The Creeps

Early in the morning, I open the front door to take Chancey out for his walk. It’s still dark. Sometimes it’s still. Sometimes the air is alive with buzzing, peeping, random flapping. Moths are butterflies who party at night. And it seems they have loads of friends. These are the original creatures of the night. They have a 'way more active night life than I have. I know. That's not saying anything at all. But they Hang Out. You can see them outlined on the house's screens, or feel the living shadows(?) on the ceiling. (the old dirty joke - that's not a Shadow…) I guess it's a cozy ledge just above my front door. More than once or twice, "things" have dropped to the ground as I open the door. I wait for the day one of those things drops on my head as I step out into the dark to walk.. It has to happen. Everything happens. Maybe just kill me now. When I have to walk Chance. in the rain, I step out into that cold, cold Florida downpour and it immediately goes down the neck of my coat, runs down my back, and I pray its just rain.

Jersey Girl

I’ve always thought that gardens are really just one garden, popping up wherever gardeners enable them. Now I know that the Boardwalk is just one boardwalk. At the beach. At the shore. Atlantic City. Now in Venice. I could go all cosmic on you. Okay, I Will ALWAYS go there at a moment’s notice. The moment is now. It’s just one Whole Earth, right? It’s the Mandelbrot scenario. Patterns repeat.  

Here's a picture: my dad pushing goofy-bonneted little me in a carriage on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. My grandparents had an apartment above a saltwater taffy place there. I remember the odd combo of wrestling flickering on the old black and white TV, and opera coming through on the radio. I think that ambience was Grandpa’s. Grandma Tuba was baking Mandelbrot (!) (they’re Jewish biscotti) and poppy seed cookies in the linoleum floored formica countered kitchen. Grandpa Dave smoked cigars. I can fondly remember that stinking stench and be tolerant, even misty at the assault . I remember feeding the pigeons peanuts from the Mr. Peanuts store. (Twenty’s me later referred to him as something rude…). There were lots of weekends spent strolling "the boards."


Much much later, there was a romantic ride on bicycle handlebars, clopping along on that same boardwalk. I was old enough to appreciate that romance when I found it. There was also faint aroma of cigar…


I’ve lived in Florida for years but Jersey still feels like home to me.


I’m a Jersey girl, in the Four Seasons /Sherry Baby kind of way. And I needed some garden paths. What was really needed was to replace my darling shredded newspaper mulch that proved to be darling AND delicious to the horrible millipedes that will forever haunt my nightmares. It held the weeds down, but those critters are milli-times worse than any weeds. Like bats: So they eat mosquitoes!? I say Bring on the mosquitoes!


Anyway, I needed paths. I looked at brick. I considered cement and shells. It had to be bare-foot friendly. I looked at recycled plastic. I looked at the cost of that recycled plastic and remembered Wood. Boardwalk Wood. A wooden Boardwalk! Of Course!



It had to lay flat to the ground. I’ve got snails. They like the cool dark underbelly places. And no snake hiding places, either. Have you realized? I’m the Squeamish Gardener. I love the nature. But only my selected selections. I think God could use an editor. No spiders. No rodents. Not even earthworms. They can stay. I’m actually glad to see them when they turn up. But I I’m not touching anything. They can beg, but I’m not going there. Have I mentioned that I’m single?



Now my Boardwalk is done. It took the guys about a week. As always, there are “outcomes” we never expect. The garden used to be all curves – curved pond/succulent garden, rounded spaces, curvy paths. But the boardwalk frames the beds. It’s geometric. There are corners. I think it must look like a beautiful organic finished puzzle from the tiny airplanes casing the joint from their pleasure flights out of Venice Airport. It’s so seldom that these outcomes meet and exceed our expectations.


And somehow, I have more space to plant things. I used to have to wait (not all that long) until something died, to open up space. But the meandering curviness just ate up the beds. The geometric controlled boardwalk whips everything into order. My garden felt wild to some visitors. (Not that that was a bad thing to me.) There was profusion and riotous color. But there was no lawn. I think that it was too different from anything that they knew.



It doesn’t look or feel wild any more. Now there are new corners, where there were none - to plant maybe some new white roses, or some other sentry/Wal-Mart Greeter plants to add to the mix. I got a variegated pony tail palm to plant at one of my new corners. I did hit the ever-lurking drain bed, but just have to believe this is the far edge of it. Time will tell if this is going to be stunted. I hope I remember it's challenge and think to move it someplace more hospitable if the time comes.

This past weekend my grandbabe was here visiting. And cartwheels and backbends happened. Up and down, back and forth on the boards. They say you can’t go home again.  But they might be wrong.  This was today meets yesterday. I’ve entered the time/space continuum, whatever that might be… I've always been a creature of this moment. I Be Here Now.

We all have so much to deal with. There’s not a one of us who gets out of here alive. We are sad, lonely, and ill, grief-consumed and suffering. But if we notice the moments, where nothing bad is occurring just for that one wonderful bit, and string them together, we have a shot at some Peace. I have so many really wonderful moments amidst the agony, that I can think at times, I really couldn’t be happier. Call me shallow. Call me Queen of DeNial. Just don’t call me late for Mandelbrot.

