Things a Garden Writer Shouldn’t Say
It seems to me that there are things that should remain unsaid in the garden writing and garden center world. So - what better thing to do than say them? Here are a few things that might have been thought but never spoken or written. And most certainly not to readers of this blog by me. 
You did *what* to that plant? And you expect it to live?
Yes, you understand you have to water the plant, yes, you understand you have to feed the plant - you didn’t do either. So what is it that you want me to tell you? Why it died? Right.
You hate bugs but you want a large country place so you can have a big garden. Let me suggest you move to Manhattan, somewhere on the 25th floor should do it.
What part of “green side up” did you not understand?
Yes that palm tree will grow in Minnesota. For about 3 months starting in June.
What’s eating your plants? How should I know - it’s the Internet and you didn’t even tell me what plant was being eaten. All I know if it’s broccoli - we can eliminate George Bush.
Reading the instructions is too hard, you just want me to tell you what to do? Right.
You know you can’t water tulips heavily, but you want to grow annuals over top of them, you don’t want to dig the bulbs up and you want me to tell you how to bend Mother Nature’s rules? Really? Have you asked her?
Why can’t I solve your problems? Because they’re your problems.
Yeah, I know organic gardening is hard to figure out - getting sick from chemical exposure is ever so much easier.
You want to garden organically and yet you want to know what will kill every insect in your garden because you hate bugs? Really?
You sprayed what!? On what?! For crying out loud, did you read the label?
An insecticide kills insects. A fungicide kills fungus. So nope, spraying a fungicide on an insect isn’t going to kill it - all it will do is ensure the insect doesn’t have athlete’s foot.
Why did your plant die? It didn’t die, it just took a look at the gardener and committed suicide.
Your turn…
Pink Slipped and I Don’t Care
Ever notice how there are weeks where your life becomes clearer (and conversely muddier). Sometimes, in the world of a writer, the words flow effortlessly, the thoughts are clear and life is sweet. And sometimes, it’s like pulling words from toffee. Each word comes away grudgingly and sticky sweet. You love each of the words but there’s only so many you can digest.
This morning is like that. It’s a pregnant morning. Full of sweet promise and a dream. And of a measure of uncertainty. I’m just not sure where the words are going to come from but I know they’re coming.
The important thing about this morning is that for the first time in 12 years, I’m not writing my gardening column. It seems to be a victim of the recession and the paper has confirmed that unless something changes in the next few weeks, I’ll disappear from the pages. I’ve written all remaining columns and they’re on the spike waiting to be published.
After the first bit of a shock after getting the pink-slip letter, and realizing that this small chunk of money was disappearing, I began to smile a lot. You see, I’ve been churning out 1000 word columns for over 12 years. Every week, every season, every topic you can think of and every which way but loose. I start my week by writing the column, it gets the writerly juices pumped up and the rest of the week flows from there. But I no longer have to do this. I can write what I damn well please. Or not.
At a deeper level, the column was one of the last remnants of my farm life. That life ended a few years ago in divorce and the column was one of the few things that continued on from that period. So while I miss the morning exercise, and the monthly cheque, I’m not missing that last link in the chain to that time. I no longer have to be the guy in the column, I can be pretty much whoever I want to be.
Ah! Responsibility. Even now, I’m starting my week off by writing something in the spirit of the column. I’d get to the office (coffee in hand) and see what popped up about gardening. See what was important in the gardening world, or what was blooming in my garden-life and then launch the week on that topic. So here I am, saying goodbye to that life. Goodbye to that period in my life. There are bittersweet memories in those goodbyes but I can honestly say that I’m more looking forward to the future than I am to the past.
You see, in my life every time something has happened that could be considered a negative, something else came along that was a great replacement. Often better (or different enough to seem better). My grandmother once said, “Doug could fall down a outhouse and come out smelling like a rose.” So I’m not sure where the rose is in this pink-slip but I know it’s coming my way as I write.
In some ways it’s like looking at a blank sheet of paper, an empty garden, an untouched block of sculpture wood and not having a friggin’ clue what’s going to emerge. And being able to laugh at that uncertainty because you just gotta know something good is around the corner. This morning is the uncertainty; the freedom to choose, the terror of choosing, the delight in the lack of boundaries and the wonder in trying to understand how it’s all going to turn out.
So what’s that got to do with you? My reader. Darned if I know. But this is a blog - I get to write what I want. 
And this was my declaration of column emancipation; who knows what that’s going to mean to the way I write, the things I see on Monday mornings or if it changes at all.
But I’m feeling pretty good about it so I thought I’d share it.
Big Box Stores versus Independent Garden Centers
Among a small circle of friends - this is going to be a very unpopular post. But here’s the deal, it is what it is.
I’ve spent the last few weeks touring garden centers close to my home. I’ve been to every box store and am only missing one of the independents.
Highest prices. Home Depot selling annuals for $6/dozen.
Lowest Price. Canadian Tire selling annuals for $3/dozen
(other big box stores - Costco at $4/dozen and 2nd Canadian Tire at $4.50/dozen)
Independents ranging from $4.50 to $6/dozen. Why our local independents should not be more expensive than the chains is below.
Quality -
Hands down to the big box stores early in the season. The independent garden center plants were either overgrown or undergrown. (I bought mine from the $3/dozen Canadian Tire because they were cheap and great plants)
Later on in the season, it is possible the box stores will lose quality points because they haven’t yet heard the word called “watering”. So their plants have always looked pretty abused after a week or two when the turns slow down. But get ‘em off the truck or a day or two later and you’re getting good plants.
Advice.
Ah me, Oh my. It doesn’t matter whether a teenager works for the big box store or the independent. Unless they’re the kid of the owner, it’s a waste of time to ask.
As for the adults, I listened to answers from all of them at big box stores and independents and I have to call it a draw. My gawd, the b.s. that was being spread about the hardiness of tender perennials at one independent (the largest around) was pretty amusing.
And the plant combinations being suggested at another were downright funny - i.e. here’s a blue flowering plant (Ajuga) that would go with this yellow flowering plant (Achillea) Never mind the height or bloomtime difference - they’d “go together” somehow in that shady/sunny garden somehow.
At least at the big box stores, you don’t expect the staff to know what the heck they are talking about (should have seen the look on the face of the staff member trying to figure out how to tell somebody how to kill broadleaf weeds now we have a chemical ban)
Checkouts.
Faster at the big box stores. The independents were slow - really slow.
Bottom Line
I’d shop at the local big box stores for the vast run of the mill stuff. Cheaper, better plants early in the season.
Later in the season - after June 1st, I’d shop carefully everywhere.
No good advice to speak of that I was able to hear or ask.
We don’t have a nursery for rare or unusual material. Period. That’s now firmly mail-order. You simply can’t get the newest and latest from our local stores.
This may not how it is in your local garden center area but with the gains the big boxes are making in retailing green goods, as a consumer I can’t resist. (The local HD even had Iseli evergreens in stock early on - go figure.)
UPDATE - just visited Home Depot (looking for construction supplies) and wandered into the greenhouse. Big signs on Annuals - “Were $7.97 - now $5.98″. Huh? I must have missed it when they upped the price to $7.97 for 12 annuals (nice price if you can get it though) and I wonder how long that price was in effect to be able to make that claim?
Interviewed on Television
One of the things I’ve never really liked doing are writer’s tours. Oh to be sure, I like talking to fellow gardeners and once I’m actually in the place and location things are fun. It’s the thought of doing it - the hassle of traveling and actually taking this writer’s body and mind and forcing it to be (as my kids say) “nice to people” instead of plants is a bit of a stretch.
