Call Me... John

Don't call me John.
It's not my name.
I know that on this blog I've not used my real name, but rest assured that it is not Maranta... nor is it John.
Only one person is allowed to call me John and that is because he thinks it is my name and has been using it for some time now. It's my own fault really.

I am not generally on a first name basis with my clients, that is, I know their names but they do not know mine; most would not even recognize me if I showed up on their doorstep in full gardening attire. To these people I am not a gardener, I am the gardening fairy. Sometime when the leaves begin to pile up, or the perennials are full of dead-heads, they rest a finger idly upon their chin and think: 'Hmm, now that's not right, something usually happens to prevent all this clutter. It'd sure be nice if that something happened again.' And they go about performing various superstitious dances, chants, prayers, and sacrifices to the gardening pantheon in hopes of incurring some sort of miraculous garden cleanup event. And then, while they're gone at work someday, the leaves disappear, the weeds disappear, and all is right again. Little do they know there is a man behind this phenomenon, that he is not currently a member of any pantheon (though he is accepting invitations), and that there is a direct link between the bill they receive in the mail every month, its being paid, and how likely he is to sneak in and answer their prayers while they are away.
Not a high profile gig, in other words. I don't spend too long planning my outfit in the morning or talking to my P.R. person. In the event that I am accidentally seen or stumbled upon by a client, there inevitably follows a myth-shattering and awkward disenchantment (think kids catching Mommy or Daddy putting presents under the Christmas tree instead of Santa), heightened by a decided lack of casual conversational skills on the part of yours truly. I have tried just freezing on the spot when seen, to promote the fable that gardeners turn to stone when seen by mortals, but for some reason this seems to creep people out rather than to re-enchant them. Also, just turning around and sprinting out of sight doesn't work either; apparently gardeners and thieves share a common mystique when fleeing.
So I'm fine with keeping a low-profile most of the time. There are, however, a small handful of clients who insist on being friendly, appreciative people; these will occasionally go so far as to openly acknowledge my existence and look me in the eye. To date, two of these have bothered to learn my name; one has successfully ascertained my true identity and one calls me 'John'.
This is because, one dull morning while I was more or less zoned out working in a sidewalk bed, I suddenly heard a loud, friendly "How's it going, John!?" directed right at me. Looking up, startled, I saw my client emerging from the front of his house, looking towards me. I briefly looked around, saw no one else near me, and started to become giddy. Someone was acknowledging me! Who cares if they were calling me 'John', maybe someone told him that was my name, maybe I had a predecessor whose name was John and he just mixed up the names, maybe he just calls everyone John! Who cares!? So I replied, as loud and friendly, "Going good, how 'bout you!?. Exactly as I was saying this, I heard a voice from about 6 feet behind me expressing much the same sentiment. Turns out 'John' was a real person, a friend of my client, and he was standing directly behind me. So then my client, with a slightly puzzled look on his face, but ever friendly, attempted to continue the conversation with both 'John's simultaneously, all the while permanently etching in his brain that his gardener responds to 'John', so that must be his name! Fabulous, now we can converse on a first name basis!
(Sigh) And we do! It's just the wrong first name... But who am I to correct him, one of the only clients who ever bothered to discern that I am a real person with a name, not some benevolent and whimsical garden sprite who visits unseen then flutters away to have lunch with the garbage fairy and the house-cleaning elves.

Triage...

The back yard is nice; but the inside is full of mold, damp chills, spiders and futility. Our home, that is. So it's time to go, to weasel out of this rotten lease and find a bit of air we can breathe without the aid of a high-tech oscillating quadruple filtration system; to talk to a landlord without the need for legal counsel; to sleep without fear of a mycotoxic silt bringing unkown disease in the still night; to drop these ugly thoughts about the evil lassitude we all suffer and inflict upon our fellow human beings.
And, hopefully, to take a lesson or two with me.

