Betty's (Little Basement) Garden

by Laurel Dewey

  She knocked on the front door and Peyton answered. Walking her to the basement door, he opened it, turned on the light and led her down the narrow steps. The heady aroma was instantly intoxicating. When she reached the final step, Betty was overwhelmed by what she saw.

  “Welcome to the cannabis castle, Betty!”

  Chapter 17

  “It’s six-thirty. Time for a little zither music.”

  It was like Willie Wonka’s Cannabis Factory. The first thing Betty noticed was the loud humming and consistent breeze from the multitude of enormous fans positioned all around the periphery of the cement-floored basement. Four more fans on the floor cooled the eighteen, neatly-lined-up cannabis plants in their ten-gallon fabric containers. The plants, all in a vegetative stage, were between three to five feet tall. Most of them were squatty, with heavy, wide-leafed branches happily spreading out two feet. Three of them grew much more lanky, with narrow leaves. From what she’d learned, the taller, lankier plants were Cannabis Sativa dominant while the their fatter leafed, squattier sister were Cannabis Indica dominant.

  When Betty commented on the rather blustery environment, Peyton shook his head. “Fans are your friends, Betty. You can’t ever have enough fans. Keeps the PM at bay, keeps the ladies moving and strengthens their root stalks with all that swaying.”

  The plants stood on a thick, black-plastic bed liner, secured in a wooden frame in the center section of the roughly eight-hundred-square-foot room. Hanging about three feet above the plants were six, four-foot, T5 light panels suspended from chains attached to beams in the ceilings. The blazing light spread out well beyond the potted plants, illuminating the far reaches of the basement. Several tables lined the walls, neatly covered with soil, nutrients and books. Betty moved closer to the plants and noted a discreet but effective watering tube set-up that cleverly laced from one cloth pot to the other. Pinpoints of either a green or red light glowed on the tubes.

  “That’s one of Pop’s inventions,” Peyton said, pointing to the lights. “Green means the sensor is picking up enough water in the pot. Red means I need to add some. You don’t want to over water them. Beginners always make that mistake. That and overfeeding the ladies. Too much water and their leaves will curl. Too much food and the leaf edges will get burned and turn yellow or brown.”

  Betty noticed four grey, six-inch round objects that freely whirred around the pots like a child’s toy top. “What are those?”

  He smiled. “Another one of Pop’s innovations. I kept tellin’ him I needed to figure out a good drainage system for the water when it flowed out the bottom and sides of the pots onto the plastic. He came up with those. They’re basically like little rotary sponges that whir around and soak up the excess water. Gotta do what you gotta do to keep the PM away, you know?”

  “Ingenious,” Betty marveled.

  “Pops also rigged up the thermostat so it stays at a nice seventy-six in here and then drops down to sixty-two at night. He also came up with these reflective colored patches that stick on the pots,” Peyton proudly said, showing off white, yellow and dark green labels. “White is placed on the light feeders, yellow is for the medium feeders and dark green is for the ladies who need lots of nutrients. It’s like eighteen different personalities. You gotta get to know them so you can give them what they need. You give them what they need, and they turn around and give you what you need. So it’s a fair deal that works out in the end.”

  Betty was overwhelmed. “This is incredible.”

  “This ain’t no ghetto set-up, Betty. And this is just half of it!” He carefully clipped a few yellowed leaves off the lower branches of one plant. “Growing cannabis and comedy have one thing in common.” He paused a little too long for effect. “Timing,” he finally said smiling. “Timing of lights, nutrients, watering and especially when the ladies are ready to give up their bud. You gotta keep charts and records of when you gave what to which plant, what strains need more nutrients than others, when it’s time to foliar feed –”

  “I had no idea it was this complex, Peyton.”

  “We’ve taken a sacred weed and turned it into an often demanding goddess. As growers, we plan our schedules around them, we skip vacations, we often invest in better vitamins and nutrients for them than for ourselves, we lose sleep when they’re sick, we protect them from others who want to destroy or steal them, and we do anything and everything to make sure they’re happy. I guarantee you there are people out there right now inventing new brews, powders, lights and sounds that are meant to make these ladies bigger, better and stronger. I can’t explain it. But you’ll soon see what I mean. They really do hold some sort of magical appeal over you.”