You want me to travel halfway across the province - to give a talk to 15 people who want to ask me a gardening question? Oh and do a 5-minute presentation on television? Really. Three days for 65-minutes of work? You want me to leave my island-retreat, my garden in the spring, my boat-shop where I’m frantically trying to get my big, old Folkboat ready for launching, leave my partner doing the transplanting (well, leave my partner is hard - I can leave the work) Really - leave all that?
Sigh. They do. They’re serious.
Now don’t get me wrong. I really like talking to people. I think gardeners are the salt of the earth and I really enjoy myself when I’m doing this kind of thing. But it’s the leadup to it, the thought of it, and the need for a nap when I’m finished that’s daunting. Every writer out there who’s ever done a book tour knows exactly what I’m talking about.
This past tour was successful (if short). And the success for it goes way beyond me - beyond the guy who wrote the book.
There’s the Princess. Nursing a monstrous cold, she’s been doing the transplanting this week while I was on expense account. I can’t even give her a hug she’s so sick right now but you gotta know payback is coming.
There’s John at Home Depot Canada who got us all supplied for the television show. And Diane at the Home Depot on St. Clair Ave in Toronto who came in at 5am to set up the display area. Now that’s dedication and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to those folks. (Diane should get an official “attaboy” and a raise from the Depot I can tell you)
Ellen at Graf-Martin P.R. took care of me, fed me coffee at 6:30 and made sure I got to my train on time.
David from Georgetown Publications who came out on a Sunday, set up piles of books for folks to look at and packed up and took the remainder home with him. I’m sure John (and partner) had other things they would rather have done than lugged book boxes around and I’m grateful to them.
Here’s what all these folks worked for on the TV show.
Here are a few shots of the Home Depot Talk-Fest at the St. Clair Store.
(Diane and I talk booth)
(some of us chatting flowers)
(”it’s gonna get this big”)
The Outcome of All This
The book moved to Number One in Gardening Canada and Number Three for Vegetables on the entire Amazon store.
Good work people.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on a Sunday night. The Princess tells me we have a bumper seed germination of Lemon Cilantro. This is very good news except I don’t like cilantro. I may have to learn.
Installed a high-pressure sodium grow light in basement. 150 watts and it burns your eyes if you look directly at it. I have it shielded by aluminum foil so the light doesn’t hit you when you walk toward the bench - but it does shine directly down on the plants. Hope it’s enough to grow our seedlings but at the rate the Princess is laying in the seeds I hae me doots. We only have one shelf under the light at this time (an old door) so we can grow a few pots but not as many as Mayo wants. Ah well.
Been digging and dividing like mad - a half dozen plants at lunch every day. Trying to clean out the main bed so I can add some peat and top soil to raise it up a few inches. Given I don’t have any real soil there, anything is an improvement. I do think I transplanted a volunteer raspberry instead of the nearby shrub rose. Ah well, if true, it won’t be the first mistake I’ll make this gardening season. (although I have to say this is a particularly dumb one). The problem is that rabbits ate the canes to the ground and I’m guessing where it was and making decisions based on small twigs sticking up.
I told the Princess we could plant some of her old-fashioned plants between the developing perennials in the holding bed so we could grow them out for seed collecting. I’m a hero for sharing my perennial space but I figure it will make the garden area look like a cottage garden - I’ll take some pics.
Have sown 2-300 daylily seed in this bed so we’ll see how many germinate.
Planted the 2010 AARS Rose winner on the weekend but I can’t tell you about it yet (we’ve been asked to hold the pics etc until June) But my goodness it sounds sweet and I can hardly wait to see it in its full bloom. Rose wasn’t happy to come to this cold weather but it’s hanging in (or at least it’s not dying yet)
Local Home Depot had a sale on Cedars on the weekend - picked up twenty 4-5 foot tall cedar trees to start laying in the visual barrier between the road and the house. Walked the property and identified all the site lines I had to block, got enough cedar to do them all. Going to call Nole with the backhoe tomorrow and see if i can get him to dig those holes and the other 20 holes I’m going to need for the laneway and some other trees. Hint, in landscaping always do the trees, hardscape, and big stuff first before flowers. They take the money to be sure but they also take the time to grow.
Had I paid attention to this, I wouldn’t be digging up the perennials now to lay in the raised beds. I should have made the raised beds first and then done the planting but who listens to his own advice. Chalk this one up to last year’s mistake and rush to get plants in the ground - fixing your own mistakes is so damn discouraging when you know better.
Speaking of Home Depot. I was glad to see only organic controls on the pest-control shelves. If they would only have stuck with Tony instead of Joey, it would be a good company. (Nascar alert)
And still speaking of Home Depot, turns out I’m doing a talk at the HD in Little Italy in Toronto (don’t ask me the address, the p.r. folks are driving) and I think it’s planned for 1pm on May 3. More later when I get an address.
Taught Mayo how to make a pea-fence the old-fashioned way (you grow your garden peas on it) using nothing but old twigs and branches from old Christmas trees. How come hers looks way better than mine ever did? Essentially, you lay down a bunch of branches over top of your sown peas and the peas grow up through them - makes it easy to harvest the peas. To clean up, you just pull up the branches and twigs.
It looks like the variegated ginger made it through the winter again. That’s “great” but it hasn’t flowered in about 5 years and it’s coming to the end of it’s welcome here. This could be the year it gets to try and see if it can overwinter outside (not likely but calling it an experiment saves having to actually toss them out)
Haven’t seen our deer herd this spring yet but with 20 nursery-fresh cedar sitting beside the tulip bed, I figure that’s candy waiting to be unwrapped. Just sprayed Liquid Fence on them all. Good grief that stuff stinks - it smells like something dead this way comes (which considering its purpose is a good thing I suppose). It worked last winter and the deer didn’t eat the cedars at the house so …. Mind you, I’m about to chainsaw these cedars because they really are ugly and too big for their location.
Big landscaping changes coming now that I got the right trailer hitch ball for my trailer; I can go and get stuff now. If the boy can’t have a truck, he better have a honkin’ big trailer. Neighbor told us we could have a load of manure; gotta go get it but hey - me, the tractor and trailer - can gardening life get any “sweeter”.
Busy week ahead - lots of writing projects to get going. Was asked to write something for a getting ready for wearing a bikini website (seriously!) I’m not wearing one (not even an advanced speedo) but the editors think there’s weight training possibilities in gardening (and there are) I’ll tell you about it after I write it. Readers who make snide comments about gardening and bikinis will earn negative brownie points.
Sunday night - it must be spring because hockey is still on the tube. The light is still good at 7pm and I’m going to take a walk to smell the clean lake air rolling over my lovely Amherst Island. Can life get any better?
Garden TV Revisited
Well, there’s yet another brouhaha in the garden blog world about the lack of garden television. It must be one of those “slow news days” to get everybody on the rip again. Joe Lamp’l (who I admire) weighs is here in a guest post on the Casual Gardener. and Garden Rant is taking HGTV on again.
I’m no marketer but I understand that marketers put their money and resources where they will get the most bang for their buck (don’t we all). Again, my understanding is that it is far easier to reach an 18-25 year old and convince them to use your brand (they’re just starting out and making brand choices) than it is to convince older groups to switch brands (either because they formed brand loyalty when they were younger or because they have a ton more experience on which to rely). So given a choice, marketers aim for younger markets because it gives them a better result with their resources.
