Here lichi, lichi, lichi!

I did not go to belly dancing this afternoon. Instead I went to bed. It serves me right, I stayed up too late last night chatting with my invisible friends, and then helping students out in the computer lab who are copying their compositions in Finale through the magic that is instant messaging. When I finally did get to bed around 12:30, I lay there unable to sleep until at least after 1 a.m. when I heard the clock chime. My husband lay beside me, making soft breathing sounds which are magnified by my inability to just drop off, and dryness in my throat was making me cough. So I had a drink of water, rolled over so my back was to him, and eventually slept, to be woken unhappily this morning by my clock radio informing me that it had got cold again. Feh.

Speaking of my husband, I had told him ages and ages ago that he shouldn�t bother learning Finale himself because it is such a difficult program with such a steep learning curve that he would be frustrated as hell, and that he should continue to compose his music with pencil on manuscript paper and just give it to me so that I can produce publisher-quality scores for him with a minimum of fuss and bother. When I got home from school today and went upstairs to inform him of my plan to become horizontal and comatose, he was cursing at having bought the program and installed it on his laptop, because it is giving him so much trouble. Why hadn�t he bought something easier, like SibeIius as everyone had recommended? Oh no, he had to go and buy the cr�me de la cr�me of all copying programs. A great big fat �I told you so� was hovering on my lips and may have escaped (not in those words), but he was way ahead of me on that one. He should come to my seminars. All the other students are benefitting.

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Whenever lichi fruits are in season, I cannot resist buying some. I love their peelable outer skins and the white luscious fruit inside. There is something incredibly sensuous about them, and delicious as well. But I think my favourite part is the seed, that rich mahogany-coloured ovoid with the highly-polished texture. Several times now I have planted them and cultivated a lichi sapling in a pot, hoping that someday I will have my very own dwarf tree to harvest. Alas, it always gets to a certain point of its development, after it has been doing quite well and is perhaps 6" high and leafy and healthylooking, where it drops all its leaves and proceeds to die from the top down. In other words, I continue to water and care for a stick in a pot. I have one such specimen in my dining room as we speak, and I do not know if I should finally admit that it�s not coming back and throw it all in the composter and start again, or just keep watering it and telling myself that it�s dormant and the stem (which still has some greenness about it) will send forth evidence of life at any moment. I�m feeling pretty stupid.

Does anyone out there know anything about propogating lichis? Has anyone grown them from seed as I am attempting to do with more success than I have heretofore had? It would be really cool if anybody answering the above questions �yes� would help me out. I think I need help.

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