Bathe in It or Use as a Laxative? In Search of Simplicity

I opened my medicine cabinet and saw the problem.

Eye wash, anti-fungal cream, antacids, acid reflux pills, muscle pain cream, cold sore cream, eczema cream, poison ivy block and scrub, anti-itch cream and three deodorants, including invisible gel deodorant. (Do I even have this one on?)

My bathroom was chock-full of expensive astringents and exfoliators. We even have two kinds of mouthwash — for people with and without braces. My laundry is full of detergents that boost, brighten and lift, and that’s just for the wash, never mind the dryer.

How come with all these products I never seem to have what I need?

My grandmother’s cupboards only had a few products, yet she always had a remedy for our latest catastrophe. Maybe because most of the products in her cupboards did double, triple and even quadruple duty? I went in search of simplicity.

First the laundry.

Every washday my grandmother used to bring out her big yellow bar of Fels Naptha soap. She’d take a knife and shave some of it over grandpa’s oil-stained overalls soaking in the washer. I found it at the supermarket right next to the newer sexier soaps.

And when Grandma met up with poison ivy, Fels Naptha removed the toxic oil from her skin and kept it from spreading. Since the oil could last a year, she washed her garden tools in Fels Naptha soap too.

And Fels Naptha beat “ring around the collar” by about 100 years. Just wet the bar, rub it inside a shirt collar and no more “ring around the collar.” I keep a cheese grater next to my washing machine and shave a bit of Fels Naptha into the grimiest load.

Another of Grandma’s staples on washday was 20 Mule Team® Borax. This naturally occurring mineral, boron, puts newer laundry detergents “all natural” claims to shame. Plus it cleans tile and grout, sinks, pots and pans, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves and stainless steel. It even removes mattress odors. When I say its uses are endless, I’m exaggerating slightly, but not by much.

This single product replaced five products: oven cleaner, grout cleaner, stainless steel polish, deodorizer and that pricey product I used to dry flowers.

Feel free to use it for its original purpose: to boost laundry detergent’s cleansing action.

On to the bathroom.

My grandmother quelled bug bites with witch hazel. This plant-based astringent is so effective as an anti-inflammatory that it shrinks anything swollen, from top to bottom. I’m not going into a lot of detail. Just trust me.

And then there’s Epsom salt.

Soak in it, or use it as a natural laxative? I kid you not. You really can do either. And according to the Epsom Salt Council (yes, there really is an Epsom Salt Council), the natural components of Epsom salt, magnesium and sulfate, claim to “ease stress, improve sleep and concentration, regulate the activity of 325+ enzymes and … ” to name just a few. Wow, the Epsom Salt Council is a thorough bunch. I use Epsom salt as a garden fertilizer. Then I add it to a bath and soak; it’s great for sore muscles.

With fewer products in my cupboards, I still have whatever I need —  whether I get stung by a bee, sprain an ankle or need to remove olive oil from my shirt.

And unlike some newer products, I never have to wonder if these products will work as promised. After 100 years, I know their claims have truly been tested. They all passed my grandmother’s test.

Just one question: What am I going to do with all that extra room in my cupboards?

Answer: Nothing.

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

License to Lollygag

What ever happened to inventing your own fun?

Photo by Joe Hoke

My sister and I spent hours filling condoms with water, then tying them off and lobbing them at our three brothers. We didn't understand why our parents got so upset at the sight of all those broken condoms. Much later, when we found out what condoms were used for, we cried. We’d increased our odds of having another brother. That was the last thing we needed.

Or what about being happy doing nothing? Like lying on your back and looking at the clouds?

Or that thrill of finding a really good rock? No, not a skipping rock, though that is sublime, but a beautiful rock. One you turn over and study endlessly. One that feels good in your hand, fits your pocket and might one day be traded for your brother's old baseball glove.

My grandmother and I used to sit on her cellar stairs and watch the latest batch of kittens play. The boldest one would ascend the stairs, and then his siblings would snag his leg and drag him back down. We didn’t exchange a word; we just watched a spinning ball of ears, tails, feet and other furry parts roll by.

