doodle by andre: a postcard for the garden

APPARENTLY MRS. ANDRE’S TOMATOES succumbed to “tiny insect things that will not leave our garden alone,” we hear this week from Himself, who very sweetly shared the actual sympathy postcard he drew for Herself on the occasion of her lost tomatoes.

SOMETIMES I GET TWO VERSIONS OF A DOODLE from Andre Jordan, and he wants me to choose. And usually I can’t.

No, I have still not met Andre, though we’ve been in contact for more than a year. But we grow a little closer every week when the latest stash of doodles-in-progress arrives, and I get glimmers into the thought process that is behind them, just like I did when I read his memoir, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” (There is no better book to give your shrink; it should be on the curriculum of psychoanalytic institutes and departments of psychiatry in teaching hospitals and schools of social work, I swear. Insurance companies should mail it out to all patients using mental-health coverage, so they know they are not alone.) Some week

BESIDES OUR SOMEWHAT OFFKILTER HUMOR, Andre Jordan and I have another thing in common: We not so long ago each headed for the hills. (Wait, are there even hills in Nebraska?)

IT’S EITHER TIME TO HIT THE SLOPES, or hit the bar, Andre Jordan–or at least that’s how it looks from conditions as depicted in your latest doodle.

I’ve been asked various times this year, in interviews about my own new life, whether I’d have other contributors to this blog, which represents my first act of personal (not corporate) creative expression in far too many years.“Absolutely not,” I’d say without a second’s reflection. “This is about my voice.”How someone who five months ago was a total stranger could have me eating those words is not so easy to explain.Andre and I still have never met, with only blog comments, Skype sessions and emails forming the concrete connection, but this goes deeper:Fr

HOW MANY -PEDES DOES IT HAVE, I ASK? CENTI- OR MILLI- OR ??? All I know is that they creep me out, too, my dear friend Andre Jordan–or at least startle me when they come pedaling prehistorically in my direction out of nowhere.

I KNOW THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE LURE of the garden pulls me outdoors before I change out of my PJs, before I brush my hair, without washing my face. It’s that powerful and seductive a force, indeed, especially with the lawn greening up right now, all verdant and provocative. But I have to say, my dear Andre Jordan, I try to make certain I have my trousers on. Do I sense a pattern in your doodles, a theme of how alcohol figures into horticulture in The Garden According to Andre (and no, I don’t mean for sterilizing pruners):

SHE SERVED TURKEY AT SAID GARDEN PARTY. You ate too much.

GRAY SKIES, BABY BIRD, CAUSE MAMA DONE FLEW OFF. That’s the message of Andre Jordan’s latest–and I don’t think Papa Bird is talking about your average seasonal migration here.

If I count my blessings from 2009, I’d count Andre right up there, along with starting A Way to Garden (and now The Sister Project), getting a book contract of my own (more on that someday) and letting Jack the Demon Cat in the house to sit at my feet while I work each day.Andre’s memoir is brutal and charming and uproarious all at once, sharing as he does in his words (sometimes starting with “F”) and pictures (sometimes involving turgid body parts) the journey through life’s inconvenient truths and low tides, as the book depicts:A line drawing of a bucket labeled “Happy Pills” and beside it the caption “Hard to Swallow.”

UM, I GUESS OUR FRIEND Andre Jordan got a peek at the way we really order seeds, huh? Trouble is: I’m still stuck on Step 1, that “Bloody Brilliant Big List” thing.