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January/February 2010
Reflections in the Bleak Mid-Something
This period of the gardening year used to be called “the bleak midwinter.” That song would long ago have been changed to “In the bleak down time between Super Bowl Sunday and NCAA March Madness,” except that it doesn't scan particularly well. But I think you know what I'm talking about. Unless you hate sports. In which case, I'm going to unfriend you on Facebook the next time I log on. But I digress.
This is the time of year that we stand at the window contemplating the garden, understanding that what was chaos just a few months ago in October will again be chaos when we get to April. Armed with that knowledge, we long to catch the flu, which would give us an excuse to toss back yet another hot toddy. But I digress. . . .
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March/April 2010
Hope Springs Eternal
"Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another season of exciting action! I'm Bud Blast–“
“–And I'm Hort Holler–“
“And it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, to coin a phrase.”
“I sure am!”
“Uh, yeah. Anyway, we've been through what can only be described at a long winter–“
“Hoo-boy, Bud! Long winter!”
“–especially in light of the way the last season ended.”
“Everything dropped dead, Bud. Door nail dead! Not a good way to end the season, Bud.” . . .
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May/June 2010
Dismayed in the Shade
"President Jimmy Carter once said that life is not fair. I'm not positive, but I don't think he coined that phrase. I'm not positive about this either, but I think he was referring to gardeners. I'll check LexisNexis when I have a spare decade.
The point is that not all gardeners are blessed with perfect growing conditions. (I haven't gone out on a limb here, have I?) The types of soil, water and asphalt paving can all be challenges to the success of our gardens, our personal esteem and hence, our very existence. At least, that's what I tell my therapist.
But nothing is more of a stick in the wheel spokes of horticulture than that Ol' Debil Shade. Yep, shade is the deal breaker. It's the one that separates the men from the yetis . . .
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July/August 2010
Scent and Non-Scents
"Stand back! I'm about to have a Proustian moment.
Wait...wait. Whew! It went away. For a second I thought I was going to become sick and depressed and this column would suddenly expand to about four hundred thousand pages that none of you would ever read except if you were in a hospital recuperating from two broken legs and I would start writing sentences that ran on and on and people would call me a genius but it wouldn't matter because fewer than one person in a thousand would actually read this column but that wouldn't matter either because the mere act of writing a four hundred thousand page gardening column would cause me to go insane and...and...
What's that smell? . . .
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September/October 2010
Harvest Schmarvest
Some gardeners are able to make graceful transitions from season to season. In my case, I find that the word “lurch” is more appropriate. Actually, applying that word to almost anything I do probably paints a more accurate picture of my life:
- Lurching into autumn.
- Lurching into a radio interview.
- Lurching into breakfast. Often literally.
So here we are, in the harvest season. Time to celebrate the fruits of our labors. I'm pretty sure that somebody coined that phrase just to taunt me, not that I'm paranoid. Hold on, let me lock the door and then explain. . . .
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November/December 2010
Follow the Bouncing Gall
There are two kinds of bets going on among my readers. The first is whether I will follow the tried, true and now fairly stale formula of setting horticultural lyrics to holiday songs for yet another year. The other bet is that I will eventually run out of holiday songs to parody.
Those of you who had your money on my trying something different this year can pony up right now. And those who thought I would run out of songs have never Googled the X-Mas Song Canon. It's about the size of a medium-sized Midwestern town phone book. This could go on forever. Sing 'em and weep. . . .
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