The Hemp Gardener

My aunt emailed me the other day to ask advice for a debate topic for one of her night school classes. I wrote her back suggesting the debate that has been on my mind this Summer, the legalization of hemp. She said her teacher had specifically told them not to write about cliché topics like that.

I can understand the teacher's stubbornness on the subject. I'm sure she's read lots of tired arguments; and I realized sending my suggestion that it wasn't exactly original. However I do feel like we are at another cross-roads in this amazingly long-winded prohibition. And of course I believe it should be legal.

Early this Summer I got a seedy bag of schwag. I was planting cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, marjoram, rosemary, eggplants, and other stuff. I couldn't resist planting the schwag too. I'd heard that it's actually easy to grow if you don't have to do it clandestinely. Hemp loves sun, needs lots of it.

I've got a high balcony so that's where I put it. It gets plenty of sun but not so visible to the neighborhood. Started with four plants and used a training technique that keeps them short and bushy so as to give them a low profile. I didn't know much about growing this stuff so I got online. Not hard to find chat groups on the subject and it wasn't long before I had a considerable wealth of knowledge on the sexual nature of hemp which is important stuff to know if one is producing hemp for certain reasons.

The main thing you got to know is how to identify a male plant because you want those out of there as soon as possible or they'll turn on the females and they'll go to seed. The male plants flower too which makes it confusing. But as it turns out male flowers have distinctive traits and look like little hairy balls where as the female has white furry bits and a V-shaped leafy bit. I started to get turned on and wanted to fuck my plants.

But I didn't. I got jealous though and ripped that male out of there and I was left with three. They're budding now. Bunch of hot bitches getting ready to turn me on.

Some days I sit on my porch staring at my ladies thinking how easy it is really to deal with this stuff and also how absurd it is that I am doing something illegal by having some leafy green plants in pots on my porch. That actually makes me mad as hell. I get excited about growing because it's fun. Thinking about going clandestine but that makes me angrier. I'm gonna go to all that trouble because of these friggin asinine laws?

We're at a crossroads though and I think we're gonna take the easy road home. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing and like so many things in this friggin country, wait for the country to catch up. Although catch-up isn't the right word. I feel like I'm waiting for the country to get its head out of its ass.