Bringing winter inside

Are you a gardener? Great... send me a picture of what's in your fridge.

Here's ours:

I didn't post this with the purpose of showing you what particular brand of lemon juice we buy. The hotter topic for debate (at least between my wife and I) is why I have all sorts of little baggies of soil mix in the door compartment.

And, as if you were begging for it, here's a shot of those baggies when I pull them out of there:

These are seeds, early into stratification. Most are bought from specialty seed web sites, and some are from my garden. This is actually somewhat fewer seeds than last year, but the winter isn't over yet.

Now, if you think Lisa takes it personally when I take up room in the fridge door that would otherwise be devoted to condiments, you can imagine how she feels about my foray into hardwood cuttings, and the space it's taking up in the beer fridge (which, as you can see, actually has some beer in it):

The hardwood cuttings are bundled and wrapped in moist newspaper in a plastic bag. I'm trying this to propagate roses that I've otherwise found a little more challenging on softer wood.

So, why all the cold?

I'm back in the botany lab at Kwantlen this semester, learning about plant pests. In a previous semester, they taught me about vernalization. It's coming up in my spellcheck right now as if it's a word I made up on the spot. Hmmm. Vernalization. Yeah, sounds sort of made up. Here's what it means:

We live in a temperate climate. That is, most plants here are adapted to survive a pronounced difference between summer and winter. Most of the plants that I want to grow are also from a temperate climate... whether they're native to our region or not.

Now, plants can't think, but they're not dumb either. If that makes any sense at all. I mean, plants definitely don't sit around like we do, pondering the meaning of life ("I would while away the hours..."), but they're well adapted to survive, so sometimes it makes it easier to understand them if you pretend they "know" what's going on.

So, all the time during the growing season that a plant is busy having sex and making babies (seeds), it's always got in its mind that the winter will be coming. In deciduous shrubs and trees, this means they'll harden their wood, prepare dormant growth points (buds) and drop their leaves. As for the seeds, they're given stern instructions by their mothers that they're not to sprout until after winter is over.

If I want to grow these seeds, or if I want to root the hardened cuttings with dormant buds, I need to "fool" the plants by giving them their own little winter. That's the vernalization that's taking place in my fridges.

But before real (outdoor) winter is upon us, let me show off a few late blooms from my garden (a couple of weeks late now, but worth seeing all the same).

These are toad lilies (Tricyrtis hirta). Kind of an unflattering common name for such an attractive plant. It's in the lily family, I think. Here... have a close-up view:

No... seriously. Have a close look. Zoom in on the photo. Now tell me which are the sepals, and which are the petals. That's for bonus points.

What else? Good old reliable sedum ('Brilliant') is attractive over such a long season, and it's popping up in a couple of places in this picture. I'm working on getting some more interesting varieties into the garden this coming year. I have my eye on 'Elsie's Gold', but there might be something nicer at the nursery by the time I get to choosing.

I've been neglecting this blog a bit. Sorry. There's been so much going on, even now that horticulture is in the "off-season". My employer participates in all sorts of trade shows and events in the fall. I made it out to the Canwest show with the whole crew. As mentioned above, I'm also back in school. To top it off, I'm trying to spin together a website for my favourite roses. So yeah, busy. I'll get back sooner next time.

One more picture, for the road: (Photo by Nic McPhee)

This is chinese lantern (Physalis). I've had it in my garden for several years. It's a strong spreading perennial, actually, so I suppose I may always have it. Anyhow, it's made a splash in the retail garden centers recently as a fall/Halloween themed plant. Very clever. Early growth is a nice fresh upright green, with white flowers. It can be a bit scraggly as it progresses into the season, but the flowers are followed by these long lasting orange "lanterns" - husks around the fruit/seed really.

(Leigh-ann - I think I saw some of this growing in the enclosed portion of your backyard earlier this year - quite near your too-floppy smoke bush)

Why I quit my life in retail and bought magic beans instead (part 2)

"Are you a betting man, Jason?"

I'm not, and I told him so. But that didn't matter to my District Manager. He was on a roll, and he wasn't going to stop until he'd had his fun.

"How much would you bet that I can't find a wrong price on merchandise in your store?"

"I wouldn't take that bet," I tried again to demur. He was having none of it.

"But if you were to bet... how much would it be? Would you bet your job on it?"

That wouldn't be my first choice in wagers. But I guess that's kind of the point, isn't it?

Just to set the scene, this is from my time at Petsmart. The guy playing the role of my District Manager... let's just call him Bill, because that's his name...is a distinctive looking guy. Think Alfred E. Neuman, the cartoon face of Mad Magazine, but put on some glasses, add some weight, and put it all on the body of an aged football player. Here's my artist's rendition (okay, it's not much more than the real Alfred with a bit of distortion and some superimposed glasses, but it'll have to do...):

Of course, upon walking through the store, Bill did find a wrong price (or two, if I remember correctly). That's what these kinds of visits are for, and I'm convinced that the prime qualifications of the job of district manager are:

A) The desire to catch mistakes which will make store managers look a bit foolish

and

B) The uncanny ability to act on that desire

He didn't fire me. I'm not sure what he would have done if I were foolish enough to take his bet. Later in the same visit (he was frisky that day) he threatened my job from another direction. It seemed rehearsed, so I'm sure he'd used it on other managers, but I have to give him full credit for his beautifully deadpan delivery.

"Now Jason," he began slowly, "let's say we were to walk fifty feet straight out the front doors of the store."

I nodded politely to move the skewering along.

"and let's say we were to turn around, and look at the store..."

"Okay?"

"Now there would be a sign above the door, wouldn't there?"

"Yes."