This is particularly galling for those of us who have passed that age-range. It is particularly troublesome for some boomers (and now Gen-Xers) to realize that their prime days of being the center of the marketing universe are long gone, dead and over like last year’s squash vine.
And yes, focus groups tell us we want to be spoken to by distinct personality types. I don’t know if you know this but there’s one (at least) company in the U.S. that does surveys on the response rates to all celebrities, can quantify those numbers and rank the “salability” of that celebrity to specific demographic groups. So they know the demographic that respond to particular celebrities. You’ll see the best examples of this during the political campaigns when politicians will trot out one celebrity to appear with them at this locale with this age-range while an entirely different celebrity will appear later that same day in a different demographic group. This is not by accident.
So is it any wonder that television companies look for spokespeople and presenters that talk to the generation being marketed to. If you get x response from some 60-year old guy and x+30 response from a 25-year old hottie - who do you think the advertiser is going to put money behind?
So when you get over that advertiser-hill so do your spokespeople. Heck, Steppenwolf is now elevator-music. What do you expect? Boomers will soon start wobbling along in their walkers in retirement homes to “Born to be Wild” in low volume from the facility speakers.
But I digress. We garden writer types like to trot out our tv-producer stories and I’ve never forgotten one from 15 years or so ago when an up-and-coming producer (now very successful) told me that garden tv was boring and badly produced. There was only one that was even shot properly (Martha Stewart) with proper lighting and decent graphics. . He also pointed out that none of them were using up-to-date and readily accessible technologies of time-motion or other interesting photography or even outstanding editing. It was mostly long, monotonous shots of people digging and talking. He didn’t want to even think about asking his advertising people for assistance to produce or market one.
But again, I digress. Garden tv is just another medium in transition - add it to newspaper, book and magazine economic-models that are changing underneath us. So I can’t get excited about traditional garden tv not being the same or disappearing - add it to the list.
Bottom line. If those involved in making and producing conventional garden tv think there’s a conventional market for this - they should fund it themselves and buy the time on the channel. Make it work yourself the way it “should” be done. Alternately, take it to the Net like a lot of writers and photographers have done. There’s a ton of models for this kind of information-exchange. And it probably is the future.
If you’re a gardener who wants garden tv, then it’s up to you in this day and age to talk to those like Joe and convince him to give you what you want in a way you can use it. Promise you’ll pay him directly to produce his shows.
You can decide to complain about what was or you can be part of a process to what will be.
Thinking Positively About Flowers
One of the things that intrigued me the most was how accurate we are (or not) at sensing emotions on other’s faces. And this ties into the new television series “Lies” where a team of scientists run around solving crimes based on identifying micro-facial characteristics. So what’s that got to do with gardening?
Your emotions are similarly readable. When you’re in a good mood, we all know it because of the subtle signs you give off. When you’re optimistic, you’re going to be giving off a different “vibe” than when you’re pessimistic. When you think something can happen, there’s a better chance that it will happen than when you’re negative about the possibilities. There’s an entire section of business and personal development based on positive thinking. So what’s that got to do with gardening you ask again?
If you think positively about your garden, do your plants grow better than if you ignore it? Do your plants sense feelings? The first thing to understand is that this might not be as far fetched as you might think. The first question is whether plants have nervous systems where they might indeed be able to sense their environment. This question is easily answered by research in the 1920’s that showed that plants do indeed have electrical systems as well as chemical ones. Dr Wildon in 1922 showed that if you burned a flower, the electrical response to that burn travelled to other parts of the flower much faster than the chemical response. So the flower started to react to the burn as en entire unit electrically before the physical effect of the burn could be transferred chemically. Research has now shown there are two distinct kinds of electrical signals in plants - an all or nothing charge that happens as a result of a major wound or problems that goes to all parts of the plant and a localized surge that travels shorter distances. More work in the 1990’s confirmed and extended some of these findings.
We now throw in a bit of a problem. A pseudo-science report done in the 1970’s by Thompson and Bird was published as “The Secret Life of Plants” and showed that plants not only responded to electrical signals but that they responded to the individuals who created those signals. According to the book, if you burn a plant, the plant not only responds the first time you do it but every time you come into the lab from then on. The plant recognizes you. The publication of this book was greeted with great enthusiasm by the plant-lovers and gardeners in the 1970’s (wasn’t everything?) but it essentially killed any serious research on this subject in the scientific community where it was treated with a great deal of disdain. To the best of my knowledge, this work has not been duplicated in a serious research laboratory.
One thing modern research has shown is that if a localized region of a plant is harmed, the entire plant is warned electrically but then that localized region goes back to a normal state if it is not damaged beyond operation. So the damage is transient in the localized damage region. We know the plant is sending signals but the main question is why is the plant sending signals? What’s the purpose of the electrical system?
It could be sexual. There’s research showing plants respond to insects messing about with the stigma and styles,the sexual organs of the flower, and the movement of pollen. The flower “senses” pollen moving in some way. It could also be a survival mechanism. We know that damaged plants tend to produce more seeds than other plants. More than one gardener has told me their plant produced a heavy crop of flowers or fruit and then simply died the next year. It could be a temporary survival mode. We know that stressed plants alter their biochemistry; some plants actually produce chemicals that make them less edible in response to insect damage. So a faster acting plant that uses an electrical response may be less likely to be damaged than a plant that uses a slower chemical response to produce a defense against insect predation. And research has indicated some plants sense when their neighbors produce these chemicals and start producing them even before they’ve been attacked.
The questions and research seem to stall out at the point of taking it to the practical level of gardening. Does the activity level of a gardener have anything to do with the survival or failure of a plant based on it’s electrical and chemical responses? Does the way you handle the plant, your mood and the way you work the plant, have anything to do with the success for failure of that plant? What do you do that changes the electrical nature of the plant? I’m sure the scientists aren’t going very far down that road but that has never stopped gardeners before. How do explain folks who have green thumbs and can grow darn near anything? Do we handle plants differently than others and reduce stress on the plant? Or, is the plant able to identify that person who is positive towards them and grow better when compared to a person who handles them roughly or who simply behaves in a way that doesn’t encourage great growth?
Is a plant able to take a “slice” of you and respond appropriately? Does it do to you what you do to other people?
Vegetable Gardening in Canada
Just in time for the weekend comes the new book cover. I’ve been working on this book for a few months now and it’s on a short production schedule (we’re going to hit the bookshelves in Canada this spring!)
More on this project later - Canadian Vegetable Gardening is almost sure to be a best-seller (and yes, I’m going to have some signed author copies to give away)
Just thought you’d like to see it.
Garden coaching
Garden coaching is becoming newsworthy now as a great many beginning gardeners look for assistance in creating gardens. These beginners aren’t looking to renovate or improve their landscape but rather get some hands-on help and “coaching” on basic plant skills and techniques. And some of the garden coaches are getting together to figure out both how to coach and make money doing it right here.
Having been involved in professional certification discussions in a previous lifetime, I’m intrigued by the subject and how folks decide to get into the garden-coaching business. Are there qualifications to hanging out a shingle and more importantly, how do home gardeners know they’re getting good advice?
I’m familiar with several areas of certification and they share some common threads.
You need a recognized level of education. Would garden coaches opt for a college or university degree in horticulture. I suspect that some would argue that Master Gardener courses status would qualify but in my opinion, there’s a huge gap in knowledge between the MG program and certified college and university courses. What would consumers want?
