Garden Rant

"A Total Celebration of Nature"

That's how one "trend forecaster" describes the whole outdoor-room phenomenon.  She continues, "We are so worried the environment is a precarious place, we want to embrace nature whenever we can.  There is something very special, even mystical about anything that we do outdoors."  The optimist in me really likes that explanation, so I'm going with it.  Despite how easy it is to ridicule this everything-in-one monstrosity from Calspas.

And these Casbah-inspired outdoor beds from Restoration Hardware look pretty silly, but you won't find me turning down the chance to nap on one of their comfy-looking chaise longes.  No sireee.

This week the Washington Post did a good job covering the outdoor furnishings trend in "Beds in the Backyard", which featured a large photo of the (indisputably ugly) Ultimate Outdoor Theater, starting at $35,000, another Calspas offering.  But this is interesting.  They found a 23-year-old guy who'd just installed a 51-jet spa with TV, built-in bar, gazebo enclosure and iPod docking station and I'm all eager to mock him until he says "I'm an outdoor person.  I love being outside as much as possible."  So okay, maybe he doesn't know a Tiarella from a toaster, but he loves being outdoors and if he's sitting in his spa watching "American Idol" and kicking back some brews, at least he's getting fresh air. 

Don't miss the accompanying article from the gardener's perspective in which Adrian Higgins asks the GardenRant reader question: "But Will There Still be a Place for the Plants?"  He gets it right in calling the trend "the art of communing not so much with nature as with commercial goods" and goes on to show more plant-centered ways to furnish your outdoors, like this inviting grape arbor. 

A Vegetable Garden? My God, We'd Better Apply For A Grant!

I was very amused this month to read in Dwell Magazine about a suburban front lawn in Lakewood, CA that was turned into a vegetable garden by a group called Edible Estates, which is the notion of an L.A. artist/designer/vegetable-garden crusader named Fritz Haeg.

Now Edible Estates has a great cause.  In fact, it's MY cause!  Stop wasting your land, you suburbanites!  Get down on your knees and count your blessings if you own a small piece of green earth!  Then, get off said knees and make it productive!  Plant some pole beans!  Or plant some crazy tulips and dahlias and at least make it beautiful and chemical-free, lest ye be turned into a pillar of salt!   

But still, there is something hilariously fey about this particular endeavor, as described by Dwell.  When the homeowners decided beans were better for the planet than Scott's lawn-feed, did they buy a pick and shovel and packet of seeds from Lowe's and just get dirty?

No, they found Haeg on treehugger.com and then competed with 40 other candidates to become Edible Estates' next project.

The lucky Lakewood couple was chosen because of the man's "thoughtful and articulate demeanor."  (Wow, I got into the gardening fraternity just by digging.)

A team of 12 volunteers then descended on Memorial Day in order to plant a 20 by 38 foot space (nice, but not overwhelming for a single person if you have the place plowed first) with Haeg covering "the cost of all the planning and materials." (Again, I can't help myself here: big deal).

Don't get me wrong.  I hope Edible Estates convinces all of Lakewood to rip out the lawn in favor of crops and that the madness spreads to Long Beach and beyond!

But I somehow fear such "projects" are more evidence of what a gardening culture America is not. 

So what is the best way to spread this idea of the productive yard?  I wish I knew.  Teach people to fish rather than bringing them a fish? Convince scared non-gardeners that it's not that hard?  And when it is hard, it will help you lose five pounds.

You Can Leave Your Hat On

And so we return, with great reluctance, to the subject of naked gardening. Please, no more jokes about thorns or poison ivy or shrinkage.  (OK, we'll allow one shrinkage joke, but make it short.  Oh.  Never mind--that was it.)

With April Fool's just around the corner, we were naturally suspicious when Friend of Rant Ilene Sternberg forwarded this to us.  (Ilene, who has not yet been persuaded to start a blog of her own, is the author of the newly-released Perennials for Pennsylvania.  It's part of a very nice series from Lone Pine Press--have any of you Pennsylvania-ites checked it out?)

So the arrival of this announcement about The Naked Gardeners sent our research team into full fact-checking mode here at GardenRant Headquarters, and we regret to inform you that it is true:  The book has been published in the UK and you can order it from our friends at Powell's and have it in a few weeks.

Further investigation showed that these are no ordinary naked gardeners.

Spring bulbs: hybrid, species, or native?