My daily bug

When I wake in the morning, I tippy-toe to the kitchen and lean in, flick the light on, and pause. I'm not a ballet dancer. (though a certain amount of alone-type dancing DOES occur…) I just don't want to step on Things that have "passed" in the night. The flicking gives the monsters a heads - up that their party is over. It's time to call it the day. And they need to get out of my sight. Those that can, do. Those that can't lie on their backs legs up and wait for the grim reaper. That's me. Eyes looking anywhere else, after assuring my target, with a wad of half-a-roll of paper towels, bend and gather, praying I don't feel, princess-and-the-pea-like, through the layers to the monster within. I've found this is also a good rule for picking up vomit and other atrocities. I raised some kids, grew up in the 60s. It's a handy hint. Just take it and don't ask questions.

Wherein I become One with Chocolate Mint

Been drinking "herb water" - Have had a peppermint plant out front, and just putting a sprig into my drinking water. Seems like it gets tasty right away! I drink the delicious herbed water, then add more to the same glass. A sprig can stay perfect for a couple of days, then be past it's prime and I start a new one.




Lately I've been using sprigs off my CHOCOLATE MINT plant. Yes. It's a perfect thing. It really is too, too! So, yesterday, I notice that the "sprig" is now stretching out of the top of the glass, growing new leaves. And there are little white roots out the bottom. I'm totally ONE with this plant. It's too cosmic. I must rest.

June 2010

Just haven't had the heart to blog since dead people started hitting the fan… It was a crappo winter in the garden, too, which normally would have been my Source of solace. Frost after frost killed stuff that had been there for years. Surprising stuff - porterweed, which isn't called -"weed" for nothing, and the huge, biggest in the neighborhood, frangipani tree that was planted right outside my window (for staring at when I should have been working…) Just lots of stuff. Some things came back after months of looking really bad. A little banana over in the far corner is back. Anyway, it was just rough-going for a good long while.

But I'm witnessing miracles again. Baby or female cardinal this morning, then three adults all at once. But two were males (bright bright red) and one seemed to be female, mate of one of the males. So, who knows? Not me. But I graciously accept.

Planted my two window boxes. Just went to the garden center and asked what was good to plant in window boxes. Could do that anywhere and for whatever reason - just ask and buy. They just carry what thrives in your area. They want you to succeed. Window boxes (and containers) are usually planted with annuals, so keep them watered, pinch off old spent flowers and yank whole plants when they look bad. Add some new soil (potting soil in bags ) every time you replant. Don't have to replace all of the soil every year - but would be great if you do. Also always add some timed-release plant food for flowering plants (stuff I buy comes in a plastic shaker jar and is all over Lowes and Home Depot, about $7.)

So, it's early June here in Florida. I've got the self-sown annual sunflowers going gangbusters and am still trying to dig out things that obviously aren't coming back after the frost. It's the hottest year ever, all over our dearly departing planet. We've got to take care as best we can - of Her and our Selves. Don't go out to garden (or do anything) at High Noon. Do it in the early morning or when evening cools as much as it does these days. Eat, drink, be merry. Or at least eat and drink. Let's try to cheer up - as Crosby Stills etc. said long ago: "Rejoice! Rejoice! We have no choice!"

If you want more of the dark ruminations, and hopefully some sunnier ones (can you ruminate in a sunny fashion?), go to my less-gardeny just- writing blog: http://ablogginn.blogspot.com (note extra "n" end of ablogginn)

A really really dark Florida winter

Began the season with the loss of a dear friend. (adding to a year of grieving for another good man already in progress…) Can it be that the garden is a reflection of the horrors going on inside me? No. I don't think I'm that powerful. I know I'm not powerful. If thinking the good thought was enough, we'd all be in Paradise right now. But frosts happened, more than one. Even more than two. And they're still coming this day of the supposed "last frost date" in the Land of the Flowers. I've stopped being able to look out my window, usually a rescue tactic from inner turmoil. It's been so cold I haven't been able to put in much swing time. Chance and I do squeeze in some moments, each of us in our quilted, padded coats. (Okay, so his is PINK! He can handle it. HE knows he's a boy…) (Mine is blue, now that I mention it, and my name IS Andy. And I had no hair for the first 3 or 4 years of my life… but I'm not confused, at least not in THAT way.)


But the frosts came. And the air is just cold. And it's totally gloomy. I think the inner gloom gets reflected in that I just don't have the patience or the interest to be out there. Even if it was sunny. Nothing is growing anyway - but the weeds coming up through the mulch.

The poinsettias brought home from the grief house are waiting to be planted, still alive, on the front deck. The garden looks more dead than alive to me. I guess most of it will come back in the spring. Or some of it. I have trouble caring, really. My closest confidants have descended into the world of pain. I share their grief as much as I can, but it is theirs and too exquisite to touch. My suffering is huge to me, but it pales in comparison to what they are going through. I can't add to their grief, anxiety, just pain in general. Where is my flood of negativity supposed to go? Writing is good. Good thing nobody is reading this. (If you are reading this, then, thanks - and stay nonjudgmental, will you?) Anyway, I hope the gloom will ease some with the coming of Spring.