You need a recognized length of time in the industry at some professional level. In order to demonstrate skills in the industries I worked in, not only did you have to have an educational training but you had to have worked in the industry/area for a length of time (Landscape Ontario calls for 1000 hours minimum to begin the training) to demonstrate that you had practical hands-on experience. Would you suggest that simply being a home gardener would qualify you as having enough high-level experience or do you require industry experience - and how would you demonstrate that to your potential clients? How would you as a homeowner decide if the coach you’re talking to has enough experience to help you?
You needed to pass an exam set by your peers. Some of the landscape certification courses are the toughest I know of. No messin’ about - and you had better pay attention in class as well as know your stuff beforehand. Are there any exams to being a garden coach? Again, how do consumers make a decision about qualifications?
I’m positive those folks involved in garden coaching are also concerned about standards and making sure their chosen work is not filled with garden-pretenders and those who will bring the concept into disrepute.
Before the garden coaches get organized enough to have standards, there are a few questions I’d suggest potential clients ask. Or good coaches answer for clients before they get into a relationship.
I’ve written about choosing landscapers before and I believe the questions are going to be roughly the same for picking a garden coach.
What level of formal training do you have? College, university, ??
What industry certifications do you have?Certified tree care? Certified landscape design? ??
What level of practical experience do you have? Where did you work in the trade? If I need help in vegetable gardening - have you done that enough to help? Do you fully understand how to prune (and can you demonstrate how) that overgrown apple tree? Or is your experience only in your own garden?
What ongoing training are you involved in to stay current? In other words, are you giving me the latest how-to information or advice that’s outdated?
Do you have insurance for any damage you might do in my garden or are you covered by professional insurance in case you’re hurt on my property? I wouldn’t let any worker onto my property unless they were covered for both. I’m liable for any injury if they’re not covered. The coach is going to be demonstrating the proper use of equipment (some sharp tools, some hazardous power) and actually doing things = chance of injury.
Can you give me a list of satisfied customers?
What are your areas of expertise? What areas don’t you know much about? No gardener understands it all. Beginners in any area are prone to accepting a smooth marketing approach and a confident manner. .
There’s a real role for garden coaches out there (and a need) but you really do want to take a hard look at the person giving you the advice. You’re paying for it - make sure it’s the best you can get.
What are you grateful for
Two weeks ago in my garden email newsletter, I asked my readers what they were grateful for. And over 450 folks have written back so far telling me exactly what they have to be grateful about even in these troubled times. I can’t repeat them all here but I do want to share some of the themes that developed in those responses.
The overwhelming favourite was a deep gratitude for family. It turns out there are a lot of grandparents writing back and they uniformly said they were incredibly grateful for having their grandkids. The specific events they told me about were lovely demonstrations of this; things like helping a grandson to identify the difference between a worm and a snake and that both were good in the garden and needed. Specific things such as sharing a moment and having a wonderfully child-like response from a grandchild to a perfectly ordinary event. Seeing the wonder in a child’s eyes when they saw a seed germinate or smelling a flower for the first time and the wide-eyed response when the child “got it” that there was something of importance in that experience. Grandchildren and the relationship with these little critters were the overwhelming favourite.
Another favourite was gratitude for having a special partner in their life. This resonated across my readers and the stories of spousal support for gardening (even in the face of extreme disinterest) made me laugh. There was more than one example of the guy being the “strong back” to the gardener’s plant-moving and landscaping attempts. The really non-interested fellow that was chauffeur for two plant-a-holic sisters every spring, driving them from garden centre to garden centre while he stayed in the car reading was another example of love having no bounds.
Having health enough to garden, to wander in the garden and be able to reach down to pluck a weed or harvest a fragrant flower were important to gardeners. And never more so than in the stories I was told by those who had been sick or had operations and had recovered enough to go back to the garden or to enjoy life again. I got a great many gratitude-tales from those who had serious accidents, weren’t expected to be able to garden or enjoy life but still found pleasure in their gardens and families. More than one of these stories brought tears to my eyes. When I read the raw emotions of pleasure at surviving and being able to enjoy life again, to garden or talk to grandchildren, I have to tell you that any problems I might have shrank into the far distance.
A great many folks wrote to say they were grateful for living in countries where freedom and the ability to think, speak and worship as they pleased brought joy to their lives. The sense of North America being the single best place in the world to live was shared by a great many people. Even with the economic troubles we’re in, there was still a sense that this was the place to live, that this was the area that would fare the best in these troubled times.
I was delighted that many of the people writing thought it was important to share the sense of good news, of gratitude with others. And equally importantly to lambaste the media for their preoccupation with bad news; to say that when all you hear is bad news, then that’s what you think is happening. One reader quoted current employment rates and pointed out that the vast majority of folks were still working one way or the other but the media treated each and every factory closing as if it were Armageddon.
So my readers were grateful and they showed it in a direct and forceful way. Like a lot of things, I really have to listen when my readers write in this kind of forceful manner; and I confess it really makes me think about the kinds of things I have to be grateful for. So…
I’m grateful for my health. There’s no doubt about that and while I may not be happy with the notion of growing older, I consider the alternative, smile and keep losing weight (almost eliminated the Christmas bulge). I may not be as strong as I was when I was 30 but I’m doing just fine, thank you very much, and I’m grateful as all get out for that. I’m incredibly grateful for my children and, I confess, insanely proud of all four of them and for what they are doing with their lives. The most important part of that of course is that they’re following their own path, their own dreams and if their mother and I had any part in helping to create that, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for a supportive partner who understands my writerly-ways, tolerates my guy-ways, encourages me to be the person I need to be and supports me in more ways than I can even begin to describe. Those are the really important things to be grateful for.
But I’m also grateful for being able to earn a living as a garden writer. To write about things that are both living and that have an impact on our lives. To have been able to spend a life nurturing and growing seeds into living plants and bring a little bit of beauty into the lives of others. To be able to share what I know with others and get paid for that sharing in the process. But my gratitude to my garden goes beyond the economic. I’m grateful for the peace it brings and shelter it provides.
So this is an invitation to join us in being grateful. I’d invite you to take a few minutes to jot down the single thing (or two) that comes instantly to mind. Tuck that paper away in a drawer; peek at it every now and then to remind yourself of how lucky you really are.
What chickens?
I spent 25 years on the farm, running my nursery and raising any number of animals and garden plants for our table. At one time or other we milked cows, fed pigs, raised beef, geese, ducks, passles of cats, pairs of dogs, and way too many chickens.
Now here’s the thing. Chickens are just birds. Nothing special (unless of course, they’re freshly slaughtered and in the oven) just a big bird. They’re not overly smart although I did teach a few of them to read one year.
As an experiment, I painted the word “food” on the side of a bucket. And then filled that bucket with chicken food to carry into the pen in order to fill up the feeders. Within a remarkably short time, the chickens learned to read the word “food” and come running whenever I entered the pen.
Another year we kept a rooster over the winter in the somewhat mistaken notion that it would be “romantic” to have a rooster around. When it became sexually active, the stupid bird decided it was going to run the roost. This meant attacking my 5 year old daughter who’s job it was to collect the eggs. A scratched cheek from it’s spurs brought her crying to the house and daddy was dispatched to handle the bird. Said daughter and I went into the coop, whereupon said daughter said, “Mr Rooster, we’re gonna eat you.” And we did.
