Burma Shave Today

Remember those beloved sequential roadside signs that first appeared in 1925, along country highways and byways. Here’s what they look like today.

Remember these original signs:

She raised Cain
When he raised stubble
Guess what
Smoothed away
Their Trouble?
Burma Shave

My job is
Keeping faces clean
And nobody knows
De Stubble
I’ve Seen
Burma Shave

On curves ahead
Remember, sonny
That rabbit’s foot
Didn’t save
The Bunny
Burma Shave

Short, stiff hair
Is what we’re after
We make no
Claims on
The hereafter
Burma Shave

Today’s billboards:

His combover hides
His stubble and brows
But hold on Martha
He’s scaring
The sows
Burma Shave

Putin’s shaves
Are very close
But our Pres says
His hair grows
The most
Burma Shave

They are no more
Hicks, Gates, and Flynn
But think of
Manafort and Cohen
And the trouble they're in
Burma Shave

Those daily Tweets
Are all the rage
But his
Orange hair
Reveals his age
Burma Shave

Striptease

I grew up in the land of the reverse striptease. For roughly three-quarters of the year you’re putting things on instead of taking things off – layer after layer after layer.

But now it’s the season to shed things. Bras and bad attitudes seem to go hand in hand – or is it cup in hand?

While we all need some support, maybe it’s good to shed more than clothing. I'm not at my best in the heat. I’m not a patient person, except with small children and the elderly, and I’m even less patient in the heat. I recently fantasized about drowning an elderly man who rammed me with his shopping cart. Forgive me.

There’s not much I know for certain, but I do know this: nothing should be encased in spandex and latex in the high heat and humidity of summer. The older I get the harder it is to bear the heat. I know I’m not alone. I hear the same thing from my mother, who is driven inside by the searing temps that hit the 100°s on the Great Plains. And I hear it from other gardeners of a certain age. I run into to them everywhere: red-faced, hands dabbing their moist foreheads; hair piled atop their heads as they try to cool the nape of their sweaty necks; bras abandoned in this bed or that (I mean perennial bed.)

One can feel as shut-in during the heat of summer as in winter. I follow my cat’s lead and take cover under the canopy of a sweet pepperbush – bees buzzing overhead.

And everyone wants in on the striptease. Even a hosta grower got into the act when he named his hosta “Striptease” after its alluring sliver of white. Ooh la la.

Years ago, I was visiting a neighbor’s garden and I saw her DD bra cradling a large trellis-grown cantaloupe. Now that’s the only use I can think of for a bra in the heat of summer, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Republican Versus Democrat Gardeners

Warning: the following contains labels, over-simplifications, stereotypes, slights and slurs.

We live in a divided country, so I escape to nature in general, and my garden in particular. But even there I cannot escape political differences.

Here’s a crash course on how to spot the political leanings of the gardener.

The tidiest gardens in my neighborhood belong to Republicans: they’ve been trimmed, sprayed, denuded, edged, weed whacked and mulched. Democrats tolerate a fair amount of disarray. Organization is not their strong suit. Will Rogers said it best: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”  

 Havahart™ traps were made for Democrats.

Democrats are tolerant to a flaw. They only trap critters after they’ve eaten their way through the vegetable garden many times. My Republican friends own guns, and they use them. Both parties agree a gun is quicker than hauling a Havahart™ trap with a mad woodchuck to a quiet country road.

Rare plants versus common plants? If you want to know the latest plant trends, look no farther than the garden of the former head of the local Republican Party. In contrast, the head of our local Democratic Party has planted a garden with common plants and pollinators in mind. The garden is buzzing with activity, even though the local political party has no activity.

Democrats meet once a month with the same agenda – which never includes the word WIN. They drink wine and whine about Republicans. If you want to see their heads spin, use the words strategy or message. Meeting after meeting they have the same action steps. None.

I told a Democrat that I liked his garden and he gave me ten reasons why I liked it. I can’t remember any of them because he talked so long and used so many multi-syllable words that my eyes glazed over. He had invited other Democrats over to see his garden and they talked and agreed on nothing. I asked him about a particular planting and he took a half hour to explain it.

Maybe that’s why Democrats use the Latin names of most plants. They’re longer. (See my blessay: Lutheran vs. Catholic Gardeners.) But ask a Republican what he intends to do about the root rot on his corn, and he’ll say: “Kill.” Now that’s economy.

Size matters in gardens. Neither political party has the corner on size, but Republicans tend to think bigger is better as long as they’re not bound by regulations. “You don’t need regulations because each gardener should take ‘personal responsibility’ for how he or she uses chemicals,” says a Republican friend.

You can’t make this stuff up.

If you see a lawn service pull up, it’s probably a Republican’s lawn they’ve come to treat. Sure, there are Democrats who hire lawn services, but if it’s TruGreen® (formerly known as Chemlawn, but with a brand name designed to deceive) it’s not the lawn of a Democrat. The buyers of organic lawn care are mostly Democrats. They’re suckers for anything labeled “organic.” They don’t take a chemical approach to pests; they tolerate dandelions and other weeds because they believe they’re good for beneficial insects. (Scientific fact in previous sentence.)

Gardening based on the latest science is the goal of most Democrats. The information they glean from literature on beehive collapse or pear blight, shows up in their garden practices. Republicans ignore the latest scientific findings because they believe they know what’s right for the planet.

One of my Republican friends even quoted the bible. “God gave man dominion over the earth.” Democrats believe the word dominion means stewardship, not domination.

The corner on righteousness? Democrats own that.

Republicans also believe there’s “a lot of hype in the science reporting on climate change.” Hurricane Harvey and Irma were “flukes,” they say. “The weather is cyclical.” I ask: “How do you explain the three warmest years on record?” Their answer: “Propaganda from the liberal media.” When I show them that Republicans own most of the media, they say: “Why do you make this stuff up?”

Okay, we’re pretty deep in the weeds right now, so grab your Round-Up® or other newly unregulated chemicals.