"Refresh my memory... do you suppose the sign would read 'JASONsmart' or do you think it would read 'PETsmart'?"

"It would read 'PETsmart.'"

"Well how 'bout that?" he drawled a bit for emphasis. "If it did read JASONsmart, I guess you could run the store any old way you wanted, couldn't you? But since it's still PETsmart on the sign, how about we do it the way the company wants you to?"

I wasn't arguing, mind you. I was just being a straight-man for Bill's skit. But just in case I wasn't taking him seriously enough, he threw down one more zinger:

"By the way, Jason... how much do you suppose they're paying on unemployment benefits these days?"

Bill didn't dislike me. I'd be surprised now if he even remembered me. Bill was about a year away from retirement, and he'd had three Canadian stores tacked onto the northern edge of his Washington state district just out of convenience. He might have been vaguely annoyed by having to travel across the border more frequently, but my store was turning a better than expected profit, so he was happy to take a little extra bonus. He gave me a good performance review the following year, and then handed me off to an absolutely awful new Canadian district manager.

The new DM... let's just call him Daren, because that's his name... did much the same thing on his visits, except he wasn't as funny, and was a lot more mean-spirited. I can usually find something nice to say about just about anyone, but I'm really struggling here. If any of my old friends from Petsmart are reading this, maybe you could help me out. Hmmm... something redeeming about Daren...

...

Oh yeah... he once told me that he keeps a pretty nicely landscaped yard. Anyone who likes to garden can't be all bad. Oh, and he had two sons who he sometimes spoke fondly about.

But other than that, he was just an ugly, frightened little man, who did his best to manage through intimidation, which was the trend in the field management of the company at the time.

Where am I going with this? Forgive me while I digress a bit.

I wrote before, in another post, that retail could be an incredibly superficial business. At least that's been my experience. Some organizations are better than others, but there's just something structural that lends itself to this outcome:

• Most retail organizations try hard not to own anything. Their largest financial outlay is for inventory. It's bought on credit, and the whole goal of the buyer is to sell the inventory quickly, preferably before it's even paid for.
• The retail space is rented, and dressed up to suit the colors and logos of the company. The people are rented too (in a way). The staff, in general, is easily hired, and turnover is high. Investments in training are weighed against the reality that many of the staff are quite temporary anyhow.
• The retailer doesn't "make" or "grow" much of anything. If merchandise has the retailer's brand on it, it's most likely that they've paid a third party to manufacture it to specifications, and just slap a label on it. The product is only superficially connected to the retailer.
• Being a highly leveraged business, there's an emphasis on quick results. A few bad quarters is all it takes to topple a seemingly stable retailer. Even one bad quarter is enough to make the share value of publicly traded retailers drop to the floor. Which is bad for executive bonuses, which makes field management very cranky, and which makes life as a store level manager very difficult.

Now, about the only things that retailers do own outright are their "brand" and their "culture".

On the point of "Brand", I've never met a marketing person who didn't worship at the alter of "Brand". And I guess they have a point. Of the following two brands, which do you think has the image of better quality?

 or...

The analogy isn't quite apt, though. Both Ford and Apple have actually built something, and therefore the reputation for quality (or lack of it) is sort of earned. In retail, nothing is built. It's just a rented building, with rented staff, with borrowed merchandise which is, by the way, pretty similar in every way to what's being offered in any other retail outlet.

So how do the marketing guys build a "brand" (and therefore justify their existence) in retail? Well, they choose the colors on the walls, the fonts on the signage, the style and material of the shirts that the employees wear... and, of course, they advertise. If they're successful in their efforts, they create the right sentiment in customers when they see the "brand". It's all quite warm and fuzzy, really.

Despite the fact that much of this effort is conspicuously superficial, the trick is to have the customer "believe" in it. Or at least be willing to suspend disbelief. That's where "culture" comes in. And if you thought that developing a brand was a tough go, developing a culture makes it look like a cakewalk. The reason it's so important really comes down to the believability factor. It doesn't matter how well the marketing people write a slogan, or choose the proper floor tiles, or whatever else they've done, if the customer isn't, on some level, convinced by the front line staff and management that this is "real".

And in order for the staff to sell the experience to the public, the company first needs to sell the experience to the staff. They hope that this employee "culture" lends some of its reality to the brand.

I've been a true believer.

Or I've tried to be... many times, in several different retail organizations.

I remember the first time I experienced a "culture" event in retail. The retailer was Consumers Distributing. Ah, now that takes you back in time, doesn't it. Such a quaint idea. A laminated catalog. Tiny little pencils. Order desk. Pickup desk. And, oh yeah, the inevitable "Sorry, we don't have that item in stock right now".

The leadership at Consumers Distributing decided they company needed a "rebranding", and to support that, they decided to sell the staff on a new "culture". We had a big meeting. There were balloons. A new mascot was introduced. We were "OBsessed with customer service", and Oby (a mascot that looked suspiciously like a big blue ball with a drawn-on face) would lead the way!

Oby wouldn't be the last silly mascot I met in retail, nor was OBsessed my last culture event.

Consumers Distributing didn't much change the way it did business. There was a marketing campaign to try to convince customers that we really did have things in stock. We didn't. Funny how customers saw through right through that.

Another neat tactic in shaping a culture is to rename things. Dumb as that sounds, some marketing and HR people really think that renaming things will change a whole corporate culture. Here's an example:

When I first joined Petsmart, there was an initiative underway to cut labour costs. Understandable, considering their financial performance at the time. But it wouldn't do to actually call it what it was. The company went through all sorts of efforts to "brand" the cost cutting.

We're Petsmart. Pet. Smart.

We're smart. As in efficient. Everything we do, we'll do it smart.

Our new budgeting "tool": WorkSmart.

