A sample of springthink: the Legend of the Slow-Cure in The Amalgamated Aggromulator

Spring is always different.

Here in the Pacific Northwest the transition matches the increasing diminishment of the soggy grey and the reappearance of the sun. But it used to happen in New Mexico too, with the world warming from a bone-dry winter and bringing the promise of towering “male rains” in mid-summer. The difference I mean is in me : this strange irrational happy Season of Hope. Enthusiasms.

(The rest of the cycle: All things being equal, my “Season of Hope” comes to a spiritually horrid, shallow, vacuous crisis and ends around August 1st. Then, after a while, begins a different, thoughtful lobe of being that I’ve far too optimistically named the “Season of Wisdom”. Intricately, perhaps melancholically seeking. Sometime between the “holiday season” and February 1st, that too will reach its self-ending culmination. And around and around I go.)

It’s hard for me to write about my Season things. When I write about the things themselves I do it fine, but, when I describe myself in regard to these things, I am mocking; I seem driven to describe “Hope” in the language of “Wisdom” and vice versa. I will try to break from this pattern here . . .

One of the excitements at the moment is that I’ll be growing marijuana in my back yard. In four big pots that will sit along our vegetable garden’s fallow row, in between the trellised tomatoes and the trellised cucumbers.

Why?

Because it is new, and “on principle”. Marijuana legalization has been a thing for me for a long time, and now it has come to pass here in Oregon - we are allowed to grow up to four plants per household for personal use - so this year I am going to by gum grow pot in the back yard, under the open sky, like a free American! :-)

. . . Not because I’ll have any need to do so. I could just go out and buy a gram or two of cannabis of any sort I wanted (and I mean just about any sort). And - even with so many of those free samples from that Weed The People event still sitting in the drawer - I smoke so occasionally that it would take me about two years to work my way through a quarter-ounce. The one-pound limit of actual marijuana per household is laughable for me. But regardless!

. . . Not because I actually ended up getting what I wanted out of the eventual victory. What I wanted was a couple of changes in thinking and policy . . . well, part of the pain in my head, one half of it, was that drugs were being officially and socially judged in a way completely out of whack with what research said about their safety levels. The more you looked at the research, the weirder it got. I didn’t really care about pot in itself that much. I wanted just general improvement in weighting, in a way that would have been extensible. For example, the central psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline) actually have a slightly better health-effects and safety record even than pot, and are just as deserving of at least substantial legalization . . . but they’re good at generating urban legends, and they’re classified deep in the “violent ward”. I found it maddening that our advanced culture - that, for one thing, could generate the research reviews I was reading! - was handling things so strangely. Well, those substances are still in the “violent ward”, in the deep freeze there to mix a metaphor, for as little reason (while pot has proven to have some risks for preschizophrenics). There has been no general improvement in weighing these things. Marijuana legalization has come because people have said, specifically about marijuana, “ohhhh, I guess it’s not that bad . . .” It is simply “OK for pot to be OK” now. And what the heck, maybe things really do come just as an accumulation of very slow over-short baby steps. Maybe I over-complain. Anyway!

(Momentary side note, to give an idea of the old strangeness: At one point - while a catastrophic explosion in the use of methamphetamine was underway in rural Idaho - a public official there made a statement thundering that, and this is verbatim, marijuana was just as deadly as meth. . . . Consider the discrediting of warnings about meth. Consider the discouragement of using the less-harmful option if anyone is going to do anything. Maybe I need not explain why I tore that phone book in half.)

So I pulled the cord - I ordered cannabis seeds. And, in so doing, I have found myself plunged into the absurd . . . romance of the thing.

The strain I’m getting is a strain that has very energetic, happy effects, and fairly clearheaded ones. Peace of heart and good conversation! Paint the porch! (Some other time I’ll try one with a good relaxed evening stone.) I made sure to lead with that explanation because the strain does bear the somewhat unreassuring name “Amnesia Haze.” :-)

I chose it in part because it was a “feminized” strain, which means it is genetically predisposed to grow mostly into female plants, which are the only ones that make the flower-mass “buds.” This matters when you can grow only four plants.

