Long-Planned
Apr. 24th, 2006 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormOne Man's Trash
I work one day a week outdoors at a hotel, doing their plants. I do a lot of deadheading, I control pests, I pinch and shape, I weed, and when it's called for I turf out everything and put in new stuff. In the fall, like everywhere else in the city, we put in pansies, tulips, daffodils, and english daisies.
In the summer, there are fantastic begonias, osteospermum, etc.
When I first started, last summer, I kept looking into the trash can. The begonias were these amazing fruit colours, and there I am, pulling off the bright flowers and throwing them in to make something very like a kaleidoscope: changing every time you look at it, and very very pretty. And of course, I kept wanting to explain this to people: I work with flowers all day, I'd say, or you would not believe how beautiful a pile of flowers with fresh dew is.
Right now it's pansy season, as I said. This is what my trash can looked like last week:
Then I went downstairs and did the tulips:
Then I went upstairs and trimmed the tips off the pansies, to keep them bushy. Now, I want to tell you some facts about pansies. Namely, they're edible, especially teh tender fresh green tips. If you were to start up a really high-end salad greens business, you might put pansy tips and a couple of flowers into your mix. They're good spring greens. So, with that in mind:
I want to take them home and eat them and give them to my friends, but... they're from a hotel. People smoke and throw their cigarette butts on these plants. They puke on them. They likely piss on them. I wear latex gloves to touch the soil. Some days I find underwear in the flower beds. Understand, this is a high class hotel, etc, but this stuff still happens. So... all those calories, in the trash.
Maybe someday they'll get compost.
I work one day a week outdoors at a hotel, doing their plants. I do a lot of deadheading, I control pests, I pinch and shape, I weed, and when it's called for I turf out everything and put in new stuff. In the fall, like everywhere else in the city, we put in pansies, tulips, daffodils, and english daisies.
In the summer, there are fantastic begonias, osteospermum, etc.
When I first started, last summer, I kept looking into the trash can. The begonias were these amazing fruit colours, and there I am, pulling off the bright flowers and throwing them in to make something very like a kaleidoscope: changing every time you look at it, and very very pretty. And of course, I kept wanting to explain this to people: I work with flowers all day, I'd say, or you would not believe how beautiful a pile of flowers with fresh dew is.
Right now it's pansy season, as I said. This is what my trash can looked like last week:
Then I went downstairs and did the tulips:
Then I went upstairs and trimmed the tips off the pansies, to keep them bushy. Now, I want to tell you some facts about pansies. Namely, they're edible, especially teh tender fresh green tips. If you were to start up a really high-end salad greens business, you might put pansy tips and a couple of flowers into your mix. They're good spring greens. So, with that in mind:
I want to take them home and eat them and give them to my friends, but... they're from a hotel. People smoke and throw their cigarette butts on these plants. They puke on them. They likely piss on them. I wear latex gloves to touch the soil. Some days I find underwear in the flower beds. Understand, this is a high class hotel, etc, but this stuff still happens. So... all those calories, in the trash.
Maybe someday they'll get compost.
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Food for thought
Date: 2006-04-25 03:24 am (UTC)Re: Food for thought
Date: 2006-04-25 03:27 am (UTC)Re: Food for thought
Date: 2006-04-25 04:40 am (UTC)Re: Food for thought
Date: 2006-04-26 02:53 am (UTC)Re: Food for thought
Date: 2006-04-26 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 04:47 am (UTC)I love peppery nasturtiums :)
Date: 2006-04-25 05:22 pm (UTC)Re: I love peppery nasturtiums :)
Date: 2006-04-26 04:47 am (UTC)Re: I love peppery nasturtiums :)
Date: 2006-04-26 04:47 am (UTC)