Day 105: Spitting vines

My wisteria tells me when the humidity gets into single digits.  Every time.

I'll be sitting in the dining room, getting work done, and suddenly I hear a snap, followed immediately by a hail of strikes against the doors and window.  Snap, ping!  Snap, ping!  It's like being in the middle of a wee bombardment.  (The feeling is exacerbated by the fact that, when the Marines are practicing shelling at Camp Pendleton, there's something about the way the landscape is shaped that funnels the sound waves directly to us, so boom! window rattle, boom! window rattle.)  It can get a little bit out of hand: snap, ping! boom, rattle! ping! boom! snap! rattle!

It's all due to a fairly ingenious plan on the part of the wisteria.  It grows its seeds in long seed pods that slowly dry out over time, twisting gently as they do.  Give them a good hot day with low humidity, and the drying accelerates until, with a final twist, they wrench apart, spitting seeds out as they go.  (Our orchid tree does the same thing.)  The seeds can fly ten or twenty feet easily, which makes sitting on the back patio this time of year a rather risky endeavor.  Poor thing - it's a ton of work for no reward, because I sweep the seeds up and put them in the green waste, every time.

Maybe that's why it's spitting at me...