paw paw pics

project paw paw and other gardening adventures

i heard of paw paw trees for the first time last month from my friend andy, and for those of you who know him, it is a subject of which he is fond. within days of mentioning it to my housemate jennifer, she had found me a (free) source of young paw paws in need of transplant. about two weeks later, with the help of tree-savvier than i am friend jake b., i was in the process of planting two of them in my yard (you need at least two for them to pollinate and produce fruit). i was told that they are fickle plants and don't really like to be moved once they've started to grow successfully, and right now they seem to be having some issues (leaves turning brown, no new growth), but it's only been a week and a half, the rain has kept them well watered, and there's good southerly sun in my yard, so we'll see if they perk up with time.

this weekend i also took advantage of the surprisingly nice saturday afternoon to plant flowers (some annuals, some perennials) and seeds for lettuce and okra. the vegetable and herb seedlings i've been growing experimentally in the basement (beets, eggplant, carrots, green peppers, basil, cilantro, dill) are not ready to be transplated, so right now i'm putting them outside for a few hours a day to allow them to acclimate. i also picked up some tomato and squash starts from mildred's daughters farm in stanton heights, which i'll probably put in the ground next weekend. only got 4 varieties of tomatoes this year (instead of the 11 i tried to plant last year, with varying success)...

city of asylum "reading the world"

last night i went to a reading with jen m., put on by city of asylum, and i came away thinking how limited my verbal expression can be sometimes. i'm a very literal person and often feel restricted in how i use and understand language, in particular when it comes to creating mental imagery to represent concepts, and listening to the authors read from their books and discuss them afterwards was a pretty humbling experience...
there were three readers, kyung-sook shin (south korea), david bezmozgis (latvia), and herve le tellier (france) and the reading was moderated by terrance hayes (and i know i'm late to the table on this one, but i think he's awesome, and this is based on hearing the guy say 20-30 sentences in person and watching a few videos online...), who pointed out some interesting comparisons among the themes of the novels (family, place) and asked more general but equally interesting questions (why write novels vs. poetry, films, etc.? what role does translation have in the experience of writing, reading, understanding a piece of literature?).
i wish i could remember and relate all of the stories and discussion but one of the things that sticks in my head is the idea that when a story is written in a different language from the one its characters would use and about a culture foreign to the primary audience the novel is written for, there is a series of layers of understanding depending on the language and cultural background of the reader. david bezmozgis described this as the concentric circular ripples that result when you drop a stone into a pool of water, the outer ripples representing those who can still appreciate the story in a broad way, but those who have a more intimate knowledge of the language, culture, and experience that the novel addresses can get a little closer, like the smaller circular ripples, emanating closer to where the stone hit the water.
a simple metaphor perhaps, but beautiful and unambiguous, nonetheless...
two more readings next week - may 10 - gary shteyngart (russia) & may 11 - jean kwok (hong kong). check 'em out.