Saturday, October 31, 2015

Pre-Day of the Dead + Sunchokes


It's a rainy day in Chicagoland. Pity the poor Trick & Treaters...I am reminded of a Day of the Dead (Nov. 2) which factored significantly in novel I wrote about Guatemala many years ago. More recently, I did spend one of those holidays in the pueblo near where I stay with AFOPADI during my SSG site visits in Guatemala. Yes, there were lots of Calla lilies, plumes of smoke from cigarettes, and alcoholic fumes. But the images I primarily recall are a small metallic radio shiny against the pale, matte stucco of a face-level tomb. And children running across the grave roofs, kites in tow. In those villages: November is the month of Wind... 
To remind us of how compost is essential to our life process, here is a photo taken by my great veggie gardener friend, Bernie. It's from his community garden (which land the city of Evanston is considering selling to a private enterprise)...oh, the curse of Northwestern (as a NPO) not paying property taxes. Nothing is too dear for our municipality to take it off the table.
Anyway, these are Jerusalem artichokes or Sunchokes. They are Sunflowers, in the Helianthus genus. I just love these tangled roots. It is what keeps us upright. We should never forget what is beneath our soil.



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