I do have flashes of just being here, just now, in this moment. And, if I can just use my eyes and ears, and not my heart or memory, I can see (and hear) that Life is going on in it's own beautiful perfect way. But while Life itself is perfect and knowing, I am not, not in my superficial, ignorant self, and I AM suffering and my friends don't need my stuff added to theirs. So, again, I write.

Swing Time

Just dragged myself in from the front porch swing. Remember Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin inhabiting the same body in All of Me? - wanting/needing to be in two places at the same time. It had gotten so dark the streetlights were coming on. A perfect day for me begins with lolling on that swing in the pre-dawn and seeing the streetlight on the corner of Zephyr and Gentian slowly fade, like its retrieving its glow, calling it inside at the end of the night. Then I'm back at the end of the day, when it shines it's light again. The bugs start their dinner (that would be me) and I finally have to admit surrender to the dark and the itching and go inside.

I’ve been living here for YEARS now, - much of the time spent on my swing. The yard has gone from ratty unkempt lawn to a mulched and floriferous hunk o’, hunk o’ Paradise (to me, anyway…) Now the swing creaks sometimes and so do I. I lie there so long I'm just about frozen in position. Over those years, the wood of the swing has molded to my shape. I struggle to sit up. My Grandmas' voices come out of my mouth: "Oy!"

The swing is on the front deck of my house. It's my front-row seat. The garden wraps around the house - (no lawn.) I've got some castor bean plants at the far edges that have finally grown tall enough to block out my view of the neighbors. I’m a captive audience sometimes to the sound of them living in their hunks o’ The Garden /Motor Shop/ Parking Lot. Their cats - and I'm talking about DOZENS OF THEM - parade by and drive Chance to distraction. Too often he's sent /tossed back into the house in disgrace. (Stop your &*^* BARKING!). I guess we're not all that mellow, either.

The deck is where the seeds sown snooze, keeping me company until they germinate. The new seedlings keep graduating pot-size-wise until they’re ready to either plant out or meet their destiny in some other way. I sit on the swing and watch them grow. Time sometimes doesn't fly when you're having fun. It slows and seems to stop.

I sit on the swing and watch my grandbabes play and grow and the time really does fly by. We've cozied up in this swing and read and rock-a-bye-babied each other. I push, gently rocking. They stare up into my eyes or close theirs. When they get to push me, I hold on for dear life while they feel the surge of power coursing through their little bodies. The wall behind the swing has dents where the swing and I have whacked it over and over with their exuberant shoves until they learned a little constraint. Of course, constraint hasn't the thrill of a screaming Grammy - (Take it EASY! Don't HURT ME!!!!.) and they're not so interested any more. But how many kids can say their grandma taught them to cackle? Now I have to beg to rock or get rock-a-byed. (My daughters didn't realize they didn't have to be rocked in my arms until they were in their 20s…)

I bring my coffee out with the latest library book or magazine. Follow the drips. Or I just sit and rock. I'm good at being alone - it's just a little too often now.

And music! My tunes keep me good company. I’m the proud owner of a downloaded library of EVERY SONG I’VE EVER HEARD . When it was all new, for one brief shining frenzied moment - the downloading was free. Now I pay Amazon or Itunes and I'm (relatively) glad to do it. I can find just about anything I can think of. - I've got Groucho and Bing, the Beatles and the Black Eyed Peas. I love it all. I used to use a boom box out here on the deck, but the Bose Knows it can't be beat. I blast those tunes out open windows and doors and rock out on my swing or dream along. (Those romantic lyrics have ruined me.)

At these ages, though, we can swing, head-bang, boogie, ballroom dance and otherwise humiliate our kids in SO MANY WAYS. (They pull into the driveway, witness atrocities, and try to silently pull out before they're noticed.)

When Molly's here, I still have my coffee out there, but I wear my new Ipod and listen to my darling John Pitzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, their show, Radio Deluxe, downloaded from the computer. (Find it and them and you'll also find Ella, Frank, and anyone old or new playing the great standards. Swing on, I say!) They broadcasted live from Tanglewood a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think I'll ever recover…

I’ve swung with a sweetheart here. Sitting, you know, in that old fashioned, hand-holding way I listen to the wind chimes, the squeaky-shoe frogs and feel enfolded in gratitude to be part of The Garden and It All. Talk about living in the moment. (Of course some of those moments are in the past - so I'm confused for a change.)

I've planted myself on that swing when my heart was broken, too. I've hobbled out there while recovering from the latest "bug", dragged a "bum" foot, and that broken heart out there to try to recoup - sometimes feeling like Ratso Rizzo dying on the bus. I'm doing the dragging a little too often now, too. Who said loneliness can be fun? No one.

I lie on this swing any chance I get. It’s like a magnet and my butt is the, the thing that’s drawn to the magnet. Well, you know what I mean. It’s fatal attraction. I’ve watched butterflies hatch and I’ve napped uneventfully. I’ve done some heavy-duty daydreaming, castle building, scheming and planning on this swing. (I’ve also flung myself off it onto the hard cement when a frog I was admiring on the wall jumped onto my leg and wouldn’t be brushed off. ) So, I’ve been moved to tears in many ways from this vantage point.