 Yesterday I watched our cat Van Gogh enjoy his afternoon bath. First he licked his left paw and began a methodical swipe over his left ear. Then he licked his right paw and swiped his right ear. He splayed his toes apart and pulled out some dirt. Next he started on his large belly. Sitting on his hindquarters, back legs stretched straight out, he worked that soft, fluffy underbelly hair up into a clean, white mass. Then he pulled his tail between his legs, and starting at the base, he worked all the way up to the tip. He capped the whole affair off by curling his freshly cleaned tail around himself and began a nap.

Van Gogh has better hygiene habits than most people I know. And I know he has better hygiene habits than my husband. He forgets his left ear.

 Another pleasure this time of year: watching Cedar Waxwings devour fermented fruit. I heard their whistling “tsseeeee,” “tseeeee” as a flock landed on our crabapple tree. They picked it clean. I swear they got giddier as the orgy went on. Just take a look at their incandescent glow, as if lit from within.

 Why not linger at such a sight? Rack up unaccounted hours?

 Yesterday in the supermarket I heard a young boy complain to his mother: "I'm bored."

 Bored?

I was never bored as a child. We were left alone to invent our own fun. No adults organized a play date or a party. We met in backyards and back alleys, and we created something — something we could all do together. Even if that something was turning condoms into water balloons. Hey, you work with what you have.

Have you ever watched ants? Precision and productivity are built into every move. But productivity in humans is often unproductive — to come up with the original, to see the smorgasbord of beauty all around us, for that, you need time.

So what about being happy doing nothing?

It comes in real handy.

Boy, I'm feeling old, but I'm also feeling lucky. I know how to invent; I know how to play; and I know how to be blissfully happy doing nothing.

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.

Ode to a Broom

There’s a sound disappearing from modern life. It’s the sound of rooms being swept at the end of the day. First the rugs are removed and shaken with a fortitude that produces a cracking snap. Snap. Snap. This reveals the day’s remnants – a watermelon seed, a tiny piece of hardened tar and something unrecognizable. The rugs are retired to the clothesline or a porch rail while the rooms, particularly the high-traffic kitchen, are swept. 

Then the porch, the steps and the sidewalk are swept. That sound is missing too. It’s been replaced by the gas-powered blower; a sound that mars the tranquility of an early morning snowfall. My neighbor owns a gas-powered blower. She’s fastidious and uses it on her driveway and sidewalks all year round – on leaves, snow, dust, you name it. Luckily for me, she’s also a considerate neighbor and doesn’t fire up her blower before 8 a.m. even though I know she’s ready to blow at 6 a.m.

My grandmother had a broom hanging right outside the kitchen at the top of the basement steps, ready for daily use. My grandfather had a broom inside the door of his gas station. He ran that gas station for over 60 years and everything in it, including his broom, were original. His broom took on the smell of its locale and its duties– gasoline, Lucky Strikes and 10W-40 oil. As a kid I’d help him sweep up at the end of a long, hot Minnesota summer day. The broom bristles deposited cigarette butts to a designated corner. I was rewarded with a cold black cherry pop and his confidential observations and opinions on the day’s customers. 

Brooms are useful for other things, too.

I often evict a confused cat from my garden with one swipe, just before it turns my lilies into its litter box. I unsnag small branches hung up in the gutters. My broom’s stiff bristles are firm but forgiving. They are strong enough to lean on as my neighbor complains about our current president. After a heavy snowfall, my broom is strong enough to move snow, but gentle enough not to leave a scratch on the car. I don’t need any horsepower except my own.

When my sister and I were young, she was assigned the task of sneaking a dozen eggs from the refrigerator, and I would grab the broom. We’d head out back to a secluded, sunny spot where we had piled dirt. There, we’d crack eggs until we ran out of either eggs or daylight. I’d use the broom handle to stir the two together. Once the egg and dirt had been patted into mud pies, I’d twirl the broom around and sweep up, and voilà – our bakery was open for business.

A broom is elegant simplicity, nothing superfluous. It combines business and beauty. And who can object to the sound of a broom? The few brooms I do see these days are often in bad shape. I can’t bear the sight of a mistreated broom. Splayed out bristles, left out in the rain to wick up moisture. Unforgiveable.

There is something hopeful about a broom as the person on the other end begins a rhythmic act of transformation.

My day ends with a sweep of the front stoop, then I move down the steps to the sidewalk, where I rest my chin on the broom handle and snatch the day’s last light. 

So let me correct an oversight.

There’s Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” so why not “Ode on a Broom”? Anything as useful and beautifully designed as a broom should be eulogized.