Let me be clear. Turkeys were stupid, capable of hanging themselves in their own pens, starving to death with food surrounding them and discovering all manner of interesting ways of doing injury to themselves within the confines of a well lit, heavily bedded and safety inspected pen. Chickens on the other hand were equally stupid but had a remarkable sense of self-preservation. Turkeys would just sit on the perch waiting to be picked up and stuffed in the sack to go to the slaughter house. Chickens would tear all over the pen in a futile attempt to avoid the same fate. A grand event was watching daddy catch the chickens - the first ones were easy as they’d all pile into the same corner and all I’d have to do was pick up the upper layers. It was when we got down to the last two or three that it became downright funny - I was smarter but they were faster. I always won in the end but there were a few birds that must have learned their ring smarts from Mohammed Ali.
Chickens stink. The high nitrogen of their feces is downright miserable to clean out of a pen. It was only when we switched to using peat moss as a bedding that it became tolerable. Great garden food but not much fun getting it into the manure spreader through the windows. You really wanted to make sure there wasn’t a full west-wind before you started that job or you’d wind up with a face-full. But chickens stink - no two ways about it.
This is all by way of saying I really don’t “get” the fascination I see in the garden media with these birds. And the movement to make them legal in cities equally escapes me. People this is a stupid, stinking bird and cocks really do crow and make a lot of noise at all times of the day. Yes, it’s kind of interesting to get eggs (you can buy them cheaper than you can raise your own) and have a monsterly-fat 10 pound chicken for Sunday dinner (again, not economical if you have to buy all the feed) but it doesn’t make economic sense in any accounting method I know.
But I don’t understand the fascination with keeping a stupid, messy, smelly bird around that’s going to cost you more money than it’s worth.
But I’m sure somebody is going to tell this old farmboy exactly what the attraction is.
Garden Resolutions 2009
Every year it seems I make some kind of resolution about gardening and every summer it seems to go by the wayside. I’m not sure what this says something about my ability to make and keep resolutions, my inner fantasy ambitions about gardening or even some weather and garden gremlins that conspire to keep me resolution success-free for as long as they can. The resolution two years ago that promised to have a serious vegetable garden was one of the biggest failures. That was the year I went away for two weeks and the tomato hornworms started on the tomatoes, did the peppers for an after-taste, the eggplant for dessert and then started all over again on the re-growing tomatoes(which is about the time I came home) In just under 10 days, these guys took care of my major gardening resolution.
Fragrant Plants
I had one that suggested I was going to have nothing but fragrant plants in my garden. Yeah right. Then the nursery with the big honking (non-fragrant) conefowers started knocking on my door, I succumbed, the coneflowers went into the garden, started blooming their fool heads off and bingo, bango another resolution went by the way. I think the corollary to that one was the resolution that said I had all the coneflowers any gardener needed. Yes, you have it - another load of the darn things arrived. What was I supposed to do - disappoint another breeder? So now I have a few more in the garden.
Only Hybrids
Then there was the time I said I wasn’t going to be growing any of my own plants any more. I only wanted brand new hybrids from recognized breeders. That must have been before I saw the prices of the new daylilies I wanted (around 100 bucks each). I have a full envelope of daylily seeds going into the seed beds next year. And seed beds? I wasn’t even supposed to have any of these but somehow I got myself to put a 12 m x 1 m seed bed in. After all, I had several dozen young lily plants and where was I going to put them. A monster seed bed would take care of all 30 plants for sure. So the envelope of daylily seeds should fill up another 3m of the bed and who knows what’s going to go there as well. And yes, I did lay the rails down for a second trial bed. After all, if I’m going to have one, I might as well have two because the Princess is sure to want a few rows for her new found gems.
Small Gardens
What about the notion of a small garden. Right. I left a 2-acre property for an 8-acre one. Does that sound smaller to you? I went from a 16-hp serious lawn tractor/mower to a 23-hp 4-wheel drive (hydraulics and bucket loader) small farm utility tractor. Does that sound like restraint and doing things in a small way? I had half the front lawn gone on the old property, I have had plans drawn up for the entire back and front lawn on the new one. I’m not sure which is worse but I confess that one of this year’s potential garden resolutions is to ignore the entire garden plan, simply mow it and not garden there at all. Except that this is where we have some soil deeper than 2-inches. I’ll have to get back to you.
Resolution Weakness
What is entirely clear is that my resolution making ability is woefully weak. To heck with it, in truth it’s totally lacking in any way of completion. I simply can’t seem to make a garden resolution that has any reasonable sense of being accomplished. This isn’t the case in the rest of my life - I resolved to lose some weight and I’m half way to university playing weight and should hit that by early summer. I resolved to do a bunch of other things and they’re either done or getting done. It’s not the resolution-doing that seems to be the problem; it’s the darned garden resolution-making that’s all messed up.
This Year I Promise
So. Here are my garden resolutions for this year. I promise faithfully to accomplish each and every one of them in this new awareness of past problems.
The first is that I am going to accept every new plant that wants to come and live in my garden. There are no restraints being placed on who and what and when. I will continue to determine the where these plants will live but generally speaking, if nurseries can get to my island, it can have a place in my garden.
I am not going to build more gardens than I can manage. This is because I’m only going to finish the trial bed I started last fall, edge the rest of the bunkhouse garden and call it a summer. I’m not going to fight with the shallow soil but every plant that comes will go directly into the trial beds. Live there or not. Oh yeah, I have to clean up the gardens around the house where the contractors aren’t going to be working. Out with all those garden thugs! That’s a summer-long project by itself. So that’s it. No backyard garden project, no big front yard project - I’ll leave those for another year - or not.
The garden is going to be manageable without a lot of work. If a plant is too much work, it will get yanked out on the spot. This one I’m sure I can do as I’ve done it before. No sense having plants that don’t perform for you. I don’t care if it’s a rose, a perennial or annual, it either performs or it’s gone.
These I so resolve.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Gardening
I have a soft spot in my heart for Alzheimer’s Disease - my grandmother and my mother have been hit by this problem and I just started putting a website together about it because I’m next in line.
Those primarily responsible for the care of the Alzheimer’s patient say it’s a very stressful task (it is I can tell you) and in a recent survey by the Alzheimers Association, 60% of respondents said that gardening relaxes them.
Kudo’s to the Better Homes and Garden folks who worked with the Association to design a purple and white Alzheimer’s Perennial Garden (Alzheimer’s Assoc colors). Ten plants were used - 3 Salvia, 2 Echinacea, 2 Phlox, 2 Sedum and 1 Aster (no mention of varieties in the news releases I saw) The White Flower Farm was offering these plants and 10% of the sale price was going to the Association (prices seemed to be $99 across the board in all the nurseries I saw).
So you all know somebody who has Alzheimer’s Disease and this might make a good gift for their caregiver - or even yourself.
Writer Dormancy
Ever decide to go dormant?
I’m thinking of it quite frankly. I’ve been wandering the streets of Savannah for a few weeks now, sorting out the next steps in my writing career (As an aside, I just agreed to do a new print book so I’m organizing around that and putting it together in a short time span as well.) It’s one of those mid-life kind of things I think. Every few years I raise my head from what I’m doing and ask myself, “Is this the dream I want to be living?” So what dream is it I’m living and what dream do I want to live?
