mimosa trees--loving the invaders
May. 25th, 2002 05:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkI love to see the mimosa tree (I tried to post a link, but the mimosa photo I found at www.invasive.org transmuted into an odd tree beetle by the time I'd linked it) in Spring. The mimosa is a curious ornamental tree. They have gorgeous pink blossoms, and branches filled with cute green, almost fern-like leaves. The problem is that this plant I really fancy is politically incorrect. Mimosa trees *don't belong here*. They come from Iran or Japan or Australia or other places which are not north Texas.
In our area, hosts of weekend morning AM radio garden shows have an importance roughly equal to that of priests in chic arcane faiths or authors of really hip and fashionably obscure 'zines. The patter is warm and familiar ("Ma'am, they sold you THAT? That doesn't grow here, that grows in CANADA! That'll DIE here! Take that right back to Home Depot and get yourself a nice Yaupon Holly. Y'all have a good weekend, now", or "Q. I just moved here from New Jersey and bought my first home. Now the tree leaves are all dying". A: "Ma'am, it's September, and in Fall, the leaves...."). The books of holy garden text written by these spirit guides have no kind words for mimosas. Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor, frankly terms them a "junk tree". Neil Sperry, the "Texas gardener" can't wait for them to die off.
Apparently, mimosas are short-lived in our climate, beset by ailments and pests unique to mimosas, and generally regarded as a misplaced fad. Their blossoms and car paint do not interact perfectly with one another. On the other hand, another invasive plant, the crepe myrtle tree from China, is seen as a beneficial plant, to be planted wherever an ornamental tree might fit. It comes in all sorts of cool leaf colors, and blooms virtually all summer long A nearby town, McKinney has pledged to plant 100,000 of them. Immigrants with marketable skills always get the better end of the stick.
I am "down with" the native plant preservationists. Here in north Texas, we have wonderful natives, and our curious "too hot and dry in summer and a couple of hard freezes in winter and by the way, the soil is a really harsh red clay" growing areas provide sustenance for only a limited number of plants favored in other places, anyway. But I say Save the Mimosa Trees. The mimosa to me is dozens of front yards during my small town boyhood. The mimosa tree is pink blooms, and huge long seed pods. The mimosa is our little oasis of exotica. Sure, it lives fast, and dies young. But when I see those pink blooms in Spring, it's as if a mimosa has eternal life.
In our area, hosts of weekend morning AM radio garden shows have an importance roughly equal to that of priests in chic arcane faiths or authors of really hip and fashionably obscure 'zines. The patter is warm and familiar ("Ma'am, they sold you THAT? That doesn't grow here, that grows in CANADA! That'll DIE here! Take that right back to Home Depot and get yourself a nice Yaupon Holly. Y'all have a good weekend, now", or "Q. I just moved here from New Jersey and bought my first home. Now the tree leaves are all dying". A: "Ma'am, it's September, and in Fall, the leaves...."). The books of holy garden text written by these spirit guides have no kind words for mimosas. Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor, frankly terms them a "junk tree". Neil Sperry, the "Texas gardener" can't wait for them to die off.
Apparently, mimosas are short-lived in our climate, beset by ailments and pests unique to mimosas, and generally regarded as a misplaced fad. Their blossoms and car paint do not interact perfectly with one another. On the other hand, another invasive plant, the crepe myrtle tree from China, is seen as a beneficial plant, to be planted wherever an ornamental tree might fit. It comes in all sorts of cool leaf colors, and blooms virtually all summer long A nearby town, McKinney has pledged to plant 100,000 of them. Immigrants with marketable skills always get the better end of the stick.
I am "down with" the native plant preservationists. Here in north Texas, we have wonderful natives, and our curious "too hot and dry in summer and a couple of hard freezes in winter and by the way, the soil is a really harsh red clay" growing areas provide sustenance for only a limited number of plants favored in other places, anyway. But I say Save the Mimosa Trees. The mimosa to me is dozens of front yards during my small town boyhood. The mimosa tree is pink blooms, and huge long seed pods. The mimosa is our little oasis of exotica. Sure, it lives fast, and dies young. But when I see those pink blooms in Spring, it's as if a mimosa has eternal life.
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To go off on a tangent...
Date: 2002-05-25 07:52 am (UTC)why, yes, ma'am
I'm a WASP, but in southern CA I sometimes felt very comfortable among the folks in the African American parts of south Central Los Angeles, because so many folks, like me, were immigrants from the southern U.S., and spoke with some of the same courtesies such as "yes, sir" and the like. As a parenthetical, it used to always amuse me to drive through some areas in LA where the stores selling fish have signs saying "You buy, we fry", as if the store were not in urban LA, but in rural Alabama. By and large, folks raised in California, while very courteous, will not use "southern courtesy" as much (though you will hear "sir" and "ma'am", only less frequently).
I remember a woman I knew in college who was initially raised in New England, and could not believe the criticism she got when she moved to high school in rural Arkansas, when she answered "yes" rather than "yes, ma'am" in answer to a teacher's question. This type of southern courtesy is fading away, but ordinary working class and middle class people, including myself, still make liberal and frequent use of "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am", at least in Arkansas and Texas. I believe most of the south is the same, although the south is not monolithic (New Orleans, for example, is entirely different in customs and practice).
I am fairly young at heart, but I notice myself being a middle age man when I go to a restaurant or store and a 20something kid says "here you go, fella" or "can I help you, guy?" instead of "may I help you, sir?".
I would never fail to say "yes, sir" or "yes, ma'am" in a restaurant or to a person in a store. I would
always say it to a stranger I had met. To a business acquaintance, or to a friend, the old social custom might fade away, but the use of honorifics, particularly with folks who do not get enough respect in their jobs, is still important to me.