Love Thy Neighbor

I’ve finally investigated my neighbors. We’ve been in close quarters and occupying the same space since 2007. I started investigating and observing them mainly in the morning and some times in the afternoon. I know they know that I’ve been watching their every move. Finally, it was time to take action.

I took my camera, walked right up to them, and snapped their photos without warning. Surprisingly, my neighbors didn’t protest or object to my Kodakian intrusion. In fact, I thought they reveled at the notion that they’d be showcased in my portfolio with descriptions of their reproductive parts, sexual habits, names of their family members and locations. I’m sure they have been watching me as well. I’m sure as I squatted down in my ripped blue jeans, sandals, and cleavage grasping t-shirts that they wanted me to be a part of their sexual future. Well, I couldn’t, because my other neighbors indiscreetly peeked out their windows and thought that I hadn’t saw them watching me…but I did. I’m not into orgies with green individuals, not now not ever. However, I did want to engage in preserving their legacies. I’ve been documenting individuals like this in other states during my travels for years. Now it was time to start in my own back yard, literally.

My front and backyard are populated with invasive Star Trek looking plants and weeds. On cool crisp mornings or muggy afternoons, I zoomed in on spiny veins and thick stamens, vulvas, and ovaries with my camera. I kneeled on dirt and concrete and gently with my fingers lifted or turned over prickly or fuzzy leaves to record its vascular structure, color, texture, and pattern embedded in oftentimes dry hard soil.

I discovered that CVS and Walgreen’s ain’t got nothing on me! Nor does the local street pharmacist. The fence that surrounds my garage and encloses the parking space is laced with Morning Glory ( Ipomoea Violacea). Morning Glory is a vine that produces beautiful purple flowers and apparently it produces some pretty good trips! The seeds of Morning Glory contain the alkaloidal substance lysergic acid amide, the original source of LSD. Yes, acid. LSD is the synthetic version of the drug. The garden bed in the front has Black Nightshade or Horse Nettle, a toxic hallucinogenic plant with little purplelish berries and tiny star-shaped yellow and white flowers. In the back yard, there’s nut grass ( cyperus rotundus) and Mexican Tea or skunkweed (chenopodium ambroisiodes). The two plants/weeds in the back yard have several medicinal properties.

I wonder if these “weeds” were always viewed as “invasive” or troublesome by ancient native and indigenous peoples, because these plants all have some type of medicinal purpose(s). What makes us (man) deem something that has been here for thousands and thousands of years and a part of nature invasive? Our relationship with plants is symbiotic. Besides, they are our neighbors and without them, we die not the other way around.