I’ve spent most afternoons in one or other of the coffee shops here reading a few interesting books and making notes to myself about potential futures. I’m examining potential dreams I’d like to explore. I’ve ruled out Nascar driver and professional hockey player. I’m considering beach volleyball player although I may be too short for the current game and I fill out the uniform in somewhat non-standard dimensions now. I’ve thought about a range of improbable but desirable options (astronaut, Canadian Senator) and improbable and undesirable options (don’t go there). I’ve looked at creative writing and storytelling in other ways. I really do like video-making and am enjoying the course I’ve been taking. But I’m not sure that’s the idea I’m looking for.
I’ve read Robert McKee’s classic work “Story” about writing stories, Herman’s “How the Scots Invented the Modern World” and some great technical books on how words work on the Internet to tell stories, including Eisenberg’s “a/b”. It’s been an educational few weeks to be sure. But I still can’t see what I want to do.
I’m not sure it’s in the gardening world.
So I’m going to mimic my beloved trees, I’m going to slow right down (tree roots below frost never stop growing you know) and think about the next growth phase. I”m going to store some sugar in my roots (can you say “mojito”?) and just let my thinking percolate. I think it’s time to look at some other areas of interest alongside gardening. I think it’s time to expand outwards instead of focussing only on the growing side of my life. Being here, doing that - what else is there? Maybe it’s about sending out some seeds and starting a new forest. The old forest needs maintaining but the new one would be challenging.
I think it’s a challenge but I’m not sure where that challenge is or the shape of it. And I think the best thing I can do is simply be open to dreams. As I said to the Princess the other night, I think I have to get into the middle of the highway if I want to get hit by a new idea rolling by.
So this garden writer is going to be posting rather infrequently for the next little while as he searches for the middle of the highway and a new idea, a new dream. And universe, this is the note that I’ve got my thumb out looking for a new dream.
So like the trees, I may look dormant if you go by this blog but underneath it all I’m storing up energy, growing new roots and looking for new growth. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Remembrance Day 2008
Remembrance Day was always celebrated in our family when I was growing up. My Scottish
grandfather left a good part of his shoulder at Gallipoli in World War One in that bloodbath of the English and Commonwealth Armies. My grandmother was a Company Sergeant Major in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in WW2. My mother was too young but my father got into the Navy by luck on a medical test; he was soon busted for being color-blind and spent the war repairing machinery. I still have my grandparent’s diaries and war papers.
The Scots are a hardy breed, the men clannish and the women fierce in their Celtic ancestry. My grandfather was a medic and this gentle mechanical genius found himself on the front lines of a battle that wasn’t going to be won. With bodies piled up as trench protection and the conditions beyond belief, he was hit. I never found out how that happened but my grandmother told me of him on the lifeboat heading out to the hospital ship. Apparently the boat was somewhat overloaded and in danger of being swamped. My grandfather jumped overboard, hung on with his good arm to help lighten the boat and stabilize it. I don’t know if others did the same thing or not. According to the story, he was promised some sort of medal (but it never happened). Being immersed in salt water and having the wound drenched and sterilized by the salt, probably saved his life given the conditions on those hospital ships in the days before penicillin. My grandfather never spoke of those days. Never.
The pictures of him on his return to Scotland were of a young, very thin, serious youth with what I can only call deep-brown, haunted eyes. Certainly not the laughing eyes of the grandfather that I knew and loved. And his sweetheart and he were married and started having babies. Well, if truth be known, they started having babies and then they got married. (You gotta love my grandmother!) My mother was the last to survive (her twin didn’t) and when the next baby died and an older sister died of blood poisoning, my grandparents needed a new start. So during the depression, my grandfather packed up - tossed a coin between Canada and Australia and got a job as a factory mechanic in Toronto, Canada. The family joined him six months later after he had saved up and sent the money for their passage.
My grandfather couldn’t answer the call in the Second World War so my grandmother did and little did the Canadian Army know what they had on their hands. At only 4’11 3/4”, she was 1/4 inch away from being eligible for service. But somehow, that 1/4 inch was provided for by a wiling army doctor. Her first job in the service was in the downtown Toronto armory. As a private, she was told to inventory the dynamite. The Sergeant assumed she’d count the boxes. My grandmother found a crow-bar and industrially started whacking and banging away at the boxes to take the covers off and hand-count the sticks inside. Grandma laughingly told me the Sergeant blanched when he found her smashing around down there with that old unstable dynamite. The fact that the Toronto armory - indeed the whole of downtown Toronto - wasn’t blow to hell was somewhat of a miracle I’m told.
Grandma wound up training women officers and moving around the province to various training facilities to organize and work out problems. This was not a woman to be trifled with and the press clippings and diaries make it clear she was both a terror and a support to her “girls”.
So this day isn’t about being right or wrong. It isn’t about politics or armies or whether the roles and fights are “correct” in our modern politics. It isn’t about which political party will get us into a battle or get us out - or whether we should even be there.
For me, it’s about remembering the sacrifices the folks in my life made so that I and my children could live a life here in Canada. It’s about remembering visits to the grave sites in Dunkirk, France where hundreds of too-young Canadians are buried; those unlucky enough to not return safely home. It’s about remembering that the life I have today was paid for by these men and women. It’s about remembering the gentle man that was my grandfather and the look in those eyes. It’s about remembering my grandmother and the fierce pride in her adopted country that she proudly served.
It’s about remembering.
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
John McCrae “In Flanders Fields”
Plant Branding Help Wanted
Let me make a few rather obvious points. 1) I’m a guy. 2) I’m a plants-guy. So when I watched several otherwise balanced garden writers go all doe-eyed and weak-kneed about a plant brand that’s unrolling right now, I have to tell you I didn’t get it. In fact, I pretty much ignored it until the Princess took me by the figurative ear and hauled me back to the trade show booth this week.
So here’s my take on things. I tend to look at plants as belonging in my garden and they get the starring role out there. Hey, I’m a plant guy!
But I understand just enough about branding to be dangerous. I understand it isn’t about the plant tag and the colour of the pot but rather about the entire consumer experience with that product. It starts with the promise of the advertising, continues through the experience of shopping at the garden center (where a bad retailer can ruin the best of plant brands) and ends up performing (or not) in the garden. The brand is the entire experience - from start to finish. Whether you like it or not - all products have brands (call them reputations if that helps a bit). And a break in that chain breaks the brand.
Some brands are very valuable in that they not only describe an individual product but an entire class of products. And branding plants has been shown in at least one experiment to increase plant sales 30% when identical plants (one branded vs. the exact same unbranded plant) are sold side-by-side. So you as consumers are seeing a lot of plant brands unroll.
I’ve always ignored plant brands when writing. I don’t care who markets the darn thing - a Lemon Thyme is a Lemon Thyme is a … (well, you get the message) I know that plant marketers want me to write about “their” brands but in my guy-plant-mind, it’s about the plant - not the brand.
Now, here’s the problem.
A new company turned these female writers into converts. Instantly. They were chattering away about their paper dolls when they were youngsters - comparing the marketing to their personal stories and the lights are flashing in my head. This is powerful branding - it’s telling a story to a very specific group of shoppers. And before we go any further - check out this brand (the link will open in a new window) and then come back and tell me what you think.
Help me here
I need to understand why I should or should not write about a brand. Did you like this website and branding idea?
Is a brand important to you as gardeners? Do you make decisions about the plants based on the brand?
Do I have to morph away from being a plants-guy to being metro-plant-guy? (with my tongue in cheek)
But it’s a serious question. How do you want garden writers to respond to branding and promotional efforts such as this? And most importantly - what do you think I should do about this kind of thing?
A New Garden TV
A while ago, I asked my readers to think about what would make a good gardening tv show. And they responded with a bunch of well thought out comments and over 100 emails to me.