Okay, now I don't much care if they call it "Ernie". It was a reduction in hours. As much as they tried to dress it up by unveiling details about their rigorous methods to develop the budget, the hourly staff knew they were losing hours. People are pretty smart that way, pardon the pun. I have no problem with cost-cutting... but call it what it is.

A couple of years later, during another culture adjustment, it was decided that our focus should not be "work" but rather it should be the "customer". Heck, I was half expecting my old friend Oby to jump out from behind the curtain.

It was, alas, another renaming exercise. Amongst other changes, WorkSmart became CustomerSmart. Huh?

Okay, again... it's just a name. I could read the report the same way, no matter what they called it. It just puzzled me a bit that someone thought this renaming exercise was worth doing.

Another year or so later, Petsmart decided to rename its customers. "Customer" was too generic. It didn't imply a relationship. Now, our customers were to be referred to in all communications as "Pet Parents". So now what with the labour report, "PetParentSmart"? Whah-tev-er.

But Petsmart wasn't done yet. In my final Arizona conference for Store Directors (that was their language for "Managers") the President unveiled the ultimate renaming exercise: to great fanfare, he announced that Petsmart would now become PetSmart.

Did you catch that? There's a new capital letter in there. Honest, it makes a big difference. No longer would there be any nagging ambiguity over whether we were a mart for pets. No, we were unquestionably smart about pets. 

This would be unveiled with an ad campaign. Hundreds of stores would have new signage installed. It was to be the greatest single moment in the history of pet retail. But first, we were given the mission of going back to our stores and sharing the good news.

We, the Store Directors, had been asked to do this before. The previous two conferences had been devoted to sending home a "culture of fun", and a "culture of people" (people are the HEART of our business, they had earnestly vowed, handing us little LED lit plastic beating hearts to demonstrate their commitment).

Back in the real world, nothing had changed. This sort of gets us back to the top of the posting, with Bill snidely instilling fear into the store-level managers. He was followed by an even more vicious little man (Daren) who was, I'm told, completely eviscerated in a floor walk with the incoming Regional Manager. He proceeded to up the ante by publicly bullying and ridiculing those managers who he had a hand in firing. This is right around the time where I went to find a new job. Still retail, but nowhere near as ugly a scene.

But so much for people being the "heart of the business", eh? So much for a culture of fun.

That's the problem with rebranding, and with culture building exercises. Both are often code for slapping on a new coat of paint, and then doing business the same old way. This is particularly true because the core of operations level managers (District and Regional Managers) are recruited from elsewhere in retail. They've seen all this before at Zellers, or Canadian Tire, or wherever else they started their careers. What they know for certain is that they can get strong financial results from leaning heavily on the store management team. They also know that whatever cultural initiative comes down from marketing or HR, it's likely to fade away over the course of the next year. Perhaps even by the next quarterly financial results conference call.

That's what did me in, in the end. It's probably just me, but after twenty years of it, I was beginning to feel a bit dishonest about it. Every time I saw them break out the balloons, I began to dread the upcoming job of selling a new initiative or culture to my staff. 

An amusing side-note: after the last blog posting I wrote on retail, I got into a conversation with my cousin Greg, who is a manager in the grocery business. One day, while doing a floor walk with a field manager, he was told (with a straight face, mind you) "Greg, never underestimate the power of balloons!"

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Why I quit my life in retail and bought magic beans instead (part 1)

Have a look at what I almost built... I call it "The Beast":

And I say "almost" built, because it's not quite finished. It'll be a DIY propagation bench. When complete, it'll have a poly cover to keep in humidity, bottom heat, a nifty controller for the heater and humidifier, and I'll probably put on some car decals and racing stripes to make it look like it can go real fast.

The project has pushed the boundaries of my building skills (it's 8 feet long exactly so that I didn't have to cut the boards, if that gives you any idea). It's also stretched the budget a bit, so the controller will have to wait a paycheck or two. Inside, you can see my collection of assorted trays and humidity domes, which were spread all over the room before. The goal is to eliminate them... and their darned height limits... so that I can take taller cuttings in a more controlled environment. Cross your fingers for me!

My wife has been understanding, or at least tolerant, of this project. She's done that a lot for me this year. We rang in the new year knowing that I'd quit my well-paid longtime career in retail. On Jan 2nd, I'd start a new job as an entry-level supervisor for a wholesale nursery. It was another decision that would stretch the budget (or rather, shrink it), and there was no assurance of success.

So, why did I do it?

Why did I quit my comfortable (indoor) job in retail, and buy magic beans instead?

Please allow me to start from the end, and work my way back to the beginning. The beginning, of course, is that retail wasn't right for me. Or, I wasn't right for retail. Or both. I'll cover that territory in my next posting (which I'm quite excited about, actually... you'll have to see how I integrate a picture of Alfred E. Neuman into my rant about retail).

That realization, however, took place a few years ago, and while important to the topic, it isn't really what made my decision. I could have spent the other half of my working life comfortably dissatisfied with retail. So what changed? Why now?

Four funerals.

Last year, I attended the funerals of four family members, and what I learned about them changed my outlook on life. Now, normally, in my self-deprecating sort of way, I'd give you an excuse to exit my blog right now, before you get squicked by all my icky introspection. Not this time. In fact, I forbid you to stop reading. These people were worth knowing. I couldn't possibly do them justice in the short length of this blog posting, but trust me when I say that the lessons I took from them are worth hearing about.

It was the first funeral of last year that kicked my butt. It was for my niece, Ashley. The other three funerals were for older relatives, who had lived long enough to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I'll miss them, of course... I've spent a lot of time thinking about them... but Ashley's death spun me off balance, and a fair bit more than that.