You may be thinking Geez, she’s biased.

So, in fairness to my Independent friends, next time I’ll give a summary of an Independent’s garden. On second thought, Independents believe the George Carlin line: “Never join a group that has a name.”

Winter Lament: Grieving Husband; Snoring Cat

It’s been a hard winter.

I’m not talking about the record days of record cold, the rain followed by falling temperatures, the ice, the struggle to stay erect or the unrelenting wind. No, I am talking about living with a man who outlived a daughter. She died last July, and we both still hear the phone ring and think it’s her. We know it isn’t, but it takes a long time for the mind to accept this fact. How long? We don’t know. While I didn’t need any more experience with grief, I’m getting it. I’ve written about grief before in “The Grieving Garden: This Too Is a Garden,” and “The Absence of Presence.” Now I am watching a man who lives to create, who had that creative focus that leads to flow, become robbed of that focus because of grief.

The world never looks the same after a child dies. As a parent, you’re only as happy as your happiest child.

He’s not striving for happiness exactly, just a respite from the dark. Nature has been our balm for years, but when you cannot get outside for a walk so many days in a row, you stay inside.

That’s where our cat Van Gogh comes in. He isn’t going out either. We used to enjoy watching him nap, silently. But in his heavier state, he eats nonstop and gets no exercise; he snores. Loudly. He has this pouch of fat on his belly that sways when he walks across the room. It takes him about an hour to clean that belly. Yesterday I got on the scale, and I, too, may soon have a pouch of belly fat that sways when I walk across the room. If it weren’t for spandex, I would be straining every piece of clothing I own with my expanding waistline.

On the plus side (which I am on my way to), we don’t have to scramble to get to the grocery store before the next winter storm. We can all live off our fat.

In the evening I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics and eating. If eating were an Olympic sport, I’d be in medal contention. I ate two boxes of crackers while watching Red Gerard compete in slopestyle snowboarding. The announcer said that Red is just 17 and weighs a mere 117 pounds. I used to weigh 117 pounds. Before this winter, that is. Still, I am grateful to be introduced to a sport I never even heard of. Wildly creative one, too. If I were 17 I would like to try that sport. Right now, I settle for aerobic eating.

At night, when I can’t sleep, I have been redesigning my front flower beds; this is done entirely in my head. I transport myself back to summer and survey the plantings. I add; I subtract; I rearrange. Try it.

I’m grateful that my brain can do this. My subconscious is primed with plants, thousands of them.

The past week we have been enveloped in fog. My husband asked: “When was the last time we saw the sun?” I couldn’t remember.

But then I think of those Woodstock Hyacinths I planted last October. I can almost see that deep magenta and smell their sweet scent. And I wait for the fog to lift.

Breaking Even: One Heel at a Time

A friend of mine (over 55 years old) was helping an elderly neighbor couple (both over 90 years old) trim a tree when he fell. He would have landed on his head, but he got hung up on a branch and spun around on the way down. He landed on his feet, eventually.

I was recounting this to my sister-in-law, a retired physical therapist, and she said, “He must have broken his calcaneus.”

“He broke his left heel and his pride,” I said.

“Calcaneus,” she said again.

“There was nothing calculated about it,” I said.

“Breaking your calcaneus happens only one way,” she said. “Whenever people came to see me for therapy and had broken their calcaneus I’d ask: ‘So did you fall off the roof or out of a tree?’ Their answer was always either ‘roof’ or ‘tree.’ ”

I guess you need both height and speed in order to bust this bone. My friend had both, and so he broke his heel.

The elderly couple paid him $180 for trimming their trees. The elderly woman took him to the emergency room. Guess what the co-pay was?

$180.

My friend’s wife was not happy. She counts on his help, and he’s out of commission for eight weeks because he can’t put any weight on his busted calcaneus. He’s treading lightly. She’s mostly unhappy because she told him not to go up any ladders, ALONE. I guess the calcaneus bone is connected to the ear bone, and he broke that right before he broke his calcaneus.

Which reminds me, a few years ago, an acquaintance broke his foot. (He was also of a certain age.) This seems like more than a pattern; it seems like an epidemic among men of a certain age.

As he showed me the swollen mass, I said; “Geez your foot looks like a Kleenex™ box.” I struggled to see any toes in the swollen mass of stretched, blue skin. His friend, helping him hobble around and holding his crutches, shook a crutch at me and said, “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

“Oh, she’s a writer,” he offered. “She’s just describing what she sees.”

I wanted to tell him thanks for not taking it personally. It really did look like a Kleenex™ box; swollen enough to obscure his toes and with corners, kind of. You don’t forget corners. Not on a foot.

So much for getting smarter with age. I think there comes a time when you have to face the fact that you cannot scale that ladder and clean those gutters, trim that tree, or re-shingle the roof.

Give the work to the young, will you? They need gravity-defying experience, too. Though there’s a limit.

So just one last question for my sister-in-law: “How many women came to you for physical therapy for a broken calcaneus or calcanei or whatever the plural is?

“I never saw one,” she said.

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” (Dr. Seuss)

I’m a sucker for anything different.

I was setup from the start. When my eccentric mother invented the name Leesa with two e’s I had two choices: either embrace being different or go crazy spelling my name. I did both. “That’s Leesa with two e’s,” I’d tell the woman taking my Christmas order. “Where do the two e’s go?” she’d ask. “Right after the L and right next to each other,” I say, baffled by where else she might put those two e’s and shuddering at the thought of splitting them up.

I’m also a sucker for anything purple.

So, I’m a sucker for the American Beautyberry. Nothing slows weekend walkers faster than my four Beautyberry bushes loaded with deep purple sprays of berries. Yesterday a car pulled over and parked next to these bushes. The woman driver pointed to them, and her male passenger stared at them. After several minutes, I went out to make sure they weren’t lost.