I also noticed that it was an “autoflowering” strain, but I overlooked finding out what that meant until after I had placed my order. It turned out I had lucked into something. Normally marijuana plants flower when the days shorten in autumn, or when their light periods are shortened indoors. “Autoflowering” strains are special - they’ve been bred to flower just when they get to a certain age. And that age comes early. So my crop might be ready in midsummer! And conceivably I could then manage a second one!

And, naturally, this unexpected possibility awakens my intrinsic greed. :-) Did I say before that the one-pound limit is ridiculous given my habits? Forget all that! I found myself cackling and rubbing my hands over the prospect of perhaps approaching that limit. I saw myself acting to keep myself within the bounds of legal probity by gifting my startled neighbor with a giant bag of weed. “There now - I am in compliance. I rejoice with all of those who love justice.” (Yes, I can see what I would be wearing, how clever of you to inquire.) Or I could hastily dispose of my excess by extracting the resin follicles to make hashish and baking that into endless powerful fudge brownies. “Great Scott! Keep baking, dammit, I’ll get some more dry ice and do another separation with the bucket and the filter-mesh - there’s still too much pot here!!!” (Yes, in my daydreams I tend to have minions.)

So, I could theoretically have a harvest by early July.

This naturally necessitated investigation of what the hell I would do then. And I discovered that the thing to do is to cut the branches and hang the branches indoors just until they have dried enough that the outermost small sticks have become brittle . . . but then you must cut off the buds, trim away all the fringe leaves from them, and put the buds into loosely-closed quart jars so that they can cure. You must cure the buds, they must be able to continue metabolizing and getting rid of all their chlorophyll and so on, so that they will then taste good and have their best effect. If you don’t cure your bud well, if you just dry it straight out, it will taste awful - it will taste like, well, the smoke of a burning plant. Complete with headaches and so on.

So, for two weeks or three weeks or a few weeks, longer generally being better, I would be mothering these glass jars and taking the lids off at least once daily and perhaps rearranging the buds and checking them gimlet-eyed for any signs of mold. Taking care of my buds as I slow-cured them.
. . . And, of course, the word “slow-cure” then completely took hold of me and I spent two whole days saying to unknown companions in the empty air, in a peculiar quasi-Appalachian old-timer drawl, “Y’all jest wait here a second - ah’m going to brayng out some o’ muh slow-cure.”

Yes, absolutely! Yew do not mess with a man’s slow-cure!

Absurdity. Madness. Of course.

(If it helps, I was very similar the first time I ordered hot pepper seeds. :-) And there is nothing important here, in any sense, or “really worth” the enthusing - I mean, dumb old dope? As well get lyrically excited about taking up brewing beer. Which, I grant you, would happen.)

Horticulture enthusiasms in general work well for me - because, for one thing, you only have to begin them and then keep them alive. They mostly do themselves.

But I should note that - as with any of my spring willy-willies - the actual fruition may not match my antic visions. The seeds have to actually germinate, for a start. And I’ll be growing outside. There could be weather. There could be mites. There could be unexpectedly ganja-ravenous raccoons, or something. And I could lose my harvest to human agents as well. You’re supposed to grow it out of public view, and, what the heck, it’s the back yard, so I’ll have no problems with officialdom - but there is still the possibility of theft . . . and “out of view” loses security significance when marijuana buds have such a very, very strong and carrying odor. And - while most outdoor cannabis in Portland will be flowering all at the same time this autumn, filling neighborhoods with a piney funk (the city government is already girding itself for the complaints), it looks like my four special autoflowering plants will be all alone in July, and will be putting out just the single scent-trail to follow. (Image of Wile E. Coyote darting from house to house . . .) We’ll see what happens. May things go as smoothly as I hope they will with the tomatoes and cucumbers whose Greek salads will become an increasing percentage of my diet through the summer.

I don’t know.

But . . . man, I hope there can be a lot of supremely happy fudge brownies. :-)

Spring.

Last updated March 23, 2016