Over at Transatlantic Plantsman, Graham Rice rants about Hideous Daffodils, bemoaning the lack of native daffodil plantings in his native land. Instead, all he sees are the large-flowered hybrids.(I don't know how he kept himself from quoting Wordsworth's "I wander'd lonely as a cloud." Such discipline.) I'm feeling your pain, Graham, but in my case, I'd like to see more species tulips, which, like Narcissus pseudonarcissus, are smaller and blend better with their neighboring plants (though of course, they're not natives). I have been using these for some years now and, unlike most hybrids, they pop up regularly, delighting with their unusual forms and color patterns, their unobtrusive foliage, and their ability to naturalize. They aren't wildflowers, but they have that informality.

I know many who have given up on tulips because the plants don't act like other perennials, coming back bigger and better each season. Hybrid tulips kind of do the opposite: they decline after a year or so, particularly when the conditions are not ideal. Hybrid tulips=annuals in my gardening practice; I plant them in containers and raised beds and compost them without a qualm when they're done. It's not for everyone.

My favorite is probably T. acuminata, but for naturalization, the winner has to be T. turkestanica, a multi-flowered type that cheerfully thrives in the unfriendly conditions of my front yard. Some of the clusianas are hybrids, but they have kept all the charm of their wild origins. Finally, these come up at all different times; acuminata is still up in mid-May. (Many of these might more accurately be called heirlooms, not species, if you want to be picky.)

As for daffodils, some comments on the Rice site accused him of elitism. In America, many public daffodil plantings are by volunteers with donated bulbs—such altruism is admirable; I've planted bulbs en masse myself and it's not exactly tons of fun. The big daffodils don't bother me that much, but I rarely use them in my garden; they're too big for the space and if I don't find the flowers hideous, the foliage sure is—as it dies back for years. Here again, miniature hybrid and species daffs can come to the rescue.

I don't know too much about native American bulbs, but even I go wild over a truly spectacular wildflower like Lilium Canadense, which, unfortunately, seems to be virtually unavailable. Old House Gardens used to have it. And then there are the various erythroniums (trout lily)—gorgeous flowers and foliage, and grown all too rarely around here.

Bulbs of any kind make the short, brutish Northeastern spring worthwhile.

Those Crazy Gardeners Have Their Own Awards!

by Susan
Our good friend Colleen Vanderlinden noticed that the Bloggie Awards didn't come CLOSE to having a category for gardenblogs and decided to fill this gaping void with the creation of the Mouse and Trowel Awards.  Excellent!  Winners receive an attractive little badge to add to their sidebar and all manner of glory, so GardenRant readers, vote early and often but before the April 15 deadline. 

Colleen was especially clever to have created so many categories, not just because it gives everyone more chances to win but because it highlights the often overlooked features of design, innovation, and even podcasts.  I just have one question for Colleen:  What constitutes an International Blog?  Because if it's a team blog with members in more than one country, you'd be surprised how fast we could find ourselves a Canadian.

Mouse & Trowel Awards also feature excellence in garden sites (remember them?) and offer categories like best informational, best forums, and best gardening magazine site.  Maybe that will inspire some innovation on the part of our magazine friends to improve their sites because as a group, they're sort of a wasted resource.  (Although to be fair, if their sites are too good, readers might stop buying the printed version, so what's a publisher to do?)

Now about those Bloggies.  Notice they have categories for food, sports, music and even crafts but nothing about nature, gardening or the environment.  And get this:  The Best American Blog is called Cute Overload.  Seriously.  (Could I make that up?)  And the Best European Blog is My Boyfriend is a Twat.  So maybe the Bloggies aren't for us, anyway. 

Now one of the winning blogs, in the Best Kept Secret category, is Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and it's outstanding.  (And thanks to Kathy Purdy for writing to recommend it to me.)  I agree that it has great writing and photography, but notice the missing disclaimer about no animals being hurt in the making of the blog?  For god's sake, there's castration, branding, and worse - altogether too much pioneer reality for this city slicker.  Reminds me of a French gardenblog I used to read (mostly for the pictures) until one day it featured a photo spread of the butchering of a pig.  Sacrebleu! I deleted that puppy from my sidebar and never looked back.

Next up, from everyone's favorite cranky Clerk (AKA Hank), a Meme.  Hey, isn't this the very same guy who's been known to describe memes as "ridiculous" and "rather idiotic"?  Well, it turns out he has an open mind to them after all, so that's a Good Thing.