Me: Are you lost?
She: No, we’re admiring that purple bush. It’s so different. What is that?
Me: Callicarpa?
She: Calla what? (Don’t you love Americans? It sounds exotic, so it throws them.)
Me: American Beautyberry.
She: Is that color natural, or did you spray-paint it?
Me: Shucks, I’m plum out of purple spray paint. So, that’s natural.
She: Where are they from?
Me: Asia
She: No, where can I buy one?
Me:  Any nursery.

They draw bluebirds too. Flocks of them.

The first winter, after the first snowfall, they were covered with hungry bluebirds. Sublime sight: sun glistening on snow, blue feathers and purple berries flung everywhere.

Expect something you’d never expect: Bushes laden with purple berries in the garden of the vowel-heavy Leesa – that’s with two e’s. Got that?

Tough Talk Among the Weeds

I’m relaxed and weeding, so I was not ready for what she was about to say.

“Your last piece of writing was not good.”
I offer no response; I just listen.

“Your writing in the past was much better. What’s happened to you?”

Still harder to hear was what came next: “Do you have the creative talent to deliver the kind of writing that gets results for clients? Well, do you?”

Geez, have I slipped that much?

“You know your last direct mail campaign got a forty percent response rate, but you have to increase that number. Can you do that?”

I grab another weed and pull hard because I don’t know how to answer her question. I feel my throat tighten. I’m tired of this daily barrage. I worked until 2 a.m. last night to make a deadline that just kept getting moved up. I’m coming up with creative concepts and writing as fast as I can. I don’t want to argue, but how much more of this can I take?

“And that email you wrote for George Carlin years ago, it broke records for response rates, so you had the talent back then. But do you have the talent now?”

I think to myself: True, I did do that. I miss George Carlin. His piece on “Stuff” still makes me laugh out loud.

I pull some bittersweet out of the bee balm.

I can’t listen to this any longer.

Enough.

I have to stop talking to myself.

Diversions & Distractions: An Odyssey, of Sorts

All epics are the same – a singular quest. Whether it’s a Golden Fleece or Dulcina’s honor, it matters little. There are arduous tests of intellect, strength and cunning. A decade-long journey home doesn’t hurt and insures loads of adventures. Throw in a revelation of a fatal flaw or two, and you’re good to go.

My quest was no different: shade plants that needed little water. I knew it would be hard; that few plants could compete with Maple roots, and I should just settle for mulch. But I had to know if it was possible.

My first stop was to collect my Sancho Panza, Patty. She’s up for anything. We stopped to gather an ample amount of supplies. Patty filled up the gas tank while I loaded up on staples for our daunting journey – chocolate, water and gum. We opened the sunroof, inserted a Dean Martin CD and headed out. We wandered from nursery to nursery with little encouragement from salespeople. But we knew as long as our blood sugar didn’t drop, our courage and civility would be undeterred. 

We succumbed to the smell of fresh bread and took a side trip to a bakery. That naturally lead to an impromptu picnic. Patty was ready to chuck her corporate job and go to work at the first nursery that would take her. It took all of my powers to persuade her to complete our journey.

 I suggested Patty plug her ears with gum as we approached the priciest of the nurseries. I tried to keep her lashed down to the seat with her seatbelt, but the siren call of White Flower Farm lured us into the packed parking lot. Patty was in search of a groundcover. I was in search of shrubs, since I had nothing beneath my trees, except that giant sucking sound of the Maples taking their first crack at all the nutrients.

We started with Patty's quest: groundcover. Discerning gardener that she is, Patty snatched up everything that looked like it would work. She had already unraveled her metaphorical shawl by ripping up everything in her garden.

She was also eyeing several other plants, but they would have blown her budget, so she held off. We were after all at the Neiman Marcus of nurseries. Or, as my husband calls it, "Needless Markup." But Patty wanted to break up the monotony of the low groundcover with some height, which brought us to a variety of Hellebores. We were smitten.

I snagged a few Beauty Berry bushes with their deep purple berry and this claim: low maintenance. Since I am now in the high-maintenance years, what with the hours spent coloring my hair and plucking the unwanted hair that appears everywhere but my head, I figure my plants should be low maintenance, even if I’m not.

Satisfied, we headed home with enough energy left to rail about our own windmills: husbands that ask us to find things for them.

Garden-Variety Crazy

I’m a victim of colliding compulsions. I visit a nursery, I see a new plant and I have to have it. When I get home my German genes kick in, and I wonder where I’m going to put it. How will it fit in my overall design? When I can’t work that out, I do my Scarlet O’Hara: “Oh, I can’t think of that now. …  I'll think of that tomorrow. … Tomorrow’s another day. … ” And I leave rebuilding Tara until tomorrow.

When tomorrow comes, I’m forced to confront my cash-and-carry habit. Why does my garden look like I brought a plant home every day and tried to find a spot for it? Maybe because I brought a plant home every day and tried to find a spot for it. I’ve got one of everything. What happened to the lovely repetition of color and shapes I admire in my friend Marge’s garden? Where’s that analogous color combination I yearned to replicate?

That’s it. My cash-and-carry habit is over. I'm going to sit down and design a bed, calculate the number of plants and put it all on paper, and I won’t buy a single plant that's not on my plan. Period. Got that?

And you know something? This disciplined approach turns out to be more fun than I thought. After I’ve researched the best plants, measured the area and calculated the number of plants, I know how the pros feel as I tuck my plan in my pocket and head to my favorite nursery.

As I pull into the nursery’s parking lot, I see the striking, feathery, nearly black foliage of a new shrub. Its alluring clumps of pink blossoms draw my nose in. Mmmm … lemony. As I get closer, I recognize this plant. My friend Linda planted this by her front door. It grew 6 feet tall by 6 feet wide in a nanosecond. I miss Linda. I'd like to see more of her, but I can't find her front door. She can't even rely on the deer to prune this overgrown plant because it's poisionous. But I can't think about Linda's poor decision now.

