Today I took the next logical step with my dragonfruit. I split it open. To tell you the truth, I knew what to expect. Before I ever saw a dragonfruit in person, I searched for a picture of it on the Internet. I was only expecting to see an outside view, but there it was, split open. No spoiler alert, no nothing. There’s got to be some kind of browser setting to guard against seeing unwanted fruit pictures. Oh well, I should move on and let the healing begin.
Mysteries of the open dragonfruit
The first surprise was the color around the edges. They were a deep purplish, beet color; the same color as portions of the outside, but uniform and completely enveloping the center. The main mass of the center was a whitish grey with black spots that looked like kiwi seeds. My impression was, “This is the model of the atom, as defined by J. J. Thompson.” He proposed that an atom is made up of electrons that are placed uniformly, like the raisins in a raisin bread (at the time, his model was also known as the ‘plum pudding’ model). Had Thompson been familiar with dragonfruit, history would have been changed. His model of the atom would have been ‘the dragonfruit model’.
Given the semi-orderly organization of the outside of the dragonfruit, one must wonder how the random dispersal of the seeds on its inside came to pass. The seeds are not tied to any umbilicus, as the horned melon’s seeds were. Does the dragonfruit abandon it’s embryonic progenitors just as their reptilian counterparts abandon their eggs, leaving them to fend for themselves, without so much as a lifeline in the whitish mass of its middle?
No matter.
My mission was to sketch, in watercolor, the split dragonfruit, representing it as faithfully as I could. But I encountered another confound. The colors I saw when I first cut the fruit open started to change! It was ever so slight. Just enough to be annoying and to make me feel like I sketch and paint v-e-r-y slowly. I even questioned my own eyes, but do have the photograph I took when I first cut the dragonfruit, so I know I was correct.
Today’s study
Here is today’s watercolor sketch:
Dragonfruit Exposed
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block
The grayish color of the center is pretty accurate. It wasn’t the stark white (of a titanium variety), but rather a charcoal grey, brightened with a LOT of white. For the beet colored edges, I used alizarine crimson/French ultramarine combination (very little ultramarine).
I wasn’t able to capture the wetness of the cut surface, but I am fairly satisfied with this study, which is more than I can say for the taste of the dragonfruit. It had no flavor whatsoever.
This is such a good description! And I loved the idea of the Dragonfruit Model of the atom! Yes, the best dragonfruit I’ve ever had still just tasted like sweetened ice. Great picture too.
A number of your recent post deserve comment. We’ll accept, “let the healing begin,” as an invitation to our kind of comments from the Healing Garden. Here, we are very grateful for your transparent examples. Especially as one is not entirely certain where one’s unplanned adventures go, their advertisement is always risky. Euclid, the Byrne translation, is helpful. Good prompt for consideration of things at the source. Thanks. No, these hands of ours have done so well climbing back from a little vegetative state, but they cannot yet draw their own drawings. For this purpose I use Stella Ross-Craig, who produced a series of drawings of British Plants for the education of botanists. These are tremendously helpful to me for brushwork and cognitive exercises. Not to mention learning the mutable nature of water with pigments.
Sounds like you’ve had a real ordeal, THGg. I liked that picture on your blog.
My gardening is confined to one avocado pit that I grew in a jar. I just planted it in a big pot, but I think I may have caused it injury.I’m probably not using the right soil or something. I can see how growing things can be helpful in healing.
As always, thanks for your comments.
j