The Black Death

in #life2 years ago

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That's odd?

I opined with a stroke of the chin like a man eating a watery fish taco.
not the lady kind, for goodness sake keep your mind out of the gutter!

What's odd now?

The Good Lady ploppily spooned some kind of fetid grainy juice from an old clay jug into her glass.

Mmmm, so good. You sure you don't want some?

She waved the jug menacingly in my direction.

I palmed it away with a smile pretending not to be absolutely fucking horrified at the thought of that thick green muck worming its way through my beautiful insides.

Really? Are you sure? It's got pistachio, spinach and flaxseed in it. I think you would love it and it's so good for you!

She raised her glass and chewed another mouthful of her super whatever it was.

The bamboo out the back. The big black bastard. You know, the one I love more than the children?

I frowned as I looked out the window at my big black companion. She was everything I had ever wanted. Strong, slender, black and yet... now, now she was looking a bit bent and yellow.

Something was not right and it wasn't that my Good Lady was chewing on something that looked remarkably similar to horse manure.

I better go out and check on old blackie.

My chair made a noise like a vole farting as I pushed it out to get up.

I'll come with you!

The Good Lady said through green flecked teeth.

We headed out to the bottom of the garden. It was uphill so perhaps I should say the top of the garden but philosophers have been pondering over such things for centuries and I had no interest in joining that fight.

Oh fuck! No? NO! NOOO!!!! Please don't let it be so!?

As we neared the bamboo I began to suspect what might be the problem.

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What is it boom-dawgy-dawg?

The Good Lady reached out and pressed a hand on my shoulder as if checking to see if I was medium or medium-rare.

It's... it's... flowered?

I wailed and sunk to my knees on the sweet soft earth.

Is that not a good thing? Flowers? You know...

The Good Lady reached out and stroked one of the yellowing leaves of the bamboo which promptly fell from its stalk and sashayed to the ground.

No. When they flower they produce millions of seeds and then they die. It's the end for them.

I reached out and looked at random ends of each stalk. There were seeds by the hundreds.

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I stroked the black canes that had bought me such joy by shielding me from my annoying neighbours.

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No more my beauty.

I whispered sadly.

Oh god, it's dying?! That's so sad. Oh no, what with everything that's been going on it's too much.

With a barking sob, the Good Lady turned on her heel and ran back to the house.

I shook my head and threw a sulky stare in her direction. Bloody grief thief. Sighing heavily, I started gathering up as many seeds as I could. This was shit. I had loved my bamboo.

Surely things couldn't get any worse?

Alright mate!

My neighbour, Cheesy Penis popped his head up from over the fence where the luscious green locks of the bamboo had once barricaded them from sight.

I looked up and harrumphed.

For fuck sake.

Maybe I would have to break out the big guns this time...

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Just think about what all those seeds could do - you'll have your own forest! But until then... A few huge cacti might be a nice surprise for your neighbor!

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I have little bitty cacti in the house. Dunno if the weather would let me get bigger ones that could survive outside!

So its on with the seeds!! :0D

How about some poison ivy or poison oak 🤣?

!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL

Add long was it covers stuff as well as having them if they try!!

!LOL

I believe it will work!

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I’ve been told crocodiles can grow up to 15 feet
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Is a very grat idea to invest on bamboo.

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Until it dies!!

I never knew of bamboo not to thrive. Hell they sell them here in a glass with a rock or three. Not sure if people ever water them and they just grow like nuts. In fact I believe people even consider it to be invasive not frail. Perhaps it was the curse of the black variety after all! 😯

Excellent post, thank you for sharing. Also very nice pictures. =)

Thank you for checking it out!

It was a lovely read, so I should be thanking you =)
!LUV

R.I.P to the botanical warrior Boom. I like the nicknames you come up with lol. Sucks i missed bunch of your stories. I been working like a machine still, but i suppose your work routine is still in full force too.

Producing millions of seeds at once then dying could be accepted by nature :)

Hahaha, yes. It would be quite the thing!