Even now, I have difficulty putting my thoughts into writing. I feel self-conscious, in a way, because I don't feel like it's my story to tell. But I will write about the place she has in my life, and if you haven't done so already, please read through her mother's blog. It's a but gut-wrenching at times, I'll admit, but wholly worth reading.

When I met my wife, Lisa (who wasn't my wife at the time, of course), the first event I attended with her family was Ashley's fifth birthday party. Lisa had been living with her sister's family when Ashley was born, and I could see instantly how close a relationship there was between niece and aunt. On later visits with my soon-to-be in laws, I have to admit that I would often sidestep my awkwardness in social situations (what... me, socially awkward? ) by hanging out with the kids - inventling little games to play with them, and just goofing around. Adult relationships are more difficult. Kids have a way of cutting through all the bull.

Just like that, Ashley and her sisters made me into an instant uncle. For that, even if she hadn't matured to be such an exceptional person, she would always have held a special place for me.

I was transferred to Ontario, and I took Lisa along with me. It was one of those things I did for the sake of my retail career. I have good memories of Ontario, don't get me wrong. But being away from the family was really hard, and it eventually became the deciding factor in quitting that job and coming back west.

Ashley matured to have characteristics I probably wouldn't have predicted. She loved animals and nature, and not just as a passing interest. I had managed a large pet store for several years after returning to BC, and I can't tell you how many young people came to work (or to volunteer, in the adoption centre) with a "love for animals" but quickly changed their tunes when they had to clip the nails on an American Eskimo, or spent a day changing litter boxes. With Ashley, her conviction grew steadily over the years I knew her, without any kind of fanfare about it. It was something she felt strongly about, and no amount of discomfort could dissuade her from a good trip into the wilderness, or from taking care of animals.

I'm not sure anyone would have predicted her spirituality, either. It's not like the adults in the family pushed her in this direction... least of all myself. Until recently, I'd have called myself chronically undecided. If I'm reading it right, I'd say her immediate family was along the lines of supportive of Ashley's move towards faith, but that it was her leadership that really tied the family into the church.

It was that kind of leadership that I've heard about from people who knew Ashley in all parts of her life. In friendships. In school. In sports. Ashley seemed, over time, to develop a toughness and resolve that I think is rare to find in people, particularly people her age.

She carried that toughness into her fight with cancer, as I'm told the medical staff at Children's Hospital can attest to. In fact, all of her qualities - leadership, kindness, resilience, faith - seemed to be exactly what was required every step along the way of her struggle. That "preparedness" is a tough thing to address, really. I would never begrudge anyone of religious faith who loved Ashley (and there were many) to pose the question to God: why? Why would she be meant for this? I'd never begrudge them the right to be dissatisfied with any answer delivered from the pulpit.

For me, it was vey different, and maybe had the opposite effect. I haven't had any real faith for years. I still struggle, I suppose. But for me, this apparent "preparedness" seemed to speak to a purpose - a purpose unknown to me, for sure, but a purpose nonetheless. If Ashley had not become such an exceptional leader, and developed her character and convictions as young as she did, she would never have had the opportunity to have the impact she did. She died at sixteen years old, having spent over a year battling cancer.

This is the lesson I learned from Ashely (of several) that had most impact on my own decision to finally take the leap and move on from my comfortable life in retail. Ashley didn't have much time, but she accomplished a great deal, it seems to me. I've had plenty of time, but I've been reluctant to commit to a new direction. Enough of that! It had to change.

The other three funerals, although quite different because they were held in honour of older relatives, led to some surprisingly similar conclusions.

Mike Fitzgerald was my wife's stepfather. He was extremely bright, by way of his undying curiosity about the world, and his meticulous attention to detail, which he carried through to every topic he chose to learn. I met him later in his life - one of many great people I've known only by virtue of having shacked up with the right girl. Everyone who knew him in his younger years described for me a man who was driven and committed to his work as a geologist... not only for a living (he lived quite modestly for a man of his eventual means), but because he loved it. It was undoubtedly what he was meant to do.

That's impressive, really. From a young age, he studied hard, worked hard, even played hard. I'm not saying he didn't make mistakes, or have failures in his life, but on the day of his funeral, the picture I took from the people who knew him best was of a man who was unafraid. He wasn't afraid to love the people around him, and to tell them so. He wasn't afraid to learn new things, travel, and take risks. There are a lot of qualities I'd like to emulate from Mike, but his commitment and lack of fear stand out for me as a lesson worth learning.

The second elderly relative to pass last year was my wife's grandmother, Violet Carswell. Her life is interesting to me because at a certain point, she just decided to do it her own way. I don't know much about her early life, but I know that at a certain time, she was trying hard to raise her children, but was in a marriage that wasn't working. In an era where being a single mom was not as accepted an option, she took the hard choice, and ended the marriage. Tough lady.

I learned that she later took up other new challenges. She became an author of poetry, a competitive dancer, took up travel... all these new endeavors that could have easily never happened if she had just kept living in a relationship that wasn't working, and if she hadn't taken matters into her own hand. This was the Violet Carswell I met in her later years. She came across as tough and independent, and always seemed to have some new project or challenge to attend to. I guess the lesson I took is that it's never too late for a change. It's okay to start over... as many times as you need to get it right.

The last of the four funerals I attended last year was for Willi Kaufmann, my grandfather. This man was a risk taker. He was born and raised in Switzerland. As an adult, he became convinced that the life mapped out for him in Switzerland would be unrewarding, so he left. Why Canada? Why not? I can't imagine what kind of a leap that must have been, to come to a country where he didn't speak the language, and didn't have a job or family waiting for him. He struck out on his own, in a big way.