I consult my plan, knowing full well that this plant is not on it. I start to sweat. Is it fear of falling off the wagon or just another hot flash? I reach for my cell phone and call Marge, the most disciplined person I know. “Is it on your plan?” is her first question. “Never mind,” she says. “Do you have a pencil on you?” I dig through my purse. “Yes, yes, I have one,” I yell as I hold my violet Revlon eyeliner pencil in the air. Snapping out of my exuberance for a moment, I notice people are staring at my elevated eyeliner and me.

“Now take a deep breath and listen carefully,” Marge says calmly, as if talking a jumper off a high ledge. “Pencil it on your plan. Then buy it.”

Gosh, where would I be without the wisdom of a friend like Marge?

As I head home, rearview mirror chock full of foliage, I realize I had better face my real problem. It’s just crazy to have that violet scribble on my nice, neat garden plan. I'm going to need a better pencil than my violet Revlon eyeliner. Maybe I'll invest in the pencils the professional landscape designers use. I'd better swing by the art store on my way home.

Hamburger Helper

Spring. Every living creature is building, renovating, shedding, mating and eating.  And stuff is disappearing.

I talked to my mother this morning, and she’s missing stuff too. She enjoys an evening meal and a beer on her front porch under her blue-striped awning. Last night, she was doing just that. She went inside to get some mustard, came out and saw a chipmunk helping himself to her hamburger. After he hauled that off, he came back for the pickle.

Yesterday, I was giving our cat Van Gogh a new spring ‘do. I removed about half a pound of fur from his winter coat with his new brush — The FURminator®. The ad says it’s the “deshedding tool for cats that reduces up to 90% of loose hair (how did they measure that?), and prevents dangerous hairballs from developing.”

Van Gogh dropped on the patio like he’s narcoleptic — in the sunniest spot, of course, and rolled from side-to-side to give me ample access to his ample coat. His coat is so thick I had to clean the brush after just four hard drags along his sides. Hair was flying everywhere. Here’s a lesson I learned: never apply lip gloss before brushing your cat; furry lips I don’t need.

Anyway, I removed his hair from the clogged brush and tossed it in the air and let the wind carry it off. He thought this was a new game and chased his hairballs for a while until a minute movement elsewhere caused him to do his own disappearing act.

Other stuff started disappearing last winter. And a hard winter it was.

We had record snowfall and wind. Between the shoveling and the filling of bird feeders and suet holders, well, I could hardly keep up. When I returned from the store with a fresh supply of peanut butter suet, I left the suet cake in the bag outside the back door to run inside and get my scissors to cut through the heavy plastic. I returned just in time to see a fully wrapped suet cake disappearing up a large maple tree. “Gee, sorry the service is so slow,” I yelled.

That evening I found the suet cake wrapper at the bottom of the tree. Hmmmm. What else is up there? It reminded me of a book my granddaughters loved when they were young: Gooseberry Park. The furry protagonist — a squirrel named Stumpy — has a working Timex watch in his nest that glows at night.

Which reminds me; years ago I left a small bag of garbage by the back door overnight. In order to spare the septic system, the bag contained some superabsorbent female products. The next morning the garbage was strewn all over the back patio and picked over. That evening, as I was relaxing on the patio, I looked up and noticed a new Robin’s nest with a string hanging out. That was one superabsorbent nest.

Just now a Tufted Titmouse flew by carrying a tuft of Van Gogh’s fiery orange hair.

The building, renovating, shedding, mating and eating show no sign of letting up.

Hey, where’s my left garden glove?

House Devil & Garden Angel

I’m having a little talk with myself. Make that my two selves.

And it isn’t going well.

House Devil: “Look at this living room. Your dust balls are multi-storied. The kitchen floor is so sticky you left one sock behind when you attempted to walk through it. And what is that film on the bathroom mirror that obscures half your face? Woman, get your house in order.”

Garden Angel: “Dear, forget all that housework. What a glorious day to be in the garden.”

Guess who wins this argument?

Once I’m in the garden, all of that chatter stops. The solitary act of planting, weeding and hoeing calms my clattering mind, and I am focused on a singular act. A meditation to dirt, perfumed by spring flowers and lashings of warm winds as the sun warms my back.

I’m my better self in the garden.

Don’t get me wrong; I do housework. I vacuum and dust in between sighs and looks of longing for the outside world. My house devil is a whiny woman who can build a fortress of resentment if her husband doesn’t pitch in with the housework. Which, thank god, he does.

It’s a common affliction: “house devil & garden angel” syndrome. And I’m a sufferer. So is my husband. Only he suffers more.

When darkness finally drives me inside, I always wish the dust balls wouldn’t scatter when I walk through rooms. I wish I could pry my left sock from that sticky mystery blob. I wish the dishes were done, the beds were made. . .

But mostly I wish for one more day to comingle with the earthworms, leave a little corner of beauty, and tread lightly on this lovely earth.

Garden Profiling - Part Two

Malcolm has just finished the biweekly trim of the boxwood hedges that border two stone paths. One path leads to a greek-like statue, another ends at a focal point — the fountain. Terraces dotted with topiaries surround the boxwood. There’s the swath of perfect lawn, cut short and edged, like Malcolm’s hair. Malcolm loves to weed, edge and prune in his high-maintenance garden. Like the formal English garden, boundaries are well defined and symmetry rules.

Malcolm’s garden began with a bulk supply of graph paper and months of planning that produced neat stacks of color-coded sketches. Then came the heavy equipment — the backhoes and graders that moved, shaped, graded and re-graded until every natural contour was obliterated. Next a white fence, topped with decorative latticework, was erected to enclose his compound.

Then he searched for plants — some rare, temperamental and expensive varieties.

Early in our friendship I helped Malcolm prepare for a large garden party. He asked me to run to the kitchen and get some cilantro from his spice rack. “Just look in the Cs,” he said. I was confused until I discovered his multi-tiered, fully revolving, electronic spice rack was alphabetized.  (I know I’ve wandered into kitchen profiling, a sub-niche of garden profiling, but it’s an illuminating digression, I believe.)