And that aforementioned flying time? It's doing it faster than I can stand. My garden has been growing for years now. Growth and death happen. Plants tower that were tiny. Swing butt-print is dangerously curved. But compost is testifying that it isn't over, even when it seems to be, and I'm still curious about other people's magnet spots, am enamored of the Earth and the Mystery and feel rejuvenated by the smallest things. I come from a long line of cockeyed optimists (Grandma Annie et al) on one side of my family - but on the other, women with the blues. So add mood swings to the variations here. No wonder I'm exhausted - yet perky! The weathered swing on the deck doesn't look like the scene of any kind of action, but oh, the emotional DNA you could collect!

Still, often, I lie on my swing savoring how sweet life can be. I’ve got the world on a string, the sun in the morning and the moon at night, raindrops on roses. I’ve got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more? (I guess that, too, might be me…)

What’s Black and White and Green All Over?

Update the old joke: What's black and white and green all over? – A nauseated zebra? No - okay, yes. But also: My Garden, that's what! Mulched with
newspaper.

A while back I was feeling the guilt over buying the Sunday paper only for the TV guide. It was before the DVR. (If I could make my computer draw a heart around those three letters, I would. ) My daughter, in an effort to stop the moaning and complaining said, “why don’t you shred it?”

I had tried mulching with thick layers of newspapers in the past. I learned that newspaper takes quite some time to rot down. This was particularly painful as I'm from New Jersey and did not know the meaning of watchful waiting. (When they say "thank you for your patience" I turn around quickly to see who they're talking to.) Oh yea, mulching/ rotting/waiting: Before that rotting happened, the flat sheets of newspaper turned to crumples of papery tumbleweed, lifting the dirt I had to apply to keep it down, and tumbling litter-ally (litter-ish?) around the garden.

So, when Molly said shred it, after the bells stopped going off in my head, (pretty sounds, as opposed to the tinnitus screee that never does stop and accounts for my latest sojourns to distraction) I ran to WalMart and got the el-cheapo-est shredder they had. I began shredding in earnest. Actually, it was in Venice. Who the hell knows where earnest is? He's probably in Distraction, since I drove him (and many more) there myself. If you see him, send him to me, please.

But the toy-like shredder could not stand the supreme challenge my garden innovation presented. It didn't last and was returned and exchanged (regularly). I ended up acquiring the fanciest home shredder $100 could buy (not all that fancy.) The thing will do 30-pages at a time and I love it perhaps a little too much. No more weekly weakling gasping-for-mercy home-office models.

Soon I was guilt-free - so much so that I had a 6-month full-time subscription to the paper. I began figuring out how to suck the life out of my friends and loved ones (even further) in a new and organic way. I convinced friends to fork over their own weeks' papers. I swear I could have reconstructed a tree. Anyway, I was paper-rich and eventually cancelled my subscription, thereby cutting myself off from all knowledge of the happenings in the world - not a great loss, considering I was riding the short-bus to Anxietyville - just down the road from Distraction.

The fluffy mulch began marching down the garden paths. With some torrential Florida rain, it reformed back into sheets. Actually any watering would do, and is necessary during dry spells. (I wonder if this could be how papier mache was discovered.) The shreds did not blow away. The mulch laid there like lox on a bagel (or like an embarrassed zebra.) Occasional strands escaped to loll on the deck, stick to my bare feet, or come inside to bond with the dust-bunnies. (Draw your own conclusions on my housekeeping skills..) I don't know why I can tolerate - even love - this. I've long had a ban on holiday tinsel and Easter grass. But this stuff is natural, it breaks down eventually if you don't sweep. (Again - see housekeeping skills above.)


Outside, wherever bare soil thought it was getting away with something in the garden beds, SPLAT. Mulch happened.. We will have NO NUDITY IN THE BEDs! (Hey, have I discovered a source of my dating problems?) The "shreddings" looked like the snowy paths of New Jersey , resting quietly (?) in my memories. (Geez! Willya look?! I totally fell on my ayass out hea!) Seriously nothing rests quietly here. Even the dog barks when Anything Happens Anywhere on Earth.


(Also in those musty memory corners : A school bus that slid onto my neighbor’s lawn, skiing , skidding, careening atop all that icy stuff - eventually adding to my justifying the move to Florida. You can imagine: It's pretty crowded and noisy upstairs in Andye Land .)

So, I don’t knit and I can’t see to embroider any more. But I DO watch an ungodly amount of TV. And now, while that’s happening, I can multitask, folding my friends' papers, mail, magazines, and old files, (okay - also grandbabes' artwork - but don't tell, ) - anything papery - and shredding the suckers into submission. During commercials, I dash outside and spread containers-full of my shredded mulch onto paths and garden beds. I don't feel guilty about the kid's artwork, friends' greeting cards, Oprah magazines. They've become ONE with my garden. Every headline, every kind thought, every piece of reading material that might come into view goes into that shredder and gets returned to the earth.

Occasionally some hardy weedy clods might poke their heads up through the mulch - but I’m playin’ Whack-a-Mole, (more dating problems?) - or just dropping bunches of mulch on them as I tra-la my way around the garden. I can walk barefoot. I don't have to bend down endlessly to weed. No more crawling around on my knees (to weed.) It sometimes looks a little like the road through Candy Land, what with the weathering of time in between patches, and different colors of the batches. Andye Land is even more colorful, if no more restful.