And strike out he did... a few times in fact. Willi tried a number of business ventures, and some were outright failures. But Willi was a hard worker, and there was no quit in him. His successes came later. He opened a billiard hall - named, of all things, "Willi's Billiards". Here, his tenacious character was rewarded, but not without sacrifices. He told me about a stretch in his business where he worked 20 hour days on his own, because he couldn't afford to hire staff. To my good fortune, another of his successes was his late-in-life marriage to my grandmother. He became a grandfather many more times in my family, and a great-grandfather as well. I had the benefit of his association and wisdom for more than twenty years. The lesson he taught me came straight from his lips... not just in viewing his life in retrospect. He encouraged me a number of times to take risks, and not to be afraid of failure.

So there you have it. Aside from having my ass handed to me a few times last year, I was convinced to take some time and reflect on these exceptional lives. My respect for these people was never dimished by the things they failed at, but was enhanced by their strength, convictions, fearlessness. There was Ashley, who shook my agnosticism, and made me marvel at the amount she was able to accomplish, and the leadership she showed in her short life. Mike demonstrated what could be accomplished in a life with commitment, and without fear. Violet, in her firece independence, showed that it wasn't too late to change directions and start something new. Willi taught me the value of taking big risks, even if they ended in some failures.

(Despite which, I hope my current risks aren't headed in the direction of failure)

Okay, I asked you to give me some time to tell you about these people, and thank you for doing so. Next blog post, I'll amuse you with a few anectodes from the world of retail management, and maybe even dish a bit on some of my previous employers. We'll see... I'll leave you with a picture (non-gardening related, I'm afraid) from my summer. My girls at Hayward lake. Yes, weekends off with the family does have its advantages.

Crispy sunny days

Working outdoors in the hot sun requires a hat, some sunscreen, and lots of water. This being my first year with a real life outdoor job, I had the opportunity to learn the lesson a number of ways. The first was when my wife just plain out told me: "Wear a hat, put on some sunscreen, and drink lots of water".

I've never liked wearing a hat. Plus, for some of the vehicles around the nursery, I'm required to wear a helmet, so I wasn't eager to be switching back and forth between hat and helmet all day. So I ignored that bit of advice.

Sunscreen, on the other hand is just an "ick" factor thing. I don't like to feel greasy. I don't like when dirt and dust stick to my lotioned up skin. So I ignored the second bit of advice too.

The water thing I tried to be good about. I just didn't realize how much water I would really need.

The crew I'm supervising these days is made up of four guys from India. When I told them "looks like it'll be a hot one today" they laughed at me, and reminded me that I had never experienced the kind of heat they were accustomed to in India. Fair enough. However, for the kind of work we're doing these days... heavy physical work, it's plenty hot. It wasn't long before even they were slowing down from the heat.

"You need to wear a hat," the de-facto leader of my work crew reminded me part way through that first day.

He was right, of course. I was squinting and flushed from the sun on my face.

"You'll cook your brain without a hat," one of the other supervisors on the nursery advised me later.

I decided to relent, and find a hat. Even if I could tough out the heat, I wasn't going to withstand the opinions of my coworkers, who would fairly regard me as foolishly stubborn to not wear a hat while working in the hot sun.

I think you can guess how I learned the sunscreen lesson. Yes, along the lines of how one would place tinfoil on the tips of a turkey's wings while cooking, it really is wise to get some sunscreen onto the tips of your ears before they become extra crispy.

As for water, I early on volunteered to bring some water out for my work crew, who were working in an area of the nursery where it was a bit of a distance from drinking water. I brought it in smaller containers at first, but I found they went through it pretty quickly in the heat. By mid-week, I was bringing it in a 20 litre container, and still had to refill it once during the day. Clearly, it takes a fair amount of water to keep hydrated while working hard on a hot summer day.

I probably should have just listened to my wife the first time around on all three accounts. That's one lesson I seem endlessly able to resist learning.

When I came home on Wednesday, the plants in my yard also had a thing or two to say about shade and water. My tomatoes were so wilted I would have bet money they were goners. Sorry, I should have taken pictures. As is, the pictures I'm about to post actually show my garden in pretty good condition. A bit of water and a cooler weekend was all it took to allow most of my plants to recover.

This is a hybrid china/gallica rose 'Cardinal de Richelieu', complemented by the blue flowers of a delphinium, and the leaves of an iris and Baptisia australis. This rose isn't completely spotless from disease, but it has a gracefully spreading habit, and look at that color! Reddish to begin, but deepening to purple with age. Have a look at all those developing rose buds in the the centre of the frame. This rose isn't done with putting on a show yet.

This is hardly a great feat of photography, I'll admit. I almost hit delete upon download, but then I noticed the blue clematis flower suspended above the scene, and figured it at least gave a different sort of view of the backyard. The subject of this photo was supposed to be the white Rosa rugosa 'Alba" in the foreground, not the monstrous green swing set in the centre of the frame.

(The swing set, BTW, was snuck back there in a daring nighttime operation by my wife and undisclosed accomplices. She claimed at the time that is was there for exactly one year - this was couple of years back. I think she sometimes feels bad about it, and lets me get away with a little more clutter in the garden room and back deck than she otherwise would tolerate, so I'm keeping my mouth shut.)

If you zoom on the photo a bit, you'll see that there's still a fair bit of colour left in the beds around this monstrosity. These are the flowers that haven't yet fried in the summer sun.

One last photo:

'Graham Thomas' - yes, Mr. Austin knows how to breed a nice rose!

Stay tuned for icky introspection, for my next blog post "Why I quit my life in retail and bought some magic beans instead (part 1)".

