Green Acre #453: Waxing Wild

White Flower Farm amaryllis, above. On the front, photo from iStock.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THE KARDASHIANS have huge trees lining the walk to their house, which resembles (from the photo) a concrete  bunker.  The trees are covered with thousands of white lights. Could be millions. They are very big trees. 

Why am I looking at this? I cannot stand this family. I canceled a subscription to Vogue with a note that I’d only resume if they stopped featuring them. Vogue paid me no mind. 

It did make me laugh to think of the “girls” on ladders, stringing those lights. In the nude. Butts wobbling like bowls full of jelly.  

Clearly, I am looking for a topic for this week’s column. It’s not going well. I keep getting distracted by the best way to apply lipstick, by makeup artists. This moment’s trend in trench coats, boots, sweaters. Underwear as outerwear. Villas in Italy. Hours pass. 

More hours pass. I realized that this week I have nothing to say about gardening, flowers, holiday decorating, or anything else horticulturally related. 

We don’t yet have a Chanukah bush/Christmas tree, the outdoor lights and boxes of dreck for tarting up the mantel and window boxes are still in the attic, the tropical plants are all inside for the winter, doing well or poorly, which is normal. Some are shocked by the move and faint for a time, then revive, or not. What more can I say about that?

Instead, I’ve been thinking about the general uselessness of psychiatry and how, for the most part, we’re just born the way we are. 

Meandering aside . . .

My sister recently posted to Facebook a photo of me at age 2, maybe in the early 3s, sitting on the living-room sofa in a party dress, dirty ballet slippers, and—why am I wearing that stupid-looking bonnet?—and I’m writing on a pad resting on my lap. I am also glaring at the camera.

I imagine My Prince would recognize this expression, which is what I shoot at him when he interrupts my writing (or anything else). Spaced-out and on the verge of being pissed off for being messed with. Some might call it my resting bitch face.

My just-about-4-year-old grandbaby, Wesley, doesn’t shift gears easily either. His response to most things is “no”—which gives him space to reconsider. Where did he learn that? He’s also been flirting with girls from the moment his eyes focused. No wondering which way the wind blows for him. 

End of meander.

At last, I come across a photo of an amaryllis flower sprouting from a mound of colored wax. Perhaps you’ve seen these. Somehow I’ve avoided them for what now appears to be decades. The copy says that, once encased, the bulb needs no water, no light. You do nothing (except maybe an occasional dusting) and within a few weeks a gigantic flower will emerge! I am galvanized. 

Well, thinks I, this looks like a project for Wesley. You just melt down old candle ends and dip the bulbs, leaving the tip exposed, then paint or cover with glitter and whatnots. He can give them out as holiday gifts. His mother will be so grateful. Hot wax. Glitter. Paint. What could go wrong? 

I flip through photo after photo, site after site. How have I not noticed these things. There are even debates about them. You’re killing the bulb, the arguments go. Encasing them in wax is sadistic, greedy, and cruel. My goodness!

Plus, they’ll only flower once and you toss the spent bulb away (which is probably what I’d do anyway). 

By the time I’ve figured out the how-to-do and warnings about not-to-do and so forth, I’m thoroughly sick of seeing them. You still want the how-to? Go to it: https://www.greenhomediy.co/make-waxed-amaryllis-bulbs/

See you next week with something else.