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What a fun plant post🌿

I do do my gardening posts a tad differently! :0D

Feed me Seymour
🌱🦁🤓👍

Lol!

A tad madly, the Boomy way.
Btw. Bamboo lasts here for many years and they grow as wide as your arm.
I will get you a picture if I can find it in my files, else I will charge you for the gas to go and take another photo of them :)

Blessings.

Charge me for the gas! I want to see. I have several types growing including one that is meant to be a big thick giant. That black one was myfirst and biggest bamboo baby. Sob!

Hahaha, you know that I won't charge you for anything, but I will go and get a shot of the bamboo for ya in the week.
Unfortunately there are no black ones!

Hehe, I know.

That's magic! I do love the stuff!!

No time yet, but I promise this week.

No stress!

Oh no! That's too bad. I didn't know that baboo died after it seeded. So does all bamboo seed at some point in its life cycle or are there male and female trees or something? I don't know much about baboo.
It looks like a beautiful bunch though.

I only vaguely remember when I was researching getting it for the garden reading that they only flower once then (mostly) die. I am kinda hoping mine is one of the few that make it although it's not looking good just now. It was getting really sleek and black too. I showed it off more than my kids! :0D

That's interesting but too bad. It sucks to lose a plant that you've had for a while that takes a long time to grow. Sucks to lose the privacy as well.

I hadnt seen my neighbour for ages too. I will be getting some kind of massive replacement tootsweet. I have to wait though, It seems there is a very small possibility that it could survive although they usually don't. I don't want to be digging it up if I don't have to

I am weeping for the loss of your black beauty.

Me too dude, it was only last month or so I was marvelling at how healthy she looked!

I know, such is life :O(

Bamboo seeds!!! They never die over here. Maybe the soil component doesn't match it for survival.
And that worming greenish mug of the Lady is a no-go-area for me.

Aw man, I wish they never died here. It has thrived for years. I think I have had it for nearly 9!

I think the soil texture is the issue. Bamboo grows around me like weeds.
9 years is enough to make it firm though.

I will do a bit of research and try again. If I can get another 9 years from one I will be happy!

With loamy soil, you need less than 9 years to keep a bamboo plantation booming.

Then loamy it shall be! The soul at the back isn't the best so I could just rework the whole area. Might go for loads more

Try it and let's see how it goes.

I sure will!

Oh no!! That is soo sad, I totally feel your grief! Not thieving it, just commiserating ;0)

And I just realized that isn't a cactus...holy rocky horror picture show, are those..really?? I want one!! XD

Hehe, commiseration is fine! :O)

Groovy little bugger isn't it! Venus fly trap, hopefully it can grow as big as the one in that movie. Was it the Rocky Horror? The singing one.. Oh wait, the Little Shop of horrors!

Oh yeah, little shop not rocky! It's been a long time since I saw either of them, but I remember as a kid being really intrigued by the idea that the Venus fly trap was a real thing. Albeit sadly much smaller...hmm, I just saw a TikTok that might help it grow..

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRUfoPTG/?k=1

The Good Lady has a fun task ahead of her🤣🤣 Maybe it would work to revive the bamboo too, you never know!

Hahaha! Oh man, no way. That's like the kind of shit I write about!!!! Oh wait till I tell the Good Lady!!! Awesome 😀🤣

Exactly, that's why I thought of it, totally a meboom thing to write about! 🤣

It really is. Can you imagine, stinking pots of death with wilty plants in them .. madness!!

Aw, that's a shame, but circle of life and all that crap. How long do bamboo (is that the plural?) last? We have a little one that has never spread, but it's been there forever.

Can you keep some of the canes and make something?

I had read that up here they live for ten to fifteen years. I am hoping it struggles on. If not I will do do something with the canes, they are a fine ebony and I could no doubt do something decent with em!

Cheesy Penis must be a tall bastard, that fence looks big!

On a fecking hill. The fence is eight foot on our side but on his side is only about five and a half! That's why we have to grow the tall shit!!