Now, I'm always on the prowl for more newspapers. I think the newspaper deliverers in the dark of night turn off their lights and engines and try to coast silently by. So, please feel free to drop by and donate. Just by reading this, you, too, are part of the goings on going on. Welcome! Welcome to Andye Land!

Mulched Dreams

A Saturday evening quite some time ago, when I was new to gardening in Florida and my house was new (to us):

We were "just looking". But our passenger's daddy was a real estate agent. Now I swear I've paid tens of thousands of dollars for dreams that WILL NOT QUIT. You see crappy lawn. I see garden walks through fragrant fields. I flipped over the lovely handmade swing on the front porch. The seller took that with her. The house (which incidentally I do love) came with a row of neatly trimmed generic shrubs, standing at attention in a straight line out front. I moved my potted herbs into the ground between the no-frills soldiers even before the kids and I moved in. I've added the first curve to the row and will plant some low-growing single roses there tomorrow. The miniature rose I packed and mailed to myself during our move five years ago, dug from my New Jersey garden and grown in a pot since then is now silently exclaiming in delight at the other end of the platoon, shaking it up and whispering to the neighborhood, "Wait 'til you get aload of US!!!"

I'm mulching out the entire "lawn" with visions of a garden blooming where weeds/grass and fire ants now thrive. My tactful, loving, 11-year-old babe, says, "Are you going to try to keep it neat, Mom?" My eldest, teenage-type daughter moans: "You can't mulch the whole front of the house!" My mother chimes in in support: "Don't cock it up" They'll like it when it's done. Or not.

The dream is for the garden just outside my window to carry me up UP and Away! beyond the sad medical stories I type for a living, to uplift and delight eyes, nose, and mind. It must keep me some company and divert me from the little hells a poppin' on my computer screen. To Eden. No snake. Just me, some flowers and my mulch.

And now:

As it turns out, we still live in the "new' house. Or at least I do. The girls are up and out for the most part. My mother's gone. (I've totally stopped dusting - except when I can't see the TV screen…) Adam never showed. All of my dreams for the garden - okay, all of my dreams in general - have skipped down paths I couldn't have imagined back then.

I've replaced the swing and now loll whenever my schedule will allow (and often when not allowed…) I stare at laden beds, bananas are dangling, roses fight their way through the passion vines. Eyes, nose and mind really ARE delighted.

The mulch has killed off the grass. There are curvy organized mulched beds now where there was once crappy lawn. (I know its organized, but friends regularly describe it as a jungle - I think they're thinking lush - as in a lot of growth - or maybe as in - "What HAVE you been DRINKING???)

I suppose my mother would think it was relatively cocked up, although, when I was able to grow a recognizable fruit or flower, she was greedy and, I suppose, in her way proud (might be reading more into her than was there.) I HAVE eaten a couple of oh-my-god juicy Georgia-0'Keefe-wudda-loved-these figs this year. And I have blue-blooming plumbago and self-sowing sunflowers and anything else that can tolerate my half-assed watering habits.

The only plants surviving from my original New Jersey garden are the garlic chives that haven't bloomed since their long-ago Garden State. I do have some of my father's cactus and succulents, and a Shefflera that was his - and he's been gone way longer than my ma. I still think of them daily. And that New Jersey garden. It's my damn LIFE - and my stupid screensaver that cycles through ALL of my pictures for goodness sake! I think of EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE on a daily basis. (As my mother chanted so long ago: Why don't you ever call???) (yes - YOU!)

I open the front door in the morning, and I'm Dorothy, newly landed in Oz. It's technicolor from the early-morning inside gray. There's a dead witch (and the occasional lizard) twitching below - but that's that other story. There IS the occasional snake scaring the bejeezus out of me, but Eve had that to deal with too, in that other story. And nobody's throwing me out of THIS garden - as long as I can keep making the payments

Much Ado About Mulching

Did you know that the whole concept of the suburban lawn arises from Longue Agoe and Far Awaye in Merrie Olde England, when an upwardly mobile inhabitant of some stolidly immobile castle wished to impress the other gentry with his wealth? “Get ME! I have PASTURE and I don’t even have any flocks to feed! No WONDER I be merrie!”

So it has trickled down to the modern masses -- (that’s US, folks!) -- out there giving our “leisure” time to chasing a mower back and forth. (Why, my home town in New Jersey, is NAMED for the treasure: Fair Lawn!)

If you’re tired of mowing, fertilizing, struggling with bad-looking grass to feed nonexistent sheep, perhaps you should consider Mulching.

My mulchy mission started when we moved into our house some years ago. I became the proud owner (as opposed to the lowly humble renter) of a corner lot, edged by what seemed like a 90-degree slope into drainage ditches on two sides, - very common here in Venice. (Picture a horizontal version of the Grand Canyon.) You really can't tell by the picture.

The house was built up high, a good thing in the drenching rains, but a bad thing if you had anything against landing on your ear while wrestling with rapidly rotating blades meant to shear down whatever gets in their path. My two pre-teen daughters eagerly volunteered for the job. That did it. I had to hire a mowin’ guy and planned the eventual annihilation of the grass altogether.

