humor

Confessions Of A Seed Addict

/ Kevin / 22 Comments

I am a seedaholic – and this time of year is especially rough for me and others like me.  The seed catalogs have arrived, with all of their colorful glossy photos designed to tempt the gardener with promises of summer bouquets and homegrown vegetables – all of the scents and textures of life itself.

Each time I visit the mailbox and find a new arrival, I wonder what the neighbors think.  A wave of thrills and excitement passes through me.  I clutch the catalog to my chest as if it was the latest issue of Tiger Beat and I’m a giddy 11-year-old school girl.  And, I swear, I feel like skipping.

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It Might As Well Be Spring

/ Kevin / 28 Comments

What’s up with Mother Nature?  Has she forgotten to look at the calendar?  It’s January, and she should be full of bitterness and coldness and frigid wickedness.  Instead, it seems Mother Nature is having a bit of hot flash, teasing us with a taste of a spring fling.

That’s why I’m more inclined to envision Mother Nature as Scarlett O’Hara, flitting and flirting her way through the folks at a Twelve Oaks barbecue, while I am one of the admiring suitors gathered around her.  My heart beats with every flutter of her eyelashes.  My pulse races with each giggle of her southern feminine charm.  The temptation is overwhelming.  I so badly want to reach out and grab my rake to clean out the flower beds, to let my fingers sift through the soil, to plant seeds and to nurture them to full growth — and I want to do all of this without the protection of work gloves.  I am hungry to be in the garden.

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A Letter to Santa Claus

/ Kevin / 32 Comments

Dear Santa,

How are things where you are?  I know it’s been a while since I last wrote to you, but I have run out of options and I am turning to you and your elves to make this little gardener’s Christmas wish list become a reality.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to keep up with your reading, but a few posts ago, I wrote about the lack of G on HGTV.  Far be it from me to tell  you how to do your job, but you may want to consider a stocking full of coal for the network’s naughty executives.  They have not been kind to the gardening population — and, in fact, they have not responded to my letter requesting more G shows.

But if you would like to avoid coal, might I suggest sprinkling them with some inspiring Christmas magic so they may wake on Christmas morning like a renewed Ebenezer Scrooge?   To help you, here are a few ideas for gardening shows that I, for one, would love to watch on a snowy winter morning.

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Bloomin’ Update 14: The Holly & The Ivy

/ Kevin / 14 Comments

Like most people at this time of year, I have Christmas carols on the brain.  They’re everywhere: malls, supermarkets, non-stop radio stations — it’s hard not to hum a few bars.  That’s what I’m doing a lot of, especially with “The Holly and the Ivy.”   It’s a moving carol, especially when sung by a choir or by folks dressed up like eskimos. 

In my head, though, the song sounds something like this: “The holly and the ivy. Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.”  I don’t really know the words — and this, my fellow holiday revelers, is the reason for this post.  My intention was to locate the lyrics and print them with pictures of, well, holly and ivy.  A simple, no-nonsense post —  until I began the research and uncovered a complicated history of the carol.

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To All The Christmas Trees I’ve Loved Before

/ Kevin / 20 Comments

Part of the blogging experience is visiting other blogs –  for advice, for ideas, and in the case of this post, for inspiration.  I recently visited Visionary Gleam, where Jim Lewis posted “O Tanenbox, O Tanenbox,” a humorous and poignant look at his family’s Christmas tree tradition and the story of the ornaments. 

I am a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to this most wonderful time of year, a fact that seems to worsen as I age.  Jim’s well-written post, however, has left me thinking.  A lot. 

No matter how cynical I have become, the Christmas tree has always remained my favorite part of the holiday.  Now, as I drive around town and peek into the windows of my neighbors and see their decorated trees, I wonder about their stories – and I reflect on the ghosts of my own Christmas trees past – long past and recent past.

There’s a handwritten sentence in the baby book my mother started for me when I was first born.  There, in her cursive writing, is a brief sentence about the moment when the love affair began:  “2 1/2 years old .  Really knows what it’s all about . . . He says the tree has meatballs and a star.” 

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Planting (And Playing) In The iGarden

/ Kevin / 18 Comments

Muffola has the right idea for a cat-nap weekend.