A lot of our belongings are ruined... one by one discovered lousy with mold, to be tossed into triage piles of things we never thought we'd have to clean, to throw away or to keep as priceless but with the caveat that spores spare not the sentimental.
So, too, in moving plants to a new rental with no backyard. This pile for plants I cannot part with: Hamamelis, you get to stay; little Sango-Kaku Japanese Maple I've had since a twig, you get to stay; Fuchsia, Hydrangea, Stewartia, too beautiful to leave behind, you're in; contorted Chamaecyparis obtusa, you're in but I'm sorry you're going to have to stay in that small pot for another year.
This pile for giveaways - plants I cannot throw away but lack the space or sunlight for: all my delicious berries, you'll be in good hands with my parents; Sambucus nigra 'guincho purple', I hardly knew ye, but my coworker will take good care of you (if she doesn't you tell me and I'll come rescue you); sentimental lilies, we'll be together again someday, I promise!
And this pile for those who didn't make the cut... let's pour out a watering can on the curb for the fallen, we got dead plants walkin' here: miscellaneous conifers I lost interest in, you deserved better than me; Coreopsis, your summer sunshine will shine no more; Portuguese Laurel, I promised so much and delivered so little, you were going to be my beautiful broadleaf evergreen tree, together we would show the world that laurel could be so much more than just a hedge - but nevermore; big unknown Japanese Maple that always fell over because you grew too fast for the pot I gave you, sorry, but this is what you get.
It feels strange to be playing God with all these plants I took into my care; but then, as gardeners, isn't that what we do?

Often, it can be difficult to make the decisions necessary to live more simply. It is so easy to accumulate and justify and tuck away and hold on that our lives become a clutter of half-remembered excuses and the objects they excuse. We become fiends for the vague sentimentality of things that connect us to our halcyon past, for the little glow of anything familiar. So when life shoves you aside and insists upon itself being lived more simply, i.e. by ruining your stuff and disallowing plants you've held for too long, I figure we may as well embrace the opportunity and be grateful, if we can.

All right, I'm outta here...

Old Faithful (Hori Hori R.I.P. #3)

Honestly, I'm surprised I lasted this long. I've heard it happens to all gardeners eventually, you just never expect it when it's your turn. How appropriate, though, that it happened on my first day with my brand new replacement Hori Hori Knife. For those readers not following along, I "lost" my trusty Hori Hori a couple months ago and have been eulogizing its loss by enumerating its many fun uses. Today I discovered a fun new use: Geyser-Creating-Device!
The story pretty much writes itself, but is best imagined in jerky, black and white silent-movie slapstickery. Two gardeners idly chatting, enjoying a leisurely Monday of planting seasonal beds for autumn. One gardener pulls out a Hori Hori knife to plant some bulbs (a la R.I.P #2). His face gradually shows signs of frustration, as the ground seems to be much harder and rockier than he would like. Bulb by bulb, he begins jabbing the ground harder and harder. Boy, this must be some soil! He wipes sweat off his face and laughs; fortunately there are only a few more bulbs left to plant. Ha ha! Jab jab jab and then the screen erupts in white! Oh goodness, he's hit a PVC irrigation pipe and stabbed right through it with that fool knife of his! A 12 foot geyser is shooting out of the ground and he's flat on his ass with a priceless look on his dripping wet face; the other gardener is running around clearly yelling and (if you can read lips) clearing swearing up a storm!

The rest of the afternoon is not nearly so well-scripted and tends to drag on into increasingly muddy and shameful trips to the local hardware store as successive attempts to repair the problem before the clients get home are met with more catastrophic damage of the irrigation system, more livid cursing than ever, and more pitying looks from the hardware store employees.
So dear diary today I learned that a Hori Hori knife piloted by impatience and frustration can become a terrible force of nature, spawning elemental water spouts from seemingly dry ground; I also learned how not to repair broken PVC pipe (turns out there's more than one way!) and, just in the nick of time before the end of the day, how to correctly repair broken PVC pipe. And now, for the rest of the season, every bulb I plant will be just a little bit too shallow because frankly I'm terrified to dig anymore.