LOL... that sucks. I am not a fan of neighbours.

Me neither, I like the ones on either side but the one behind me (Cheesy and his wife) are annoying as fuck

F

Thats funny actually, I was doing comments in Peakd top to bottom and saw the F answer after answering with my long multiple choice book adventure answer! :OD

Ah! F...

You stare confidently at your host and swig down the contents of the goblet. Your confidence falters however as you feel a roiling in your guts and your head starts to swim.

Do you:

a) fall over and die quietly so as not to disturb the feast
b) Stand and shout, you bastard, they are all poisoned! Before falling over and dying.
c) take out your penis and smirk before dying with your penis in hand
d) start singing 'Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea' and grabbing another goblet of wine so that you can die with a drink in your hand.

Or e) Refuse to die and stare at those around you with contempt before summoning a hellbomb burst to destroy everything around you for 100 yards in a seething hell flame before walking out unharmed and remarking to a wide-mouthed witness, that party was shit, know where a fellow can get a good drink?

I type F to pay my respects, and you throw this at me?

Fine. I slit the throat of whichever bastard tried to poison me, regurgitate the vile concoction into the most bosomy Karen's cleavage in sight,and then choose option e from your list.

Thats the way to do it!! Never play by their rules!

I didn't even know bamboo could die.. it seems to run rampant here

It seems that some breeds can live and flower and keep on living and some grow for decades before flowering and dying. Mine is one of them. I feel cheated, it ain't been decades!

The Good Lady reached out and pressed a hand on my shoulder as if checking to see if I was medium or medium-rare.

We all know you're well done mate.

Seriously though...You remember that book, Day of the Triffids but John Wyndham? I think you should investigate the opportunities, you know, head down to the plant nursery and all. You'll not have to worry about neighbours then.

I actually tried to convince the missus to get the weird flute-like fly eating ones that grow quite big but she thought they were as ugly as sin.

And yeah, well done is what I am :OD

I actually tried to convince the missus

That was your first mistake. I thought you would have known better by now.

I slipped from the path! I should have known!!

Let the beatings commence!

It's funny from that, makes Will Smith look like a giant!

Maybe you could plant him next to the back fence in place of the cane? Lol.

Hahaha!! I can imagine him now, slappy halls flapping in the wind shouting about how he was gonna fucking get me for feeding him chicken shit all the time 🤣🤣

The last photo "Venus trap" I want this kind of the plant.

Hehe, they are quite cool. I want it to feast on all the little flies!

Lol. They are a real thing!! :0D

Here that bamboo is like something out of stranger things.

Yeah, the blackness is cool as feck!!

Yeah so true. I know plenty of them. 🤣🤣🤣

So do I, most of them seem to live on Facebook!!

You have the bamboo seeds, I guess others grow, I really don't know much about plants, let's talk better about the good lady's drink, I've had some green drinks, and indeed the teeth are green haaaaaaa, these drinks are very healthy
Hey I hope they grow more banbú

She does like to grind up vegetation and whizz it up into some kind of smoothie. Some of them are like three course meals!

I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope her little eggs hatch into big black beauties that turn your yard into a bamboo forest that block out the neighbors for miles.

That sounds magic. I would be happy living ina bamboo forest!

Pressing "F" To pay respect for poor bamboo - This is hilarious, Extra points and No rick for This amazing Storytelling skills of yours.

The Good Lady reached out and pressed a hand on my shoulder as if checking to see if I was medium or medium-rare

Haha i was expecting she's going to blow your head off but than i realised she's Good Lady.

F it is!

She is indeed a good lady! Thankfully she has not suffered the same fate of the bamboo!

Unfortunately (or perhaps very fortunately) the flytraps don't get that big XD

Otherwise we might have this adorable little horrors running around.

RIP bamboo :< live on in your several million seeds!

Haha, I know. It would be kinda cool to be living in terror from my own meat eating plants. Sadly never to be.

I am going to start planting the heir to the king of bamboos today!

