It is late at night when the call comes, well past midnight, but I’ve been waiting for this call for some time, and so I’ve left the phone on the table beside my bed.
Hello? I say. Yes?
Though I haven’t spoken to him in years, I recognize my brother’s voice on the other end Read More
1.
Having recently gated my garden to keep out the deer, I decide to plant something just beyond the gate so the landscape doesn’t look so bare.
Liven it up a bit, I say to myself. Give it some color.
I go to the nursery. The tag on a large purple astilbe has a picture of a deer with a red circle/slash across it.
“Deer don’t like these?” I ask the nursery employee.
He looks at the tag.
“Nope,” he says, pointing to the picture of a deer with a red circle/slash across it.
I take three of them, along with a bottle of Critter-Ridder deer repellent, just to be safe. I plant the astilbes that afternoon and give them a good dousing.
“Those look good, Dad,” says my son.
“They do,” I reply. Read More
The other day, driving to the local home center for some mulch and fertilizer, I absolutely solved the problem of gun proliferation in America once and for all. This was the morning after the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colo., and so I guess the subject was on my mind. When the traffic light turned green, I stepped on the gas and was nearly broadsided by a speeding Cockasaurus, running the red light going the other way. Read More
I’m planning a trip to my local nursery next week, just me and the nine sitting United States Supreme Court justices. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, frankly, because I have a smallish car, but Ginsburg can sit on Kagan’s lap, Sotomayor can sit on Roberts’s lap, and Thomas will ride shotgun where I can keep an eye on him. Otherwise, he’ll plow through the Doritos before we’re even out of the driveway. If they’re good, we’ll hit Five Guys on the way back—if they’re good. Still, despite the hassle, I think it will be worth it, because the nursery is a wonderful place to teach the judges about the reality of life on earth. Read More
I was working in the garden the other day when I remembered how much I hate working in the garden. I’d rather go to a concert, for God’s sake, and there are people at concerts, hundreds of them. I hate the dirt, I hate the smells, I hate the bugs, I hate the plants—holy fuck, do I hate the plants. Full sun, part sun, shade, more acid, less acid, trim, don’t trim, too much water, not enough water. They’re like old Jews at a deli. “So why do I bother?” I wondered that morning as I dug yet another hole for yet another whiny bitch of a plant that would no doubt be dead in a week. And then, that afternoon, I went to a neighbor’s pool party. Read More
It is May, and time to spray the doors and windows of my home. I trudge, unhappily, out to the garden shed. The insect repellent waits for me, but by the time I carry it back to the house, I’ve already decided I’m not going to spray the fucking doors or the fucking windows. It’s a beautiful day.
And yesterday, goddamn it, was City Day.
City Day is the day, every couple of weeks or so, that I take the train to New York City and wonder what God is waiting for. Read More
I’m not much of a gardener, but I’m an obsessive anthropomorphizer, and so I garden primarily out of guilt. In the autumn, I shudder to hear the leaves scream as they fall to their deaths; in winter, my heart breaks for the trees, trembling in the cold and wind.
Why? the trees ask. Why?
But I have no answer.
Which brings me to my houseplant—I’ll call her Flannery—a corn plant. I’ve never liked houseplants, I don’t know why. They make me angry. I am, however, a man of much irrational hatred, and only realized why houseplants infuriate me so much this past weekend, when Flannery died.
I took her in a year ago. I was in my local nursery when I saw Flannery there, in a corner beside the door, in a pathetic plastic pot, and she called out to me:
I’m young, Mister, and frightened; please don’t leave me here … Read More
You know what I hate? Flowers. I was at a dinner party recently when the conversation turned to gardening; the warm winter has people anxious to begin planting, and with spring, the beloved “Season of Birth,” just around the corner, my friend Allison (she’s not really my friend) expressed concern that the petunias around her home’s foundation would once again fail to thrive.
“Do you think,” she asked me, “it might be a soil-preparation issue?”
Well, I said to her, yes and no. Some years ago, I explained, my wife and I moved to the country, full of hope and joy at the prospect of returning to the land, of filling ourselves with that which was pure and good and natural. Of course, the very first thing we did was to get a dog. She was a beautiful Rhodesian Ridgeback pup, with dark brown eyes and adorable white feet. We named her Harley, and watched with amazement as she bonded with our young son, playing in the yard with him or just curling up, a boy and his dog, on the couch in front of the crackling fire.
The second thing we did was to get a bird feeder. Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
