Weed BnB

I launched the prototype of a Weed BnB last week and I don't think the first visitors ever stopped smiling or smoking. (I do like to playfully confront obsessive addicts at times, like when I asked the man of the couple, “So are you trying to not feel something by staying stoned all day and what might that be?” The guy seemed to ponder the question as if he had never thought about it before.)

In the mornings they invited me out on the deck for marijuana-infused omelets and scrambled eggs and later offered me a THC-laced cookie. I passed on the eggs but had a couple bites of the cookie.

Once or twice a day they went into the nearby “pot cabin,” where black plastic garbage bags filled the shelves, and took whatever strain of weed they wanted to try out on the deck or inside the Weed BnB. They were also welcome to take home as much as they had room for.

Once I cracked, “Well I'm going to go look in those bags and see how much you took,” and they just smiled knowing I had no intention of doing that impossible task, that my weed-man's burden was to try to give it all away before it got brown, ragged, and smoked like hay.

They took day trips to the coast and to see the big trees and I took them on a tour along the river. Sometimes we sat around talking and I regaled them with old-time growing stories, printed a few off for them to read, and made them a compilation of my favorites to take on the road.

On one of the weekend evenings I got high with them after we'd consumed dinner, Irish coffee, homemade brownies, and ice cream. I invented silly games we played with giant hula hoops and after all the fun I went back across the lawn to bed while my guests took a sauna.

Despite my six varieties the woman of the couple didn’t like the seeds sprinkled throughout and wanted to try some of the Raspberry Kush a friend had given me a couple months ago. “This is all I smoke now,” I said. “It's tasty and beautiful, purple and sparkly, and a great aphrodisiac. He's broke and really needs to sell some, which is nearly impossible. If you like it you could pay him the going rate, $400 a pound.” 

K-dog came by on his way to play disc golf at the park, dropped off a sample bag, and the lady gave him a lamp, pillows, kitchenware, and other household items from a condo she was giving up in Reno. (He also dropped by a couple more plants of his sexy strain for me to grow.) They worked out a deal and he said he'd be back the next day with the rest of the weed. Her guy was also a disc golf player so he went with K-dog to the park to play a round in the rainy fields surrounded by poison oak, and returned a couple hours later sopping wet and happy.

She wanted a couple pounds, K-dog set to work clipping it up, and came back over the next day with half pound of very well-trimmed weed and a pound and a half roughly clipped. (It was one of the most beautiful pounds I'd ever seen.) 

The pot tourist gave him $800 for the lot, both were satisfied with the transaction, and I was happy to help get a pound or two sold in this stagnant economy. “This is the first weed that went out of Humboldt County in over three months!” I announced, only half joking.

The day before they left I went over to the Weed BnB a few steps away and said, “Okay, if you get to mopping during the housecleaning use just a small amount of Murphy's Oil Soap and water for the hardwood floor.”

They were busy all morning cleaning up the space. I may be offering a free weed tourism experience for friends but there's no maid service and I wouldn't even know who to hire.

(The night before they left, the guy told me the story: each of their spouses had died within the last year and they had gotten together during their mourning recently when a consoling hug lead to something more. They hadn't told anyone because they didn't want to be judged as her husband had died just three months before. Her therapist had reassured her that she had already been in mourning during the two years she had been taking care of her husband dying at home.)

In the morning he took off for his job north where he works for the parks department in Oregon, to avoid the Vegas summers, and she headed south to continue caring for her 105-year-old mother who's in a nursing home. Having put off her world travels for the last couple of years she's looking forward to visiting the gorillas in Africa this fall. He's going to confront his empty house containing a lifetime of stuff and figure out what to do next. 

* * *

A month later she texted that she'd be stopping by again, wanted to pick up another pound, I called K-dog with the news, and he was elated. He had already given me five undeclared plants of the same strain, the Raspberry Kush, and I had gotten three females from the lot and planted them. (So much for my plan of not growing any, or only one this year.)

I asked him if he had another extra, he said he'd already given them away to the farm down the road and started complaining about his plants, that they were already four feet tall and hadn't sexed yet. 

“Hey, if I sex your plants for you would you give me one more female?” I asked. 

He didn't go for that idea either. “I'm worried they might be hermaphrodite,” he said. “The plants I gave you came from seeds I made two years ago so I thought I was being clever keeping the more recent starts for me but maybe you got the best ones?”

“But they're all the same strain, right?” I said. “That's all I've been smoking since you gave me that bag last January when you came over to watch the 49ers-Rams championship game. I really like it, it may be no better than mine but I guess I'm believing the illusion that it is.” His weed was very pretty, purple and aromatic. “I better just come up there and sex them for you.”

“Why would anyone want to drive all this way to do that?” he asked.

“Hey, no problem, it needs to be done,” I said. “I'll call in a little while when I'm ready to come up.”

I found a couple rolls of construction tape and drove up the Avenue of the Giants ten miles. His plants were very robust and healthy-looking, bright green and three to a pot. It took me about ten minutes to go through and sex them: I marked the boys with orange tape and the girls with white. One huge Smart Pot had three females in it and I assured him he could dig out two without harming any.

His total was six females and four males. We sat around talking for forty-five minutes and he said the state or county was going to give him new front teeth. He also said he lost his glasses and wasn't sure how he could replace them, maybe that's why he couldn't see to sex the plants, but he probably just doesn't know the tricks, he was never a grower. 

Finally I drove out of there, my community service completed. 

A couple days later he sold his pound to my visitor for another $400 and as he was leaving he said, “That's a miracle.”

“What?” I said. “That a pound actually got sold in Humboldt county and you got paid?” 

“Yup,” he said.