Greatness

Gardeners! Hear me now! You growers and guardians of all things green: be you patio potters, earth movers, or indoor horticulturists; all you wheelers of barrows, sowers of seed, and hoers of ... uh ... hoes—Now. Is our time.

Society around us is crumbling.

Or is it?

Nay. Not under our watch, it's not.

Go forth, all you thumbs of green, all you might-have-been Monty Dons, all you latter-day Le Nôtres with suddenly more time on your hands and nowhere in all the world to go—go now! Go as far as current federal or gubernatorial edicts allow—which may only get you to the curb or the windowsill, but still—go forth and unleash what glorious hell your dirty hands have in store for this quarantined, pent-up, panicking planet. 

It's time for some good old-fashioned homegrown garden therapy. 

But not just for ourselves. 

For if there's anything the last couple of weeks have taught us, it's that no matter how introverted or plant-centric we gardeners tend, we don't amount to much in this world without our friends, families, neighbors, coworkers, and society-at-large to patch-up and knit together the more threadbare portions of our lives. This thing we do in the garden, mostly for ourselves, largely by ourselves, is only possible and—as it turns out—only meaningful, in the context of our greater community. And although gardening may provide a blessed and much-needed escape for some of us even during the best of times, it is now, when the kid gloves come off and our days are battered back and forth between boredom and lurching fear and uncertainty, that we glimpse a garden's true potential. Like some common weed long picked for childhood posies suddenly found to possess incredible curative properties, let us now unleash the hidden, salving power of our hobby. 

This is the year to make your garden spectacular and, more than that, to share it with the world. Whether you are a seasoned gardening vet who finally has that bit of extra time to bring it all together, an amateur now freed of excuses to not develop your passion, or a total newbie with a bit of curiosity and nothing better to do, I challenge you to make your little space beautiful. And do not do this just for yourself (though you will certainly reap the rewards); do it as a gift for the street you live on, your neighborhood, your town, your community. Give this world something lovely to behold.

  

In doing so, our gardens, yards, balconies, and windowsills (open your blinds!) shall spark outwards in a glorious sensory jolt to bleary-eyed passers-by. Let our plants speak and reach out where social-distancing now forbids. May our blooms be fragrant and friendly, our foliage lush and soothing, that all neighbors, dog-walkers, gym-deprived joggers, exercisers and exorcists of school-less children, laid-off lost-souls, hair-tearing parents, and every brand of shacked-up shut-in out perambulating for their very sanity might have cause for a deep breath or two with which to steel themselves for whatever the hell may come tomorrow (good grief, what else is there?). Garden like you never have before, like the racing pulse of our febrile society depends on it. 

Do this with the conviction that we still, despite everything, have the power to bring good into the world. 

Now go forth, gardeners. 

I expect greatness. 

(A reminder during this time when supporting our local independent garden centers becomes difficult or impossible: consider purchasing gift cards for future use. For your immediate needs consider the many great small online businesses which offer mail-order gardening supplies, from seeds and plants to tools and artwork. A few of my favorites are Territorial SeedCompany for seed, Far Reaches Farm for rare and unusual perennials, and Raintree Nursery for fruit trees, bushes, and all manner of cool edible plants.)

Spontaneous Combustion

Stand back!

Some years, the transition from summer to fall simmers and creeps across leaves like caramelizing onions. Slow, steady. Not too hot now, or they'll burn. A sweetness tenderly kindled and set free from harsher, earthy stuff. Lovely. Sublime. A fall that pairs well with smooth soups and mild cheese. Grab something light and crisp on the palate to sip alongside, maybe a nice pinot gris or Diet 7Up.

This is not that kind of fall.

Some years, fall sizzles and flashes and pops—those same onions left to smoke and char in the skillet while you dash out of the kitchen to officiate a bubble-bath-turned-battle-bath between your two children. Such an autumn goes well heaped on burgers or brats. This time of year, one might opt for a pumpkin-flavored microbrew to wash it down. Enjoy at your own pace, then go check on the kids in timeout. 

This is not that kind of fall.

Then there are the years when all of the foliage in the garden seems to spontaneously combust into outright flame. Where yesterday hung the green (if piqued) leaves of summer, now, suddenly, there is only fire. All livid scarlet and retina-searing orange. Autumn spreads by shock waves from one tree to the next. Knocks you off your feet. Blink and another blueberry bush is ablaze.

Here, unfortunately, the onion metaphor quickly breaks down, unless one invokes some newfangled molecular gastronomy technique involving acetylene welding torches and/or sorcery. (Now that's a cooking show I would watch). A fall of this severity does not pair well with food, unless you care to stand back and hurl marshmallows or raw steaks in the general vicinity of your witch hazel's seething embers and hope for the best. Any accompanying libations ought only be issued at high pressure, from great distance, via fire hose. 

This is the kind of fall we are experiencing: an explosion of fiery senescence; a good-riddance bonfire to the summer-that-never-was; onions blasted to ashen oblivion; one last apocalyptic hurrah...

And one heck of a good show. 

Now how do I hook up this fire hose to my keg of 7Up?

Plants are Terrible People

Caution: weird garden stuff inside. 

Finally! After three years and countless hours spent writing and editing, my second book, "Plants are Terrible People," is now available on Amazon, both in print and for Kindle/E-reader.