Weeding and other garden snobbery

Some people weed their Facebook friends the way I weed out plants in the garden. These "friends" are added in a moment of inattention, or maybe it was just a miscalculation about how much "space" they'd take up. Perhaps no one realized just how obnoxious these friends could be until they're popping up every 37 seconds as a fan of 'something stupid someone wrote and decided to make into yet another stupid facebook fan page'. Or maybe they just posted a link to their garden blog one too many times!

Whatever the reason, at least getting unfriended on Facebook is a relatively painless process. If you're not paying close attention (that would definitely be me), you might not even know it's happened to you. You're more likely to hear about it when it happens to someone else... I saw on a friend's status update a while ago that she had done some weeding, and something along the lines of "if you're reading this, congratulations! You made the cut!"

Getting unfriended in my garden is a somewhat more brutal experience. Unlike in the electronic world, some plants do not go gentle into that good night (a literary reference I'm not too proud to admit I would have never have summoned up if I hadn't watched Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School"). Some plants put down deep taproots, like kniphofia, or yucca. Others have runners and stolons and other bits and pieces that break off when you pull them, which allows them to reappear again...and again...and again.

I'd rather not spend this blog entry reminiscing over the battles I've had trying to get rid of ivy, lamiastrum and morning glory. If you've been gardening long enough, you've already had a chance to battle one of these beasts yourself. There isn't much to say about it that doesn't involve the heavy use of expletives. What I'd rather do is write on the reasons some of these plants are invited into our gardens in the first place, and the reasons they eventually become unwelcome.

In this picture, you see snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum) duking it out with periwinkle (Vinca minor). Cerastium looks nicer with now, with the white flowers, but I had an earlier picture - I didn't post it - where the periwinkle showed off it's blue/violet flowers equally well. If I'd stretched the angle a bit, I might have fit in the viciously competitive dead nettle (Lamiastrum galeobdolon). Yes, I know you zone out when I put botanical latin in here. Truth be told, I mostly do it to annoy readers, so mission accomplished!

These plants aren't unattractive. Even the variegated dead nettle (despite it's name) would be a decent looking plant if you weren't aware of its desire for world domination. That's the reason these strongly competitive plants are invited into the garden in the first place. And there's nothing wrong with it, I suppose... unless your plan for that area of the garden changes (good luck!) or you plant them near other plants you care about.

That's my first category of unwanted garden friends: The bad guest

They'd be weeds, if you didn't buy them in a little pot and plant them yourself. Some to watch out for: ivy, morning glory, comfrey, bugleweed, lamiastrum, snow-on-the-mountain (Aegopodium), mint, bamboo, loosestrife. That's not a complete list, of course... and your tolerances will vary. I love the sweet woodruff in my front yard, but I might not feel the same way if I grew it in a shadier situation, and it really took over. Apparantly, I've been willing to live with the periwinkle and cerastium - but not the dead nettle. I've declared war on that one.


BTW, some of these plants are so aggressive that they can pose a risk to natural ecosystems. Check out the website of the Invasive Plant Council of BC if you want to do something about it.

Now, you can't feel bad about getting rid of "the bad guest"... one way or another, the plant earned your disapproval by its own behaviour. It is funny, though, how the relationship with this plant changes over time.

From: "This is kind of nice..."
To: "Neat, that filled up all the bare space in the garden."
To: "Hey, didn't I used to have a lawn?"
To: "Okay, maybe it's time to get rid of this stuff."
To: "Who the $%^& planted this #$#%$ing crap in the first place? I'll stop this stuff from coming back, if it's the last &*(%^ing thing I do!"

The other kind of plant that becomes a victim of my garden snobbery, I actually feel a little bad about. This plant is: The neon tetra

Okay, you didn't work with me at Petsmart (probably), so I'll make myself a little more clear. Some fish, like a neon tetra, are just so common that you kind of get sick of looking at them. There's not much wrong with them, really, except that they're too common. Once you realize that everyone in the world has them (or at least *has* had them), they're just not that interesting.

I snapped a shot of the rose 'Bonica' in my backyard a couple of days ago. I could have taken a picture of Bonica just about anywhere around town (and with many more flowers open). The local gas station... the dentist's office... roadside plantings... this rose is everywhere, and deservedly so. It's tough, reliable, and covered in attractive flowers for a good portion of the summer. It looks good in mass plantings or as a single plant.

Bonica is nice enough, actually, that I probably won't ask it to leave. But there's nothing exciting about this rose, because I see it everywhere I go. It's a mild case of "familiarity breeds contempt".

Inevitably, fish hobbyists either lose interest in their tank, or they move on to something more interesting and perhaps more difficult to find and keep than neon tetras. Gardeners are the same way. On the bright side, if they choose something like Bonica, and then later lose interest in the hobby, they'll still have an attractive and relatively trouble-free shrub in the yard.

If you're new to gardening, don't let this put you off of some the tried and true plants you'll find at Wal-Mart of Costco. Dig in a few shasta daisies, or a mophead hydrangea, or whatever rhododendron they have a thousand of. There's nothing wrong with it. Later on, you might feel a pang of guilt when you decide that these plants, as dependably landscape-worthy as they are, just lack the excitement factor you're looking for.

I'm sure people get unfriended on facebook for the same reason. It doesn't make you a bad person. Honest.

Learn about the family

Despite the topic I've chosen to write on, I'm not a big fan of genealogy. I don't know how many times I've had this conversation, where an older relative implies that I might be distantly related to Billy the Kid, or Abraham Lincoln, or the second cousin of a former chef for the King of Belgium or something.
Is it supposed to mean something to me? Even if true, is my tenuous distant relationship to someone noteworthy from history supposed to give me reason to feel that I'm special?

