Category: Blog

(With apologies to Douglas Adams)

Every nurseryman I know got into the business because they had an affinity for plants; and therein lies one of the great paradoxes of our trade. The best plantsmen, the great plant explorers of our age and indeed past ages have had an eye for a wonderful plant but generally a head full of compost when it came to making money with them.

The artist’s eye saw the soul of the plant and instantly understood how it thrives and enhances our lives. I have walked production and test fields with such people and have seen their scanning senses pull one plant from thousands as distinctive and worthy of attention.

I have similarly had people ask me how I could pick out one small plant from thousands while scanning greenhouse benches full of similar plants. How could I pick out the one sick one?

I would answer that once you’ve seen a million healthy ones, the sick ones stand out — in an attempt to say that I had absolutely no idea how that one plant would speak to me.

Our plantsman’s reality is that we operate in “sympatico” with our plants.

There’s an instant acceptance but never-ending wonder at an emerging seed and no matter how many millions of seeds I’ve started, I confess that wonder is still there for each and every seed. It’s the delight in feeling the wonder of thousands of plants about to grow again after being snow-covered for 4 months.

It’s the delight on an early spring morning of having thousands of nursery blooms and not having to share that sensation with any living soul. Indeed, it is one of absorbing the exuberance of nature unfolding.

There are no magic words to adequately share these “nurseryman moments”, those skills, the attitude, or involvement with the plant world.

You Get It Or Not

You look at pictures in a book and you either “get it” and know you are, as Canadian author Lucy Maude Montgomery described, a “kindred spirit” or you don’t.

Your sensibilities lie elsewhere and the pictures are simply gorgeous pictures.

But if garden pictures speak to you as they speak to me — the words aren’t necessary. You understand the seed emerging, the bud unfolding and the spirit that emerges to become a player on the universe’s stage.

And in the late stages of winter, this is enough.

I have just finished renovating my office, and there are a few lessons I believe I should share with you.

• The first, is that I am a terrible judge of color in a room. This was pointed out quite firmly to me while a certain person I live with and I were in the paint department. Ahem…. she was right.
• The second, is one we all know all too well and that is that things take longer than they should. So a project I had tasked for one week grew into a three week — and counting- project.
• I am a chainsaw carpenter — close counts. Caulking and paint hide many sins.
• I am not a painter. While I have excellent hand eye coordination, I do not have fine finger coordination and masking tape is my best friend.
• I also learned that masking tape bleeds if it is not ironed onto the wall.
• I have far too many books. (My favorite book this morning is an 1891 version of John Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations”.)
• After moving all of my books and furniture out of the office, I needed a chiropractor. I was slower and smarter moving stuff back in but…
• Caulking floor trim is fraught with opportunities to make a mess. I have been told I never pass on an opportunity.
• If you get white latex paint on your jeans, you can soak the jeans and then rub like crazy. If you get it early enough it all comes out.
• I do not know where the three whiteboards and stands came from. Ditto the yoga mat that was never used and is still in its store wrapping.
• So that’s where that box was!
• My kids have brought back some very cool presents from their trips over the years. Between these and the ones they made as small children, there were some tears shed.
• I did a little work on my laptops while all of this was underway. I have a Windows system and a Mac, and I prefer the Mac. Having said that, I am delighted to be back on my big office iMac. (I have the Windows system for dictation and the Macs for everything else.)
• One really should throw stuff out rather than keep it, “just in case.”
• So that’s where X went! I found several X’s
• I’m missing one T. E. Lawrence book. It wasn’t stolen, I’ve just never bought it and this will have to be remedied. When one is moving books, one must investigate them thoroughly. Which may account for the one-week project being extended somewhat.
• My rugs from Jordan and Timbuktu will have to get along with the smaller ones from East Asia. Color clashing is fine in my office.
• Which leads me to the question, with that many interesting rugs, why did I lay a new floor?
• My history book collection is now approaching the size of my old gardening book collection. Something has to give in the next few years As I have no more space for shelving. And yes, before you ask the rest of the house is fully shelved as well.
• My Tom Swift Jr. collection only needs one more book to complete it and it really should be up in my office. As I told a friend, I could buy it from a bookstore but I’m going to find it “in the wild”. This gives me a reason to haunt old and used bookstores.
• I found stuff! Now I know where that package of o-rings for my scuba gear went. This is only one example and I’ve put all these new-found treasures in a “safe place” where I won’t lose them. The challenge of course is remembering where that damnable safe place is.
• I now firmly believe one should do this kind of cleanup exercise quite regularly.

Watch for my next update in 20 years when I do this again.

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