Now I'm not much of a meme person myself but this one interests me because it hits home.  (And who can resist this cool graphic?)  All the answers ring true for me and my only original contribution isn't even original to me, but here it is.  When our local gardening Yahoo group raised the question "You know you're a gardening addict when...," one respondent confessed to not being able to stop gardening after it gets too dark to see what she's doing.  No problem, though.  She just periodically waves her arms at her motion-sensitive outdoor spotlight so it will stay on.  She does wonder what her neighbors are thinking when they see her doing her nocturnal gardening dance.  My own neighbors call me "the Constant Gardener," which seems harmless enough.  At least I haven't noticed them calling their children to come when they see me outdoors.

It's a Fruit! It's a Veggie! No, it's a Tomatoberry!

Sometimes we don't even have to write our own headlines.  They arrive, as if by magic, in the mail.  This just in from Johnny's Selected Seeds:  the Tomatoberry. Bred by the Tokita Seed Company, which is also responsible for rolling out the ultra-sweet 'Sungold.'  This little baby is shaped like a strawberry and reaches about an inch in length, making it perfect for all your inch-long, strawberry-shaped needs, whatever they may be.  (Go ahead and tell us all about those needs in the comments.  We couldn't stop you if we tried.)

Do we need another cherry tomato?  And if so, do we really have to go around calling it the Tomatoberry?  You decide.

Next order of business:  Bees. Has anyone else noticed the recent disappearance of bees?  No, I'm not talking about the disappearance that the New York Times reported on.  I'm talking about the one the New York Times caused.  Ever since that damn story ran, it has been impossible to find orchard mason bees, those native North American solitary foragers that you used to be able to buy in larval form, all tucked into little cardboard tubes, for about twenty bucks a pop.  You'd keep them in the fridge until the appropriate date ("Honey?  What are these little crunchy things in the straws?") and then set them outside and let them hatch, pollinate your apple tree, make love in your flower garden, and lay eggs in the pretty little bee house that you might have bought for them or in any old piece of rotten wood they might find around your garden. 

Those were the days, right?  But now, thanks to the NYT, everybody's out of bees.  We managed to find a few tubes of Osmia californica, a native bee that hatches a little later than the orchard mason bee, and they're resting comfortably next to the chorizo tofu and the martini olives as we speak.    We'll keep you posted on their status.

AND... it was great fun meeting so many of you on the Flower Confidential World Tour, which is not exactly over, but has certainly calmed down.  (Check here for the latest listings.)  For one thing, you are all much better-looking than you let on in those mostly-anonymous blog profiles you hide behind. We may have to start requiring you to submit semi-nude photos before we allow you to post in the future.  Second, you're all terribly funny and in-the-know and just exactly how I imagined you might be.  We simply must find an excuse to hang out together more in the future.  Meanwhile, I am back to blogging, and thanks to my fellow Rant-Ettes for ranting on without me.  More Tales From the Road coming soon...

School Garden Story

by Guest Blogger Ed Bruske of Studio City Garden, The Slow Cook, and DC Urban Gardener News

So there we were in the Annapolis Yacht Club with a 180-degree view of yachts bobbing at their moorings. Thirty-two ladies from The Garden Club of Annapolis had assembled for a lunch of chicken salad sandwiches and to hear me gab about the container garden I’d started on a scruffy asphalt lot next to my daughter’s charter school in downtown Washington, D.C.

I felt a bit like the skunk at a DAR convention. All those well-coiffed females smiling politely as the hostess made my introduction—my years of reporting for the Washington Post, being a caterer, a personal chef, gardener and whatnot. “And what does that mean, exactly, ‘The Slow Cook,’?” she asked when she got to the moniker I use for my food blog. “Is that something you do on a grill?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s more like the weekend we spent recently on our friend’s farm, killing a bunch of pigs and making sausage out of them.”

There were audible gasps. Maybe that didn’t go over so well.

Months earlier, my mother-in-law, who lives in Annapolis and hangs with the local garden club, had suggested I sign on as a guest speaker. As it turns out, the ladies are not so much about getting down on all fours and running soil through their fingers as they are about gossiping over iced teas and Chardonnay and arranging things like buffet dinners and house tours. I don’t mind. Any excuse to speak in public is fine with me. And it caused me to stop a minute and reflect on the garden we had started just over a year ago.

