SOMETIMES IT’S THE PLANT WE BOUGHT (as in “wrong plant, wrong place,” above); other times the cause of our gardener’s lament-bordering-on-shame is a little trickier, more the stuff you’d have to sort out by the 50-minute hour, on the couch. Over the years Andre Jordan, my doodling friend, has reminded me of more than just a few of my horticulturally induced regrets, including these:
SOMETIMES IT’S that we, ahem, overdid it just a tad (not that such a thing has ever happened to me).
A COROLLARY of overdoing it: when we buy more things than we can keep an eye on (especially in a dry year like this one, when you can practically hear the newly planted babies screaming across the yard for relief, and you can’t water fast or deeply enough).
I‘VE TRIED getting help; I have. Somehow, though, when that first seed catalog arrives in my mailbox, or spring springs at the garden center, I just can’t seem to control myself and I slip right back into my old ways.
I‘VE EVEN MADE LISTS and contracts with myself, promising to behave differently, to head off any possible regrets at the pass. But, no; it never quite helps–or if it does, the improvement in my bad behavior is short-lived. (Note to Andre: I do manage to wash regularly, thank you very much.)
OF COURSE, some of our garden regrets have nothing do do with plants whatsoever–unless you count the juniper berries in that third gin martini, or the agave in that margarita, or the hops in one too many beers. I regret misbehaving in all these ways, I truly do–but the likelihood of my acting differently in seasons to come? Slim to none (well, I don’t drink, but as for stopping plant excesses…).
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HE READ IT IN MY DECEMBER CHORES LIST: Make the last mowing before winter a short cut, way down low. And even though the snow fell before he got to that task, the guy in the doodle (is that you, Andre Jordan?) didn’t want to skip a single to-do I’d suggested, apparently.
I KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT DIBBERS, and this one looks perfectly fine to me. Not sure what master doodler Andre Jordan, our Thursday columnist, is talking about.
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.
I AFFECTIONATELY CALLED ANDRE JORDAN A BIRD OF A FEATHER last Thursday, when his new weekly doodle debuted here. Apparently this is the migratory Englishman-turned-Nebraskan’s response.
SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT.Andre Jordan seems to keep hoping for the best, despite a few well-documented cases of rejection (as in, loc. cit., The Girl I Love With All My Heart. Caveat emptor: Deliciously not PG!).
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
“And so I said very little,” his email continued, “and hoped (as I tend to do with my more serious doodles about depression) that people such as yourself would understand the enormous thing I did not try to say. If that makes sense?“I shall get back to my slightly passive aggressive doodling now. Ha. I am currently drawing a ladies bottom. I am as yet unsure how this will eventually become a garden doodle.”Stay tuned, dear readers. Next week promises to be a doozy. (I love my Andre emails almost as much as my Andre doodles, frankly. Well, except ones like this Quantum Physics Diagram, which actually does relate to gardening…and about 500 others.)Thanks for being Andre, Andre. And yes, of course it mak
THANK GOODNESS WE HAVE ANDRE JORDAN to warn us of the dangers all around us in this hazardous hobby of ours. I confess that even though I tried to exhibit restraint in this year’s seed orders, a few extra things have found their way into my stash.
WHAT BETTER WAY TO START OUR NEW ERA as a nation than by sowing seeds of hope? Thanks to a recent transplant to America, doodler Andre Jordan, for a perfect message for this historic week.
I was trying to repair a failed de-icer in the pool. All that’s missing from his latest doodle: the flashlight I had in one hand, and the hammer (to crack the ice and save the frogs from suffocating) in the other. (Not the same tools I’d used earlier that day to dislodge ice dams from the roof.) I repeated the hammering periodically throughout the night to protect my beloved amphibians; who needs beauty sleep, when potential princes are at risk? A girl must be versatile, well-equipped, and ever-ready.When does spring begin?Tagsandre jordan
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.