Swabbing off a Ficus
Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under Bonsai |
The title of this post sounds sort of dirty if you don’t know the exact meanings of the words, or take them just as sound. Go swab a ficus, mate! In fact, the post title refers to the fact that I spent an hour this evening with cotton swabs & insecticidal soap swabbing the leaves of a favorite little fig tree. It’s about seven inches tall & probably has a hundred & fifty leaves, each about three quarters of an inch long. Looks like some spider mites have moved in, though the tree seems healthy & is putting out new spring foliage. This is the sort of process in which I can happily lose myself, which may seem strange, I admit. I’m not going to claim it’s a form of meditation or anything spacey like that. But I do enjoy focusing on small things. Even if I’m not working on one, I sometimes find myself staring at one of my trees, just focusing on the shape & structure of the branches, for minutes on end. The closest analogy I can think of is listening to music that I know well, following its shapes & textures. Swabbing is just a closer form of looking.
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2 Responses to “Swabbing off a Ficus”
Stumble it!
Not many people I know talk about music having shapes and textures, but that is exactly how I hear and understand it. Good music anyway.
Paul, with songs, I often hear/see the lines as “branches” with various twists & turns; music without lyrics, I tend to see as large solids that stand in various relations to each other.