Any worldly horthead will know that Acacia is a relentless species that threatens to inherit the Earth, an invasive plant with low standards that's typically bereft of structural interest.
But then there's Acacia pravissima, one of Portland's great de rigeur plants. Two major reasons for that: #1 is undoubtedly its shovel-shaped phyllodes, "flattened leaf stalks which appear like and serve the same function as leaves." (RHS). Which explains its common name, wedgeleaf wattle; to see its flat little arrowhead non-leaves is to covet them.
Reason #2 is my buddy Sean Hogan of Portland's Cistus Nursery who has made this crowd-pleasing and fast-growing shrub easy to buy.
And, replace. Which is very likely what I'm heading for if the incredible snowstorms of the last few days turn into the final blow of an ice storm that will bring my aching acacia to its knees.
Of course there's also the chance that if the ice doesn't get it, plummeting temperatures will. (So far we're hoving around 20 in my neighborhood). It's happened before; this is, I think, my second or third A. pravissima in 8 years.
Fine, then. Goodbye acacia! Having just come from a winter solstice party, and having meditated on my life, I'm acutely aware that of late I'm a magnet for loss. Not one to overreact, I've decided I am prepared to let go anything I can -- the theory being I'll take more conscious pleasure out of what I have while I have it.
In theory...
And while we're on the subject of letting go, how 'bout a little light reading just as we did at our gathering tonight. Here's an excerpt from the Four Quartets by that perennial Was he/Wasn't he an anti-Semitic poet ("Reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable."), T.S. Eliot:
But then there's Acacia pravissima, one of Portland's great de rigeur plants. Two major reasons for that: #1 is undoubtedly its shovel-shaped phyllodes, "flattened leaf stalks which appear like and serve the same function as leaves." (RHS). Which explains its common name, wedgeleaf wattle; to see its flat little arrowhead non-leaves is to covet them.
Reason #2 is my buddy Sean Hogan of Portland's Cistus Nursery who has made this crowd-pleasing and fast-growing shrub easy to buy.
And, replace. Which is very likely what I'm heading for if the incredible snowstorms of the last few days turn into the final blow of an ice storm that will bring my aching acacia to its knees.
Of course there's also the chance that if the ice doesn't get it, plummeting temperatures will. (So far we're hoving around 20 in my neighborhood). It's happened before; this is, I think, my second or third A. pravissima in 8 years.
Fine, then. Goodbye acacia! Having just come from a winter solstice party, and having meditated on my life, I'm acutely aware that of late I'm a magnet for loss. Not one to overreact, I've decided I am prepared to let go anything I can -- the theory being I'll take more conscious pleasure out of what I have while I have it.
In theory...
And while we're on the subject of letting go, how 'bout a little light reading just as we did at our gathering tonight. Here's an excerpt from the Four Quartets by that perennial Was he/Wasn't he an anti-Semitic poet ("Reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable."), T.S. Eliot:
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
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Why be Anonymous? After all, I've showed you mine.