the sourcerer: Curcuma Longa.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Curcuma Longa.

Curcuma.
The name is a caress.
In all the years that I've been growing Turmeric from rhizomes, I've never had a plant that bloomed.

But look!

It snuck up on me - the buds are shy and initially only visible from one side.

After a day or two, as if that wondrous bloom was not enough, from each furled green bract popped a fanged yellow dragon.
Hermaphrodites I am told.

I can't wait to see what happens next...

4 comments:

Marie said...: Lovely. The rhizomes Don gave my mom had grown, the last time I saw them (I repotted them, in Constantia). I was very jealous. You've inspired me to go downtown to get some fresh ones to see if they'll grow indoors.; January 27, 2015 at 9:55 PM
dinahmow said...: After last week's 300+mm I'm hopeful that my various curcuma will pop up again...; January 28, 2015 at 12:34 AM
the sourcerer said...: Marie, I have grown ginger indoors before, so ....
and Dinah - "various".... I noticed when I did an image search that there are different varieties - I'm intrigued.; January 28, 2015 at 10:31 AM
Rosie said...: WOW!!; January 28, 2015 at 8:32 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.