Hori Hori R.I.P. #2

How could I forget planting bulbs!
After planting a few hundred yesterday, I don't think I'll ever forget again! I'm planting bulbs in my dreams and vacant gazes; my hands are on auto-pilot, inappropriately stabbing any nearby surface during casual living-room conversations, clawing for that magical depth of 6" because I'm subconsciously sure that the couch would look lovely in the spring with a dozen tulips poking out of its cushions. Bulbs go anywhere! Bulbs go everywhere! I'm Johnny Appleseed's less popular and more often medicated brother Tommy Tulipbulb!

I guess if you have to go nuts planting too many bulbs, you may as well have a hori hori knife along for the ride. I know there are any number of tools sold for the sole purpose of planting bulbs (including some spectacularly ineffective drill bits that are supposed to carve out a nice tidy hole - do not ask my boss about these unless your sweet tooth is craving a lengthy tirade against the retail nursery industry and the "idiots" who work therein) but the hori hori exists to make such specialized tools unnecessary. I do not want 260 tools in my kit, one for every task I'm faced with; I want 1 tool (OK, 2 if you count my Leatherman) which stays always on my belt. The hori-hori negates the need to "dig a hole" for every single bulb you have to plant. Instead, you just stab-stab-stab a narrow column in the soil, drop in a bulb, cover up and repeat... several hundred times!

Good Things Grow

At a time when the only things growing in my life seem to be mold - over my entire apartment and all my belongings - and uninsured health problems, who else but my parents could remind me that good things grow, too. This unsolicited bounty (plus a few items that found my mouth before they found their way into this photo) came from their garden in the fertile soils of Camano Island and it was casually handed to me in a large plastic bag during a family get-together over the weekend.
When I took it home and began washing and inspecting it all, I found myself immersed in the unique and strangely calming beauty of these things that spring up out of the ground and grow ever more appealing as time goes by...
then I began to question the wisdom of mustard-yellow counter tops and wondered if I should maybe sneak all this produce into a Lowe's display kitchenette for a more attractive photo shoot.

Counter tops aside, I realized that even in a storm of worries and problems, there is usually plenty to be grateful for; in this case, loved ones and vegetables.
So here's a special thank you to all my friends, family and... Swiss Chard (it's just so pretty!)

Thank You Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Remember to Tip Your Gardeners

OK, you don't have to, but it sure would be nice.
Out of the blue the other day, after a couple hours' work installing some new container plantings, my co-worker and I were each slipped a nice crisp $20 bill by our client and told that we did beautiful work for which he was very grateful and that we should treat ourselves to something cold to drink.

I nearly cried.
And yes, I treated myself to a Grande, Pomegranate something-cold-to-drink on the rocks, no salt.

It just doesn't happen in this business; tipping is something from my high-school days of delivering pizza, when the extra couple of bucks almost made it worth driving around in a perpetually overheating car exposing myself to cracked-door slices of sordid Americana. Back then the tip was an acknowledgment that, while pizza delivery is not rocket science, I still managed to not f*ck it up in an industry rife with f*ck-ups; furthermore I took that spare change as risk reward, knowing that the next cracked-door might reveal a particularly well-armed slice of Americana demanding more than just an extra packet of Parmesan cheese (trust me, it happens).
But gardening is different. If you are a bad gardener, you are not tolerated because at least you showed up with pizza; you are fired. Therefore, the mere ability to maintain regular clients is its own reward and letting me keep 83 cents for not messing up a hedge is more or less redundant. I do not wish gardening to become one of those awkward trades where tipping is sort of half-expected to the point of crippling ambiguity on the patron's behalf to be returned by ready, frosty glares from any slighted worker. While I am not laughing my way from jobsite to the bank every day, I am paid a fair wage for my work (some days I believe this more than others) and do not expect anything beyond an agreed upon price for my services. That being said, gardening can be grueling work and gardeners are known to enjoy a something-cold-to-drink after a long hard day, so I am certainly not going to refuse the $20 out of some noble but vague system of vocational ethics. Nor will I be offended by the social hierarchy implicit in any tipper/tippee relationship, because I choose to interpret a tip as the only available means of expressing superlative gratitude in an increasingly impersonal culture (although I would also be moved to tears if someone slipped me a thank you note or chocolate-chip cookie) rather than as a patronizing reminder of my servitude. If I came to expect a $20 tip after every job, the gesture would rapidly lose its significance and sincerity; as it is, I am moved because it is a completely unexpected act of generosity and kindness. Never underestimate the power of such acts.
Here are some other ways you can thank your gardener:

