E VERYTHING IS POSSIBLE,” a dear friend I have never met keeps telling me, and all of us. “To see it, though,” he reminds, “you must first believe it.” Good advice for life, and also good advice for making a garden, no? That friend is Englishman Andre Jordan, now the mad doodler of Lincoln, Nebraska, whom this week I want to really celebrate bigtime: Andre just earned his green card, the latest whirl in a whirlwind year that included meeting and marrying the woman of his dreams, publishing a memoir, buying his first home, and adopting a dog (named Pickle).
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 weeks there are multiple versions of a doodle in my inbox, and we email back and forth or have a Skype call and figure out what we think.
Mrs. Andre gets a vote, of course, and usually we have a unanimous verdict in favor of one incarnation or another of a drawing.
I am sharing the backstory on this week’s with you, which came to me as triplets, each just slightly different (some with distinctive, perhaps English, spellings of the word “pruning,” above). What do you think? Did we choose right? Perhaps because I have had a wild year of evolution,.
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No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
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.
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?)
NO SMART-ASS COMMENTARY FROM ME TODAY, not on this one. As doodler Andre Jordan paints a very clear picture of, there is more to life than meets the eye. Shall we look a little deeper?
THIS WEEK’S DOODLE IS REALLY A POSTCARD, one to send to the beloved garden in appreciation for a year of its devoted service and joy. Thanks, Andre Jordan, for just the right thing at just the right moment–one less thing on my to-do list, now that you have “send card to garden” covered.
WE GARDENERS HAVE SPOKEN OUR FEELINGS OPENLY together here about mowing, but I guess The Andres hadn’t had the talk yet–the talk about how some lovers with macho names like Toro and Snapper are fair-weather friends. Uh-oh, the mower’s about to go into cold storage, and *she* isn’t ready for the separation.
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):
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.
APPARENTLY MANDATORY DRUG-TESTING will now be required in the arenas of the county fair and harvest festival, where our able correspondent Andre Jordan reports that the use of performance-enhancing substances is growing as rampant as crabgrass. I wonder if the rotten carrot is being held in the crisper–or the clinker–awaiting trial? Doubtful that the drug-dependent root was a match for the world-record holder, at 19 feet 1.96 inches–I kid you not.