Thus began my quest for free mulch. It didn’t take me long. The new house came with four Live Oak trees in the back yard which needed trimming. As was my pattern, I ended up blabbing into the dusk with David Moore, the Florida Tree Expert, and he said he’d bring me all the mulch I wanted. And he’d not bring me anything that might go to seed and become more of a nuisance than the grass. These are to mulch lessons to really consider when acquiring new mulch: Seeds of some really nasty stuff can come along for the ride and rise up and bite you places later. - AND free mulch can be scooped up through professional tree trimmers who might have to pay a fee to dump their stuff anyway - (doesn't hurt to ask…) and also communities also make free mulch available if you are willing to dig it. Dig? Use your noodle, your Google, yellow pages, whatever. They're called resources for a reason!

Anyway that first truckload delivered a load of ground-up Florida late in the day. I swear, during the night it began steaming, the fumes doing a cartoon hootchy-koo into my open bedroom window and into my dreams. That next morning, I was out there in my nighty and combat boots before I knew it. First time I had gotten to fondle a pitchfork since leaving my garden back in New Jersey too long ago. Garden Porn? Not so much - maybe with a different leading lady.

Then the Endless Forking - (again - NOT dirty) - began. First thing each morning before work I loaded and dragged at least one barrow-full. I'd dump on a fairly thick mound of mulch and spread it. I found the St. Augustine grass came right up through the recommended 3 or 4-inches of mulch. I needed to dump the woody mulch maybe a foot deep. And it took unbearably long to rot. It needed time to perform its murderous magic. I could usually restrain myself for a month or so before lifting and peeking. If I could get ahead of my impatience - (Note: First New Jersey reference - we/ I tend to be impatient, itchy, scratchy) - and leave the mulch in place for months, when raked back, Voila: Black gold, Texas tea. NO, that’s the Beverly Hillbillies. But there would be lovely no-grassed soil there (I hear). So I peeked and re-tucked and had to wait.

But the mulch kept the grass from seeing the light of day. And what grass did wend it’s way up through the mulch was easier to pull up, still freaked out by its mulchy predicament. If the grass was still alive, it was squishy-topped and white-rooted and more easily dug. Weeding became the random bend and tug as opposed to minutes/hours of knee-destroying work.

As I got patches mulched and softened, I’d realize where beds might go. My ideas of what I would plant formed. It seems that as soon as an area was mulched, I knew what I wanted to plant there. (I started with place-holders: Annuals mostly - they'd live one season and then be gone. By the time the annuals had come and gone, I'd have an idea of something more permanent). I advise not planting anything at first that you'll have trouble moving as you learn and if/when you change your mind later on.



Time passed, I learned. Things lived (or were composted.) There are beds now where once there was crappy lawn.


I could not imagine in those early days what I'd do with myself should I ever get to stop hauling the mulch (and myself) out there every morning. As it turned out, I never DID stop the mulching. Now it's with containers-full of my fabulous shredded newspaper mulch. But more on that at another time.

So, now of a Sunday, I loll on my porch swing, hidden by towering flowers. I listen to the whirring roar as my neighbors spend another lovely Florida weekend out there in the blazing sun, risking sunburn, dehydration, and amputation for the sake of impressing some long-dead, merry-no-more gentry and We are not amused.

The Banana Chronicles

I've always wandered aimlessly in the mornings in my gardens. These days, I have to concentrate on being aimless - which, although my chronic state - is a problem as my garden has set paths on a small lot. Anyway - during a'wandering this one day, I sense the presence of Something New. I feel IT: Red, pendulous, bigger than my head - and my head is nothing to sneeze at. I look up, and voila! (or more appropriately: AGH! (or OY?) I behold the glorious bud suspended, bursting mid-air: Floral fireworks. The Star Spangled Banana. Really more like Audrey II, the big-lipped nosher from Little Shop of Horrors ( must-see botanical rock musical.) Little banana plant of yore no-more. This, as the Jefferson Starship might say, is the Crown of Creation. This plant has realized its destiny.


It had gone unnoticed, starting out kind of sheathed, incognito, appearing to be another extraordinary leaf among many, but that day the spectacular banana flower surfaced through the (endless) pool of my oblivion, to my consciousness. Okay, I've gone all 60s on you. Now you know. Welcome, my Friends, to the show that never ends! But seriously - didn't some kind of prehistoric Something surface from the ooze to chow down on this plant's grandma's stem cells?

Anyway, over time, Seymour Banana Flower shot forward while it’s hind petals curled back revealing its hand: A jackpot of perfect fruit, playing peak-a-boo behind the curling red petals. They filled out, plumped, spiraling around the stem revealing Nature’s plan (see 60s note above) in each exquisite fruit.

I was invited up North at the end of October to visit a friend with a new house and wanted to bring some kind of “Floridy” gift. I was stumped up until the day of my departure when, during my morning ramble, I was halted in my tracks by the banana gang's cheerful (but admittedly silent) chorus bidding me “Top of the Morn!”(talking fruits?- Irish ones? - 60s again...)

Airport personnel realized my problems were clearly only of the horticultural variety and UP I FLEW, my carry-on bag alive with giant red banana flower, 3-foot long stalk and semi-ripened fruits. I worried about the rocking and the warmth of the over-head compartment. I wondered if I had unwittingly transported some evolving pudding.

