Protruding out of the stalk right beneath the bud, they served essentially as satellite dishes, to absorb sunlight and send energy to their flower.

They weren’t totally useless.

But when they got to be too big, or there got to be too many of them, they began to either:

Suck up too much water from the roots, not allowing enough to get to the buds.

Or: block the sun from flowers lower down the stalk.

Become overbearing.

Stifle.

Suffocate.

Deprive the flowers of sunlight and clean air. Invite mold.

And once your buds got moldy bro? You were fkng done.

So V and I, the last fortnight pre-harvest of each hoop house’s grow, would be those hired-hand Big Leaf Assassins.

Spend all day in there, railing through albums and playlists and pods, working our way down the rows. Letting the supportive leaves be just up to the point they were still supportive, and then fkng nixing em.

Taking em out.

Population control.

Offing all the non-productive, destructive male leaves no longer serving the female flowers.

I touched on some of this in my rant to roomie bae.

But the main, the new, epiphany was that, in tobacco, it was the opposite: tobacco flowers (female) had no pharmacological value; the leaves (male) were what you smoked.

I didn’t get wind of this till, late last summer, early fall, when first facing up to the reality that ex bae might really be done, and that I likely wouldn’t make it out of Philly by winter, I’d ordered tobacco seeds online, started watching tutorials, and had this idea of—I don’t need you bae! I’ma give all my love to these ’bacc-y plants here.

Of course, them shits didn’t even make it out of the sprouting phase by the time the snow hit.

But I remembered that. That with tobacco, it was the leaves that you harvested, hung to dry, and sliced into strips.

“And isn’t that so interesting?” I asked roomie bae, having finally got to this part in my spiel. Waiting for the light to go green at 46th and Market.

“Bc, if you think about it,” I continued, “the respective effects of tobacco and cannabis sorta reflect those aspects.

“Of masculine and feminine.

“Solitary, self-concerned focus, on the one; and somatic, empathetic concern for others/the group, on the other.

“Y’know?”

Roomie bae went “Yeeeah that’s all complete BS.”

I looked over at her and just stared, thinking she was fucking with me.

She wasn’t.

Someone behind me honked to go.

I looked up. Green. I eased the box forward.

“What do you mean? Which part is BS?”

Roomie bae said she disagreed with the notion of masculine and feminine in the first place. That they were social constructs made up by dead white men to assign negative traits to women. To keep em down.