That's right, for all you who have been craving a dose of absurd garden miscellany to giggle about and ponder: go forth and get your fix.

This book took everything I had, and would still not have been possible without the help of my brother, Jesse, and mom, Jodi, whose editing insights were invaluable; and my wife, Roni, whose help with the cover graphics and support throughout the whole process was likewise priceless. My sincerest thanks to them and to everyone who read my first book, "Twenty Reasons Not To Garden (And Why I Ignore Them All)". Without you all, I would never have had the courage to see this insane project through to the end.

And to those of you who do choose to read this new volume: thank you in advance. Being a self-published author requires the support and patronage of people willing to take a chance with their time and money. It is my hope that this book moves you in some small way; to laughter, to commiseration, to surprise, to a fighting back of tears. This, more than anything, is the critical measure of success for a writer.

That being said, it feels tawdry to ask, but if you do partake of "Plants are Terrible People," or any other independently produced art out there on the great wide internet, know that it would do a profound service to the artist if you might take a few seconds to post a rating or review on whatever site you purchased from. These small acts of customer feedback are the lifeblood of all independent creators attempting to bushwhack through the online jungle of big money and big names. Your reviews are the slash of a great machete, clearing the tangle and rendering visible those small, lovely things that deserve to be seen in this world.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Enjoy!

Saving The Bees

One of the lucky ones.

This year, in a move 100 percent motivated by environmental sustainability and not at all by indifference or laziness, we decreed that Fencebroke Promontory's lawns, such as they are, should be allowed to run wild with white clover. This, in an effort to provide more forage for the downtrodden wild honeybees we've all heard so much about.

As a method for attracting more honeybees this has worked swimmingly. As an excuse to ignore the weeds in one's lawn, it's been fabulous (if not entirely convincing when held in defense against neighbors' dirty looks). Whether or not we are in fact "saving" the bees, however, remains to be seen. That's because I myself have accidentally stepped on no fewer than five of these noble pollinators when ambling barefoot through the lawn. My daughter: three. My wife: just one that I know about. My son: none so far, but he's due.

Not that we're keeping track.

And those are just the known casualties. How many more have been flattened under careless heals too well shod to feel the meek sting of a bee's dying outrage? Have my heavy old gardening clogs become weapons of oblivious mass destruction? Am I to be someday tried for apiarian war crimes by a tribunal of disaffected survivors?

It certainly seems likely.

But maybe I deserve such a fate. Because if anything, the honeybee has become more literally downtrodden under my watch, and my own bumbling bigfeet are the ones doing the trodding. As penance, I've tried imposing draconian lawn-usage rules for the family, but it is surprisingly difficult to play soccer on tiptoe, and the old "lawn is made of lava" trick works better as an afternoon game than a summer-long edict.

Oh well, I tried. I can only hope the little unlucky buzzers got a good sip of clover nectar before stabbing my daughter's toe and rendering her terrified of the very grass and world she plays upon. Seems like, for a bee, there'd be worse ways to go.

Unfinished Business

Wow, where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday I was apologizing for neglecting this blog. Now here it is, time to do so once again. My easy excuse for this episode is that I've been tearing my hair out trying to finish my next book in a somewhat timely manner. But since I've failed to meet even that low bar, it's not much of an excuse at all now, is it?

In any case, I am sorry. But I'm here now, so chill. This time around, to help mark the occasion, and in the spirit of unfinished business everywhere, I thought I'd highlight a few of the other projects around Fencebroke Promontory that have been neglected, ignored, or otherwise stiff-armed away from any sort of satisfying conclusion. Keep in mind, this is a very short list meant to represent an extensive litany of crimes against completion. Which means the list itself is incomplete and as such should probably be on the list as well. All right, we're off to a great start!

*Fencebroke's Namesake Broken Fence.

Pretty sure the plants are holding up the fence. 

At this point I think I'd prefer total collapse over this leaning purgatory of fencedom in which we've been stuck for months/years now. Ideally, the fence would just be replaced, a job we are perfectly capable of tackling ourselves. But in the stated interest of not wasting our entire summer on such a project, we opted instead to hire someone else to do the job. Or rather, we tried. So far, we have failed to crack the fencing contractor code, which requires that some as-yet-mysterious combination of personal charm, fenceworthiness, subterfuge, and scheduling riddles be met before anyone will actually take our money and do stuff. To this end, we are wasting our entire summer and failing to secure a truer fence. Woo!

*This pile of rocks.

Rocks! Got yer rocks here!

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. As a pile of unwanted white rocks inherited with the house, it's as "done" as it's ever going to be. As an unsightly driveway obstacle for going on two years now, it's top notch. But as something to be rid of, well ... could I interest anyone in a lovely pile of white rocks?

*The Spot Where Nothing Grows.

I give up.

This one ...  @#*!%^! ...  Spot.

*The Wandering Hinoki.

Put me in, coach!

Every baseball team needs a utility player; that one athlete versatile enough to step in for any position, but not quite awesome enough to earn a full-time role anywhere. This here hinoki false-cypress is my utility player. This one plant has been relocated a dozen times at least and fills in respectably wherever it's asked to, but never with such aplomb that it can't be unceremoniously scooped from the ground as soon as something better comes along. What a pro. Where will tomorrow's roster land it? In the veggie garden? Lending evergreen support to the apple trees? In some sort of harebrained, impromptu rooftop garden? You'll just have to stay tuned!