I titled my little talk, “An Accidental Garden” because, really, our school garden was only meant to be a casual thing between me and some of the teachers, growing a few vegetables on a vacant lot up the street from the school. But one day before we even got started my wife was cruising the internet and noticed something on one of the local listservs.

“Hey, look at this!” she said. “Somebody’s giving away grants for gardens.”

The Fedco Seeds of the Apocalypse

Oh, I hate to think of German Johnson tomato seeds shivering in there!

In a week when Al Gore warned Congress that “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. . . You take action,” it's comforting to know that even if our federal government allows the baby to burn up, vegetable gardeners need not lose hope. 

There is alway the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is designed to rescue the agricultural heritage of humanity from complete disaster by preserving up to 3 million distinct varieties of crop seeds.

This is not a cheery Seedsavers Exchange rediscover-those-delicious-antique-beans kind of effort on an idyllic Iowa farm.  This is an ugly bunker dug into the remote permafrost on an island 600 miles north of the Norway mainland.  In this bunker, vegetable seeds may survive for a hundred years, grains for a thousand.  And when the seeds threaten to go bad, they will be planted under controlled conditions to yield more seed. (How permanent the frost, of course, is another question.  Let's just hope the artificial refrigeration works, too.)

Though the vault, when it is completed this year, will attempt to house the entire panorama of genetically diverse food crops, it will not lend seeds to scientists or breeders.  No, this particular pantry is not to be raided until doomsday.  It's designed to keep the human race from starvation, should we screw up the climate so completely that all our crops fail, or should we wither them with the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war, or should we completely muddle them with our genetic engineering. 

Not exactly a cheerful mission, but it was the brainchild of an apparently charming and admirable man, plant scientist Bent Skovmand, who died last month.  His New York Times obituary pointed out ...

The vault was only part of Dr. Skovmand's crusade to save and propagate the best of the best strains of valuable food plants. His mission, he often said, was ending hunger. He searched the world to discover and preserve lost strains of wheat and other crops and helped breed them into stronger, more disease-resistant strains.

Obviously, hunger is not the great problem in America today, but it's impossible, post-Gore, to be sanguine any more about what's coming.

So if we are going to completely mess up the natural world for generations to come, I like to think that my offspring still have some hopes of enjoying pole beans, arugula, lemon basil, patty pan squashes, Japanese eggplants, and heirloom tomatoes--at some point, maybe, when the baby's forehead cools.

 

Music in the Garden - a Year Later

by Susan
Last winter, in Music in the Garden, I asked readers an innocent-enough question: What music do you listen to in the garden, and how?  In Music Anywhere I conceded that I'd asked a totally uncool question, since even mildly enlightened gardeners prefer listening to the sounds of nature and why didn't I know that already? So I broadened the question to include listening to music anywhere and got some enlightening comments from my very enlightened readers. 

Undeterred by my uncoolness, I continued to experiment with various sources of music and finally tried XM Satellite Radio, with the purchase of a little XM2GO and a $10/month subscription.  In XM Radio - the Results, I gushed my findings - it's a winner - and haven't stopped listening in the year since that report.

But back to where we started -  music in the garden.  Funny thing about that.  Despite an impassioned defense of music in the garden - it's practically transcendent! - I don't think I've listened ONCE since writing that clap-trap.  Now maybe it's because XM Radio reception sucks in that situation. (When their instructions tell you the antenna has to have direct access to the southern sky, believe it.)  It's no good at all in your pocket or your fanny pack.  But guess what -  I've stopped wanting to listen when I'm in the garden.  Nothing can compete with the sounds of my back yard, which is exactly what my readers were saying.

SF Garden Show--'The Metropolitan Meadow'

Talk about gardening while intoxicated!

At the SF Garden Show

Martini Modern from Garden Design.

Can we all bloom along?

America's been in bloom since 2001. Buffalo's been in bloom since 1995. So has Canada. Britain's been in bloom since 1963, though perhaps not continuously.

From individual cities to regions to entire countries, various "in bloom" programs, sometimes connected to a larger program, sometimes not, employ contests and other incentives to get community residents out there planting. The contests as such are not really the point. It's all about inciting people to clean up and beautify—but the competitive spirit is meant to be a strong inducement.

It's interesting how different countries rank the criteria. Britain in Bloom judges on floral display, permanent landscaping, sustainable development, environmental quality, and public awareness, in that order. In Canada, it's tidiness, environmental awareness, community involvement, natural and cultural heritage conservation, urban forestry, landscaped areas, floral displays, and turf and ground cover areas. America in Bloom uses the same criteria and gives an award for each. Individual communities can organize their own contests and adjust the criteria to their needs.

