Slightly Off Center

One day, she came home with three small yucca plants. Someone on River Road had been tearing them up from along their driveway, and she asked if she could take them. Sure, help yourself, they said. We had a scraped-up heap of bare dirt between our driveway and the neighbors, so she planted them there, along with a stray rhododendron, the birch, and a bunch of iris plants.

I didn't really expect much of them. They're desert plants, after all, and Oregon, notably, isn't.

I should have known better. They thrived. (Throve? Thriven?) Grew to be big, spiky globes, and then went up. Older leaves died and drooped, while the top stayed green, leaving an almost palm-tree effect. The big ones started throwing flower stalks every few years, and smaller plants started budding off the roots. Not even an occasional winter blizzard could slow them down, and a cut-down trunk, lying rootless on the ground, put out new shoots for three years afterward.

They were getting to be a hazard, actually, reaching out over the sidewalk--those leaf tips are sharp!--and making it hard to see oncoming traffic, pulling out of the driveway. She finally asked me to take down the two outermost stems. After she'd harvested the dead leaves.

Yucca leaves are very fibrous, you see; they're in the same family as sisal, which is made into baler twine. The green leaves are waxy and hard to break down, but the old, dry leaves make a lovely pulp for paper making. It's a complicated, multi-step process.

Perfect for a new video!



(Music by Silk Road Music, Endless, from the album, Endless.)