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.

Grieving Garden. This, too, is a garden

It begins with death and ends with life – this garden.

On the edge of the Great Plains of Nebraska, a weather-beaten wooden bench sits in dappled light under a large crabapple tree. Fourteen years ago, that tree made a sixty-mile trip tethered in my mother’s pick-up after her oldest son died.  Ragged from the ride and the unrelenting Chinook winds, my mother hoped it would draw robins in winter. And it does. Flocks of them come to devour the frozen fruit.  Watching robins gives my mother pleasure.

This is not a garden she planned – her grieving garden. Suddenly, unexpectedly the earth calls. You must sink your hands in it; you need to feel, to smell, to taste it, as her son did as a child. You need to till, to sow, and to sit in the shade, to bear witness to the natural order, so out of order after you bury your child.

Here she does not dictate her desires, but allows her garden to take shape as she grieves. She enters the garden with half-formed ideas – grief demands her full attention. Slowly, imperceptibly, the garden takes shape out of the truth of her son’s life.

 His favorite colors drew her to plant lavender and yellow tulips in the sunniest corner. Clusters of grape hyacinth skirt the rocks she brought back from a trip to Kansas. It began as a drive just to look at the countryside, like her son did in his old pick-up. But she spotted the rocks on the side of the road and spent the day unearthing and shot-putting them into her truck bed. Grief gave way to the solitary task of her will over their weight. The afternoon’s work brought the handsome buff-flecked rocks to her garden and her fitful nights to an end.  She slept without dreams of him: subconscious subdued by sun and wind and hard physical work.

Unearthed remnants from abandoned farmsteads – a passion they shared – are scattered among the rock and flowers. A rusted old cook stove’s missing leg is replaced with an old car’s spoked wheel now ensnared by a honeysuckle vine. A decaying Tree of Glory, severed at ten feet, is retrofitted as an aerial outpost for birds. Topped with a reclining old oilcan and a bent Arizona license plate for a roof, it houses chatty finches. A clay saucer invites thirsty layovers and an occasional odd visitor – a snake was sunning itself up there last week, she said.

And it’s here she moves earth.  Though she cannot move heaven or have her heart’s desire. And it’s here she keeps the faith.

“Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.”
(Emily Dickinson)

Last week she began a second grieving garden, for her youngest son, just forty, the baby of the family. The Linden tree she chose is straight and tall and able to withstand Midwest storms – “flexible just like Christopher,” she told me. She planted it within days of his funeral in late March.

And it’s here she dwells in light, in air, in lovely life: Watching a robin and worm in an early morning tug of war, or swallows swoop mosquitoes in the vanishing light. And it’s here she wrests memories of those son’s childhood games, watching their thin boyhood faces fill in manhood, the rhythm of their footsteps on a return home, the smell of their oily skin mixed with sweat as they worked beside her, the quick laugh of one and the certainty of her life without both. And it’s here, between cloudless blue sky and verdant teeming earth, she talks to them.

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.

Tweeter: Communication & Collaboration

Humans think we’re so smart; we’ve got nothing over birds. They’ve got a social network that we can’t match.

                                                                 Photograph by Robert E. Regnier

I just filled my birdfeeders after a year of empty feeders dangling in the wind. Now there’s a backyard smorgasbord of black niger, millet, sunflower seeds, peanuts and suet cakes. And how long do you think it took for word to get out? A nanosecond. First came the nuthatches. They sent word to the chickadees. The chickadees told the finches. Oops, who told the flicker? Birds scattered everywhere as the flicker clung to the suet cake and pigged out. Birds are superior to people when it comes to communication.

Last week, shortly after getting out bed, I felt queezy, so I got back into bed. It took my husband until two o’clock in the afternoon to figure out where I was (he works from home.) I realized I could starve. When he finally did find me, he was confounded:

He: Why are you in bed?
Me: Sick.
He: Where?
Me: Here (pointing to my head).
He: I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. I’d better just leave you alone.
Me: No. I need water. I need food.
He: Well, what’s in the refrigerator?
Me: Geez, my x-ray vision is broken (Even when I’m sick I can muster the energy for sarcasm.) Go look.He: Stay right here.Me: Gee, I’ll try. (Still sarcastic despite low fluid levels.)He: I didn’t see anything in the refrigerator.Me: Did you see eggs?
He: I may have.
Me: Scramble them.
Me: Did you see bread?
He:  I don’t remember.
Me: Go toast it.
Me: Make some tea, too.
(An hour later)
Me:  Help.
And what would birds make of our 2008 pre-election dinner dialogue?
Me: We need to replace the fuel pump in your car.
He: Obama is ahead in the latest Gallup poll.
Me:  It will cost about $300, and the garage can do the work this Friday.
He:  But Obama has to do well in the last debate.
Me:  I’ve scheduled it; so don’t forget to drop your car off at the garage Thursday night.
He: You know 80 percent of the deficit came from Bush.
Me: Take your credit card, so you can pay for it.
He: He ought to tell them.
Me: Tell who?
He: The American people; spell it out: The two wars, the tax breaks.
Me: Did I overcook your salmon?
He: People ought to know.
Me: So, go tell everyone that I didn’t overcook your salmon.
Me: Dear, my left ovary just fell out. (Maybe this will get his attention.)
He:  I hope he tells them in the third debate.Me:  So long ovary.

Birds beat humans in collaboration, too. I remember a decade ago, I stood on the banks of the Mustinka River in Minnesota with my friend Bob. We were watching pelicans fish.

Pelicans have been doing this since atoms and DNA conspired to form a pelican. We were standing where it all began, not far from Browns Valley – where the earliest man was found in the Traverse Gap, the ancient glacial bed known as Lake Agassiz. Anyway, back to the river where we were standing.

My friend Bob has watched and photographed pelicans fishing since he moved to this remote part of Minnesota. We went there every day during my visit in hopes of seeing Pelicans fishing together. And finally we did.

They form a semicircle — a pelican net. Then one pelican drives the fish into the pelican net.

And none of these birds fly around bragging about how superior they are to humans or eat us. Though I wouldn’t blame them if they did.

Renovating Dusk ’Til Dawn

I’m looking for relief – from the heat. I’m dripping, and I can’t sleep, so I figure I may as well garden. There’s just one problem: It’s dark. But with each hot flash, you get more creative. I found a miner’s helmet in a catalogue of hard-to-find tools; it’s perfect for nighttime gardening. 

Before you write me off as hormonally imbalanced, hear me out. There are a number of gardening tasks that are perfectly suited for the dark.  Slug patrol, for starters.  Come on, who among us has not gone slug hunting with a flashlight and a six-pack of beer. For bait, of course.  I even talked my husband into joining me one night.  I used the old excuse of “sharing the experience.”  He falls for that line every time.  He was actually quite good at it, but resented the sacrifice – the beer, not the sleep. 

Transplanting, too, is well suited for nighttime gardening. Here’s how it works: during the day, I use Day-Glo paint – two colors – to spray the ends of stakes.  I place the first (orange) stake next to a plant in need of relocating.  The second (green) stake goes next to the pre-dug hole where the plant will end up.  That way, at night, I simply aim my wheelbarrow toward the glowing orange stake and dig up the plant.  I then head to the green stake, where I pop my transplant into its new home.  There’s a massive plant relocation program going on in my yard tonight.  Consider this an invitation.

Mulching can also be done in the dark, especially if you just need to deposit wheelbarrow loads in one location.  I save the finer tasks, like spreading the mulch, for daylight. I’m not crazy.

Deadheading in the dark is an ideal task too. The shaft of light provided by the miner’s helmet is just enough to shine a light on a single plant, so you can really focus on removing those spent blossoms. No distractions at 3 a.m., either.

There’s a lot happening in the garden at night. My moonflower vine unfolds when coaxed with even the smallest amount of moon- or helmet-light, and bats are busy nighttime pollinators.

All gardening is an act of faith; nighttime gardening is an act of devotion, though my neighbors might call it dementia.

Chipmunks: Commutes, Cats & Walking the Plank

It’s a banner year for chipmunks.

A mild winter and abundant acorns and other nuts last fall meant stockpiles for underground orgies. No need to leave their harems due to hunger and get picked off by a hungry hawk.

My strawberries ripened to perfection, and then I saw the tunnels. As I got closer I noticed the backside of each berry was eaten. And with all those antioxidants they’re getting from my strawberries, these chipmunks will live forever.