  She looked at the eighteen plants and suddenly felt slightly sorry for them. “But…with all the pampering you give them, they never see the sun?”

  “No. It’d be too risky to take them outside. That would be asking for somebody to rip them off.”

  “How sad,” she softly said.

  He considered the possibilities. “Well, I guess it could be done. I could hang red Christmas ball ornaments on them. From a distance, they might actually look like a tomato plant.”

  Betty smiled at the visual. She sauntered around the periphery, examining the various leaves and stalks. “Does Pops…enjoy the fruits of your labor?”

  “Huh?”

  “Does Pops use pot?” Betty replied, straight to the point.

  “Oh. Yeah. Of course. He’s one of my patients. Not only does it keep his joints moving more freely, he said it puts him in touch with his creative muse. Oh, and please don’t call the ladies ‘pot.’” He clasped his hands around the top branches of a nearby plant, as if to close off its “ears.” They really take offense at that. Just like the Mexican term, ‘marijuana,’ was hijacked by the government to marginalize cannabis, the same thing goes for the word ‘pot.’ It’s short for potiguaya. It’s like Doobie Douggie says, ‘Every time people call this beautiful plant ‘marijuana’ or ‘pot,’ you unknowingly feed into the government’s propaganda campaign of manipulation and conditioning they’ve been selling us for decades.’ I love Doobie Douggie. He’s a sage of enlightenment and a soldier of freedom for cannabis.”

  “He’s not a wallflower, is he?”

  Peyton grabbed the sturdy rootstalk on one plant and began to vigorously shake it back and forth.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, slightly alarmed.

  “They love this. It kinda mimics the way they bend and sway in a stiff breeze when they grow outside.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of breaking the stalk or a stem?”

  “Nah. The ladies need a lot of care, but you gotta remember this is a wild plant and a lot of times, they actually grow better in the midst of chaos.” He walked over to another plant and repeated the same method. “Anything you can do to shake or vibrate the root stalk will strengthen the plant and produce a better bud. I know a guy who tortures his ladies. He bends the stalks until they break halfway and then tapes them back together. He also ties string to the branches and pulls the string until the branch bends down, nails it to the floor and lets it stay like that for a day or more. He’s brutal but he grows the most incredible herb you’ve ever seen.”

  Good God, Betty thought. The Marquis de Sade of marijuana was alive and well and operating with abandon in some Colorado basement. She asked why he used cloth pots, and Peyton informed her that unlike plastic, they breathed better and allowed the roots to self-prune instead of becoming bound to the bottom of the container. “You gotta keep the ladies happy,” he said, flicking a speck of caked dirt off a cloth pot.

  Betty noted a strange, discordant tone suddenly issuing from the four audio speakers in the basement. “Good God, what’s that?”

  Peyton checked the clock. “It’s six-thirty. Time for a little zither music. They wake up to Zeppelin, mid-morning they get Hendrix, lunch is Pink Floyd, then some down time of total silence – you know, a nap? Zither starts at six-thirty and then we move on to the
Allman Brothers, Steve Miller Band and wind up the day before the lights go out at midnight with Country Joe and the Fish.”

  Betty stared at him. “This is not normal, Peyton.”

  “Actually, if you spell it differently, it is. As in N-O-R-M-L,” he said, explaining the acronym for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Apparently, NORML didn’t heed the message about not using the word ‘marijuana’ in their acronym. “Hey, the ladies in the bloom room are going to sleep pretty quick.”

  “Ly,” Betty corrected. “Quickly.”

  “Right. So, if you want to see ‘em, now’s the time.” Peyton led Betty to the far corner of the basement where a separate room was built, complete with its own roof. A heavy black cloth covered the entryway. Behind that, about three feet away, was a black door. He turned to Betty. “Get ready,” he said as he swept back the cloth and swung open the door.

  A brilliant blaze of red and orange light filled the three-hundred-fifty-square-foot space, emitting from four massive, hooded, bloom lights that hung from metal bars.