We have Buffalo in Bloom, which started out as a contest organized by fifteen councilmanic districts, with only 1 winner and 2 runners-up for each (front gardens only!). Winning it meant something then; the competition was stiff. Three years ago, all that was changed and now there are no winners, just "recognition" with a sign on your yard and your address on the website. Last year over 1200 gardens were recognized, including mine. Big whup, as they say. I might add that the Buffalo in Bloom judges of yore often favored large colorful arrays of bedding annuals. Now they're happy if you've weeded. So it goes.In Western New York, I would speculate that our various Garden Walks provide more of an incentive for street and neighborhood cleanups than BIB does; residents seem more aware of the influx of thousands of walkers and the desire to draw walkers than they do of the BIB contest. There are many more walkers than there are BIB judges, and sometimes the walkers buy houses. But from what I hear, the "in bloom" programs are getting hotter. In 2006, eight American communities, most of them relatively small, won awards from AIB: Gallipolis, Ohio won for floral displays and Bartlett, Tennessee won for tidiness, to name two. The Britain in Bloom program seems very strong; their 2006 award ceremony, held in Perth, was nationally reported (Scotland pulled off a sweep of sorts). On the other hand, the America in Bloom awards were given out in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and reported only via the organization's website.

Whatever they're doing in Britain, it does seem to work; beautification efforts in the towns and villages I saw when I was there were widely prevalent and effective. Is it Britain in Bloom? Or are they just better at the whole gardening thing? (Yeah, I know, I'm buying into the stereotype—I can't help what I saw!) Could America in Bloom have the same effect here?

News from Other Blogs

Our new friends at Open Register report on the Garden Writers Association's latest survey:

• For the first time in years, more respondents say they choose garden centers over mass merchants (Big Boxes) when they shop (47 percent to 44 percent), with garden center preference up from 39% in 2005 and box preference down from 52%.  This is declared a Major Shift that GWA says is due to "quality-driven consumers."  Can this good news be true?
• Organics are hot, hot, hot.  19% of garden shoppers want their flowering plants, trees and shrubs grown organically - amazing.  Less surprising is that 29% want organic fertilizers and 28% would choose organic fruits and vegetables if they were offered.  So the good news keeps rolling in.

I'd love to link you to the GWA survey  but it's available for members only and I seem to have let my dues lapse.   I will note that this survey has been suggested by some GWA members as a service to drop so that the yearly $80 dues can be spent on the looong list of suggested new services - like helping members get work.  They might also save money by switching to e-newsletters but that would require GWA moving into the 21st Century - apparently a radical notion.

Open Register also reports on a European survey of gardening trends that falls into the category: Surveys That Make No Fricking Sense.  People in the gardening biz must be shaking their heads and cursing at these bizarro results.  But maybe GardenRant readers can explain them?

Doug Green (a favorite Boomer Boy of Gardening) reads widely so we don't have to.  He points us to a Scientific American report on genetically modified corn and the news isn't good.  And a Christian Science Monitor story on plant intelligence has Doug wondering if vegetarians can survive after they read it.

And finally, my favorite gardenblog photo of the week - a nongardening photo from a mainly nongardening blog.  But who can resist Marie Freeman's images from Boone, NC over on Blue Ridge Blog? 

The good, the bad, and the ugly in Southwest Florida

A northerner vacationing in Florida—especially a Buffalonian—must be well-fortified against the mock-sympathetic hilarity that will greet him or her when place of origin is revealed. Most of the people who currently live in Naples aren't from there either, but that doesn't stop them from being smug about the weather.

We're used to it though, so during a recent vacation down there, I tolerated the merriment, only occasionally protesting that it doesn't quite snow year-round where I live.

After all, I should feel lucky to be in this paradise—and I like lying around on the beach sipping margaritas as much as anyone. But once away from the ocean (a sight that never palls), why does paradise have to look so … boring? Most of the landscaping in Naples looks like it was executed by a Marine Corps-trained team armed with electric clippers and directed to "trim first, ask questions later." A shame really, because many of the flowering shrubs that had been cut into box shapes were currently in bloom.