*Irrigation.
  

At least the watering can works like it's supposed to.

One of these days a convenient, efficient, and low-stress watering system for the whole garden will be at my fingertips, ready to be activated with a single flip of a switch—or better yet, maybe I'll be able to ask Alexa to do it, so I really feel like I'm large and in charge around here. "ALEXA! THE BLUEBERRIES ARE DRY, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?!"
<Hmm... I don't recognize that.>
No, I didn't think she would. So until that day she does, I've cobbled together a makeshift system of faulty soaker-hoses, rain barrels, overeager children with watering cans, leftover kiddy-pool water, and an uneasy truce with impermanence when it comes to plant mortality, in order to tackle the never-ending task that is irrigation.

Okay, I could go on, obviously, but since this list is kind of stressing me out as it is, I'm going to leave it incomplete and pretend it's not all that bad. 

Until next time then—and let's be honest, who knows when that will be—nobody work too hard this summer, and I'll check in the next time I feel an apology is overdue.

I would tack on a reminder here to keep an eye out for my new book, Plants Are Terrible People, which should be released very soon, but if this list is any indication of just how indefinitely things can get delayed around here, I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. 

Spring To Spring

The apple trees are blooming again. Ditto the daffodils; same with the hyacinths. Great thunderclouds of pollen are once more billowing out from every tree on Earth to reconvene in my sinuses. That one #%#!@ dandelion is back to taunt me. The whole showery, flowery refrain of Spring is chirping along with the birds at full tilt. Our hemisphere has wobbled back to face the sun, and all the garden and nature beyond are conspiring to make us believe the world is the same place it was a year ago. As if, from one Spring to the next, nothing really changes. As if starting over was the same as never ending.

But it’s not.

The seasons would have us marvel how they bring us back around each year. How each Spring, the same flowers bloom, the same fledgling birds stumble from their nests. They ask us to trace the line of their circle and cry “Infinity!”, forgetting, of course, as seasons do, that while trees may bloom every year, the same flower never emerges twice. Those are not the same birds fledging; they are just more birds.

We may stagger and spin along with the planet, we may turn our faces to the warmth of the returning sun, but we do not live on the endless line of a circle. Ours is rather the bounded space within, where air and time and luck are not replenished. Once any of these is exhausted, we either stop spinning altogether, or are hurled off to trace another line whose shape we can’t comprehend. Life itself goes on, goes around again, for however many seasons it may, and there is comfort to be found there. But we ourselves have only the one season that is a life.

Our life.

Because we are not the apple tree, the perennial bearer whose cycles mirror the seasons indefinitely. We do not get another Spring. Each of us is but a single blossom. This is our one chance to unfurl and flower, to sing in scent for the bees, to grow within us whatever fruit may follow and then drop, spent, to ground. None of us knows how long we have on the branch, which perching bird or gust of wind will cast us off. But we do know the season can’t last forever.

One year ago, the sun’s angle in the sky as it dawned outside my window was about the same as it is now. The day would have been as long. But as far as I’m concerned, this is where the resemblance ends. Because one year ago I woke to the news that shuddered up and down my soul and hasn’t stopped since. It shouts from a cave in my chest and runs loose in dreams and idle moments and stolen memories.

My brother is gone.

How could anything be the same, ever again?

No, the world is different now. And in truth, it is so with every passing moment for every person on Earth. So much can change in the space of a heartbeat, in a morning glance towards a phone with suddenly too many messages. How much more becomes strange and unrecognizable from Spring to Spring? No chance realignment of the Earth and its star could change this. No periodic confluence of cherry blossoms and chickadees could reassemble the petals fallen in seasons past.

What these things can do is remind us.

This is our one life, our one and only season here, our one bloom.

So make yours beautiful.

Under The Snow

Sing it with me!

A northwest gardener could be forgiven, upon waking to a scene like this, for enjoying a bit of a freakout with his morning coffee. When it's the second time in a February week he's woken to a scene like this, one might also allow a good useless twenty minutes for hyperventilating at the window, gazing out at the soft white ruin, and imagining the worst. 

If, furthermore, our northwest gardener previously allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security during the procession of mild winters that prefaced this scene, and if he used that confidence to pepper rare plants of marginal hardiness throughout his garden, well, then, why not get out the weed torch and go a little post-apocalyptic psycho trying to melt all the snow with that there flamethrower? 

And who among us, northwest gardeners, when cold-slapped in the face with a scene like this, would not think immediately of the unprecedented number of "hardy" overwintering vegetables we planted this year, which were only weeks away from rewarding our hard work, foresight, and patience with delicious early spring crops of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and the like? Would not most of us then, having no better outlet for our frustration, launch into an alarming, unhinged rendition of "Under The Snow", sung and choreographed to the tune of everyone's favorite submarine anthem from The Little Mermaid?

And finally, I suppose, if this (entirely hypothetical) northwest gardener was actually employed as a professional horticulturist and really, really ought to have known better than to beg the wrath of the gardening gods by opening his garden beds to a heretical cohort of New Zealand shrubs, Taiwanese evergreens, and unprotected brassicas, I'd say a little humble pie might be on the menu for breakfast.