  “Every time I open this door, it’s like seeing the Son of God,” Peyton said in a reverent tone. “It’s almost a religious experience, isn’t it?”

  Underneath the lights were eighteen plants, between five and six feet tall, all in bloom. The red-orange lights cast an odd color onto Betty’s hands, making them appear slightly yellow. She had to steel herself momentarily from the pungent aroma that surrounded and invaded her senses.

  “My God, Peyton. One could get high just standing in here.”

  “Nah. Maybe for beginners like you. After a bit, you get totally used to it.”

  Betty’s head began to swirl, as the scent wrapped around her in an exquisite, sweet bouquet. There was no skunky smell; rather, a fruity aroma with a dash of brie. “What smells like cheese?”

  Peyton pointed across the room. “Cheese! For real. That’s the name of the plant. It’s actually U.K. Cheese. One of my patients, who used to live in England, asked me grow it for him.”

  Betty walked between the blooming plants and gave a closer look at the heavy, top branch that Peyton explained was called a “cola.” Even with the harsh cast of red-orange light, she could detect the glistening resins that frosted across the buds and spread onto the surrounding leaves. It was magical to her – this plant that looked so plain in its vegetative state, had erupted into an imposing beauty. It was hard to believe, she thought, that something could transform itself so naturally and yet so powerfully. There was majesty in each plant. Eighteen individual queens who demanded daily attention and love in order to become the transcendent beauties they were born to be. As Betty looked closer into the shimmering buds, she almost felt as if the plant knew exactly how coveted it was by others outside of its basement home. And with that knowledge, the plant held a harmonious supremacy over humans. “Adore me,” she could almost hear the plant saying. “Worship me. Indulge me. Devote yourself to me and I’ll make it worth your while.” Betty pulled back, wondering if she was slightly loaded. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of them. There was nothing remotely evil about them. There was nothing sinful, immoral or corrupt. But there was power. Quiet, resolute, vibrating, transcendental, ancient power that calculatingly oozed from each bud.

  “You wanna see what the buds look like up close?” Peyton asked.

  Betty nodded. He crossed to a table in the far corner of the room and retrieved a microscope and a small pair of scissors. Surveying the various plants and their growth patterns, he settled on one in the center and gingerly cut a small, frosty leaf just over a quarter inch long that grew out of the top cola. Delicately placing it on his palm, he brought it over to the microscope and gently positioned it on the glass specimen slide. Checking the focus, he smiled and handed the microscope to Betty. “Give that a look.”

  Betty squinted through the scope. She took in a quick breath and turned back to Peyton. “Oh, Peyton. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Returning to the eyepiece and adjusting the focus ring, Betty was mesmerized. It was like a fairyland inside that magnified circle. Against a creamy, glistening white backdrop rose hundreds of iridescent, round heads. Betty soon learned they were called trichomes and held dozens of healing compounds. It was like visiting another reality; a world within a world that was both surreal and magical. She moved the leaf just a titch to the left and dozens of new, shimmering trichomes came into view, most of the globular heads clear and a few others slightly milky.

  “People don’t realize it but you can alter the physical and mental effects of a single plant based on when you harvest it,” Peyton instructed. “If you cut it down when the trichomes are clear, the plant has more of an effect on the mind. If you wait until they are all milky, you start to move the effects more into the body. Eventually, if you wait until about half of those trichomes turn amber, you’ll get a powerful physical reaction that locks you into the couch or bed. See? That’s the art of this, Betty. You can manipulate the strength of the plant based on when you harvest it.”

  Betty didn’t want to take her eyes off the enchanting, magnified scene. Part of her wanted to jump into that exquisite world that occupied the tip of the leaf and roll around in the sparkling landscape. She reluctantly handed the microscope back to Peyton as her head continued to reel with the enthralling, resinous scents. “You know, Peyton, you hear about pot, weed, marijuana, whatever…and you see it in these bags all crushed and dried. But when you see it like this, it’s different. And you have to ask yourself why so many people are against it?”