Malcolm’s color combinations are as refined as he is. The analogous pale blue flowers of bugloss are followed by delphinium’s deep blue — a perfectly planned succession of blue blooms. Every plant relates to each other and to nearby architectural elements. He uses the fence as a backdrop for single “specimen” plants.

This is the garden for clarity and conservative clothing.

Behind the fence, among the orderly hedges, we discuss Malcolm’s recent trip to the Cotswolds, books and the theater, in a logical fashion.  My words are careful and considered.  I find myself saying “precisely” and “ostensibly.” Nothing like the “ya right” and “in your dreams” I let loose in Patty’s garden. 

Malcolm wears a bow tie to a profession that suits a man who owns eight well- sharpened edgers. He found his calling in contract law.

Then there are gardeners who confound, like my friend Barb. While single, she was smitten with wildflowers and made and sold her own soap. When she married a man with money, she quit the soap business and hired a crew of 12 to rip up the fields of wildflowers. Lured by catalogues and magazines chock full of glossy photos of the newest plants and the latest designs, she’s what profilers call an “aspirational gardener” or a “serial sower.” She renovates her garden to reflect the latest fad. Recently, she added a pergola, a scented garden, a cutting garden, an herb garden and what she calls “a water feature.” By the way, that’s a fountain.

But I remind myself that it’s gardeners like Barb who make the work of this profiler so challenging.

Garden Profiling - Part 1

I met Patty’s garden before I met Patty. As I wove my way through the flowers, brushed up against random rows of butterfly bushes, ducked under the vine-covered arbor to her front door (There is a front door in here, right?), I suspected that an unconventional, spontaneous person lived here.

Gardens may be many things — floriferous flings, places for show, corners of compulsion — but they’re always a dead giveaway to the gardener’s personality even their profession.

What started as a hunch became a full-blown calling. I’ve now carved out a niche in this uncrowded field of one, a field I call garden profiling. The possibilities are infinite; here are two and a half.

Patty’s garden has the carefree informality of a cottage garden. It engulfs her house in a profusion of old-fashioned flowers: foxglove flop over her front walk, roses cascade over a low picket fence. There’s no grand plan, no plant list or a prescribed amount of space between plants. Instead, everything is crammed together; thick, natural and unruly, like Patty’s hair. Her close plantings mean she spends less time weeding, more time dreaming. In a neighborhood where lawns dominate, she has none. There are no boundaries either; her garden follows the natural contours of the land and dissolves into the woods.

Her color combinations are spontaneous and unusual, too. Masses of orange-red poppies collide with lime-green Lady’s mantle in large curvy beds. When I ask her about compatible colors, she says, “Nothing in nature clashes.” No slave to flower fashion, Patty gardens to please herself. Never a victim of the latest marketing schemes touting “the must-have plant of the season,” she’s more likely to use their marketing materials as mulch.

 An experienced profiler like myself can tell that Patty doesn’t spend a lot of money on her garden. She’s transplanted many of her plants from her aunt’s garden. The plants she likes are no-fuss, or they’re history. A weathered wooden structure is a couple pickets short of a fence and not straight. Here’s a woman who believes symmetry is overrated.

This is the place for invention and abandonment. In Patty’s garden I shed my inhibitions and, when it’s really hot, some clothing. Amid our convivial banter I forget the heat and enjoy the hummingbird on the bee balm and this uplifting drink she’s just invented.

“Say, what’s this drink called?” A hummingbird hovers near my glass, attracted by the cranberry color. “I don’t know,” she says. “How about a Hummingbird Highball?”

This is definitely not the garden of an actuary. Not these helter-skelter plantings. In an actuary’s garden, if the tag on a Shasta daisy recommends planting them 18 inches apart, by God they’re 18 inches apart.  No, this is the garden of a graphic designer, known for her inspired use of color and unconventional old-fashioned typefaces. 

Later, across town, the buzz of the electric trimmer meets me as I unlatch the gate to Malcolm’s garden.

            Next Post: Find out why I sound so different in Malcolm's garden.

Hyperbole & Horticulture

Photo by Joe Hoke

'Tis the season for hyperbole, and I’m not exaggerating. Garden catalogues are piling up faster than snow, and while I’d rather to be standing amidst my fragrant bugbane, it’s winter. So catalogues offer sustenance…as well as temptation. 

Now you’d think purveyors of plants would be immune from making such hard-sell claims. Beware of their hard-core language.

Take a peak at the centerfold of this year’s “must-have” plants, bordered by their complementary “must-pair” plants. Gee, how have I led a rich, full life without these “must haves” and “must pairs”? The vegetable section features a new tomato that’s “sure to beat any record in the neighborhood.” So gardening is now a competitive sport? Will it be added to the Olympics? Well, they added Greco-Roman wrestling; maybe they could combine record-breaking tomatoes to that sport? Nah, too messy.

Oh, and here’s a new large zinnia. “Looks best in clumps, rather than solo,” the copy suggests. I order three dozen. When I said you’d think the industry would be immune from their claims, I said nothing about me being immune.

Darn it. I can’t complete my order because I’ve run out of room. I’ll have to make a copy of the order form and attach a second sheet. I guess I could order directly from the website, but it’s more satisfying to touch the glossy photos and smell the phlox. O.K., it’s probably printer’s ink I smell.

Here’s a catalogue that offers a way to control aphids: order beneficial lady beetles. Last year I forgot that I had ordered 5,000, and they arrived while I was on a trip. They sat outside for a week, and with no aphids to eat, they ate each other.

There are new rabbit and deer repellents to try. They are all billed as humane. I’m always looking for ways to coexist with critters without fighting them for my supper.

Hey, here’s an “ergonomic” hoe that claims to help seniors “cut hoeing time in half.” Come on. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. Nothing is going to speed me up. But it looks like it fits into all those places I no longer can. I’d better get one.

