A Man Can Dream

Pretend you never saw this.

These are Mexican Sour Gherkins! AKA cucamelons. They're all the rage this year in veggie gardening. I mean, as much as anything can be the rage in veggie gardening … which is not a lot, if I'm honest. Sure, there's often a bit of Tomatomania in May, but that's about it. Maybe the occasional hubbub. Purple carrots have been known to cause a hubbub. Oh—and there was that time a few years back when I witnessed a tizzy over beans. No rages, though. (I do wonder how you'd characterize the whole Hatch pepper phenomenon. A movement, perhaps? A falderal? A hullabaloo?)

But back to the gherkins. They're incredible! They're the kumquats of the cucurbits! You grow 'em up a trellis, pick a handful, and pop 'em in your mouth. They taste just like the tiny little, sweet, refreshing watermelons they so clearly resemble and what's more—

—oh, who am I kidding?

They don't taste like watermelons. They're just little cucumbers. Tasty, sure, with a bit of a lemony zing, but it doesn't matter how great a cucumber they are because whenever I pick one my mouth starts chanting, “Watermelon, watermelon, teeny tiny watermelon.” and then practically chokes when it gets cucumber instead. Which would be fine if it just happened the first time and then my brain actually bothered to link the visual cue that whispers “Wee watermelon” to the sense memory that screams “CUCUMBER YOU IDIOT”. But instead my mind just redacts the experience altogether so that I am fooled Every. Single. Time. I eat one.

Like Charlie Brown blinded to Lucy's timeless treachery by the imagined bliss of actually putting foot to ball, I walk past the stripy little impostors and stop in my tracks. What's this? Minimelons!? Don't mind if I do …

And then I bite down, my tongue's feet go flying out from under it yet again, and we're talking a different sort of rage.

Success!

There's a reason you never hear of any unhappy writers. The fame, the money, the lifestyle—it just comes so easy for them. I mean, for us. I always heard that writing books was a surefire path to celebrity and fortune, but even I never dreamed, when I first sat down at my Great Grandfather's writing desk twenty years ago, that it could happen to me. All I had to do was actually finish a book. That was the catch. I've got the bones of half-a-dozen different manuscripts littered around the office, all of which showed promise and momentum in their day, none of which came close to completion. But then—Bang! This Twenty Reasons Not To Garden thing came to fruition and a couple weeks after its release, my life is changed.

That's right, it is with excitement, humility, gratitude, and a little … je ne sais quoi that I announce—due to the overwhelming success of my book—my decision to temporarily retire from all current endeavors and occupations in order to more obscenely bask in the rich rewards of my achievement.

After consulting with my accountant (yeah, I've got one of those now), the to-date and projected book sales should easily fund a lengthy sabbatical. He figures I've got a good hour/hour-and-a-half's worth of revelry in which to pursue my life's dreams. But, you know what? You only live once so I'm taking a full two hours.

What'll I fill the time with? I'm glad you asked.

First off I plan to see the world. Scotland, Patagonia, Southwest China, Fiji, Delaware—all the places on my bucket list. Then of course we'll take the kiddos to Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, the Pyramids, Antarctica to see penguins, underwater to see the Octonauts, and wherever else their little hearts desire. Then my wife and I will hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Yes, the whole thing. After that, I'm sorry to say, I'll probably just blow a good portion of my windfall at the casino. Maybe Monte Carlo, maybe Emerald Queen—doesn't really matter, I've just always wanted to say “Double Down”. Ooh—and “Let it ride”. I'll drink dirty martinis, scotch, and whatever that interesting fella from Dos Equis is drinking … as long as it's not Dos Equis, I mean. Double down.

And just to show I have not forgotten my gardening roots which thrust me atop this new promontory, I plan on devoting a full ten minutes towards getting my community-gardening-for-the-homeless charity up and running.

And after that, well, I'll probably just spend the duration of my leave swimming in the ol' money vault à la Scrooge McDuck. Which reminds me—anyone know a good contractor with vault experience?

I thank you all for your faithful readership, and though it will pain me to be away, I promise I will return to regale you once more with tales and musings from the annals of Fencebroke. Someday.

… We'll say noonish.

Now, where's that martini?

The Loophole

I'm no glutton for punishment. Now I know that may sound disingenuous given my choice of vocation, hobby, and decision to sire children, but believe it or not it's mostly true. That's why I'm not about to look askance at the obscene bounty drooping along every roadside ditch this time of year just because it didn't come from my own garden.

