Dingo the Dissident
THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .
My window-sill this morning.
On the right, a flower of one of the hardiest of the many species of Caralluma,
a succulent which gives off a smell of rotten meat to attract certain flies and wasps.
2 comments:
wonderful!
You are wise to have this one outdoors. On visiting an eccentric friend of ours in the Cochise Valley of southern Arizona, where in the middle of a wide desert just east of the beautiful Chiricahua Mountains, he had bought ten acres and planted a forest of different species of oak trees, now joined by invasive tall bamboo (as of our last visit in January of 2014), we saw he had among other oddities (like a solar stove, outdoor compost toilet, and open-air shower) a sun porch attached to the back of his cabin, the entire floor surface of which was filled with a species of these Caralluma. They did not look as healthy as yours, nor were the flowers as well formed, but our host was very proud of their effect: they reeked, filling the air of the glass porch, with a sickly sweet smell of rotting meat as if twelve rodents were decomposing. He was a fruitarian then, supplementing his diet with nuts, wanting to be totally self-sufficient on his own land. With my rapacious, reportorial curiosity, I silenced my inevitable question: "Why indoors and why next to the open wall to your bedroom?" I wanted to honor his eccentricity, which was daring and charming, although horrendously self-absorbed.
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