Beautiful as Heaven, Deadly as Hell
A month (or so) ago, a few people from our church decided to do some landscaping around the parsonage. For this, we are incredibly thankful! The parsonage is 50-ish years old, but has never had much landscaping done to it and the work they did in the course of a day practically transformed our yard. To make matters even better, they are - even as I write this - putting up a fenced in back-yard so that we don’t have to worry about chasing Sophia to the highway if she decides to run! It’s great. However, that’s not my point. All of that is context to what I’m really interested in writing about this evening. I really want to write about a weed. Yep. A weed. Somehow, when they pushed a bunch of dirt into a pile, they must have worked up an old seed and exactly on the top of the hill a weed started to grow. In the course of a month, she’s now several feet tall and blooming. And beautiful - at least the flowers are. Every evening she pushes open a half a dozen white-trumpet-like flowers with blue-ish insides. Gorgeous. (Although the leaves suggest a little of her darker side.)
The weed is, I believe, Datura Stramonium: Jimson weed… or for those of you who like Harry Potter: Devil’s Snare. It’s a relative of the famous “deadly nightshade,” and it’s horribly poisonous.
Go figure! The one plant that not only lives but actually thrives under my care causes one to be “blind as a bat, mad as a hatter, red as a beet, hot as hell, dry as a bone, the bowel and bladder lose their tone, and the heart runs alone” or according to the Navajo: “Can’t see, can’t spit, can’t pee, can’t sh*t.” (please excuse the language…. reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium)
Several years ago I ran across this same plant and actually dug it up and put it in a pot - it thrived. My wife, upon learning of it’s effects, promptly “suggested” that it wasn’t welcome inside the house. Now I’ve been re-introduced. I wonder if I can replant it somewhere and tell people it’s intentional?
So what’s my point. Well, I don’t suppose I have one. I just wanted to share my little plant with someone before she gets dug up and destroyed….
Grace and Peace,
`tim
4 Responses to “Beautiful as Heaven, Deadly as Hell”
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August 5th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Datura are closely related to Brugmansia, which are both highly prized ornamentals and pretty much as deadly as Datura. There’s a literary reference to jimson weed in “The Sound and the Fury”. It’s one of the few things I remember about the book from high school.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Mel… I think that means I can (re)plant it as an yard flower right?
Thanks for the reference, I’ve never read much Faulkner; this may be a good reason to give him a try again.
Grace and peace,
`tim
August 14th, 2008 at 11:37 am
There is a sermon in there someplace: it’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s relatives are highly prized, and, somehow, God has gracede you with the ability to grow it (and not much else), and the world says it’s a weed, so it has to go . . . hmmmm
Good thing the Church doesn’t do that with people, huh.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
On the other hand… the American church seems more than willing to get rid of anything that ISN’T big and beautiful….. hmmm…. There’s probably a sermon there too.
Grace and Peace,
`tim