Thursday, December 10, 2009

Gardening with Smut

With Spring well-advanced now and the equinoctial gales finally dying down, the unearthly ichor will be burgeoning within your half-plant half-human grafting experiments, and it is time to think about pruning them.

Using a sharp knife such as the one you use for vivisecting badgers, cut away any heads, torsos, hands or other body parts that have withered during winter. Cut diagonally and smear balsam from the dedaim plant onto the semi-animated stump to staunch the slow, viscid leakage of pale pink fluids, neither blood nor sap.* Decide whether you prefer to direct the growth of the abominable hybrid vertically into a column, or let it spread sideways into an old-fashioned broad espalier. This is also a good time to replace the fertiliser at the base of the root-stock, if last year's body has been drained of all nourishment.

A lot of people think that these morbid grafts will only thrive indoors, roofed over with great sheets of lead and copper, preferably lit by the sanguine light from a fiery globe levitated by infernal power and fed with the never-dying flames of that clime in which the fruits of Thasaidon swell to unearthly size. This is used to be true but with the modern root-stocks they can grow quite comfortably outside, in sunny dry conditions sheltered from the wind, as shown at the top.

Of course this is also the time of year when the pests are proliferating. Last year my Virgin-&-Child graft was flourishing with obscene vitality and I had high hopes for a prize from the Unnatural Necromantic Horticultural Show, but the a-phids sucked the fluids from it practically overnight.

* The stuff stains something awful and is a bugger to get out of your clothes, but an immediate bubble-bath sometimes works.

22 comments:

mikey said...

Dear Smut:

I harvested my previous season's endeavors, and proudly carried the bounty of unnatural fruits in my apron to the kitchen, whereupon I sliced them into 1cm discs in spite of the horrible screams and foul odors.

I breaded them with panko seasoned with oregano and cilantro, and put them in a medium sautee pan in a mix of ghee and olive oil.

That's when things got weird. A deamon with fucking EXTERNAL lungs (what the HELL is that about, fer crissakes?) threw my stove through the wall and my neighbor called the cops and said I was cooking crank.

So my question is, should I have let the pods dry for a few weeks before cooking?

ckc (not kc) said...

With Spring well-advanced now ...

here it's -10, light snow, ice everywhere... may your spring be "safely tucked away" (if you know what I mean, and I think you do).

Smut Clyde said...

seasoned with oregano and cilantro
There's your problem right there.

Smut Clyde said...

With Spring well-advanced now ...
here it's -10, light snow, ice everywhere


We're not gloating. Oh no. Too mature for that.

Another Kiwi said...

I'm having a bit of trouble with neighbourhood pets going missing and collars and the like being found amongst the unearthly creations. Is this something I can guard against or should it be encouraged?

Smut Clyde said...

When the neighbourhood animals respond to the call of the wild by throwing off their shackles, they dump their collars and the like in your garden before they disappear into the hinterland. It must be an old tradition, or a charter, or something. Like tying together the laces of old running shoes and flinging them over telephone lines.

M. Bouffant said...

I would link to those awful calendars by that awful woman who puts awful children in awful flower suits & steals their souls via photography, which she then also makes a coffee-table book of, but I feel sick already.

Be careful no one gets all up in your ghril, or your ghee.

Another Kiwi said...

So my question is, should I have let the pods dry for a few weeks before cooking? This underlines how difficult it can be to judge pod readiness.
Due to a court appearance over some spilt offal (didn't look like a school to me)I left my pods for too long last year. All that was left for me was dust which caused several frankly amusing hallucinogenic episodes in the neighbourhood but were worthless in terms of soup production.

Smut Clyde said...

awful calendars by that awful woman who puts awful children in awful flower suits & steals their souls via photography

Ahh feck. You mean Anne Geddes. Look, she may live in NZ, but she was born in Australia, OK? So she's THEIR responsibility.

Wikipedia informs me that "In 2004, Geddes collaborated with Céline Dion".

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Geddes is self-taught, as there were no photography courses at her school.

~

fish said...

Last year my Virgin-&-Child graft was flourishing with obscene vitality

This is a real shame. If you could get a robust harvest of Virgin&Child, you could save a lot time spent on religious arguments.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

As far as human/plant hybrids go, I always stick with the mandrake.

Feckin' Youtube doesn't have the appropriate Excalibur clip!

Nichol Williamson is the Jew of Youtube fascism!

Substance McGravitas said...

My plants keep getting away. What am I doing wrong?

Smut Clyde said...

Call me old-fashioned, but for appropriate sound clips I am sticking to the classics.

Jennifer said...

Ahem

mikey said...

The Siouxie vid brings up something I wonder about quite often. If the video portion of a youtube is nothing but a still image of the album cover, why is there so often nonetheless a 'HQ' option?

The mind reels...

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Jennifer unloaded teh A-Hem!! Well Done!!

Smut Clyde said...

This is a LOL-free zone.

ckc (not kc) said...

wrt the holbein my questions are:

1. which team won?
2. do the male-pattern-baldness midgets count (what position?)
3. in re the coaches: is a book better than a beard?

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

You canNOT stop the ZOM NOM NOM, smut.

Smut Clyde said...

ckc is quite right. The "Holbein" image is in fact an early Renaissance prototype for a foosball table, as shown with elaborate flourishes in an illuminated manuscript of the time.
I think the baldness midgets are team mascots.

Another Kiwi said...

Interesting that both teams are playing the 3:2:2:3:1 formation and each has a main coach with 3 assistant coaches.
Further interest is provided by the Latin player descriptions which describe the right hand team Centre-back as "uncompromising".