The closest we got to flora in a more or less natural state was at the local zoo/conservancy (visited under protest); there was also a lovely mangrove preserve (shown above) that we walked through every day on the way to the beach. My favorite example of plant life kept under rigorous control was at the local library,
where a luxuriant stand of ferns was being thoroughly groomed, all the better to frame the "No Skateboarding" sign. I did feel sorry for my mother-in-law, whose gardenia was cut back to the ground by an over-zealous maintenance guy while she was up north. She would have had buds otherwise.

It's interesting to see cultivars that I normally think of as houseplants flourishing in the wild, but sad to see them used in such unimaginative ways. Heck, here in the frozen tundra we do much more creative public and private plantings, even under the duress of our unlivable climate and limited plant palette. You have to take the good with the bad when you're in paradise, I guess.

Finally, I can't resist posting an example of sculpture destined, no doubt, for a pricey garden in somebody's exclusive neighborhood. Other then questioning the scale, I have no comment.

Who's Your Daddy?

Unfortunately, the "embed" function has been disabled on this video, so you're going to have to head right over to YouTube to watch these two amorous ladybugs get it on.

What I love about this video is not so much the ladybug love itself--we've all seen it, and come on, you know you stop to watch--no, what I really love is the fact that the video has been viewed over 1.3 million times.  Now THAT gives me hope.

Don't Talk Down to The Gardeners!

Two of my favorite morning coffee reads--Garden Rant's Elizabeth Licata and The New York Times' Judith Warner--woke me up on Wednesday by provoking sputtering disagreement.  Both wrote pieces in praise of great phonies: Beverley Nichols in Licata's case and Hillary Clinton in Warner's.  I'm mainly interested in Clinton as a means to get to the much more important problem of phoniness in the literature of domestic life, so let's get going.

First of all, I really like Judith Warner in her role as the Times' blogger on modern motherhood.  Unlike Caitlin Flanagan, another in a wearying line of domestic-lit phonies that heads straight from Beverley Nichols to today's Atlantic, Warner always surprises me with the un-Times-like grittiness with which she writes about family life.  She's clearly got problems far bigger than Flanagan's homemade-or-storebought cupcakes dilemmas and is willing to talk about them.  In other words, Warner has a certain authenticity to her that I really respect.  But in her debut as a guest columnist for the actual paper, she tries to defend Hillary Clinton by arguing that authenticity is nothing but a performance--and Hillary is not enough of an actress (ergo too real and honest) to pull it off.

Two problems here: 

First, it's not just Clinton's manner that's inauthentic, it's her policy positions.  Clinton's refusal to admit that her vote to authorize war on Iraq was a mistake suggests mainly that she is too full of bull herself to be able to say she was once swayed by bull.  And flag burning, give me a break!  That's a big issue in a country with a complete leadership vacuum on energy, global warming, health care, and a senseless war.  Not to mention the nauseating impersonation of an upstater Clinton felt was necessary back in 2000 in order to be elected to the Senate in the first place.

Second, authenticity in politics is not just an act.  I worked in politics, not at the presidential level admittedly, but I did work for two governors who were major characters.  And after observing them very closely, I concluded that they were major characters in part because they were better than the run-of-the-mill politico.  Authenticity in politics, in my observation, comes from two not-meaningless personal qualities. 

1. One, a lack of fear.  People who give off an air of authenticity are not afraid to be themselves, not afraid of exposure by the press, don't generally feel the need for a mask.  That's not to say that they are not always calculating the angles, but they are confident enough to move through the day with a certain degree of willingness to damn the torpedoes and possibly even a sense of humor. In a crisis, I'd way rather have them in charge than people who don't know what they think or who they are until they consult a pollster.
2. Two, respect for the voter.  Bad actors like Hillary Clinton are awful in part because they assume their audiences will be swayed by the crudest pantomime.  That we'll forget you're a woman because you vote the bellicose line.  That we'll forget you're a Midwesterner just because you vacation in Skaneateles. 

I don't trust people who talk down to me.  Dare I say it?  It makes me think that they are pretty witless themselves.  The political life of this country would improve vastly if the politicians understood that the voters are not stupid, not at all.

Worms, Personal Responsibility, and the New York Times

Oh, heavens to Betsy.  Another dust-up over our friend, the  lowly earthworm. Now, I'm as concerned over this issue of earthworms being non-native invaders of our forest as the next gardener--hell, you might say I wrote the book on the subject.  But when Anne Raver tackles earthworms in the pages of my beloved New York Times, I simply must rush to their defense.  Once again.

