Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 164


Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I talked to a friend in Denver. She had a couple peanut-butter cups that were laced with TCH. She bought them legal, of course, from a dispensary. I told her what I know about the banking business around pot, how most banks won’t hold the money even where it’s locally legal due to federal criminalization. That means many of the cannabis outlets are holding large sums of cash and have to spend money on electric fences, armed guards, that sort of thing. My friend said that gave her a weird image – kind of scary.

Meanwhile, men and women around the country are still getting locked up for possession.

My roommate has a plot at the community garden. She grows morning glories, mint and rosemary. She took me to the garden a few weeks ago while we were walking to the office. It was a hot day, I watched her water. There were flies buzzing around, a couple coupled beetles, and a bright blue lizard basking in the sun. She picked a cucumber from a plot a neighbor keeps for the community and we went home and soaked it in salt. The slices made the summer heat more bearable. That taste – like dipping your toes in the ocean.

Who’s allowed to share the harvest? I drink beer weekly and get high off it. I watch my neighbors raise vegetables in a garden. There’s nothing so human as putting seeds in deep soil, nurturing life until it grows. And there’s nothing so human as choosing who gets to benefit from that life and who’s life gets locked behind steel bars for picking the wrong plant.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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Anthropomorphism is unavoidable, I am finding, in writing about gardening: weeds don’t just grow, they grow with intent, they grow aggressively. Well, they do, as any gardener knows. They sneak in and swarm up when your back is turned.

Penelope Lively, Life in the Garden