Turns out I am not alone.  Everyone I talk to this summer has a chipmunk remedy or two. Here are a few:

One neighbor fills a bucket with water to within two inches of the top. She floats sunflower seeds on the top to cover the water. Then she props a small board from the ground to the top of the bucket with a little of the board hanging over the lip of the bucket. Think chipmunk diving board. Finally, she sprinkles a few sunflower seeds at the base of the board. Eager for the seeds, the chipmunks “walk the plank” and drown. Not for the faint of heart though; you have to empty the bucket.

And there are some very long commutes in our neighborhood...by chipmunks.

One-way, hopefully.

Another neighbor commutes an hour to the Connecticut hills. His commute began after he excavated his wet basement to get the water out, only to find that newly mined chipmunk tunnels brought water back in.  

The state would classify him as an SOV (Single Occupant Vehicle), but he shares his truck with a dozen chipmunks at least once a week. The number of people commuting may be down, but if the state counted chipmunks, the numbers would be up. Way up. Turns out there’s a lot more carpooling going on. Who knew?

Several miles north, a lawyer friend lives in chipmunk nirvana. Oak and hickory trees surround his house. Every morning he loads his car with legal briefs and chipmunks. He drops them five miles from his home before he heads to his law office. It’s a crowded commute. One week he kept a tally — 35. 

If he had a group of litigious chipmunks he could have some serious trouble. Or he could make some big bucks. . . especially if he charged by the head instead of his hourly rate.

Turns out the only time chipmunks aren’t trouble is when they’re commuting. But they’re a lot better than most people. They’re quiet occupants; they don’t take up much room; they don’t smoke (well not unless they escape into the engine compartment); and they don’t argue about which radio station the driver should to listen to.  Plus, no matter where you drop them off, they never complain. I don’t know about you, but I can’t say that about most of my former dates.

We’ve got the ultimate deterrent— a cat. I didn’t go looking for a cat, but when one wandered in to our yard one winter — drawn by the smell of hibernating chipmunks — I remembered my ravaged Hosta bed — more tunnels than Stalag 13.

This cat turned out to be one focused hunter. He’s a chipmunk-a-day cat. I’ll put up with the trouble of a cat, the main trouble: I see a garden; he sees a giant litter box, if he’ll keep up with the chipmunks.

We celebrated the shrinking chipmunk population, until my husband noticed the cat was importing chipmunks from the neighbor’s yard. 

And the longer he played with them, the more likely they were to get away. Yesterday, he was playing his favorite game — toss the chipmunk — then he took a break.

The stunned chipmunk got up and limped towards a hole in our stonewall. Our confident cat just watched. When the chipmunk was about 10 feet from the stonewall, the cat rose and nonchalantly headed after him. But the chipmunk dashed and dove into the wall. The cat lunged, but too late.

Turns out the chipmunk faked the limp. I guess possums aren’t the only ones that play possum. Chipmunk: 1 – Cat: 0.

With the imports, is there a net gain? A win or a loss? We’re still not sure.

That night a vehicle stopped across the street and opened it’s tailgate. I heard the clanging of metal, so I walked over to investigate. A man was stooped over a Havahart® trap.

“Hey, what was that that just scurried into my yard?” I asked.
“Chipmunks,” he said.
“Gee, we have plenty of those already,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said and drove off.

God only knows where those chipmunks came from. The good news is that at least the license plate wasn’t from out of state. The bad news is one of them looked familiar. He had a limp.

Fetching Undersides: The Marilyn Monroe of Plants

My husband still admires my backside – which seems to be holding up better than my front side.  Like people, some plants look lovelier from their backside – when breezes lift their leaves and expose their unusual undersides. Like Marilyn Monroe’s dress in The Seven Year Itch.

I’m thinking of Ligularia Desdemona – so alluring its beauty incites jealousy. My husband, who knows nothing about gardening but helps with the heavy lifting, was helping me plant this in a shade bed, and I pointed out the dark burgundy underside on the leaves. “Too bad you can’t plant this upside down,” he said. 

In spring, the new leaves emerge beet-red, fade to greenish-bronze on top, and remain purple on the undersides. Even the stems are purple.  As if that isn’t enough, in late summer, electric yellow, daisy-like flowers appear on long burgundy stems. Still, for all that, the underside is where all the action is. 

