one after another, we tossed the peeled fruit into the trash.

What happened?  T'was not the tree.  T'was not the bee.  T'was me.  I selected the wrong kind of citrus for my private one-tree orchard.  Algerian Clementines are self-fruitful but produce better crops if pollinated.  But, if pollinated by anything other than another Algerian Clementine, you get what we got: yuck fruit.

The tree blossomed profusely, smelled delightful, attracted lots of bees.  Ah, but who knew where those bees had been?  What were the odds that every one of those little fellas showered the night before, removing all traces of pollen from their prior day's work, that they then spent the night in isolated clean rooms away from their unwashed hive-mates, that their first stop of the day was an Algerian Clementine across town, after which they made a non-stop beeline to my place?  Any bettors?

Bees don't care where they get their nectar.  Got flowers?  I'll be right over.  Bunch of sluts.  Kinda reminds me of myself in my younger days.

Yesterday, the orange tree became history.  It's gone: cut up, rooted out and trash piled.  The pretty, aromatic blossoms alone didn't justify the special care and feeding I was providing.  In its place is a pygmy date palm.

Pygmy Date Palm

It grows slowly to about 9' tall and wide.

Will it actually produce dates?  

Don't know.  No pygmies around here to eat 'em, anyway.

Wow!

A pleasant memory of growing up in rural northern Minnesota, was seeing the northern lights. They appeared rarely but when they did, we'd all rush outside to view the constantly-changing, colorful display.  We'd stand there, awestruck, and exclaim, "Wow!"

Last night  at dinner this question came up: are there southern lights, as well?  Indeed there are. They're called aurora australis; northern lights are aurora borealis.

I thought the northern lights would be excellent subject matter for a painting and started working on it last spring, thinking I'd finish it before we left LHC for the summer.  No way.  After 3 abortive attempts, I set it aside.  Six weeks ago, I started over and screwed it up a couple more times before finally creating something I liked enough to hang on the wall.

Wow!

Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 30"

Mike Delaney

December, 2014

Guineas

Trish started it.  She said she was reading a book I might enjoy, said the setting was New Guinea.  I'm no geography expert but vaguely recalled there being several colonies or countries called New Guinea.  I asked Trish, "What's with all the New Guineas?  And, why isn't there an Old Guinea?"  There had to be an old one, couldn't be new ones if there wasn't an old one.

I brought up the Guinea subject later, at Gary and Nancy's, with Terry and Lisa in attendance.  I said there was a Guinea in South America and that Devil's Island was part of it.  Devil's Island was an infamous French penal colony, the setting for the movie Papillon.  Gary agreed but ours was the minority opinion.  We were partially right: Devil's Island is indeed off the coast of South America but it was part of French Guiana, not Guinea.  It's now the independent country of Guyana.

French Guinea was the first colony to bear the Guinea name.  Located in West Africa, it is now the independent country of Guinea.  Other areas of Africa were claimed by other European countries and named Guinea, some with the 'New' prefix, some not: Dutch Guinea, German Guinea, Spanish New Guinea, Portuguese New Guinea, etc.  The British minted gold coins (from 1663 to 1814) that were called guineas because the gold came from the Guinea area of West Africa.

The setting in Trish's book is the island of New Guinea, which used to be called British New Guinea; it's located north of Australia.  One online source said there 13 different places named Guinea at one time or another.  Currently, there are four: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea. Good grief!

My first ever exposure to the term 'guinea' was guinea hens.  My uncle had a few, very ugly, very noisy.  He also had geese, nasty buggers that chased me when I was a little kid.

PS: Papillon starred Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen and they did a great job of acting.