So I’ve been reading and thinking. The reading is the easy part, the dangerous part is when I get thinking.
And I think there’s no good tv programs freely available to all of us because it’s now pretty much impossible to produce and fund such programs. It just isn’t going to happen. The world has changed and the communication industry has changed along with it in the face of the Internet.
What you told me you wanted was - quite plainly put - what you wanted, where you wanted it and when you wanted it. 125 different answers that added up to give “me” what I want to watch that’s relevant to my garden and my garden ability in my neighborhood, and oh yeah, when I want to watch it.
You didn’t describe Network TV, you described the Internet. You described the distribution and content model we call the Net.
And the face of the Internet itself is changing. From a top down kind of programming to a bottom up programming. Youtube users upload 13 hours of video every minute of the day. We upload more watchable minutes than all the major television networks put together. And North American viewers watch 10 billion videos a month (and growing).
Some would say that much of that user-generated content isn’t worth watching. And they’re right. But have you watched much network TV lately and convinced yourself that it is all worth watching? It seems that most of you don’t want to watch the current offerings about gardening so…
So having sorted that out in my mind - I got to the dangerous part.
And that was to start thinking about how to set something like this up. How to push the boundaries of gardening television or videos into new territory. How to make use of the Net to give us all a shot of gardening information that we can’t get from the traditional tv media.
I decided I needed partners to work with.
To jointly put together good gardening information of all kinds. Not promotional videos touting products (ads) but rather good info on product-reviews, designs, real gardens, real plants. Turn what we do in print into video and share it.
I made this offer to the garden writers listserv and got absolutely no takers.
Not one writer wrote saying “here’s the subscription to my video channel - upload them to your site.” Nobody even wrote and said, “I’m going to make some”.
In confess I might have gone after the wrong group. It may be possible that the group of people we should be working with are the people who are already involved with the Net.
You folks.
Maybe it’s about sharing our own gardens. In simple ways. Maybe not in professional quality ways but in ways that show what we do and share those ideas and gardens with each other. Maybe it’s not about saying I don’t have a good enough garden to saying I don’t have a great garden but it’s *mine* and I’m sharing it. (I note that none of our gardens are ever good enough) So I’m going to hunt up some digital images and show you the changes in my own garden over the past year.
Software exists now (very simple software) that allows you to take a bunch of digital images, add a bit of sound or voice and make a very fast video. Easily done.
I’ve set up a preliminary video channel at http://video.douggreeensgarden.com and would be delighted to upload any garden video produced by one of my readers.
Go out - take a bunch of digital images of your fall garden or string some shots of your garden through this past summer together - make a video about your garden. Upload it to Youtube and let me know the address where I can find it. Keep it between 2-3 minutes long.
Maybe it’s not about finding professional partners. Maybe it’s about finding folks who will share their gardens with us using a video. Maybe it’s about finding folks who take a lot of pictures of a garden on their holidays and share it with us. Maybe it’s about you doing this.
I think it is probably about us doing our own garden TV? I think it’s about finding a merry band of garden videographers to do this with me.
If there’s enough interest, I’ll take it beyond just a a mere subdomain of my web page.
Whaddya think? Any takers?
On having a birthday
In my teens, I was invincible. A successful first string jock, smart enough to stay in a good program in university, and unbounded if undisciplined in my choice of a future.
In my twenties, I fell in love, was married, did grad school, started having kids, knew I was going somewhere but had absolutely no idea where that might be. I knew the future was mine to grab.
In my thirties, I continued with even more kids, started a greenhouse/nursery business, started writing, was successful at just about everything I started except working for the government. I wasn’t a government worker and that became quite clear to all concerned. I still wasn’t sure where the future was going but I had my head down, had up to 3 jobs at the same time, milked cows, fed hogs and started building greenhouses. I was an iron-man on a mission to make a life for my family.
In my forties, things were a bit easier. We had a good little greenhouse business, the writing was starting to take off and I had a sense that I might wind up in this nursery industry for the rest of my life. I flew planes and continued to challenge myself.
In my fifties, the wheels fell off. The nursery business was too small to be big and too big to be small. It was exactly the right size in the right location to be run over by the big guys. We closed it ahead of the curve. My writing business was doing well enough - in fact better than the nursery and I enjoyed this more than digging perennials in the freezing rain. Life got a ton better when I went full time writing. But then the wheels really fell off. The Internet bubble changed the face of publishing and the income-well ran dry. My marriage imploded. So - nursery down and out, writing career down and a failed marriage. But even then, I knew I’d be OK at my core but there were a significant number of hurdles to face. The wheels were mostly off in my 50’s as I wobbled from one hurdle to another. But with each hurdle, I learned something important about living and life.
The wheels got put back on in my very late 50’s. My kids kept one wheel rolling the entire time, an online publishing company got another wheel established, a small island community out in Lake Ontario put on the third and Mayo brought the last along with some road maps and tune-ups.
Enter my sixties.
This is indeed an interesting time in my life. My ability to do the same physical things I used to do seems to have disappeared when I wasn’t looking. I simply can’t work all day in the hot sun slugging bales of peat moss or lugging plants. Not going to happen. My foot speed seems to have slowed down a bit on the squash courts and I’m having difficulty beating those early 30-somethings. I think I need more practice. I find young guys don’t expect me to lift what they do - or work as hard as they do. And while this is interesting and likely true, it is not good on my male ego to acknowledge this decreasing strength or speed.
I’m writing better than I have in a long time. I’m exploring other issues and thinking different thoughts. I still stay on top of the Net developments and as one very early 20-something said to me, “You know way more than I do about the Net”. I see this constant learning as the equivalent of mind-camps for seniors. If I refuse to stop learning, I’ll push the door to mental degradation back as far as possible. I can live with some young buck being able to outrun or out-lift me but I’m not too eager to have them begin to out-think me.
I’m more open to ideas and challenging assumptions yet I see rampant hardening-of-the-attitudes around me when it comes to politics, religion and other issues of our daily lives. I despair of the closed minds, of increasingly hostile attitudes towards new ideas and people. With all the speed of modern lives around us, I see friends slowing down their sense of change as well as the wonder and excitement in living.
My future is more limited in scope now than just a few years ago. Oh sure, we all talk about reaching 100 (and I don’t intend to write, never mind use an obituary) but already I see friends hitting the physical wall and sliding down - to crumple in a heap. I worry that something like this may take me as well and limit my future. I worry more about senility and those challenges. I worry more about my health and really losing some weight (I am - finally). Those are new concerns now - the future health concerns are real, they are no longer something that is “far away” from the point of view of the 20-something me.
I think about my writing and trying to have it make sense, of having it say something to readers rather than pouring words out on a pay-for-word basis. And I acknowledge that a large part of me is a writer - with a writer’s innate desire for privacy and isolation. The part of me that loves people, who loves to go to parties gets shoved in the background quite a bit more lately. Because I do like people a lot and I’m learning how to let them know I like them from behind my writer’s world-view. Learning how to hug and smile - letting that part of me out to the world has and continues to be a challenge.
I”m still optimistic about my future and I have a sense that there are still mountains to climb and rivers to cross before I hang up my hat. I have absolutely no idea how long I’m going to continue at my current pace (fast and furious) but I have a sense that as long as I can garden and can fire up a computer, I’ll write. But that’s the fun thing in all this. I simply don’t know what I’m going to do next. I’m going to take the next few months to sort this out, to identify the really important things to me and to set my next set of plans.