That’s also the reason I wanted Chocolate Eupatorium. The top and side views are lovely enough and reveal their deep, saturated dark chocolate – purple leaves and stems, but the real drama is on the underside of the leaf, which is so loaded with color that it illuminates the tops of the leaves. Being top heavy they need help staying upright. I can’t help think of my Great-aunt Ida whenever I’m staking then. I only saw her at Christmas, but she had a holiday headlock that held me tightly to her large bosom – so pendulous that they resided at her belt. Air was hard to come by there, and I wondered if my release would correspond with the amount of oxygen that remained in my lungs. Luckily, I had four other siblings, and she’d release me and move on to them. All of us emerged gasping and slightly blue.

In fall my Eupatoriums are pumping out huge flower heads made up of hundreds of miniature white flowers all abuzz with bees and butterflies.  

While admiring my assets the other day my husband made this pronouncement: “You have a bionic butt. It shows no signs of aging.” It’s probably from squeezing my cheeks through years of client deadlines, not to mention his snoring. Some women hold tension in their necks, some in their backs – I hold it all in the backside. But, if it keeps up, that just may remain the loveliest in the end. Just maybe.

Mulch Madness

Maybe because it’s arriving by bag and by truckload, maybe because it’s the main activity in my neighborhood, maybe because it’s everywhere, I’m convinced we’re buying more of it. I’m also convinced it’s ending up where it doesn’t belong. A case of “overuse abuse” is my guess. Mulch that is. Hey, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

What I need is market research.

My neighbor to the east is applying mulch right up against her foundation. “Do you really want to trap moisture there?” I ask. She ignores me. “Remember your problem with termites last year?” Now I’ve got her attention. “You better leave at least six inches between your foundation and the mulch or you won’t be able to see signs of termite activity. You know, those mud tubes.” She pulls the mulch away from the foundation, muttering something about pests.  Insect, I’m sure.

Around the corner, a retired English professor has just finished mulching under his maple trees. I guess there’s no harm in pointing out the dangers of mulch right up against a tree trunk. He raises both hands in a sign of surrender and offers, “Mulch mea culpa.” (You’d expect no less from a literary mulcher.) I’m starting to see a pattern.

Finally, my neighbor to the west is holding a handful of finely shredded mulch over her perennial beds and sprinkling them, like a baptism. “Is that mulching or total immersion?” I ask. “Oh, so you’re the self-appointed mulch police,” she says as she mulches my left foot. I shake the mulch out of my sandal, unperturbed; research, after all, requires composure and objectivity. I head home as she finishes baptizing a plant that prefers life in the open air: iris.

Research complete, I’m off to visit our three-year-old granddaughter Anna. She too prefers life in the open air. And she’s against anything that gets in the way of it, especially underwear.  Her parents have explained, unconvincingly, you can’t go outside without underwear. Given the chance, Anna will wiggle her way into a dress and head to the backyard slide before either parent knows she’s not fully clothed.

So she comes flying off her slide, dress billowing with air as she hits the mulch her dad has piled to cushion her landing, and she gets mulch in, well, that cute little fanny. Speed combined with the force of her landing drives it in fairly far. She attempts to dig it out as she runs to the backdoor to seek sympathy from her mother, who offers the most convincing argument so far: “Maybe that wouldn’t happen if you wore underwear.”

So there you have it. My research shows there’s a lot of mulch out there. Let’s try and keep it out of places it doesn’t belong.

Garden Pickup Lines

Maybe it’s my springtime state: revved up from all those winter months spent ogling centerfolds in garden catalogues…all those dormant desires. I’m ready to fulfill my fantasies, and I want every waking moment to be spent in my garden. Vertical. My husband has other ideas.

 I’m betting the first garden came with a well-timed, well-rhymed pickup line designed to lure the gardener to leave her hoe, the weeds, the whatever, for whoopee. And while I haven’t read some of these celebrated poets in over 30 years, in rereading them I now see that literary history is chock-full of garden pickup lines. Why else would these carefully crafted pickup lines use such suggestive images, metaphors, and similes so apt for gardeners?

All gardeners toil against time, decay, and death, so it’s no surprise that most of the greatest garden pickup lines mine those themes. That’s why they’re so effective. They exploit the symbols gardeners hold dear. And what better symbol to exploit than worms?  Never has an invertebrate been used so often in the service of man’s desire than the worm.  And nobody could deliver a compliment to his beloved, while lamenting her lack of interest, like William Shakespeare, in rhyming couplets no less:

“Be not self-will’d for thou are much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.”