So I'll have that. And another pot of coffee if you please. It's shaping up to be a long February.

Kinder-Garden Planning

I recently sat down with my favorite seed catalog to begin the arduous process of planning the garden for the coming season. It's the same old dilemmas every time: which crops where; which seeds when; how many times to try growing parsnips before invoking everyone's favorite definition of insanity—figuring it all out can be a true labor of love ... but also a labor of indecision, insomnia, and joyless, iterative cost-benefit analyses.

'Love' sounds better, right?

Don't get me wrong, I feel incredibly grateful that I even have a garden to plan. The ability to grow food to share with friends, family, and community is an utter privilege, so by all means, someone please slap me across the face with cold winter's carrot the next time I seem to forget that. It is only through outrageous fortune that I'm able to vacillate back and forth between potential winter squashes as if I were witness to a riveting, if unusually gourd-heavy match at Wimbledon. At the same time, if someone came along and offered to take over the planning part for maybe just one year, I would definitely hear them out ... 

Oh hello, what's this, now?

Well well well, what have we here? 'Someone' must have heard my passive aggressive cries for help. From the looks of it, someone named 'Daisy', who was possibly growing tired of Daddy muttering under his breath at page after page of lettuces when there were important Candyland scores to settle. 

That's right, this year our daughter Daisy stepped up big time to take one for the gardening team. I found this gem of a garden plan tucked away inside a mess of apparently backlogged kindergarten assignments last week. Look at it; it's got everything we need, and labeled to boot! 'B' is for broccoli; 'L' is for lettuce; 'A' apple; 'K' kale. One presumes those are carrots stabbing the kale, and the 'R', of course, if you have to ask, stands for 'rain barrel'. Add some sunshine and the can-do attitude captured in ME's smile, and you've got a garden my friends. (Also, I checked: that's not a legless weasel eating the kale, it's a watering can. We're good.)

I have no idea whether this sort of thing is normal or healthy for a five-year-old, but frankly, I'm too proud to care. My girl can already sketch out a garden better than her old man can. Now, the trick becomes whether I can get her to do it again next time without letting her know that it's a big help to me. I learned that lesson when I "let her" put rocks in the wheelbarrow a few too many times last year. 

Also, I have to imagine, I might expect some carefully-worded inquiries from her teacher if this becomes a regular thing. But we'll bribe that bridge with apples when we come to it.

Smallber Giving Smuesday

Can't ... take ... anymore ... branding ... 

Yes, the shameless beating of our holiday shopping season's dismembered corpse is getting out of hand. With the recent arms race to claim exclusive marketing rights for days of the week it would be tempting to wax cynical and just boycott the whole thing. (Screw it, I'm going to shop small on Wednesday, just you try and stop me.) But, being a self-published author who works at a small independent garden center, sells his book online, and believes strongly in charitable giving, like it or not, I do have a bit of a stake in the madness. 

So to make amends for my participation in this yuletide vivisection, I have undertaken the following grafting of weekday shopping directives: all proceeds from Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday sales of my book will be donated to Hopelink, a local food bank/social services organization.

If, for some reason, you don't find snarky gardening literature on your shopping list this year, please do consider making a donation to a charity you believe in anyway. I won't even tell if you if you do it on Wednesday.

Full Disclosure

Free Kindle Version This Weekend. Yay.

I don't have it in me to play clever and coy with marketing this year as the holidays approach. The world is two-faced and deceptive enough at the moment, thank you. The fact remains, though, that I wrote this book a while ago and I've been working hard to finish my next one. It was, and continues to be my hope that people will read what I've put down and smile, laugh, or feel that piquant, nameless something that can only be transmitted by the written word.

To that end, and whatever meager "profit" follows thereof, I occasionally engage in nefarious schemes to make people aware of my book's existence. This is one of those. It's called "advertising" and it makes me cringe. But, since I've never come close to generating any substantial income, I've historically just returned all revenue from book sales straight into my advertising budget and suppressed the "yuk" factor by telling myself that at least, if more people are reading, than maybe more people are laughing. Maybe a few days get fractionally brighter. 

Do the ends justify the means?

Well, you tell me. Here's the latest pitch:

The Kindle version of Twenty Reasons Not To Garden (And Why I Ignore Them All) will be free this entire weekend (Nov. 9-12). As a gardener myself, this is the kind of book that I would love to receive as a gift and I think it would make a good gift for the gardener in your life. But then I'm biased; I wrote the thing (please don't give me this book as a gift). So why not download it for free and see for yourself?

Then I can get back to writing, which is the part of this that I actually enjoy.

Thank you.

Leaf Season

The Rising Tide

We've entered peak leaf season here at Fencebroke Promontory. It's that magical time of year when we celebrate the many delights of having three gigantic deciduous trees in our front yard. A time when blizzard-thick drifts of leaves pile against the door and a rich humusy mulch begins to accumulate on the living room rug. A time when kids disappear into leaf-piles for so long that Dad considers filing a missing persons report and then jump out screaming in an emergency test of Dad's cardiac function. A time for getting slapped in the face by earthbound, dinner-plate-sized maple leaves and to always beware the treacherous world of abandoned toy trucks and scooters now hidden underfoot. Above all, though, November is a time for raking.

