Reading the fruit

Ivanhoe is turning out to be a bit of a page turner. If only I weren’t so tired when I start to read it…usually late at night after all the possible things that could be done in that day are done. Sometimes I can only manage to turn the page once or twice. And then I fall asleep and wake or drop the book. Right now Prior Aymer & Isaac are prisoners and negotiating their freedoms in a way that reveals both the best and worst of their characters. Well-dialogued! Scott manages to keep quite a few balls in the air at the same time…so, lots of adventure and Ivanhoe has completely disappeared again (from the pages of the book). I have a strong sense that we don’t really need him. But maybe that’s the trick so that he can later appear and do something remarkable. Maybe he’s the one to catch all of the balls that are up now and resolve all of the plots. Now there’s a hero. I feel like I need someone like that in my life right now. Life right now is turning out to be a bit of a page turner.

And this includes the garbage. The talk of the town these days is maggots. Everybody’s talking about maggots. This is because it’s very hot and they just started green bin recycling here and we’re up close and contending with maggots directly and it’s just not nice. Even over lunch the other day, somebody asked me for advice on dealing with their maggots. Then there was an article in View Magazine about them called, “Maggots, they’re not that Bad” with tips and all. I’d already figured out that you had to line the bin with something like a paper bag in order to keep it cleaner and that you had to keep the bin outside and hose it out every week. So I felt gratified to read that this was indeed a sensible approach. I didn’t know about freezing stuff before you put it out or using vinegar and other cleaning products etc. My main contact with maggots prior to this experience is having them in fruit that we grow in the garden. We had, up until this past winter, a dwarf sour cherry tree in our front garden. People would always come by when the tree was fruiting and ask if they could pick or try a cherry and I would tell them that they were sour cherries but that they could try them. I’d warn them that some of the cherries had maggots in them. I appreciated that these people asked. Sometimes, I’d be in the house and I’d see people stopping to pick the cherries. Usually they’d have some kind of discussion among themselves about whether these were really cherries and whether they were good to eat. For those people I’d always say under my breath, ”yes, help yourself, a maggot guaranteed in every one” because they really were not the greatest cherries. The tree was not in good condition and had to be taken down this past winter. We haven’t replanted yet. We still have a mulberry tree in the front. It’s interesting that no one touches that tree though the fruit is much better than the cherries were. It seems, from questions I get asked, that most people don’t even know what the tree is or that the fruit is highly edible. I guess it’s a matter of knowing how to read the trees and read the fruit. I still see shrubs with tantalizing-looking berries and wonder if they’re edible…

I just read an article about maggot art. I really don't know what to say about this except that as I've been reading a lot about early legistation against animal cruelty, I have no doubt that I'd have to advocate for the maggots on this one.