This was an amazingly lazy weekend — the kind of weekend when, as a kid, I would lounge around all day and watch old science fiction films like Godzilla, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Children of the Damned.  Today, though, with hundreds of channels from which to choose, there’s nothing to watch on television.  But there is a new iPad staring at me.

There is a post to write, though.  My first thought was to revisit the scene of “Bedazzled & Be-Blogged,” so I could show what a week’s worth of autumn did to those jewel-toned leaves — but a series of bare branches could hardly be included in a feature called “Bloomin’ Update.”  

Just when I thought I didn’t have a postable idea, I think I heard the iPad whisper my name. 

So to fill the indoor day, I went on a free app spree to look for games that might appeal to the gardener in me — and maybe even the gardener in you. 

 

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Coming Out Of The Gardening Closet

/ Kevin / 28 Comments

It’s time for me to open up and reveal something about myself.  I must confess, now that I’m about to write out the words, I’m feeling a little self-concious.  But there is no turning back now.  Accept me or reject me, the choice is yours.

I never really knew this was an issue for me.  I embraced my circumstances as something natural.  It wasn’t until I read about it in a book that I wondered, “Am I really that different?  Are there others out there who are like me?”  So, I’ll take a deep breath and come out of the proverbial closet.  I experience nature both ways.  I am bi-zonal.

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Zen And The Art Of Raking

/ Kevin / 22 Comments

There’s a scene in the film Roxanne, in which Steve Martin, playing a fire chief who is nasally challenged, steps outside, sniffs the air, and announces that there is a fire.  That’s how it is with me when I decide on a good day to rake the leaves of autumn.  Today was one such day.

When I walked outside, the air was crisp and still, the faintest hint of ice on the edges of the fallen leaves — a fine day to take my new rake out for a spin.  After years of holding onto my ancient aluminum rake, the one with the head that always fell off, I purchased a new model from Home Depot. 

You can keep those extra large plastic tined rakes.  They seem to only rake the surface of the grass, never getting between the blades and down to the soil.  No, for me, it’s all about the metal, and the one I chose had plenty of it.  Black metallic tines.  Sturdy.  A green rubber grip on the end of the pole.  It seemed to say, “Buy me, and I will rake your lawn like nobody’s business.  We can make make  magic together — just you and me and all those leaves.”

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What Happened To The “G” In HGTV?

/ Kevin / 37 Comments

A few posts ago, I made a brief comment that the G in HGTV is noticeably lacking.  Personally, I long for the old days when the G, with shows like “A Gardener’s Diary” and “Gardening By The Yard,” far surpassed the number of H shows.

That comment, though, resulted in my fellow garden bloggers agreeing that there is a serious sink hole in the HGTV programming schedule.  One commenter, Erin from Urban Organic Farming In Sidney, wrote, “I’d love if you could write a blog about it, get the readers and writers to write to them and ask that that be rectified.”  So, Erin, I accept the challenge.

My first step was to visit the HGTV website.  Clearly, the opening page is the home page – because it’s all home, all the time.  Surely there must be a G somewhere.  Shouldn’t there?

The truth is that the G has been reduced to a single on-line tab that says “Outdoors.”  The editor is Marie Hofer, and I’m worried about her – especially if her office is proportionately equal to the amount of space HGTV has given to G.  It’s probably too small to fit a desk.

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Not-So-Wordlesss Wednesday: Homecoming

/ Kevin / 28 Comments

 

I returned home from my stay in the hospital, feeling much — MUCH — better.  Imagine my surprise when I looked into  the garden and saw all of the terra cotta pots lined up like the upstairs/downstairs servants on “Downton Abbey” greeting the arrival of the lord of the estate.

Actually, I had arranged them before the health hoopla for a post on my love of terracotta.  My idea was to call it a family portrait with some smarmy comment about it beging so hard to get everyone together for a family photo.  But with days and days spent in the hospital, as well as all of the doctors and tests, I had forgotten all about that photo shoot and that post.  Oh, well.  You know what they say about best laid plans.

In any event (and in my own warped mind), it was flattering to think that the terra cotta team thought as much about me as much as I do of them.  I really don’t know where this affection for terra cotta began.  I just know that I like the color, the feel, the texture, the variety, the warmth, the weathered age.  When I see them in the garden, I am reminded of sun-splashed Meditteranean vacations, where whitewashed walls are the perfect backdrop for terra cotta pots overflowing with red geraniums. 

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