And raking.

And raking some more.

To be a gardener, during the Festival of Foliar Inundation, is a repetitive labor of patience, diligence, and, when those inevitably fail, despair. Any hope of tackling one of the many, many projects typically found on a gardener's Autumn docket is quickly smothered under a wet heap of leaves. Oh, I've tried, trust me, to carry on as though I could still see the ground, like the garden was something other than a sea of red and yellow into which our house was slowly sinking, but always failed. One cannot easily transplant, for example, though the Fall is said to be a great time to do so, when one cannot discern where the garden ends and the rest of the world begins. I once spent half an hour trying to plant a Fuchsia into some exceptionally compacted soil that turned out, once the leaves were cleared, to be the sidewalk. Back to the rake, then.

Fellow horticulturists occasionally chide me for bemoaning too much of what they consider a good thing:

"Just let the leaves stay in your garden beds; they're great mulch."

"Run over them with the lawn mower."

"Put them in the compost bin, they're good as gold!"

Well, I did all of these things three weeks ago. Now I can't even find the beds, the lawn mower, or the compost bin because they've all been devoured by the autumnal avalanche that so rudely didn't stop just because the bin was full. I cannot simply redirect or quarantine the fall to favorable or beneficial areas of the property any more than you could restrict a household flood to the waterproof rooms of your house. The leaves are the property now. I'm raking just to stay afloat

But, you know, by all means, any of you leaf-hoarders out there, if you're so fond of them, please come help yourselves. Take them all. And if you find my kids, please tell them to come inside.

Cabbage In The Hay

We recently celebrated our daughter's fifth birthday with a good old-fashioned hay-hunt.  Screaming children throwing hay all over the yard in search of candy and coin—it was a delight. Really, if there's a better way to get a pile of kids good n' itchy (not to mention sugared-up) I haven't heard of it. We'll call it a parenting win. 

But I must confess to ulterior motives in pushing for the hay-hunt over other, more common birthday candy-delivery systems. Pinatas, goody-bags, IV glucose drips—any or all would have sufficed in this case. But Dad seemed to really want a hay-hunt, for some reason.

And that's because, well, Dad really wanted some hay. For the garden, of course. It makes a nice cozy blanket for all those shivering rutabagas and Brussels sprouts in the Winter veggie garden. A birthday hay-hunt, then, would conveniently kill two birds with one stone. As a parent, you can never kill too many birds with each of the precious few stones you are afforded. (Would someone please inform that miserly resource manager in charge of rationing stones that there seems to be an awful lot of birds down here?) 

A couple of weeks after the party, I even convinced the kids to help me spread the same hay in the garden. "It's like tucking-in the plants for Winter." I said. Which prompted a half hour or so of  pretty adorable, Goodnight Moon-esque vegetable tuckings-in—and another week of pulling spiky hay fragments out of socks and underwear. To the kids' delight, while distributing the hay, they also turned up a few more rogue pennies and a chocolate bar or two that had been overlooked in the birthday frenzy!

All I can say is: what a magical world this must seem, to children, where treasure and prodigal Twix bars turn up even in the course of mundane gardening chores. I, for one, think that adults could do with a few more of these little magical surprises in the course of their own daily lives. Not winning the lottery, or scoring a free pizza for submitting a customer-service survey—nothing so grand or life-changing. I'm talking about small, unexpected delights which, when encountered occasionally enough, manage to change our expectations of the world and what it might have to offer. A cold-brew coffee truck that inexplicably tails the ice-cream truck one hot Summer afternoon. Health insurance decides to cover weekly massages. No traffic on a Tuesday morning. Maybe that car honking so rudely behind you is actually trying to get you to stop because the driver is in advertising and thinks you have the perfect face to represent a new line of "Haggard Dad" skin-care products. 

You know, stuff like that.

Right now, when I dig through the hay, all I can reasonably expect to find are cabbages. Which are great, don't get me wrong, but, well, I did plant them there. Not much of a "surprise!" factor. Still, now that I think about it, there is something a little bit delightful about a cabbage. Just look at it ... 

Right? Could it be then, that I've just forgotten how to be delighted by all the wonderful craziness the world hides in plain sight? Are we adults thrashing around, trying so hard to find something else in all this hay of life that we can't see the cabbages in front of us? I mean, my son just said "Ni-night bwoccowi!" and threw a handful of hay at the ground. That's at least as magical as a Twix bar, right?

I'll take it, anyway.

But next year, we're doing a pinata. The metaphors are better.  

Still Growing ...

Listen To The Episode (My segment begins at about 45:00)

This week I'm honored to be featured on "Still Growing", Jennifer Ebeling's wonderful gardening podcast. If you have any interest at all in gardening, do yourself a favor and subscribe to her weekly episodes. They are a great way to catch up on all things horticultural and hear some great interviews with interesting folks in the field.

I chatted with Jennifer a couple months ago in a phone interview for this episode. She was so easy to talk to I had little problem discussing the silly details of my book with appropriate levity. Since then, my life has ... changed. "Changed" is the wrong word, really, but let's not blame language for life's shortcomings. With the death of my brother, I find large parts of me missing or inaccessible. They may return, someday, but for now it is strange to listen to myself speak with such a light heart when it's still, at present, so hard to raise a smile for the world.