* Consistently keep your vicious attack dog locked up inside, not just occasionally
* Hire an on-site massage therapist to tackle those charlie-horses, cramps, muscle strains, and general soreness that inevitably arise in the course of the day.
* Speak to him as an equal, not as a servant
* Offer to sharpen his tools
* Offer to give him a straight-razor shave when he starts to look particularly scruffy
* Shout peppy High School cheers out of the window when he clearly cannot get the leaf-blower started
* Remember his name
* Remember that he is human and cannot achieve superhuman feats of gardening merely because you desire it
* "Accidentally" Leave tall frosty glasses of iced-tea, with just a little bit of lemon, scattered around the garden on hot days
*Every once in a while, pretend that plants are something interesting out of which someone besides a complete reject might choose to make a career

That covers most of the bases, but remember as long as it's a sincere gesture of appreciation, it doesn't really matter what you do. And don't limit yourself to gardeners; everyone likes something cold to drink!

To Smash Or Not To Smash

...That is the question for the Karmic Gardener.
Whether 'tis nobler to spare all creatures big and small in the name of compassion or to protect your beloved garden's plants, smashing all creatures big and small underfoot with the fury of a vengeful god and an overprotective mother rolled into one karmicidal death machine (which I'm sure the good people at Scotts/Miracle-Gro/Ortho are scrambling to reproduce in spray form; maybe I should copyright that while I still can: Karmicidal Death Machine©).
Every gardener I have known has established his/her own system for evaluating the rights of garden pests to exist beyond a smear on the bottom of a shoe. For some, there simply are no such rights for anything unfortunate enough to wander into the garden; these types can be found sitting on the front porch, shotgun in hand, waiting for their chance to demonstrate their inalienable sovereign right to blow sh*t up if it crosses that line between not-garden and garden. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who cannot bear to intentionally harm any living thing and will go to great lengths to avoid doing so while generally making every other gardener feel like a heartless, murdering piece of karmic trash, doomed to spend the next several lives as an indentured earwig with asthma and skin problems to pay for that earwig they just accidentally sat on.

Most fall somewhere in between.

The interesting part is how each gardener sets the scales of pragmatism and compassion to balance their usually arbitrary and illogical feelings towards each offending creature. One of the easiest ways to set these scales is to put all "harmful" animals in one pan and all "beneficial" animals in the other; basically, anything that harms your plants gets the firing squad and anything that eats those pests or just minds its own business gets salvation and a blessing. Thus a gardener that I know: sweetly shooting daggers my way anytime I disturb a spider's web ("beneficial"), trying to remedy the situation by sing-songing apologies to the poor little sweetie, and in the next moment snarling "goddamn snails" ("harmful") under her breath, smashing the offending abomination of a creature down on the ground and terminating the infraction with a well-placed, well-stomped heel. The problem is, by this line of thinking, those irksome but beautiful deer that frequent your salad-bar of a garden are as good as venison, and if there existed a garden clog big enough, they should be stomped with all the wrath and snarl due any other garden pest. Now, the idea of smashing a deer underfoot probably sent some shudders around and for this I apologize, but my point is that death and justice are not easily doled out by any logical system we establish because the act of killing is an emotional one and will always be affected by our irrational feelings. Why is the deer spared? Because it is more beautiful and closer to our own size than other pests and thus feels more like killing a fellow creature than does hosing off some aphids. Why do I smash the occasional spider? Because the big ones freak me the hell out and despite my homage to Buddhist tenets such as Karma and compassion, I cannot always shove aside the feeling that this fast, spindly thing in front of me is going to kill me if I do not kill it first. Conversely I feel absolutely no threat from a snail and actually think they are kind of cool; so if they want to munch on some leaves, so be it, I don't consider it a crime punishable by death.