Make no mistake, given the choice, I would much rather avail myself of existing produce rather than spend all that time and energy growing it myself. Trust me, if, say, tomatoes just popped up every Summer along sidewalks everywhere—to such ridiculous convenience that one must actually go out of one's way to not be assailed by a fruit that would normally flirt at $5.99 a pound from a farmer's market table—then I would immediately rededicate their prime Fencebroke real-estate to a new pickleball court. As it is though, there remains, to date, only one crop so brash as to defy cultivation by mere fact of its ubiquity.

C'mon, Nature, this is too easy.

I'm talking, of course, about blackberries, which—sure they're a noxious ecological disaster and all that—but jeez, if mother nature has a cheat code, this is certainly it. A rampant weed that gives you buckets of delicious fruit; it's like a thief who steals your car but takes you out to a fancy dinner several times a year (although to complete the metaphor, said thief would probably jab you with his steak knife at regular intervals throughout the meal). I always feel vaguely guilty when picking a good berry patch, like someone's going to jump out of the briar and close this blackberry loophole once and for all.

I suppose it's a good thing for my career and pastime that more produce doesn't flail at you from every vacant lot and fence-line the land over. If morning glory vines dropped hazelnuts and horsetails sported Brussels sprouts; if dandelion roots were baby carrots and knotweed could be pressed for a passable apple cider—the backyard gardener might soon go the way of the Walkman.

You know what? That's okay. I'd take one for the team and find a new path through life if it meant broccoli could be picked from sidewalk cracks. Now, who's going to get on that and make it happen? Anyone? Monsanto—I'm looking at you. Come on, don't let me down; I really want that pickleball court.

Twenty Reasons Not To Garden

That's right, with the oodles of spare time I've had over the last couple years—I mean, whenever I'm not working full time, helping raise one child, preparing for another, running an amateur sleuthing agency, blogging, and relearning the same Shovels and Rope song on the guitar every few weeks, I've managed to write a book.

It's called Twenty Reasons Not To Garden (And Why I Ignore Them All), and it's now available in print, Kindle, and limited edition cuneiform tablet from Amazon.

It's pretty much what it sounds like: Twenty reasons not to garden and why I ignore them all. I shouldn't really have to type that again. But it's perfect for gardeners, non-gardeners, and Sumerian businessmen alike. Funny, if you think this blog is funny, probably not so much if you only stop by Fencebroke for the stunning photography. Also, it's a pretty wicked green color, which is nice if you're into various shades of green.

So anyway, you can buy a copy or just take turns stopping by the Promontory and reading my copy. That's cool, too; it's a pretty quick read.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've been remiss in my other duties. Methinks there's a hefty backlog of cases at the ol' driveway sleuth-booth.  

What is the Same?

We have a set of flash cards we use with Daisy. Each one shows a handful of shapes or animals or objects or whatnot, and the goal is to come up with various similarities and differences between all the items pictured. Color, shape, size, quantity, gross and aggravating cuteness, shared phylogenetic heritage of depicted species, anthropomorphic absurdity—those sorts of things (let's just say we get different responses when Daisy is answering vs. when Daddy is answering).

So, in the spirit of this educational tool that has proven to be every bit as effective, fun, silly, and skull-crushingly intolerable for the parent after five minutes as most other early childhood games, I have decided to start a Fencebroke Promontory harvest version of these flash cards. Here's an early sample:

What is the same? What is different?

In this case, Daisy's answer might go something like: “These two are purple! That's the same.” or, “These two are cauliflower” or “The white one is smaller. That's different!” To which I would respond with a fatherly hug and assurance that her keen grasp of concepts such as these would all but guarantee her a life of happiness, fulfillment, and accomplishment the likes of which mankind has never seen. (For the record, her actual response when prompted with this image was nothing so sterling, I'm afraid—mostly confused pointing and “I don't knows”. I didn't have the heart to tell her this means she has no future.)

Daddy's response to the same image, however, would likely reflect his more intimate knowledge of the crops at hand. E.g.: “They're all brassicas; that's the same!” or, “These two cauliflower contained a greater density of earwigs than I would have thought possible, seemingly violating the physical properties of cauliflower as it exists in 4D space-time; that's the same!” or, “Each of these represent more of their respective vegetable than I normally eat in a year. I don't know what I'm going to do with any of them; that's the same!” or, (hypothetically of course) "The cabbage makes a great tetherball; that's different!" Ha ha. Not that I would ever use any of my precious harvest for sport. Ha ha. Ha ... I mean ... not anymore. Ha—<ahem>

Again, that's why this game is so great. Everyone sees something different. 