I've written many things in my life, in many genres, but I set off on this weird tangent of Gardening Humor thinking that maybe I could make a few people laugh and not take the world so seriously along the way. Now, this mission seems like an uphill struggle going forward. Recently, I've given thought to abandoning the whole thing. I have a good portion of a sequel to 20 Reasons written already, but I don't know how to return to that voice and humor that once came so easily. All those hilarious little absurdities that used to pop up around every corner have since gone scurrying into the dark. So what do I do? Give up?

No. Because it's not what Griffin would want. (Now there's a guy who could make people laugh.) He would joke that I should hurry up and become a famous writer already so my wife and I could quit our jobs and move away from the city to live near his family. When I told him, a lifetime ago, about this interview I was doing for a neat gardening podcast, he was excited and, maybe, I hope, a bit proud of his little brother. I think he'd want me to keep going with this gardening stuff. Either that, or start working on that epic, hard sci-fi trilogy I never wrote. But that sounds exhausting.

So I'll keep writing (whether you all like it or not). It may take a while to navigate the minefield of double meanings, hair-trigger memories, and emotional explosives that lies in my path, but I'll get there. Gardening is, after all, too ridiculous to be ignored for long. I mean, just thinking of rutabagas almost makes me smile.

Almost.

Life

My brother and I

A six-pack of cheap beer, an old soup can, a handful of dirt, and a little branch of ivy.

In the right hands, that's all it took to derail my life the first time. It was a good derailing, a fortuitous one, back in the early days of college. My major was, at the time, "Cellular and Molecular Biology/Biochemistry". A god-awful, pompous mouthful of a degree. I loved it. Well, saying it anyway. You had to actually say the "slash Biochemistry" part. It was more impressive that way. The problem was, I think I hated everything else about it. I just didn't know what else I was supposed to be doing.

That is, until my older brother Griffin showed up in my dorm room one evening with the aforementioned supplies for a re-potting session and sent me tumbling through the air, in love with plants. Simply because he was. His passions were so contagious I couldn't resist following along. Whether it was fishing, motor-scooters, or the music of Tom Waits, his sincerity and unbridled enthusiasm made it seem insane not to go along for the ride.

I changed my major to Botany I think sometime later that week. The new tracks of horticulture I screeched onto were rusty, warped, and did not provide a comfortable ride by any stretch. But the places it took me, though inglamorous and unlucrative, were so much more interesting! Beautiful, dirty, exhausting, and satisfying to a degree that no laboratory, however prestigious, could ever compare. And I owe it all to him.

This week, my life derailed a second time. Again, because of my brother. But this time, because I had to say goodbye to him. He fell, and hit his head, and that's it. Sudden and senseless, random and final. Now I'm spinning through the air again, and I'm not sure when I'll land, or in what condition. All I know is that life has an irrefutable momentum and this, if nothing else will carry me forward. Hopefully, if I have enough sense to look, and can see the ground through bleary eyes, I'll make out a new set of tracks, tearing off through the future with the same brilliant, crazy fire my brother ignited in everything he set his sights on. An unspoken decree to love what you love because others may need a spark to get going.

I won't waste time trying to further explain what made my brother a great man. If you knew him, you already know, and if you didn't, nothing I say will come close. Suffice it to say there is tremendous power in the death of a good person, and while it is this power that has his family and friends reeling, I believe it can also, in time, propel us onto a truer course for the remainder of our own lives. It'll be uphill, and a difficult track, but once we land, I think we may have enough momentum to do my brother proud.

Life can end for any reason, or for no reason. At any time.

Live without fear. Live like you mean it. Make your love known.

(Griffin leaves behind his wife and three young girls, here is a link to our gofundme campaign to help support them. Any contribution helps. Thank you.)

GROW

During the month of April, all proceeds from sales of my book will be donated to GROW, a community-gardening advocacy group which also assists low-income gardeners and helps connect food banks with community-grown produce.

These are pretty awesome things to do.

Secretly, it is my dream to someday start a community food garden in my own neighborhood (er—I guess don't tell anyone). Not so long ago, in the time before Fencebroke Promontory Gardens, we lived in the city. Well—more in the city; FPG isn't exactly a rural setting. The point is, we had no land of our own to plant. So we spent a couple years on a waiting list for a spot at one of Seattle's neighborhood P-patches. A couple looong years. It turns out, there are a lot of people who want to garden and only so much space to do so in the city. 

The demand side of this equation is just fine, but I'd love to do something about the supply. Hence this small step into the realm of non-profit advocacy. Gardening is one of my life's purest, dirtiest joys. It changes people, and never for the worse. The more opportunities we can create for gardeners to bloom, the better our society will be. Sure, we'll all have to put up with a lot more vests and seed-talk at work, but I think it's an acceptable trade-off. 

I've rarely been happier than the day the P-patch finally called and said our plot was ready. From that moment on, in my mind, I was a farmer.

This is for all the other would-be farmers out there. 

(If you've already purchased my book, or frankly have no desire to do so, please don't let that stop you from checking out GROW or a similar organization in your region. They are doing valuable work and can use the support. Thank you!) 