I was going to ask if you were going to plant a spare as well and then remembered maybe not such a good idea with giant grass XD

Ha, in am going to go for it this time though. I will plant as many as I can get to germinate!! There will be bamboo!!!

"chewed another mouthful"

EEEEWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I didn't know they die like that. I had been told by several folks that had some that they were invasive and you nearly couldn't get rid of them once they started and began to spread out. At least you have the thousands of seeds you can let drop between the stems and regrow. They will... won't they??

When I have grown them from seed before I have had a 1 in 20 to 30 success rate. And at first I couldn't get any of the funkers too grow at all. So there might be millions of awards but o don't know if any will make it. Especially in Scotland, the land of the slugs!!

I thought the bastard thing would live forever!!

Do you see others growing any of it around there? Maybe a different strain?

I have never planted them, so I didn't know the slugs liked them. If it ain't one critter fightin ya it's a dozen ! So annoying !! 😄

I havent seen anyone else growing it in the area despite it apparently being very popular. I had to buy the funker from a specialist supplier!

I have a couple of my own which I have managed to grow from seed, they are tiny though.

And those damn slugs, they all deserve to die!

How do you know its gregarious flowering and not sporadic? I looked up the year and the last one was in 2008, and black bamboo has a 40-60 year flowering period?

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/bamboo-flowering

This guy's black bamboo is also flowering, and he mentioned others are going through it also. :-\

Well he seems quite confident that it might not necessarily die. Phyllostachys nigra being one of the gregarious ones. UK and Europe wide. I will feed it like mad and see if it helps

He said he chopped it down and feed it, seems like forcing it to grow again since it didn't finish its flowering. If you want privacy screening you could find a native willow that has fast growth and copice it 2 or three times after it reaches 10-12 foot, they readily root so you can use the top to start a lot of them, plus, if you've got headaches you can use the bark to make dank aspirin water, works really well, and its loaded with rooting hormones so if you like transplanting or rooting cuttings you'll always have it, plus you never have to worry about it dying, or sprouting elsewhere, and eventually, it'll become a monumental tree, nothing quite as beautiful as a weeping willow. Over here our willows don't droop down, they're branching is more stout and short and it fans out instead.

I will have a look for native willows. I know that it is a common thing to grow for the think branches that people make things with. Might be for another bit though, I have a bamboo fixation!

Our willows grow almost like bamboo, especially when you copice them, the leaves are very similar too and they are the last to drop in winter so it keeps its use as privacy screen, mind you its Texas.

I have had a look, most seem perfectly suited to here. They seem to like damp, wet boggy conditions which is kinda perfect for Scotland. Defo something I will get

We live in a swampy area as well, though this is the driest its been.

All these were small 8-10 ft wild growin plants 18 months ago that got pulled out from ditches we had dug last February, I just laid them down uprooted and everything and they started growing from the original trunk, the second picture with the driveway right behind them, those ones I had chopped down about 4 months ago,maybe even less, and as you can see they came back with a furry. The first picture is one that hasn't been chopped down since it got uprooted and laid down. I tried growing bamboo here, dug out by my old man from somewhere in North Carolina, but it didn't make it, in between the heat and flooding it didn't have a chance but I've been eyeing bamboo for a while and we will probably order some giant species, but for privacy I'm settled on the willows. If it had rained this season the ones I chopped down and stuck in soil (around the time they were starting to flower) would be worth showing off, but for now are nothing more than dried twigs, though I do hope they took to rooting, I stuck em in when we had a very brief rain so I'm gonna let them be ugly stick until this October just on the off chance they threw some roots.

Quite impressive! I am definitely sold on the willow.

I have a giant bamboo, it is only a baby though. Two years old and just about thigh high with the odd shoot waist high. It's chusquea gigantica I think, apparently the canes when they start properly appearing canon be really think and massively tall like 30, 40 foot.