My favorite catalogue is written by folks who not only know plants but also love plants. But the same cannot be said of the writing in other catalogues. Most read more like online dating ads, written to seduce winter-weary gardeners with descriptions like “vibrant, dazzling, stunning, massive.” Do they hire writers that specialize in adjectives?

The oldest catalogue, one my grandmother ordered from and my mother orders from, ensnares you with words from a bygone era, like “fetching.”

Some plants are labeled “indestructible.” That word usually catches my eye, but causes doubt. I want to believe, but experience and memory offer up some past “indestructibles” that bit the dust shortly after they were planted.

There are catalogues in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom and the bedroom. If you take catalogues to bed and the last thing you see before you fall asleep are the deep purple berries of a Beautyberry bush, for instance, it boosts your creativity during your waking hours. That’s what I tell my husband when he complains that the bed is crowded with catalogues.

But catalogues in the bedroom are dangerous.

Read the blessay “Lust” to get the sordid details.

Lust: Vegetable & Non

“My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow…”
(To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell)

Garden catalogues invaded our bed, and my husband was aroused…but not in the way I had hoped.

When he pulled the adhesive mailing label from a catalogue off his pajamas one morning, I knew there were problems in paradise. In order to keep the peace in the bedroom, I had to keep the catalogues out. 

But that didn’t stop me from dreaming big. Each night my dreams brought forth the garden of my desires: expansive enough to hold every plant I coveted, verdant and pest-free.

Every morning I faced reality. I was a big dreamer with a small yard. The botanical booty of my dreams exceeded my space by a lot, actually two lots.

Then a voice commanded: “Woman, go vertical.”

That’s when I added vines to my catalogue order: the clingers, the grabbers and the twiners. 

Willingly I sowed the Passion Flower vine. But in my inexperience, I failed to provide a support for this clinger and found my Passion Flower in an indelicate pose — flat out and face down.

Lovingly, I cultivated the grabbers too. Boston Ivy and Virginia Creeper’s disk-like suction cups grabbed the garage; Hydrangea and Trumpet Vine’s root hairs hugged our house. When I decided to break off my liaison and relocate these grabbers, the remnants of their ardor remained — vine hickeys covered our stucco house.

Shamelessly, I scattered seeds of Hyacinth Bean below our second-story bedroom window, erected a trellis and forgot them. Before the end of last summer, this twiner forced its way through a dime-size hole in the screen. My husband complained that while the catalogues were out of the bedroom, now the vine was in.

 “You know,” I said, “some people believe love and life began in the garden.”

 “It ended there too,” he noted.

But gradually, among the catalogues and the vertical catastrophes, our diurnal and nocturnal life has returned to a convivial coexistence.

Yesterday, though, when two new catalogues arrived, my husband got testy. As long as he keeps it out of the bedroom, testy I can take. 

Listen: To His Coy Mistress

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44688

Children In the Garden

Their claws were inches from my ankles. Claws and eyes, two things my grandmother’s garden had. Her cats napped under the dense canopy of the asparagus that flanked the entrance to her garden. They’d swipe at my ankles whenever I followed her to pick beans or whatever needed attention. But the chance to be with her, in that acre where she dwelled, lush with possibilities, the promise of that, was more powerful than those feared sentries.

When you invite a child into the garden it’s like the first time they go to church – they see things that we don’t. And they aren’t afraid to question what they see. Like the time a friend took his three-year-old son to his first sermon. He chattered nonstop. After shshshshing him several times with no luck, my friend tried a new approach: he pulled his son close and whispered, “Simon, do you know why we come to church on Sunday morning?” Simon surveyed the congregation and answered: “So people can sleep?”

Or the time my friend Linda pulled a ripe radish from the ground and turned it round and round for her young granddaughter to see. Studying its shape, the rosy clef, the white bottom, she had one question: “Grandma, do radishes have butts?”

Giving. Gardens have a way of doing that.

Or when my friend Bob, who gardened in St. Cloud, Minnesota, invited two young neighbor children into his garden.

He recounted this afternoon scene:

“Chad and Amy and I were gathered, on our knees, around a gopher hole, at the grassy edge of my garden. I was telling them, in considerable detail, about the underground dwellings of gophers. In folding back the encircling grasses, I espied a tiny, tiny flower with a tiny, tiny purple bloom. The first of its sort I had ever seen. I enlarged my explanation of the wonders of nature; barely visible flowers all around us.

“Later, we heard the voice of the tots’ mother, summoning them home. The tots dashed off in her direction, Chad ahead of Amy. In mid-dash, Amy stopped, as if arrested, bent down, plucked something at ground level, then wheeled and dashed back to me.

“One little fist loosely closed, her arm extended toward me, she said:
‘Gdalk mprn qsrt bkadg?’
“Chad not there to translate for me, I had to decide for myself what she said. In my judgment, she had said:
‘I hold in my hand a precious gift,’ so I responded by saying, ‘Yes?’
“Unclosing her fist, she added these words:
‘Kl whmpt bgl rmu.’
“That meant, I was sure, ‘It is for you.’ ”

Gratitude. Gardens create that too.

My granddaughters, on every visit, wanted to walk through my garden and pick flowers. But before they were allowed to pick any flower they had to learn its name. I’d say the name, they’d repeat it, cut the flower and add it to their bouquets. Naturally there were bees on the flowers, so naturally we talked about the work bees do. Further down, they noticed worms. Being so close to the ground is a big advantage for kids, so we talked about the important work of worms.

That year, before Thanksgiving break, all the students in my granddaughter’s kindergarten class had to stand up and say what they were thankful for. “My new bike,” one child said. “A trip to Disney World,” another said. My granddaughter rose and said one word: “Worms.”

“What was the that?” the teacher asked.
“I’m thankful for worms,” Emma repeated.

 “Never in my 23 years of teaching,” the teacher told Emma’s mother, “have I heard that answer.”