The Established Garden

Celebrate with me! Or don't, but at least humor me. This marks the first year in Fencebroke's history in which I have not spent the better part of the Fall, Winter, or Spring cutting and digging new planting beds. Woo! Wooooo—That's right, no more inching along with a half-moon edger drawing invisible shapes in the lawn; no more sod removal; no more attacking the underside of turf chunks with my hori-hori knife in an effort to salvage priceless native topsoil; no more little piles of once-buried beer bottles, car parts, and children's toys that were to be the previous owners' contribution to our priceless native topsoil; no more bulging mounds of removed sod popping up like monstrous mole hills around the yard—correction, no more additional bulging mounds of sod—I will do something with the existing mounds, mark my words; and, most importantly, no more hours burned away on any of the above when I'd much rather be doing ... almost anything else. Woo.

This year, at long last, the beds are dug, mulch has been laid, and the garden is, dare I say, established. Which should in no way be confused with finished, or even coherent, but somewhere along the way I found enough spare minutes and plants to at least lay claim to the newly cut beds by burying things in them along the way. Unfortunately, as new leaves and flowers begin to emerge this Spring in surprising places and unexpected colors, I must admit to a rather startling amnesia regarding what exactly I planted and why exactly I did so. Here's an example:

There. What is that? Kinda pretty I guess, but how big will it get? Will it bloom? When? If so, what color? Is it edible? Poisonous? Psychedelic? Noxious? Obnoxious? I have no idea. And there are dozens of similar examples around the garden. Each doubtless planted in one of many sleep-deprived fugues to which I have succumbed in the four-odd years of the garden's and, not coincidentally, my children's, existence. Did I keep the plant tags? Of course I did. They're in ziploc bags in the shed somewhere, just like my kids' birth certificates. Can I find, much less figure out which goes to which? No I cannot. I mean, with the plants. I have a decent hunch with the kids.

So far, I'm not inclined to remove anything until I see what it does. I can be patient. I will go through the seasons experiencing my own garden with all the joy and surprise of a public garden I've never seen before ... which is pretty much all of them. Yeah, I don't get out much. But I promise, just as soon as this green clump does something more interesting or identifiable, I'll let you all know. I'm sure the suspense is killing you.

Musical Chairs

An unwilling participant in the game.

I'm always changing things, in the garden. Moving them around. Pots, plants, piles of dirt, whole beds (conspiracy theorists will insist that a mythical "paisley bed" once existed in the middle of the backyard—preposterous, of course), and the kids' plastic play slide, which never fails to suffer spontaneous disintegration into its component parts in protest every single time. It is, I suppose, one consequence of never having given a moment's forethought to the overall design of one's garden. 

Instead, the design process here at Fencebroke has been compressed into a series of ultra-dense, creative vortices, in which I swirl around frantically for a few minutes while the kids are sleeping or distracted and lest I collapse forever into the imminent singularity of too much to do in too little time. While I flirt with this event horizon, my tried-and-true process is to gather up as many plants in my arms as I can carry (which, after a career spent largely working at nurseries, is rather a lot—this I mention not to boast, merely to paint a more absurd picture of myself biting off more than I can chew) and then run back and forth around the yard setting plants down at more or less random intervals until their composition is at least generally inoffensive if not particularly inspiring. Inevitably, to achieve this gold standard of Generally Inoffensive I will be forced to dig up a few existing, happily-rooted plants that were plopped down in the same haphazard fashion during a previous vortex. Plants excised in this manner are then added—raw, exposed roots dangling down with pathos—to my enormous, mighty armful, which unfortunately changes in composition but never seems to shrink. Then I just go back and repeat the whole charade until time runs out. It's like musical chairs. There's never enough space for all the plants, so there are always a few left out when the music stops. Pfff—a few—who am I kidding? By the time the needle slides off the record when Rowan falls off a patio chair or Daisy uses a little too much of the rain barrel for her "mud farm", I usually have more plants in my arms than when I started. SO many plants in my arms, and they're heavy, too— 

Okay, okay, now I'm boasting—give me a break, I work in horticulture, there aren't many opportunities.

The results of each round of Musical Vortices attest to a given moment's random and unbridled creativity, which in no way meaningfully communicates with any other moment's random and unbridled creativity. What once, briefly, passed as Generally Inoffensive in its own right will inevitably rear up as Generally Appalling when viewed at a later date and in the context of the garden as a whole. When this happens, the music starts up, the tidal pull of distant creativity swirls, and I start grabbing plants again. This is an approach to the art of garden design that cannot, and indeed, should not, be taught. But it's the way I do it. And frankly I don't have time to do it any other way.

So ... who wants to see how many plants I can really carry? 

Keeping Busy

A still life for sanity. Yes, I made the crane ... do you doubt my skills?

What's a body to do? It's January. It's cold, dark, and dismal. The clouds hunch lower and lower in the sky until they collapse in a stupor and splat to the Earth with a great wet <plop> that will echo until June. The sun is a mythical beast. The family is restless, its father useless. The walls are closing in. The garden is ... well, it doesn't matter what the garden is because no one's stepping outside to find out. So how does the resourceful gardener stay sane in the off-season? Exercise? Pfff! NCAA hoops? I just ... no. Binge-watching old Star Trek episodes? Well, maybe. Hibernation? Tried that, I can't make myself sleep in past 5am. Or until 5am. Or for more than an hour at a time, anytime. Actually, what's the opposite of hibernation?