So here's the deal. Yes, the earthworms in your backyard are most likely non-native species like this lovely creature, Lumbricus terrestris, the nightcrawler.  You might also find another little darling, Eisenia fetida, the red wiggler.  Or an Asian species or two.  If you live in the North, your garden may have once been covered by glaciers, and whatever native earthworms had once been there--some ten thousand years ago--would have turned into popsicles long ago.  And these European and Asian newcomers hitched a ride with European settlers and, well, the rest is history.

But let's separate the fact from fiction, shall we?

Garden & Gun Magazine (No Joke!)

It's alive and it has a press release:

Garden & Gun, a new Southern lifestyle magazine, will hit newsstands in April. The publication will reflect "the modern lives of affluent Southerners and those who aspire to the sporting life of the South," according to a company statement.

And on their website we find gorgeous photography and this ad copy:

In the 21st Century American South there is a breed of modern men and women whose mindset is at once old world and new....Stewards of the land, they love the outdoors and long to conserve all that the favorable environment and climate affords them.  They seek a magazine that is contemporary yet classic, confident, sophisticated - a new kind of Southern magazine.

Garden & Gun will attract men and women who live an adventure bound, art loving, skeet-shooting lifestyle and who have a love affair with the South.

Thanks, Garden & Gun, for reminding me why I carried myself OUT of ole Virginny as soon as I legally could.

And thanks to Doreen Howard for alerting the (disbelieving) Garden Writers Listserv to this new publication (subscribe now!)  She also passed along this information about a gun soon to be introduced by Marlin Firearms.  "It's marketed as 'perfect for getting rid of chipmunks, mice, snakes, and other garden pests', sort of a mini shotgun.  Without the loud blast.  It will be called the 'Garden Gun'".

Now get this.  According to the website, Garden & Gun is being published by none other than Rebecca Darwin, former publisher of New Yorker Magazine.  We've heard the publishing world is all a-fluster over its new competition on the Internet but this is just bizarre.  So bizarre, in fact, that I'm still not entirely sure this isn't an early April Fool's joke, in which case - ya got me!!

Joke or no, the Garden Writers Listserv has been having lots of fun with this, using subject lines like "Let the Games Begin!" and tongue-in-cheek reports of Poetry Magazine's takeover by the NRA and subsequent roll-out as Poems and Pistols.  Et cetera.  Readers, your contributions?

UPDATE:  Called Garden&Gun, We Done You Wrong.  Turns out it's a really good magazine.

The wit and wisdom of Beverley Nichols

Bless Timber Press for having the good taste to persist in their reprints of the works of Beverley Nichols (1898-1993). My hunch is that very few people are aware of Nichols's witty, passionate, and knowledgeable books on gardens and gardening. Most of them are technically chronicles of his own gardening efforts at various locations in England, but every chapter contains plenty of observations and opinions on general gardening topics, as well as comments on human—and cat—nature. Nichols was a political writer, playwright, and novelist who published from the twenties through the eighties; his work deserves to be as widely known in America as it is in Britain.

The most recent reprint, Green Grows the City (first published in 1939) is an often-hilarious account of Nichols's efforts to create a gracious verdant retreat in an unpromising Heathstead triangular plot. Along the way, Nichols devotes whole chapters to the uses of such plants as ferns and cactus in the domestic landscape. From his search for appropriate plants: Did you know there were nurseries in London? Stretching for acres and acres, unsuspected, behind the most unpromising facades? No? Well, there are. But I won't tell you where they are, because I like to prowl about them alone. Muttering. To his comments on certain garden ornaments: … Somewhere, we may be sure, in one of the suburbs of Purgatory, there is an arid garden where dwell all those misshapen creatures who have been decorating so many gardens for so many years. In this strange hell the traveler will see bloated cupids, staggering with leaden feet … They will see fearsome plaster girls who, as they pass by, spout a mouthful of water from between their cracked lips. ….. … Nichols's prose is characteristically tart and finely tuned. True, he mentions a lot of plants (Siberian wallflowers? Aquiglia discolor? Lilium kikak?) I've never heard of and don't ever expect to see, but I don't read Nichols for gardening advice. Rather, his fervent devotion—albeit with touches of acerbic humor—to plants and the creation of gardens is inspiring and heartening. It's also encouraging that he lived well into his eighties. Must have been all that gardening. If you've been looking for the M.F.K. Fisher of gardening, this is as close as you're ever going to get.