Whirled Piece: Ginger or Mary Ann? Julia or Lucetta?

Costus pictus, spiral ginger

The ginger that does grow
In tropical garden isle
Makes its way onto the blog
And so the garden file

It traveled here all potted up
Last year from lakeside yard
It grew but didn't bloom 'til now
A spiraling upwards guard

With gaze that grows from inward out
To focus on a whirled
Piece on Earth, on entwined fates allowed
To mingle here, so gradually unfurled.

Hedychium coronarium, butterfly ginger

JULIA: What is't that you took up so gingerly?

LUCETTA: Nothing.

JULIA: Why didst thou stoop, then?

LUCETTA: To take a paper [blog] up that I let fall.

JULIA: And is that paper [blog] nothing?

LUCETTA: Nothing concerning me.

JULIA: Then let it lie for those that it concerns...

(from William Shakespeare's The Two Gentleman of Verona, Act I, scene ii)

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I never dreamed I would become such a ginger gardener. But who can resist the tropical allure of these beauties? They grow so effortlessly, with so little care and attention, quite unlike a blog, I'm afraid. I never dreamed I would become such a "gingerly" blogger. If a blog is let go, allowed to drop out of sight and mind, it might just die on the vine, so to speak. And the entwined fates (faithful readers/followers/thinkers) will stop mingling here and remain unfurled. Impressions either never arrive or quickly leave, unseen and unspoken.

If you're wondering what Ginger or Mary Ann have to do with this whirled piece, blame SAM. When he saw the ginger unfurling its flower bracts, he suggested that I ask the question. Are you a Ginger or Mary Ann? Gilligan's Island fans will know what I'm talking about. You might even remember dramatic Ginger as Ophelia in this episode. There, now. Shakespeare>Ginger>Tropical Landscaping>Gilligan's Island. Everything comes together in this whirled piece. Oh. What about Julia or Lucetta? Read the play and let me know what you think.

Thunder Smitten: The Idea of This Garden-Life

Black-and-yellow Argiope aurantia

"Tell me," said the spider, "why do you garden? Why do you toil in the heat and bake yourself brown under the summer sun while countless others of your kind are cooling themselves in pools of water or at the beach or sit all day inside their offices and houses made artificially cold by large, noisy boxes? I have to be outside to catch small things that fly so that I can feed myself and my babies. They're coming soon, you know. And then I will die. As I sit here day after day, I notice that you don't have many mouths to feed. How will your species survive with so few young ones to work and gather food to feed you and take care of you when you're very old? I've heard (on the Web) that your kind lives for many moons, more than I care to imagine. So, why do you garden?"

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The author needs great faith in his[her] reader's sympathy; else he[she] must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder smitten Adam[Eve], who had fled for refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled. 

(from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables).

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Life cycle of Argiope aurantia: The female fills a spherical egg sac, up to 1" (25 mm) wide, with a tough, brown, papery cover. She attaches it to one side of the web close to her resting position and then dies. The eggs hatch in autumn; the young overwinter in the sac and then disperse in spring. The male builds a web in the outlying part of the female's web, making a white, zigzag band vertically across the middle.

This spider seems to prefer sunny sites with little or no wind. It drops to the ground and hides if disturbed.

(from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders)