Bad Hair Day

I'm told this plant in my yard is called a sago palm. When I was a teenager, we called that a bad hair day. Sago palms are all over the neighborhood. I'm not sure what's worse, when the yard guy cuts it back and it looks a mutilated stump that will never recover, or when it begins to sprout up through the middle in a vaguely obscene manner. Unbeknownst to me, there's a smaller one nearby, which I guess is what happens. I saw some younger neighbors trying to dig one out. They weren't having much luck.

Frankly, in my humble mid-west opinion, sago palms are not very pretty. Not at all elegant and going-with-the-flow like the palm. But I'm still in awe of all the plants that a previous owner-horticulturalist placed in our yard, as well as the sheer proliferation of all things green and colorful in the month of May here. Reminds me of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things or Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. Gilbert's book is an amazing read. How did the author even think of Alma Whittaker, a 19th century botanist? Plants and desire are one and the same, which can also be said of Kingsolver's powerful Prodigal Summer. If you haven't read either, consider at least one for a summer read! Have a paper fan nearby to cool yourself like a church lady when the doings of the proliferating wildlife spill over into human scenes. I just stumbled across a review of Gilbert's work written by Kingsolver! Voila! Validated. . . https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/books/review/elizabeth-gilberts-signature-of-all-things.html

All this to say that sometimes South Carolina, especially in the spring as the humidity builds, you suddenly become aware that all that color is the result of nature going to town in a bold way. It's why the flora will always be exotic for me (not unlike door handles in Europe). I appreciate both, but they remind me I'm living somewhere I'm not from.

Which isn't a bad thing--it's a great thing! I'm a proponent of living somewhere other than where you grew up. You can always go back. That said, if you choose to stay planted firmly where you are from for all the right reasons, than you know who you are. All power to you. I have lived in SC as long as I lived in the midwest town I grew up in, with a stint in Europe via Indiana and New York state in between. Every place was worth the living. Now I'm off to somewhere different, but I'm taking time to be here now. Even, maybe especially, on a bad hair day, you gotta be here now.