And, by the way, if you go back far enough -- and it's really not even that far -- everyone is related to everyone. Heck, we're all hominids, right?

I suppose it's all in good fun, but if I'm looking for something useful in genetic information, it'd be best to look at something much more specific (like the history of heart disease or breast cancer in the last couple of generations of my family), or much more general. It's probably more useful to know what I have in common with other humans, other primates, other mammals, and even with animals going right back to starfish and sponges than it is to track down the exploits of some distant relative who fought in the battle of 1812.

Until I took some courses in plant identification, I hadn't really applied the same logic to members of the greener kingdom. But every time I learned a plant, the profs insisted that I also learn the family. Rosaceae. Ranunculaceae. Ay ay ay!

The reason, of course, that they insist on students learning all of this botanical latin is that there are family characteristics - things in common between members of the family. These common traits are useful in identifying unknown plants, but also in decisions on how to use and combine plants.

So in this post, I'll go through a few of the more common plant families in the garden. You might decide to bug out right here, but then you wouldn't learn anything interesting about the stems of members of the mint family, or the reason why you don't find members of the buttercup family in many soup recipes.

First, meet the bean family, Fabaceae:

But wait... those look like branches. This is Cercis occidentalis, a bonafide member of the bean family. Many plant families include annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees. They can include tender and hardy plants. So, in other words, individuals within a family can seemingly have very little in common with each other. Look closer (especially at the flowers) and you'll find the family resemblance.

Being kind of an amateur, I find myself personifying the families a bit - probably as a device to jog my memory. I think of the bean family as a hardworking clan.

You'll find the Fabacaea family slaving away in the poorest soils, improving it by enlisting bacteria to harvest atmospheric nitrogen. You'll find these plants in some of the toughest environments... from lupins growing in high alpine areas, to mesquite trees surviving in the desert by sending down a deep taproot.

It's hard to fault the bean family for being invasive. Rampant vines like wisteria and kudzu are just doing their jobs - and extremely succesfully!

Of course, you'll find regular old garden variety beans in the family, along with peas, peanuts, and the industrious soybean, which is hard not to find on your food labels, in one form or another.

To continue with the personification of plant families, I'll say this: if the bean family is quietly industrious, the rose family is full of show-offs.

Here's a picture of Spirea x. 'Goldflame' from my garden. That's bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) in the foreground. Even in early leaf, it's easy to see the family tendency to grab attention. Whether it's a shrub rose, so heavy with flowers it can hardly keep it's canes off the ground, or a cherry tree fully obscured by a cloud of pink blossoms in the spring, members of Rosaceae don't do anything without making a fuss about it.

So many of our fruit and ornamental plants are from this family, it's easy to plant a whole garden without much family diversity without realizing it: Plums. Apples. Saskatoons. Hawthorn. Cotoneaster. Lady's Mantle. Strawberries. Raspberries. Almonds. Ninebark.

While the himalayan blackberry is definitely grabbing up more than its share of real estate in these parts, it's hard to stay mad at a plant which colours my girls faces purple with a prolific crop of berries every summer.

If the bean family works hard, and the rose family struts its stuff, meet one of the bad boys of the plant world: Solanaceae.

Deadly nightshade. Solanum dulcamara.This is a common weed in our area, and as you could guess from the name, it's a tad on the toxic side. I'm using the image (under creative commons license) from a pest management website, IPM Images.Good site, BTW, for information on plant pests of all sorts.

So which garden plants are from the nightshade family. Oh, how about tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants? On the ornamental side, this family produces petunias, daturas and chinese lantern plants.

And just to cement the bad-boy image, this family includes tobacco as well.

Why would we eat or smoke products from a plant family which produces toxic alkaloids? I won't speak to the smoking bit, but on the food side, domesticated members of the nightshade family have been selectively bred to reduce or remove the toxins from the parts we eat. So you can enjoy your spicy hot chicken wings with all the hot pepper sauce you want... and aside from perhaps a little indigestion, you probably won't come away with serious health consequences.

Despite the bad-boy image I'm slapping on the nightshade family, it has proven to be very useful to man. In addition to the food plants I've mentioned, members of this family have been used extensively in medicine.

The toxins, I've read, help to defend the plants in this family from herbivory. Another plant family that I'll discuss here also has a special way of defending itself: the mint family does it with aromatic oils.

This is a picture of bee balm (monarda) - the photo is by Keith Haessly. Bee balm is a member of the mint family. Every time I handle this plant at work, I'm hit in the face by its minty smell. Okay, I promised to say something (semi) interesting about the stems of mint family members. Look at the photo. Imagine that you're taking the stem below the flower between your thumb and forefinger. Now, if you tried to roll the stem along your thumb, you'd find that it's not round, but square - which you can just about see in the photo.

That stem being square in the cross-section is a characteristic I use to identify members of the family. Most also have a strong scent as well, although it's not always overtly "minty".

Many herbs are in the mint family. There's basil, oregano, rosemary, lemon balm, lavender, hyssop, sage, thyme, savory - just about the entire spice rack. In the way that the rose family is showy to the eyes, the mint family is showy to the nose and taste buds.

A couple of interesting things to know about using mint relatives in the garden:

1) The fact that they're so aromatic actually helps to keep down pest insect populations.
2) Most, but not all, spread rapidly below ground. Unless you contain them, they can really take over in the garden. Now if you happen to be looking for a plant to take over some empty space (and crowd out the weeds) this can be a very good thing. If you've placed it in an alpine garden, right next to your prized gentians, well...

Now, so far, every plant family I've mentioned has been fairly useful to humans. They include some major food crops, herbs, medicinal plants, and they include plants that look great in the garden as well. The fact that these plants are such good neighbors to humans has secured their places in our farms and gardens. We breed them, we tend them, and wherever humans have settled, these plants are with us.