I have no idea what my 60’s will bring but there’s no porch rocking chair on order, that much I can tell you. I’ll get back to you on all this in another ten years or so.
Gardening and the Financial Crisis
Sometimes columns start off with the words forming in my head and rolling onto the paper and sometimes they have to be encouraged by several cups of coffee. This is a coffee column. The second cup of coffee this morning has produced several thoughts that I think relate to gardening and more specifically my green garden design theme.
The first is one of “moral hazard”. This term is being bandied about by financial types as they discuss the meltdown in the US banking and investment scene. It refers to the nature of companies that take their profits but expect the government to cover their losses. We see this repeatedly in Canada as well when a company is falling on hard times, the first thing they do is ask the government to do is bail them out to “protect jobs”. The company keeps the profits but taxpayers fund the losses.
It’s the same in the garden. We have a moral hazard in our own backyards. We treat the garden as a concept that isn’t connected to the rest of our lives; as something that exists independently. We pollute the garden with synthetic chemicals and fertilizers and then when they run into the ground water, we ask our governments to ‘clean up our water”. As if we had nothing to do with that pollution.
When 2-4-D or Atrazine gets into farm wells, rural residents want it “cleaned up” but it should be crystal clear that Mother Nature didn’t put it there - farmers put it there. In the case of salts on our roads polluting lakes and water courses, our road crews put it there at our request. And interestingly enough, if you decide to buy corn grown with Atrazine or drive on those winter roads, then you are part of that decision chain and share part of the responsibility - you share in the moral hazard of offloading your decisions to the general public purse. It’s difficult to avoid being part of the problem in some areas but completely within your control in others.
I think you can make a start at eliminating this moral hazard in your own home, save money and go green at the same time. It’s one of the many things I find myself struggling with as I work at making a large garden. For example, “ How do I really turn that lower area into a deer proof zone?” The herd was out there this morning, not 40 feet from the house, munching happily away on the shrubs that will form the backbone for that garden. Is nylon deer fencing environmentally green or is it part of the problem? Turns out that if you’re going green, then fencing made with a non-recyclable material isn’t a good choice. So my choice is not to support the petrochemical industry that produces this product. My individual choice won’t make much difference, but if everybody found a different option (I have and will tell you about it in upcoming columns) then we’d make a dent in the production of this material and reduce petroleum products in this area.
As an example of saving money, we start our own vegetable seeds, grow our own vegetables and then save the seeds from the resulting fruit. We have a cycle of our own inputs for our vegetable production. And while it will only hit full stride next year when the new gardens start coming online, the freezers get filled and canning-jars are working, we’re on our way in this new garden. That’s easily done by anybody with a sunny backyard and in its own way, reduces the moral hazard of offloading not only the costs of production but also the costs of transportation from the general public to yourself. You get fresher vegetables and more nutritious vegetables from your own organic garden. And if you can’t grow your own, then support the farmers right here that do. Check out your local farmer’s markets and producers at this website for local food, produced right here in your region by your neighbours. At the very least, you’re going to be reducing transport costs and supporting local farmers who shop in our area as well. Check my area one here. http://www.localflavours.org/
You know using all the chemical inputs in our gardens isn’t one of effectiveness or “best-practice”. It’s all about convenience. It’s more convenient to wipe out the dandelions with a spray rather than take a few extra minutes to cut the roots off and learn how to grow a great lawn without chemicals. It’s more convenient to toss some chemical fertilizer on the garden rather than to make compost and shovel it around the plants. It’s simply more convenient to spend the petrochemical resources on our conveniences.
The problem with convenience is that it creates other problems. So by using the mosquito fogger to stop from getting bitten, we wipe out all the predators that naturally eat mosquitoes. Without predators, the surviving mosquitoes breed quite happily and we get even more mosquitoes. The predators recover more slowly. We do the same with plant disease. We spray for convenience and the natural predator fungus and bacteria get wiped out too. The end product is simply more effective disease organisms creating the need for a “new” convenient chemical because the old one doesn’t work any more. I know more rose growers that bemoan the ineffectiveness of sprays on black spot; they’ve made their own problems over the years and I, for one, don’t have much sympathy for them.
In short, we’ve gotten used to having convenience in our lives and now we’re paying a price for that. And we’re suggesting that “somebody” take responsibility and fix it. Instead, I suggest it’s up to each of us to take control of our own moral hazard problems and that we start with our food system and backyards. Those things are well within our control now. We’ll get to the rest next month.
Garden Writer Conference Awards
This post has taken the better part of a week to write as I struggle to find “up” amidst a whopping head cold I picked up at the conference.
The annual conference where we put 600 garden writers together into one hotel, and see what emerges, is always a good time. Newcomers invariably tell us that it’s the best conference they’ve ever attended. And if you’ve ever been to a conference with a trade show, you know that companies like to get your attention with “gifts”. Heck, when we attended greenhouse conferences, we’d come home with shopping bags of “stuff” to mess about with. Nursery trade shows are just as good and some of the nursery folks I worked with were famous for their ability to bring home competitor’s gifts. I still still have t-shirts from the computer shows I’ve attended plus a ton of cd programs. The garden writers trade show is no different - there’s a ton of stuff coming our way as different producers enlist our help in evaluating and promoting their products.
Without further ado, here’s my top list of innovative “stuff” I brought home.
The Shortest Lived Award - goes to Sluggo, the slug control folks. This was a bottle of good beer telling us we should drink the beer and use the newly OMRI (organic) certified product on the slugs. I’m all for both of these things. The beer was good. I didn’t eat the slug killer but it works much better than the chemical alternatives.
The Most Useful Conference Tool award goes to the folks at American Beauties for their insulated beer holders. We all wandered around the trade show with our beers (see above) and kept them cool. While the beer didn’t make it home, these did. This product was promoting their line of native plants that are regionally based and I think this is not only great marketing but great plantsmanship. If you want to grow “native plants” in the midwest, you get to pick different plants than if you want to grow native plants in the northeast - and this program will let retailers and gardeners make appropriate choices.
The Coolest Promotion Award goes to Fiskars for the monogrammed trowel. With my name engraved on the blade, nobody (hello Princess) can claim it as their own. These folks have a full line of garden tools and between the Princess and myself, we own most of them. But “I” own that trowel.
The Longest Lived Award goes to the AARS for the thumb-drives they were handing out. These were loaded up with rose images and I managed to wander by the booth twice (quite accidentally I assure you) . These darn little things will live in my camera bag (after I download the images to my server for regular use) and be used all over the continent on my travels. Mind you, the label of them makes it clear I won’t be forgetting their name any time soon.
Products I most Regret Award goes to Iseli nursery. This was a half dozen of this famous nursery’s woody plants. I lusted after these plants as I wandered around this premium nursery with it’s acres of rare evergreens, shrubs and trees. I was in garden-heaven and the gate was shut. I’m Canadian. This means I had to have not only a phyto certificate (obtainable) but also an import permit. Import permits have to be filled in ahead of time so we can’t legally get them into the country. I gave mine to one of the conference staff and I hope they grow well for her. (Insert big sigh here.)
I didn’t bring a lot of stuff home because I was flying; I know there are things on their way from various manufacturers for me to trial and I’m looking forward to putting these things through their paces. And then reporting on them for you.
Stay tuned - there are some really interesting projects and reviews on the drawing boards - from vermiculture to photography to hydroponics. Fun stuff ahead.
