I’ve lived in my apartment for more than 12 years. In early April, I realized for the first time that there are wisteria in the back parking lot.
I suppose this is because I only caught onto wisteria, as an event, in April of 2019. I was in Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan. A friend and his wife took me to see the wisteria at the shrine in their neighborhood. Those wisteria weren’t even in full bloom yet, but they were popular enough to have grandpas in wisteria print jackets directing traffic into overflow parking. These wisteria in the parking lot? I guess it took a pandemic for me to notice them.
My apartment building has a free shelf on the ground floor, next to the bike parking. Over the years, the free shelf has provided to me cast iron skillets, a rice cooker, a mostly-broken paper shredder, countless books and DVDs, mixing bowls, knitting supplies, and more.
This month it gave me a mostly-full jar of conditioner that claims, on the label, to turn brown hair blue. My hair is dark brown, and I’ve always wanted to try wacky colors. When else does one make weird hair choices, but during a pandemic. I tried it. I could see the purply tinge, sort of, but nobody else noticed. Turns out you still can’t dye dark brown hair blue, even if the instructions say you can.
Three weeks ago, like many other people across the country, I dragged out my sewing machine and learned how to make masks. Many of them were made with fabric from the free shelf.
Sewing takes a lot of advanced spatial reasoning. I know much more about sewing, and specifically about my sewing machine, than I did a month ago. I even took it apart and cleaned it, and this weekend I’m going to oil it. These are things you are supposed to do frequently. Whoops. I’m learning all sorts of stuff in this pandemic.
I don’t know when it will be safe to go to Japan again. I don’t know when I’ll be able to socialize with enough people that one of them might say, “Did you do something to your hair?” It seems like this is going to last for a while. What else will I do? Maybe I’ll discover more surprising plants in the back parking lot. Maybe I’ll learn how to make my own clothes. I have a feeling that much of this year might be little moments like these.
Photos/Comics: Helen Fields
Wisteria looks and smells wonderful, so I planted some, only to discover it has invasive tendencies and may have to be pruned if around buildings or power lines But probably
that’s the landlord’s problem.
Thanks that was nice. I like wisterias. Don’t forget about the redbud trees, they are just finishing up with their flowers and putting out leaves! We don’t have to eat everything, you know.
Some things are just for beauty.
Funny you say that, Richard, because in normal years I like to eat some of the redbud flowers. Not this year, though – I don’t trust my hands to be clean enough (or the trees in my busy-ish neighborhood). Sigh.