Appetite

Photo by Robert Regnier

One thing we never had in my family was leftovers. I come from a long line of small people with large appetites. We enter the world ravenous and have the metabolism of hummingbirds. While other kids played outside, we’d be in Grandma’s root cellar sampling jars packed with peach, raspberry and chokecherry jam, and her pickles: dill, bread and butter and watermelon. We’d see who could eat her pickled hot banana peppers without wincing.

 My grandfather had a ravenous appetite fueled by deprivation. As a child he was often hungry. I guess you never get the hang of delayed gratification if you never experience gratification. When he met my grandmother he was in the hospital in Mt. Lake, Minnesota, where she was a nurse. She could tell that he had been malnourished. They married in 1934 during the Depression, and my grandmother, who had studied nutrition in nurses training at the Mayo Clinic, started a garden and began feeding her short, thin husband. And he grew several inches in height. “Unheard of,” she said.

Fear of hunger never left him. For nearly 91 years he gorged himself, plucking cherries and apples from the garden in between the three big meals my grandmother prepared. On one childhood visit, Grandma took a cherry pie out of the oven and instructed me to let it cool before cutting it. As soon as she left, Grandpa demanded a piece. “But, Grandma said we have to wait for it to cool,” I kept saying. He was relentless. As he cut into it the center collapsed; steam rising, he spooned it into a bowl and lapped it up; hot cherry juice running down his chin. When Grandma returned she looked at the pie, looked at him and said nothing. She understood him. She loved him. She fed him for 64 years.

On a trip back to Minnesota to visit these grandparents, my middle brother, Stuart, and I stopped at the Kaiserhoff in New Ulm, Minnesota, famed for its German cooking. He ordered the ribs with sauerkraut. A mound of meat arrived covered in sauce and steaming sauerkraut. I left for a short trip to the ladies’ room, and when I returned his plate was empty. “So you changed your mind about the ribs?” I asked, thinking the waitress must have taken them away. “No, I ate them,” he said. I sat there stunned. Hyenas don’t even eat that fast.

Years ago at a family reunion, I watched my Uncle Peter put away four desserts, then unbuckle his belt and ease his hand under his waistband to relieve the pressure. And he’s as thin as a whippet. I was sitting next to my youngest brother, Christopher, and I made the mistake of resting my fork for a minute. Eyeing my plate, he said, “Gonna finish that?”

Even our measure of time relates to food. Asked how long some home repair project took, my uncle said, “About as long as it takes to eat a pie.” All the men nodded in agreement – a quick home repair project by everyone’s estimate.

As a kid I liked to experiment in the kitchen, and my brothers were willing taste testers. Hold anything up to their mouths, and they opened up like baby robins. Days later they might ask, “Say, what was that?”  They’d eat first and ask questions later. Appetite trumps curiosity. When they would bug me I thought how easy it would be to poison my tormentors. And it’s not just the men in the family.

As newlyweds, the first time my husband saw me sick he was concerned. Not at my illness, but at seeing me devour scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast with peanut butter, a bowl of oatmeal, a cup of coffee and two glasses of orange juice in between the wheezes and coughs of bronchitis. This went on for a few days until he called in reinforcements. His daughter brought chicken soup, a friend brought a whole pan of lasagna, another friend brought banana bread. And so my husband survived the worst of my illness. Nothing dulls the family appetite.

When I worked at a desk job in corporate America, my colleagues’ daily entertainment was to stop by to ask, “So what are you eating now?” The women had no sympathy for my struggle to maintain 110 pounds. When I’d complain during a long meeting that I was weak and needed food, they’d say, “We hate you.” Even at desk jobs, we eat like field hands.

Some families talk about the weather, or art, or Aunt Agnes’ beard; we talk about food. We finish breakfast and start talking about lunch. After lunch, it’s “what are we having for supper?” After supper, we wonder what to make for breakfast. We don’t always remember birthdays or anniversaries, but we remember everything we ever ate and which restaurant has the best steak or the crispiest hash browns. 

Don’t get me wrong. We’re considerate people, when our stomachs are full. But when our blood sugar drops, things get nasty. And when we’re all hungry at the same time, harsh words are spoken. Things usually calm down after a few bites.

My husband has seen the family appetite for many years now, and he offered this admonition: “When the famine comes your family will be the first to go.” Could be he’s right, but I can’t think about that right now. What are we having for lunch?

Forgetting

For years I’ve heard my elders speak about going into a room and forgetting why they went there in the first place.

Yesterday I went to the basement and just stood there. Why am I here? Laundry? No. Extra paper towels? No. I thought I could reconstruct what sent me down to the basement, so I backtracked through my thoughts. I came up with nothing.

But I wasn’t about to go back upstairs with nothing, so I grabbed a pair of pliers from my husband’s workbench. When I got to the kitchen he was there eating lunch:

“What are you doing with the pliers?”
 “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
(I thought for a moment about making up a story about how he had promised to fix the whatchamacallit months ago but forgot, and so I had to do it myself. But why compound memory loss with lying?)
“I went to the basement to get something, forgot what I went to get, so I grabbed your pliers.”

Here’s where I wish I could say we laughed, split an egg salad sandwich, and continued in our domestic bliss. But that’s not what happened.

He looked alarmed. Granted his expression of alarm looks the same as every other expression: pity, surprise, anger. That’s why he has no lines on his face; its never been used. But these are the kinds of digressions that got me into this mess in the first place.

So he says: “We only have one working memory between us – YOURS – and now you can’t remember.”

I told my friend Linda about this. She’s a decade older. Experience matters in these matters. Here’s what she said:

“Oh, that’s normal. I’ve heard experts explain the difference between normal memory loss and dementia: ‘Normal is when you leave the grocery store and can’t remember where you parked your car, but after a moment, you remember. Dementia is when you leave the grocery store and don’t know where you are or how you got there.’ ”

Or did she say that dementia is when you find your car and don’t know it’s a car?

Anyway, one last question: What do you call it when you leave the grocery store and cannot remember where you live, but it doesn’t seem to matter?