I guess, beyond noble belief systems, what it comes down to is how you feel when you kill something. Are the feelings of guilt outweighed by feelings of justice being served? If not, then you probably won't drop the clog, so to speak. The karmic scale is already tipped against humans because of our size and lumbering, reckless ways; if I were to add up all the spiders I've killed by blundering into webs and then frantically brushing and slapping at my body like a drunken slapstick act, I would probably drop this whole Karma thing as damning beyond salvation. I can only hope that one time I held the elevator door for someone scores me some serious points to make up for this unavoidably murderous profession of gardening (at least I think I held the door...).

Hori Hori R.I.P. #1

I'll start off with one of the more unusual applications I have discovered for the Hori Hori: hedging-residue-buildup-scraper.
During hedging season, the only enemies standing between myself and a successful day of clipping hedges are sharpening and cleaning. Sharpening for obvious reasons: even the best made hedge shears will succumb to hours upon consecutive hours of blade-dulling action and nothing is more frustrating than making a series of well-placed cuts only to find out that nothing has, in fact, been cut.
Less obvious is the not-so-slow buildup of mashed leaf bits (I could wax plant-physiological here and throw out some speculations as to which cell parts are most likely to stick to a blade, but ultimately it's just mashed, smashed plant matter) which accumulates along a certain axis of each cutting blade. This accumulation is somewhat sticky and serves to slow down the speed of my cuts, to mess up the timing and placement of my cuts (thus messing up the shape of a given hedge) and to reduce me to a livid, cursing, anthropomorphizing singularity of gardening rage.
There is no way to traditionally "clean" this residue off of the shears, it responds only to physical force (steel wool, wire brush, etc.) and even then only moderately. One day, when my steel brush was bent and flattened beyond all use, I decided to try scraping the flat edge of my hori hori knife against the blade of the shears and, lo-and-behold, gunk gone! Score one for Hori Hori!

The Surgeon And I

Does a surgeon have a favorite scalpel? One he/she uses more often than is strictly necessary? One whose versatility and usefulness have grown as a function of the surgeon's own sentimental attachment to the point of its being used in borderline inappropriate circumstances, say trying to hack through a bone in lieu of a bonesaw or even being snuck home in a pocket to use as a steak knife on the weekend? If the surgeon inexplicably misplaces the scalpel after years of loyal service, is he utterly lost? Does he suit up for surgery only to freeze at the operating table like a first year med-school student with second-thoughts, realizing he could no more perform surgery without his sidekick scalpel than he could stand up on the table and sing the Magna Carta to the tune (and in a round) of row-row-row your boat?
If this is the case (and I, for one, strongly suspect it is) then I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for the poor surgeon because I am a kindred lost soul.

I am without my Hori Hori Knife.

I cannot forgive myself, because it was my own inexcusable fault for leaving it behind in a raised bed along a busy street, like some forged siren singing its many magical properties to all passers-by. I only hope whoever took it will give it a good home, and discover for it many more uses to add to my own extensive list.
For anyone unfamiliar with a Hori Hori Knife (it's okay, you don't have to feel ashamed), it is quite simply my favorite gardening tool and without its reassuring weight on my belt I feel like less of a gardener, less of a man somehow. It is an indestructible 6" Japanese steel blade with a simple wood handle; it is not sharp per-se, but it has one dully serrated edge and one straight edge that meet to form an ever so slightly concave point. Strapped to a belt, from a distance, it looks like a particularly stout and vicious hunting knife (and in fact, I have received more than one suspicious glance from innocent bystanders who must have thought me some kind of half gardener/half military assassin run amok in their neighborhood). It is sold as a "weeding tool", a task to which it is admirably suited but which label does no more justice than selling a modern computer as a "Tetris-playing tool".
In the interests of not publishing an encyclopedic dissertation in one blog post, I will not attempt to enumerate the sundry uses for the Hori Hori all at once, but will rather christen a new installation at Callus and Chlorophyll which will eulogize and regularly explore the applications of my beloved knife gone astray, to be entitled: "Hori Hori R.I.P".
Stay tuned for more.