But, no. The banana flower and progeny were sprung for presentation and were intact and suitably appreciated. Fruits still green, they were set on the fireplace mantle to be admired. I spent a day alone at Marcia’s house while she was at work. I lolled on the couch and literally watched those devils ripen over the course of my day. (Just throw in that aforementioned decade reference wherever you like - its always appropriate.)

That evening we stood in the shadows of the towering, autumn-painted maples in Marcia's yard and ate delicious Florida bananas. Bingo! Kumbaya. We are One.

I've since acquired a dwarf banana variety (Cavendish) which doesn't tower. I planted one little plant in the photo-op/children's garden. (bench, sand, then grandbabes, toys - talk about reaching your destiny!)


The other morning, there, right at eye level was the odd-looking sheath I had only imagined. Days went past, each unfurling the Awesome Truth. (Referencing should be happening.)

The babes and grandbabes are dragged out there just about hourly now to see where babies come from. In the sweetest way. (Better than the "doctor book" Emmalee and Taylor are so enthralled with.)

So, the fruits are fruiting, and this plant, with more energy than it knows what to do with, is sending out suckers (baby plants). We'll have to

wait months for the bananas to ripen, but I've been out there digging the extra plants and will be offering them for sale. It's Psychedelic BananaRama, Baby! Right from the ooze to youse. (I have not mentioned New Jersey once in this installment…) In time, I should have a few plants to mail out. Let me know if you want one.

How to Garden in Florida

I grow what I love - which is anything that is interesting, floriferous, edible, smelly - (in the good way.) If it gets flowers and won't hurt me, I want to grow it. I still grow some plants that were my dad's - and he stopped growing things a really really long time ago. It's kind of cosmic, really.

I moved from New Jersey (The Garden State) to Florida (Land of the Flowers) more than 15 years ago to be able to garden year-round. I rented houses for years, happily gardening in pots on patios. Eventually I bought a house, seeing in its ratty lawn the garden wishing to be set free. That garden now surrounds my house, the lawn mulched out of its miserable existence.

I became a Master Gardener, got my nursery license. I sold plants at regular plant sales from my home. I was always a gardener - Joni Mitchell’s “ Lady of the Canyon” who grew stuff. I've always tried to grow everything.

I'll show you my clipping: I considered it a RAVE review for being a great gardener - under arrest, but a great gardener… (notice the askew ceiling segment and gigantic cop.)

I've mostly cleaned up my act, but am still pushing the green stuff. My customers are as varied as the plants we can grow here. My customers are retirees yearning for the peonies and irises of home, but dazzled by the possibilities of our glorious climate. My customers are young couples just getting started gardening. Some of my customers are garden club members visiting my garden to see what can be grown here and some come for one last spree before they travel back up north.

I encourage them all - and you - to try something new. Gardening in Florida, we can grow our houseplants in the ground, for heaven’s sake! Geraniums can thrive for years planted in the right spot.

We can’t grow peonies, but we’ve got the beautiful Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia and Datura,) and sages and jasmines galore. I’ve got some water irises blooming in my pond and walking irises (appropriately) by a path. They’re different from their northern cousins, but they’re wonderful just the same.

We’ve got pinks: begonias and Lisianthus. And blues: Plumbago and Blue Daze. We've got orchids blooming under our Oak trees. We've got sunlight on the sand and plenty o' nuthin' and so much more.

I encourage you all, whether gardening here in Florida or where-ever, to just keep an open mind. Be brave. Go for quantity and you’ll end up with quality. Plant everything you like. Move it if it isn’t thriving. Give it away if it’s still not suiting you or if you have extras. Compost it if its not fit for human consumption. (My garden looks great. You don't see the plants that didn't make it. )

Plant til the sweat runs down your legs and the fire ants run up. Run to the shower. Wait 'til its cooler and plant some more! You’ll end up with plants that fit your style and your location. You'll end up with a garden. Who could ask for anything more?

Selling Plants at the local Flea Market

I was in need of The Next Big Thing. You know how things get sometimes… I was too sad to lift my head up, brought to my knees (very bad posture.) But gardening saved me once again, to the point that I had loads of plants needing to get gone. I found my way to a local flea market here in Venice, putting money down to reserve a booth space. There was a brandy new one they had just bricked and awninged tucked outside next to a main entrance.




Pay attention to the innocent-looking air conditioner lurking shark-like at the rear of the picture.

My first weekend at the flea, I brought the houseplants and cuttings I had been planning to sell at an unfortunate business venture wherein friendship and faith took a dive. (Have I mentioned the Jersey Connection yet?) I did okay and made my booth fee back. I was so happy to be in my little booth. My January birthday happened that weekend. Life got good again.


Buddy, a retired nurseryman who spent all day every day at this (weekends-only) market, looking after things, saw the germ, the gem, the seeds contained in that first weekend. He knew how to make that tiny space WORK. And I knew enough to listen to good advice.


The following week Bud built up the booth. He brought in his own umbrella’d picnic tables. He hung lattice and shelves. We went and scoped out the competition: GIANT STORES (you know who they are). He told me what plants to order and from whom. When the plants came, he watered them and tried to teach me how to keep things flowering and looking good in the dusty, windy conditions at the flea market.