I like growing shit, it seems you do too. I like the idea of willow also for the dank aspirin bark water you mentioned. Herbal is good

Yup, you dry the bark for a couple of days, then chop it up and set it in water in the fridge for a day, don't quote me though, been a couple years and the missus concocted it, but it certainly has the aspirin taste and effect.

I opined with a stroke of the chin like a man eating a watery fish taco.
not the lady kind, for goodness sake keep your mind out of the gutter!

This matched my train of thought exactly... at first my mind was heading into the gutter ... then, when I was instructed not to, it immediately jumped to how much I hate it when eating a fish taco that is full of liquid (let's hope it's mayo OK?)


We can't grow black bamboo here. It doesn't like the -40 winters.

But ... harvest those seeds. All of them. Plan the Pallisade!!! You could plant circles to represent towers. Perhaps a moat of lavender. While you are add it, plant a wall in the front. Surround the house!!!

Mayo is splendid but yes, I hate those watery ones too. What a flipping mess they make of everything and then toward the end the taco starts disintegrating!

I have much lavender! I am thinking of different types of Bamboo now, the first was a let down but I also cant help thinking if I grow some from seed then the next flowering must surely be a long long way away!

image.png

Don't rule out sunflowers. Mine are a bit of a mess right now ... but in this shot, there are 4 types. The Mammoth's are in the back (up to 10-12'). and in the front there are multi-heads.

Lot of birds, lots of bees, pretty decent privacy. At the end of the season, you simply need to remember to harvest one head of each (put them in a paper bag with some rice) and you'll always have more.

The downside is ... when they get a little more mature ... the neighbours come over and start taking selfies.

NOTE: The reason they are a mess this year is that most of them were planted by the squirrels. I usually plant them in a nice straight line. This year, I thought I'd see what nature provided ....

They look magic though. I have some but only a handful and not in a big batch. There do look good when there is a big clump of them together. I think I will go for that next year!

Helluva transition from fish taco to cheesy penis.

You gotta have a beginning and an end and a journey between both!

I love the ending, LOL!

At the first mention and description of that juice, I knew it was green and chunky in nature. How did I know that immediately? It's due to my own customized concoction that looks like green slop and most definitely tastes much worse that what the Good Lady was drinking. Think of the taste of stone dust mixed with many other elements.

I have never seen black bamboo before. I can see why you're devastated. I didn't know bamboo will seed, then die, never mind what the seeds look like. You have quite a lovely backyard, now I know what bonny Scotland offers for backyard beauty.

My neighbour, Cheesy Penis popped his head up from over the fence where the luscious green locks of the bamboo had once barricaded them from sight.

What a visual, LOL! Plant those bamboo seeds so it's double blockage.

I am going to be getting some today and giving them a planting. I knew that some types flowered once then died. I just didn't realise mine was one of those types. It was only five minutes ago it was a lush big giant thing!

I didn't know that bamboo did that at all. I guess, in my mind, I am visualizing bamboo forests in Japan. That black bamboo was a treat to see, totally love that type, even if it decided to give up the ghost. How long does it grow before it goes to seed and dies?

It was only five minutes ago it was a lush big giant thing!

When I see that with any plant I have, I want to do the crybaby thing. I hope the seeds pop and get going nicely. I'd love to see that process.

It's meant to be ten to fifteen years which is why I feel cheated. Bastard thing. I have only had it for about eight. But if it goes to seed genetically with half the world's black bamboo then I suppose I can't argue with it!

If I get the seeds to grow I shall post it on here!

Oh wow, that's almost half it's expected lifespan. No wonder you feel cheated.

I look forward to seeing you post about the seeds taking off.

I know, mother funker that it is. I have a good mind to tromp on up there and give it a kicking!

LOLOL! If you give it a kicking, please take video and post it. I'd be so unhappy with that whole situation, probably far too attached to plants, shrubs, and trees.

Well, I did go up there to gather some seeds and to my horror because it has been shedding so many yellow leaves all the grass is dead around it because it has been carpeted in the dark!

It has gone from my favourite to my enemy now!