I know I’m on my way to worm food, but that sentiment sounds more convincing in rhyming couplets. As if that wasn’t enough, Shakespeare goes on to seal the deal with this irresistible offer—you’ll be immortalized in my verse: “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long live this, and this gives life to thee.” Of course, the offer is good only if you leave the garden—now. There’s always a catch.

These poets weren’t without guile. There was singing; there was flattery; it’s all really foreplay. Just think of the willpower a seventeenth-century gardener needed when faced with Robert Herrick’s alliterative-packed lines.  This singing foreplay is designed to soften her up; sure to make a gardener gaga, or at least weak in the knees. He wasn’t called a Cavalier poet for nothing. 

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.”

“Hang on to your knickers,” as my grandmother used to say. It’s so considerate of Herrick to break into song before his proposition. He gives the gardener a chance to put her scythe down just before the Grim Reaper carries her off.

But it always comes back to the worm. Here’s Andrew Marvel’s blunt prediction of their collective fate if his beloved holds out much longer.

“ . . . then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust; . . .”

Translation:  Get it on with me before it’s too late. You sort of feel “time’s winged chariot drawing near …” This may fall under the category of sympathy sex, which I see has been around a long time. Since they’re both dying, it’s sympathy sex all the way around.

Then there’s flattery. And nobody tops flattery like Bobby Burns’ celebrated simile:

“O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;  . . .”

This is quite a compliment, since we lasses were always competing with the drink. In other words: I’ve ‘ad me pint; I’ve ‘ad me haggis; and now I’ll ‘ave you. That’s spring in Scotland. 

Well, there you have it. These bards of the bloomers were all besotted. And they disarmed gardeners as they thumbed their rhyming couplets at time and death, and decay.  But it’s not as if we need a reminder that things around us are dying. We’re nothing if not vigilant in our efforts to rescue the living from the dead. That’s why I’m working in the garden today.

You’d think any husband who knows his literary history would be intimidated by the creativity of these bards. Then again, he might just deliver this direct, rather lame line: “You’ve been vertical all day, wanna get horizontal?” While I’d prefer a little singing, followed by a worm-infused rhyming couplets or two, this will do. In the end, I have to agree with Mr. Marvell: “Had we but world enough and time, this coyness …were no crime.”

The Lilacs Are Here

Their scent loiters in the kitchen, the bedroom—a scent registered from birth—of life, of possibility, of love.       

One whiff ignites a memory of a drive across the Minnesota prairie with my grandparents. Lilacs were everywhere: at abandoned farms, next to a leaning barn, by a fence, ringing an outhouse, flanking the foundation of a deserted farmhouse. We took cover in that farmhouse to watch a thunderstorm swab the prairie. “This must have been the kitchen,” my grandmother said. “The mistress could wash her dishes here by the window and smell the lilacs,” she surmised. 

After the storm, we emerged to a prairie perfumed with distilled lilac.  And there, growing in the center of a rusted old threshing machine stood a lilac bush bent with rain. Its partially opened petals pressed against the earth. The delicate blossoms belied their endurance through brutal Minnesota winters.

Farmers planted long rows of lilacs as windbreaks. My grandfather remembered a fire that jumped from house to barn, and then burned two mile-long windbreaks of lilacs. Their smoldering embers gave off an incense of lilac that lasted for weeks.

We stopped at a cemetery, and atop a grave, a lone sprig of lilac. My grandfather, quick with numbers, noted its occupant was dead 17 years— but her husband, his name inscribed next to hers, was still among the living. “Ya, he must have just been here,” he said, remains of his German accent still evident 85 years later.

Yesterday, I listened to a friend’s regime of pills: morning antidepressant, evening sleeping pill. The possible side effects of the antidepressant: “may cause thoughts of suicide.” The side effects of the sleeping pill: “may cause morning grogginess.” I bring her a bouquet of lilacs, hoping their perfume will alter her state.

My prescription: May be taken before meals, after meals, during meals, at bedtime, and upon rising. Take three times a day, 30 times a day, 100 times a day, or as often as you like. Possible side effects: None. But you may want to sing, want to loaf, want to banish futility, want to surrender to their perfume . . .

So this is just to say: Work is suspended today. No cell phones. No emails.

The lilacs are here.