I added the unusual/weird plants I love so much: The odd succulents, the houseplants-gone-wild, I was now growing in the ground… I bought small ones and grew ‘em into great big ones. I had Coleus to fear! The new varieties grow in sun and shade. They do grow well in the ground here in Florida, but nurture one in a great big pot and Whoa Baby! As my daughter says, “It’s GI-NORMOUS!”

I stocked Australian tree ferns (Sphaeropteris cooperi) and Desert Rose, (Adenium obesa). I had the paddle plants (those flat-leaved succulent Kalanchoe thyrsifolia) that proved to be a best-seller.

As well as harboring our year-round residents, Venice and Englewood, Florida play host to escapees from the north from October through Easter. Buddy knew they’d want color for their winter homes. We stocked the little booth with hundreds of geraniums and hanging baskets. Like Kevin Costner, we built it and they came. And they could not resist trying to take a bit of heaven back home, packing plants up in luggage, trunks and campers to be watered nursed and prayed along until the danger of frost passed in New York, Michigan, Maryland.

I gave "pregnant onions" (Ornithogalum longibracteatum) away to kids who expressed any interest at all. I know those plants are pregnant with possibility (lots of baby bulblets growing under oniony skin) and the kids will have the beginnings of garden fever.

I had robust rosemary plants in one-gallon pots I was able to sell for $3. I told my customers about the two four-foot lollipop-shaped fragrant rosemary shrubs growing at the entrance to my house. (This sounds a little formal. Believe me, its not.)

My home garden was earning its keep. If anything self-seeded at home, I dug it, potted it, and eventually brought it in to my booth. One week it was sunflowers nodding under the umbrellas and Mexican blanket flower (Gaillardia) literally volunteered their way into pots and on out into the world. I noticed Cosmos had seeded itself in the really rough gravel of the parking lot adjacent to my booth. Florida, Baby!

But.
When summer came the owners of the market turned on the air conditioner in their office which was on the other side of the wall we shared. They were inside, air conditioned. The exhaust from their AC piped right into my booth outside making being in that booth a death-defying act. Then they began the paving of the new parking lot adjacent to said booth, the area roped off with yellow hazard ribbon. Couldn't get near the stinkin' booth. During my enforced retirement, my daughter was shopping there and heard them selling my plants, advertising the great bargains over the loudspeakers.
Leave us say, (yes, still from New Jersey), that the police were involved. They stood guard as my daughters and I reclaimed my plants. I'm banned from the flea market.

So, I'm working from home again. Insert picture of Mackauley Culken here - I type and watch the birds in the bird bath and the passion vine climbing at breakneck speed up a trellis (and a rose vine) outside my window.

I dash outside for breaks and get in some swing-time. On weekends I’m pushing the petals from my really fantastic home garden at occasional plant sales. I lay in wait, needing and wanting some company, writing here to all of my new imaginary friends. I'm spreading the word that gardening can get very exciting here in the Land of the Flowers. Oh, and call me if you wanna buy some plants!

The Butterfly Effect

I have spent some quality summer hours sitting with butterflies. I've occasionally been told I'm for the birds, but I've always loved the butterflies. What's not to like?

As a Master Gardener (now lapsed) I was "helping" Claire Herzog in her horticulture classes at Laurel Nokomis School. Unfortunately, I discovered the butterfly box in her classroom and I was a goner. While lessons went on over the weeks, I lingered near the box, watching as Monarch caterpillars munched on milkweed, climbed to the top of the box, spelled the letter "J" and eventually became chrysalises. (The word should be chrysalides, but lets let it die its awkward death.)

I've learned recently that the various stages of those creepy/too-beautiful caterpillars are called instars. How fabulous a word is that? Not awkward at all.
I was present at various "releases" of newly-hatched and properly- warmed butterflies as they were sent off (sometimes reluctantly) into the world.

One summer I was able to bear witness to a chrysalis being spun and a butterfly being born. The chrysalis - (I'd've called it a cocoon when I was a kid) - was a shimmering light green. The really magical markings were a tiny golden chain of metallic-seeming dots at its neck. The tiniest of Crown Jewels. (Grandbabe Taylor has provided me with the information that this is the "zipper".)(Forget about jewels, please!)

Weeks went by but the time came when the tiny green pouch gradually darkened, and somehow became transparent, the dark wings visible, but not quite. I was filled with awe at the IMMENSE struggle it seemed to take at either end of this cycle. Let me use the words "convulsing" and "great exertion." Being "in labor" might apply here. And it wasn't easy for the butterfly either!

I was surprised to see M. Butterfly emerge HEAD FIRST, doing some kind of Chubby - Checker-Twist, hanging-dangling on while the rest of her damp self kind of slipped out - followed by more hanging around and uncrumpling and eventual soaring into the day.

On a more recent summer day, I had a butterfly land on my knee. Another day, one flew by so closely that I could feel the "wind" and the warmth of its flight. Would it be too much of a leap to wonder if this was my same observed hatchling - or her heir?


So moving! How much more could I take? Rapture and passion are fine, but I'm exhausted. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to stop the weeping and sighing.