A Revelation

Remember, as a child, making yourself sick on fresh-picked fruit? With a dire (but unheeded) mothers' warning ringing in your head as some unknown motive force takes control of your hands and desperately grabs just one more raspberry from the vine, just one more strawberry or apple?
Our little human bodies, genetically compelled to partake of, but physiologically incapable of processing, such a bounty, are thrown headfirst into the fray of will power and restraint when confronted with such a wonder as an orchard or a vineyard. The animal says consume until there is nothing left; the mind reels at the notion of something so delicious just hanging around outside bearing a parent's blessing instead of the usual "Please, please, please! Why not? You never let me have anything! It's not fair!" that comes heavy with the prospect of other treats; the mouth only remembers the last mouthful and how nice that was; everything but that one little warning is gleefully screaming "one more, why not!?"
And then, a little bit later, you get sick.
One look from your mother at your juice-stained mouth and hands and she knows you chose to learn your lesson the hard way.

As it turns out, I still occasionally learn this lesson the hard way (thanks mostly to my parents' garden); and if none of this sounds familiar to you then you have probably been raised on store-bought produce and you deserve to treat yourself to an afternoon at a U-pick berry farm. Because when kids learn that first lesson (and second, and so on) they are not just learning that fruits and vegetables in excess can make you sick, they are learning that fresh fruits and vegetables can be so incredibly good that they are worth making yourself sick on. Store-bought produce varieties are bred to be durable, to ship well, to freeze well, to be pest-free and if, after all that, they end up being palatable, then huzzah for a happy coincidence; they are just not good enough to inspire a lifelong devotion to healthy-eating.
If you think for a moment, you may recall a particularly delicious piece of store-bought fruit you have had lately... go ahead, maybe it was that one unmealy apple or an orange that didn't have that weird thing with the creepy dry juice-sacs...
These are only memorable because they shine above the mediocrity of the average produce experience! It should not be momentous occasion to enjoy fruit, it should be the norm!
As a bonus now, try to recall a particularly delicious store-bought vegetable you have had recently... go ahead, I'll wait...
No? Nothing? I feared as much. And if you can, it's likely because you made a delicious dish out of those vegetables, not because of any intrinsic tastiness of the vegetables themselves.
For people who have never pulled a carrot out of the ground, brushed it on their sleeve and eaten it on the spot, eating vegetables will seem like a chore because there is no visceral connection to the flavors, textures and life of the food they are eating. Carrots become bland, packaged, merchandised products they buy out of a dimly-understood patriotic duty to their bodies. For years now, I have tossed a bag of peeled baby carrots into my shopping cart as a relatively inoffensive concession to my own health (I dunno, they're orange and make you see better, right?). This summer though, my cup (or fridge, as it were) overfloweth with carrots from the aforementioned parents' garden and from my own potted garden (yes, you can grow carrots in a pot!) and I have found myself actually eating them as a snack rather than as an obligatory addendum to a sack-lunch.
Carrots taste good! I think I knew that once, as a kid, but after I lost access to farm and garden, I slowly morphed into the baby-carrot-buying zombie here before you today. It is a revelation, replete with unknown and forgotten flavors, with subtlety and vitality. It is the satisfaction of an urge forged in malnourished ancestors, of a need to be alive and well.
I encourage everyone who has not already: plant some seeds, visit a local farm, farmers market or neighbor's garden; have your own revelation... but don't make yourself sick!
(OK, go ahead and make yourself a little sick.)