After all, I have enough groceries for a week, and I’m pretty sure I know where to find them.

Relief

Here’s a topic that I’ve never seen covered.

Anywhere.

When I am deep in the garden, far from indoor plumbing, I sometimes squat and relieve myself. I know I am not alone. Well, I’m alone when I’m peeing, but come on, you’ve never done this?

This habit began 35 years ago when every hungry critter bellied up to my first vegetable garden in rural Minnesota, despite a fence. When I told my troubles to a nearby farmer he said, “No animal will cross your scent.” He recommended I relieve myself around the perimeter of our garden. But I had a large garden and a small bladder. No problem, Folgers to the rescue — “good to the last drop.”

So I hoarded Folgers’s coffee cans, and I filled them. But it took a long time to fill a few cans, so I enlisted my husband’s help. He needed no coffee can, but I offered him the luxury of his own, since sometimes the local traffic made him a bit shy.

Here’s the thing: It didn’t stop a single critter. But it probably extended the life of our septic system.

And here’s proof that I’m not alone.

Years ago the BBC News reported that a National Trust property in Cambridgeshire was urging people to relieve themselves outdoors to help their gardens grow greener. It turns out the composting process is activated by pee. The head gardener said, “By the end of the year 10 men, from the 70 on the gardening team, will have made 1,000 trips to the pee bale, saving up to 30 percent of our daily water use by not having to flush the loo so many times.” He added, “It’s totally safe, and a bit of fun too.” 

You can’t make this stuff up.

That reminds me of a talented high school friend. She could pee in a Coke bottle. How I admired her aim. This was the stuff our friendship was built on. She had brothers too, but none with aim like hers. She really got all the talent in the family.

She was so unlike my three young stepsons.

I used to examine their leg length while they slept; convinced they’d been born with congenitally shorter left legs, since they pulled to the left whenever they peed.

When my second husband and I first met and traveled the back roads throughout New England, he was surprised that I preferred a cornfield to a public restroom.

“God only knows what you’ll pick up in a public restroom,” I told him. “If you go in a cornfield, what’s the worse you’ll get? Root rot? I’ll take good clean dirt over man-made germs any day,” I said as I strode into a cornfield.

Now when we travel a familiar route we stop at my favorite pee spots. I even rate them. To earn five stars, the spot must meet five demanding criteria: close to a main road, low shrubbery for privacy, no poison ivy, a slight slope — for maximum drainage. Oh, and a view. One longs to see beauty when one relieves oneself, doesn’t one? Well, this one does.

I relish the hunt for five-star places. I’ll keep you posted as I add new spots.

Permission to Purge

"You don't have to live like this."

That's what I told a friend who's been living with things she loathes.

She directs her loathing at plants that were gifts that she feels compelled to keep. Some are unkillable. Believe me, she’s tried. I tell her: “If you don’t like them it’s best to get your good-byes over and move on. Not unlike husbands.”

Why do we have so many things we can’t give up: socks with holes; purses with the fiendish gravitational pull—everything disappears at the bottom, and you spend hours digging for things; warped Tupperware® containers that lost their lids; or the odd husband. (Who hasn’t had an odd one? Okay, two.)

Think about it.

At the rate I’m going, I’ll arrive at the pearly gates with that purse still clutched under my arm, only to have this conversation:

Saint Peter: “I see from the ledger of your life that you spent over 6,000 hours helping those in need.”
Me: (Beaming from ear to ear) ”Yes, I’m ready to receive your halo.”
Saint Peter: “But I also see that you spent over 10,000 hours digging in that damn purse for your car keys.”
(Rough language for Saint Peter, but even he cannot believe how long I hung on to that pitiful purse.)

Last week, a colleague asked if I would come over and give him and his wife some advice about their yard. I love doing for other people what I cannot do in my own yard. But that's a whole different story.

He warned: "It's overgrown…monumentally." (Oh, a word ending in “lly.” Yikes. It’s sort of like the dreaded adverb that writers avoid.)

I know the feeling, incidentally. Things get ugly and overgrown incrementally. There are other words ending in “lly” that come to mind, but let's not go there.

As I pulled into their driveway I saw many lovely trees, but then there was this hydrangea. Actually, there were lots of hydrangeas. They had overtaken the front of the house, entirely.

Me: “You must love hydrangea.”
Him: “I hate them.”
Me: “But you have three large ones.”
Him: “I hate them.”
Me: "Get rid of them."

He looked at me. He looked at the hydrangeas. Then he looked back at me. Then he got his shovel and his wheelbarrow.

“Do you want them?” he asked. All my overgrown hydrangeas flashed before my eyes, and then I blurted out: “No thanks.” Ooh, that was close.

Turns out he had a hydrangea-coveting neighbor who was thrilled to have them.

I managed to pawn off some plants from my overgrown garden. Stuff was coming and going all week in one giant relocation program.

In the end, their yard was stunning.

I got this email from him a few weeks later: "It all came from your giving us permission to make ugly things go away, and reassuring us that all we needed to do was rearrange a little."

Which reminds me of this family that had this cat. This cat was old. They got it when their kids were little. Anyway, long after the kids left home, the couple divorced. There were endless things to divide: businesses, properties, you name it. It all went smoothly.

Until they got to the cat.

They fought over that cat.

Neither wanted it.

They called their three grown kids. None of them wanted the cat.

Turns out some ugly things are harder to get rid of than others. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a twenty-year-old, nasty cat? Harder than three overgrown hydrangeas, that’s for sure.

And while I'm at it, you know that library book that you started weeks ago? The one you say that you “can’t seem to get into?” Return it.

You don't have to read it. Do you think the librarian cares? 

What’s she going to say: “I see you didn’t read this.” Then she’ll run off to the annual American Library Association meeting, and while reporting on last year’s stats on the number of books and DVDs loaned out, she’ll drop this bombshell: “We have a patron who checks books out and never reads them.”

So today, permission to purge granted. Totally.