Coffee!

Don't worry, thanks to your pals .. er, pal ... okay, weird garden guy at Fencebroke Promontory, you won't have to resort to any of those soul-sucking pastimes. Lucky for you, I've compiled a handy-dandy list of meaningful, engaging activities to keep the northern-latitude gardener and family man sharp and productive right through the soggy gut of Winter. Next time you're feeling antsy, just throw a dart at this list and consider yourself occupied!

No ... you know what, don't throw a dart. Sharp projectiles and digital devices don't mix well and I don't want to be held responsible for any broken screens. Just look at the darn list and choose for yourself.

On with the list!

The list is as follows:

List:

<ahem>

Winter Activities For The Boreal Gardener (A List)

1.) Make a list.

2.) Hem

3.) Haw

4.) Make a fresh pot of coffee

5.) Drink a fresh pot of coffee

6.) Get sick

7.) Take care of your family when they get sick

8.) Get to know your pediatrician

9.) Start remodeling your kitchen!

10.) Stay up all night with sick kids

11.) Learn how to remodel your kitchen

12.) Cook dinner with a microwave

13.) Does anyone know a good contractor?

14.) Consider getting sick again

15.) Talk about a book you want to read

16.) Hear about a film you want to see

17.) Binge-watch old Star Trek episodes

18.) Um ... origami?

19.) Hey, didn't we used to have a kitchen?

20.) Go smell the witch hazel

21.) Again

22.) Listen to the wind-chimes

23.) Deep breath

24.) Seed catalogs

25.) It's going to be okay


There you have it, feel free to use as many of these ideas as you want. You'll likely find some more engaging than others, but rest assured I've thoroughly tested all of them for merit. All I can say is: thank god for seed catalogs.

... Yes, and Star Trek.

Consistency

They're really ... something.

There's something to be said for consistency. I'm not sure what, exactly, that something is, nor who, if anyone, is actually saying it, but it's out there, I have faith, waiting to be said all the same. It might well be something good. I mean, hey, this here sweet alyssum has been flowering at Fencebroke for almost nine straight months now. That's pretty darn consistent. Are the flowers mind-blowing? No. Are they transcendent? Certainly not. Life altering? Meh. But is there plenty of room beneath these unnecessarily hyperbolic descriptions for something ... worthwhile? Sure.

In fact, maybe we need a few more sweet alyssum-caliber benedictions in our lives. Not everything has to make you weak in the knees in order to push the day's balance a little toward the positive. We can't, after all, buy a new phone every day. I mean, yet. I certainly see people lined up in front of the Apple store every day, so god knows the demand is there. But until that happens, maybe we'd be better off noticing some of the little, consistent things in life. The things we tend to overlook which, upon closer inspection, might reveal themselves to be a bit remarkable. And full of happy bees. (Do watch out for those.) Like little white flowers still going strong in the middle of December. That's pretty ... well, it's pretty something. When I figure out what it is, I'll be the first to say it.

Basically "Mad Men"

Being a self-published author means you have to do a lot of different things. Which is unfortunate, because when I set about my writing "career" it wasn't because I wanted to do a lot of different things, it was because I wanted to, you know, write. And occasionally attend swanky awards shows, but I always just assumed these were an inevitable consequence of writing. Secretly I still do. Uhh ... don't tell anyone.

One of the things you have to do as a solo writer is figure out how to get people to read and/or buy what you've written. I've been told this is called "marketing". I'm not a fan. But, since our house gets very few door-to-door solicitations for indie garden lit. by itinerant publishers, critics, or book buyers, I've been forced to enter this strange world that is the psychology of the pocketbook. Wallet. Uh, credit card ... people don't really use pocketbooks anymore, do they? (Wait, is a wallet the same thing as a pocketbook?)

As I write this, on Thanksgiving evening, a great storm of controversy has erupted among those family members present about the term "pocketbook". It was a mistake to seek clarification in this setting.

Anyway, the point is, I now spend more time than I'd like trying to come up with novel ways to drum up readers and customers for the micro-niche of humorous horticultural miscellany I've so foolishly belly-flopped into. It basically turns my household into a scene from Mad Men. Well, minus the glamour. And production value. And, uh, rampant bigotry, infidelity, and sexism. But I've been told I could pass for a shorter, blonder, ever-so-slightly-less-dreamy Jon Hamm. Also, I've been trying to smoke more cigarettes, but so far all I can tolerate are the candy ones. Oh, and I wore a tie for a while, but it seemed to confuse the children. My poor wife has no idea what's going on.

This holiday season, especially, has kicked me into full on Mad Men mode. I put together several flashy proposals and presented them to myself in a high-stakes meeting. I criticized them ruthlessly and told myself to go back wherever I came from. I fumed, told myself off, and then fired myself for insubordination. Now I'm as confused as everyone else in my family.

So I settled on this, because I can't think of anything else:

The Kindle version of my book will be free again this whole Holiday-shopping kick-off weekend (Friday through Monday). Read it, if you haven't already, and then if you like it, maybe consider picking up the print copy as a gift for any gardener or otherwise weird person in your life.

That's it, that's all I got. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm out of candy cigarettes.