Marijuana: A Growing Experience

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WHEN MY OLDER SON, Edmund, arrived home for a visit recently, he found me and his younger brother walking around the kitchen with the legs and tails of Beanie Baby animals hanging down over our foreheads. A physical therapist had just showed me how balancing a small bean bag on my head while walking could improve my posture—which would help relieve my aching back. Beanie Babies were the closest thing I could find around the house.

But, Edmund said, it wasn’t just the Beanies but the combination of us wearing small furry animals on our heads along with the gigantic marijuana plants clearly visible in our small garden out the back window that gave our kitchen an otherworldly feel.

With DC’s marijuana legislation, each resident can grow up to three plants and enjoy the produce, so my younger son, Oliver, told me when he moved home after college.

I had tried marijuana back in the day, but when it didn’t make me especially happy and often inspired me to eat much too much, I stopped indulging. When it came to my sons, I did my best to cast a critical eye on their interest, but I have tried to view marijuana more positively since Oliver found it a helpful supplement to his medication for occasional bouts of anxiety. Moreover, I was slightly relieved that the boys were imbibing something other than alcohol, a particular scourge in our extended family.

Oliver began with six plants—three for him and three for me. At about the same time that I was ready for my one annual gardening weekend to plant tomatoes, the marijuana had gotten large enough to move outdoors. I offered to include them in our garden plot.

When I went to Johnson’s to buy our customary eight plants, I asked for advice on fertilizer that would be good for both tomatoes and marijuana, thinking that because Johnson’s is located in DC (near the intersection of Nebraska and Wisconsin avenues), the staff would be accustomed to such a question. Not at all. I looked around to find several sales guys smirking—at me!

Then, when I had, of course, forgotten several gardening essentials, it was more convenient to go to American Plant on River Road—in Maryland—where I couldn’t resist mentioning that the netting I needed was for our marijuana plants. The responding looks included some fear and disapproval along with the smirks, even after I tried to explain about the District, etc., etc.

After that, I couldn’t stop telling random people that our family was growing marijuana—six plants, though the number fell off with a few early deaths. I noted the responses, from outright disapproval to amusement, but the biggest surprise was my discovery that No One Else seemed to be joining us. Weren’t at least some of my boomer friends starting up again?

Each morning as I cast my hose over the garden, watering the beautifully pale-green, five-point leaves along with my still-scrawny tomatoes, I began to feel a slight pride at being a lonely pioneer.

But the best surprise came the next time I encountered one of many news stories about the medical marvels of marijuana. This research suggested that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, might reduce the production of amyloid beta protein—linked to Alzheimer’s disease, which is one of my many concerns about the future. THC might even prevent the protein from accumulating in the brain.

Now I was completely IN: our garden, our plants, although I have tried to keep paying attention to those sad, slow-growing tomatoes—and remembering to wear a Beanie Baby on my head any chance I get.

—Mary Carpenter

Mary Carpenter is the Well-Being Editor of MyLittleBird. Read more about Mary here. This is a reprise of  the column that attracted  a lot of attention last year.