Now, what do you see?

"Saving Seed"

I don't know why I didn't figure this out sooner. It's brilliant—the best thing to happen to gardening since sliced bread. Yeah, well … hey—gardeners eat sandwiches too. I mean, as long as they're gluten-free—for this gardener anyway. So I guess it's the best thing to happen to gardening since gluten-free sliced bread … which, If I'm going to be completely honest, and with few exceptions, is pretty awful. But at least it's bread. And it's sliced. So that's something. Maybe, in retrospect, not something to include on a great-moments-in-gardening timeline, but if you stick around you'll see that this post deals in part with laziness, and, that being the case, I see no reason to waste my time deleting things I've already committed to text. So butter yourself a nice slice of particle-board GF toast and pretend this first paragraph never happened.

What in the name of gobsmacked heck am I talking about? Well, if you'd bothered to read the title, you'd see I'm newly enamored with the time-honored gardening tradition of “saving seed”. Yes, in quotation marks. It started out without them—a genuine desire to leave various heirloom vegetable crops in the ground long enough for them to flower and produce seed, which could then be collected, dried, and saved for sowing at a later date. In this way, I could theoretically do away with the overflowing grab bag of impulse-buys that is my annual seed catalog order.

In practice, however, and to date, I have saved … no seed. None. Sorry. One of two possible fates awaits each crop I leave in the ground tagged for seed-collecting: 1.) After a couple weeks it becomes so overgrown, pest-riddled, and generally hideous I am compelled to attack it by some urgent combination of horror, shame, and self-defense or, 2.) I just forget about it, becoming gradually more desensitized to its malignant presence until the window for meaningful seed-collecting shuts behind my back and I'm left wondering what all those brown, brittle corpses in the vegetable garden are.

Beets, firmly in category 2.

The previously alluded-to brilliance (and the origin of those suspicious quotation-marks) lies in the latter fate. For, as it turns out, I can justify almost any failed gardening experiment, fatal procrastination, poor plant placement, general lapse in sound horticultural practice, or just plain laziness as part of my grand “seed-saving” scheme. Nope, that plant's not dead. Just waitin' for those seeds. Yep, that one too. And that one. And that one—look, I've got a lot of “seed to save”, okay?

Do note, however, that this cunning little strategy does not translate well into other branches of domestic/professional life. Repeated failures to fold my laundry, for example, are not so easily written off as “saving seed”, no matter how insistent my appeals to time-honoredness or economic efficiency. And the neighbors' dirty looks, unfortunately, can only be averted from your overgrown lawn for so long before your “saving seed” argument wears thin.  

Playing Favorites

Let's just start by saying it would be ludicrous for me to choose a favorite plant. Absurd. A tenured horticultural professional such as me choosing sides in the glorious orgy of plants that is the palette of my vocation? Fie! Pfff! Tssch! I should rue the day any single specimen—no matter how beautiful— blinds my eyes to the vast spectrum of color, texture, and form—nay! the very breadth of Life ITSELF—which I've the good fortune to pass before my gaze on a daily basis.

All that being said, let's just continue by saying that this here Hydrangea is my favorite plant.

Whatever. I don't have to explain myself to you.

I know, I know, but just … shut up, okay?

Here's where I should probably launch into some poetic manifesto enumerating the virtues of Hydrangea serrata 'Bluebird' in order to justify its exalted place in my personal pantheon of plants: how its beauty surpasses all others; how the grace and longevity of its bloom charm for untold months on end; how I would settle for leaf or flower alone but the two together are twin arrows through my heart; how my own little Bluebird huddled in a cramped pot for years before finally taking root outside my bedroom window to wave good morning! in the first dawn breeze and goodnight in the evening's sough; how not a week goes by in the whole year where I don't fancy a glance in its direction, now swollen bud, now breath of blue, now burnished autumn spilled upon the leaves … and now rest. Winter's rest. A rustle of paper lacecaps in the cold.

But I'm not going to do that.

Because the truth is as soon as you try to justify or explain why something is your favorite, the purity of your conviction gets all scribbled-over by the crayons of language. Like that! See what I mean? “Crayons of language”—what does that even mean?

It means I should just stop talking. Because discovering that something is truly your favorite, without preface or discourse, is a very rare occurrence in this world, and we'd do well to just enjoy it while it lasts.