Tannenbaum-Leichenschaendung The little fir is dead. I clearly over-watered the little guy. The droopy new growth turned from bright green to green to brownish green yesterday. I took my knife, put on rubber gloves, pulled out my butcher's pan and pulled the corps out into the open. Half of the roots just stayed in the pot in with the dripping-wet soil. I had clearly drowned the poor tree. All I could do now was to try some ad-hoc bonsai training, make the dead thing look good, for the last few weeks of its life. (Or the first few weeks of its death.) I cut off all the lower branches, I shaped the thing until it looked like a pathetic miniature version of a high altitude mountain fir. I then began to cut off the rotten the roots. My intuition somehow told me that a smaller root system would be only able to support a smaller tree. I cut some of the injured roots, some of those that looked as if they were nerves torn bare, tangens, in the open now, like bright wires stripped of their protection. It was then that I came across the spiral. It was this lump at the base of the tree, right under the surface of the soil. The spiral looked like one of those energy saving light-bulbs. The winding was much tighter though. The main root of the little fir was wound up into a very tight spiral, incredibly tight, like a single fingered fist, bare knuckles, ready to punch, like the tight knot on an executioners noose, except that the rope was the one to be executed. And the "rope" here was the now dead tree. I should have thought of that before. The tree might have been bred in a very tight cup in the first moments of its life perhaps? Had it been somehow made to grow quicker as its roots had been forced to take as little space as florally possible? It felt as if the little tree had been bred to just live a quick, effective, bright life... and then somehow destined to suffocate itself on its unnaturally wound up root a few months later? Was the tree equipped with a self destructive mechanism designed to kill it just before the return of the tree shopping season? I clearly drowned the tree. It was a perfectly good tree. It could have grown into a giant.. had I not drowned it... I then went on to killing some tomatos... not on purpose, of course... but many died... My father only told me the story of the two seeds today. The seed that did not want to crawl into the rotten dirt, the one that felt quite happy with the surface, the temperature, the good view... the seed that was worried what would happen to it if it had to push itself to grow roots, to push tiny leaves towards the surface... This seed was eaten by a stupid chicken... The other seed... the one that went through the trouble of sacrificing itself, the one that exploded in the dark moist dirt below the leafy surface, that was the one that ended up as something worth while... as... maybe even a tree, producing new seeds... I think my mind is going in spirals towards the rotten bottom of a tiny flower pot. enough. Good night.