  “Aw, now you’re gonna get my blood pressure up if we get into the politics of cannabis.” He scratched the topsoil of one plant, checking the moisture. “Back in the mid-1800s, on up to around the 1930s, cannabis was a common ingredient in nearly half of any doctor’s remedies, usually sold as liquid extracts. They made the extracts for everything from migraine headaches to menstrual cramps. You can still go online and see these cool bottles from the early 1900’s with Cannabis Indica written across the front. Dude, they even had formulas with cannabis for babies who were teething! Most people never thought of cannabis as a way to get high. I’m not saying there weren’t people abusing it. There are always going to be people who abuse stuff. Hell, some people still abuse cough syrup.” He leaned forward in a confidential manner. “I’ve heard people even drug their kids with cough syrup.”

  “Really?” she said, feigning shock. “When did cannabis stop being considered medicine?”

  “You can thank William Randolph Hearst and the Dupont Company for starting the bullshit campaign that smeared this beautiful plant.” Peyton launched into a concise history lesson, beginning with Hearst’s newspaper empire and his vast ownership of timberlands. The strong fibers from hemp – the more common name for the non-psychoactive “ditch weed” version of Cannabis Sativa – had been used for thousands of years to make everything from paper and clothing, to rope and ship’s sails. Hemp fiber was employed as canvases for Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the paper used for the first draft of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as the cloth chosen by Betsy Ross to sew the first flag. Labeled a “billion dollar crop” in the 1930s, hemp was poised to propel the United States out of the Great Depression. But Hearst’s influence changed the course of history and started the propaganda campaign against the plant.

  In 1937, Dupont held the patent for the process to make plastic from oil and coal. Synthetics were the future and natural hemp industrialization, while more cost effective and less invasive to produce, would destroy Dupont’s monopoly in the marketplace. Dupont’s primary investor in his plastics division was Andrew Mellon. Mellon conveniently became Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury. Even more conveniently, Mellon appointed his future nephew-in-law and strong prohibitionist, Harry J. Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. An unholy alliance between the four powerhouses, Hearst, Dupont, Mellon and Anslinger, was born and exploited. In order for their wealth and power
to continue, cannabis hemp had to be removed from the landscape.

  But how? How could they convince the public that a plant used for thousands of years for fiber and medicine was suddenly not useful? “Danger and fear,” Peyton said in an ominous tone. “Tell us it’s dangerous and make us afraid of it. Fear sells and compels,” he declared. “And there was a shit load of fear-stained rhetoric they couldn’t wait to unleash.” After learning that Mexican laborers smoked “brick weed” – low potency cannabis that was barely psychoactive and full of seeds, stems and leaves – Hearst’s tabloid-driven, racist-fueling, agenda-heavy creation of “the evil weed” was established to shock and manipulate the unsuspecting and naïve masses. “Back then,” Peyton added, “if you wanted to turn people against something, all you had to do was associate it with immigrants or people who were considered ‘low class.’”

  Hearst, who believed blacks and Mexicans were inferior, fused racism with disinformation and the media blitz began. “This is when Hearst and his buddies started calling it marijuana,” Peyton informed Betty, “which was purely a Mexican slang term the field workers gave it.” When Harry Anslinger, who was also an unapologetic racist, discovered that black jazz musicians liked to toke on joints, he spun a story about how marijuana smoking would insidiously incite white women to have wanton sex with black men.

  To visually shock the unsophisticated public with the supposed debauchery caused by “reefer,” Anslinger had a strong hand in the scripting and production of anti-marijuana, propaganda films between 1935 and 1937, including Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed, Marihuana: Assassin of Youth and the classic, Reefer Madness. The films featured “marijuana crazed youth,” who turned into sex hungry, insane, violent, raping, murdering, nut cases when they smoked the herb. Peyton shook his head. “I mean, come on. If I vape a little too much of an Indica strain, I go to sleep. The last thing on my mind is plotting to kill someone.” He pulled a few dead leaves off the bottom of one of the blooming plants. “Have you ever seen those idiotic movies?” Peyton asked. “All the actors playing the ‘teenagers’ look like they’re in their late thirties or early forties. One of the guys even looks like he’s balding.”