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.