I was so glad to have the work week over. Upon arriving home, I went straight to change into shorts and put my hair up, grab a beer and head out to the back patio to commune with my husband and with nature. We sat chatting for a bit when Wayne mentioned that the heat and humidity seemed to make the air smell a bit musty. Hmm...yes, it did. In fact, it smelled a bit like something was rotting somewhere. We talked a while more and Wayne went into the house to start dinner. I sat in my rocker, checking out
NPR news on my ipod. It wasn't long before the aroma of something rotting caused me to start breathing through my mouth instead of my nose.
I put the ipod down and walked around to the back of the house where the voodoo lilies are starting to come up. There, I saw the origin of that fetid stink. An
Amorphophallus bloom! The flies were all over it. We have a fan on the patio to move the air about and it was moving the perfume of decay right at us. I love my bizarre plants, though, and was delighted that this one bloomed again
as it did last year. We turned the fan to blast the smell away from the patio. It reeks for only a day. This strange and wonderful plant will send up a tree form after the bloom dies. There are so far six more smaller voodoos coming up around it. I call this the voodoo forest. These plants look truly prehistoric, with their mottled rough stalks and palm like fonds. They are easy to grow in zone 9 and die back in the fall. In this picture, you can see smaller voodoos coming up on either side of the one that's blooming.
The close-up...imagine Smell-O-Vision where you get the hint of a dumpster full of carcasses sitting out in the sun for a couple of days...
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