So I’ve had Spiney now for over a year and lately he’s looking more and more like just a stick! His life story is a lackluster one but still worth telling (while he is still standing at least). I heroically rescued him as an adolescent from our campus greenhouse in Fall ’05. The greenhouse was the first to go with the breaking of grounds for our new science center. So with winter approaching all the plants in the greenhouse were up for grabs & at the time Spiney was the pick of the litter! I mean I didn’t have to push anyone in the mud to get him, but he actually was a rather remarkable spiney tree and only about 1 ½ feet tall. So he was the “talk of the town” around the office and I was like the best zoo keeper ever! So that lasted until the following summer when he decided to lose all his spines one by one and then grow into a giant stick. Now he is over 3 foot tall and totally transformed into a different structure (dead) from when I got him. Still I’m rather defensive when people call him pitiful, ugly or a bean stalk! I don’t make fun of your kids so why do you gotta pick on my boy spiney just because he’s a little scrawny?
’07 is totally his comeback year, I know it!