(On an aside, author Michael Pollan has an interesting clip on TED where he looks at these human/plant relationships - from the plant's point of view. Are we using them, or are they using us?)

I wanted to mention one more plant that isn't quite of the same character. The buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, doesn't really pander to human needs the way these other families have. If I'm going to lend a character to the family, I'd say that the buttercup clan is selfishly indifferent to the needs of the human race.

This is a picture of autumn monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii) coming up in my back garden. Actually, it's a lot taller now, but I haven't had a chance to write for a while. I chose to show this plant because the leaves actually look a lot like those of a common buttercup - if you cock your head to the left a bit and squint - c'mon people, work with me here! The flowers don't look much like a buttercup, but that's another story.

There are no important food crops from buttercup relatives, primarily because they'd likely kill you. Just about the entire family is poisonous to humans and livestock.

In the garden, buttercup family members are strong competitors. Some, like columbine, self-seed readily and pop up everywhere. Some, like clematis, scramble up through and over other plants. I have a Clematis montana which is currently working hard at killing an alder tree in my back yard, pulling down entire branches under the weight of its leaves. Some, like western bleeding heart (Dicentra exima) spread aggressively underground when they find a spot they like.

Members of this family are not known as particularly good companion plants. They like a good rich soil, but will apparently kill off soil improving bacteria to keep competitors from the bean family from moving in.

Selfishly indifferent. But pretty. Members of this family make up some of the more attractive garden plants. There are delphiniums, bleeding hearts, anemones, hellebores, trollius, meadow rue, and the ever-so-striking cimicifuga.

There are loads of other important garden plant families, but I need to stop. To make another family analogy, it's a bit like making the guest list for a wedding - difficult to know where to stop. If I write about the sunflower family (Asteraceae), I really should include the carrot family (Apiaceae) - but if I include the carrot family, the mustard family (Brassicaceae) deserves a mention.

If you're really into gardening, though, and you haven't given much attention to the plant families, I'd really encourage you to learn about a few of them. If you don't want to jump in and take a plant ID course, there are still a number of other good resources out there. Some of the better gardening books list the family name right next to the latin name of the plant. Or throw some of your favourite plants onto wikipedia, and then click through to the family (usually in the first line of the plant description).

Okay. Done. Sorry it's been a while since I posted last. I was trying to survive spring shipping season for my first year in a wholesale nursery. I'm happy to report that I'm still employed, still married to a very patient girl, and I'm finally (beginning) to catch up on my weeding.

Eat your garden

Eat from a plant in your front yard. I dare you. How do you like them hedging cedars now?

Maybe I'm being unfair: it's too early in the season. Ask yourself this: at any time throughout the year, is there anything edible produced in your front yard?

How about the back yard? Okay, there's a better chance that you have a fruit tree tucked in back there somewhere. Do you have any sort of vegetable garden? Good job if you do.

I read an article recently that talked about the decline of the home vegetable garden - something like 70% in the last 20 years. Now, I'm not going to get all hung up on statistics, but that sort of reinforces my own impression... that while many in my parent's generation had a small vegetable garden, you'd really have to go back to my grandparent's generation to see really serious backyard vegetable plots.

That's too bad. But before I get on my high horse, let me admit that the closest thing I've ever had to a vegetable garden is sitting in a tray at my patio door right now, waiting for a bit better weather before they take to the outdoors. Here's a picture of my tomato seedlings:

I wasn't drawn to gardening by the idea of growing my own food. Don't get me wrong, I do have quite a few edible plants in my yard. Blueberries. Strawberries. Currants. Gooseberries. But previous to this year, they earned their place in my garden by other virtues, with edible fruits as only a nice bonus.

It wasn't until I enrolled at Kwantlen's school of horticulture that my attitude changed.

There are some very bright professors at Kwantlen. A few in particular have impressed me greatly, and I'd place them amongst the brightest people I've ever known. So here's what got me thinking:

a - These guys are extremely bright
b - They're experts in food production and landscape plants
c - They see a problem with how the residential landscape is being used today

Now, I don't want to put words in their mouths, so I'll stop right there. It was enough to get me thinking, and reading, and it was enough to convince me that I really want to grow some of my own food.

So, back to what I already grow:

 
In the backdrop of these emerging hostas is one of my blueberry bushes. It fits right into the landscape, with golden leaves in the early spring, attractive white bell-shaped flowers later on, followed by a load of berries, and then the leaves turn orange and red in the fall. If you zoom in a bit, you can probably see the airy blue flowers of Brunnera macrophylla too.

Who could ask for a more useful plant in the landscape?

Here's another edible plant that works great in the garden:

The plant in the foreground is a woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca. The one in the background is a big-root geranium, Geranium macrorhizum. I have these woodland strawberries popping up all over the place in my front yard now. They make a great groundcover plant, with glossy, healthy green foliage. The berries are a nice treat while working in the garden, and they give the kids an excuse to join me for a while weeding.

Attractive plants like these make it easy to find an excuse to put edibles into your garden. It's a little harder to explain to the wife why I'd like to grow a whole ton of good king henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus) in the back yard:

It has it's visual appeal, I suppose, but it also could be taken as looking, perhaps, just a little bit - ahem - weedy. Like a little version of pigweed - and it doesn't help that the two are closely related. The selling point is that the plant is a traditional potherb, with the young leaves and shoots tasting much like spinach. It's also a perennial, unlike many of the vegetables you'd normally grow in the garden.

During the winter (and very early spring) I go into a bit of gardening withdrawal. Right when I'm at my most vulnerable, the seed catalogs arrive, and I usually end up going a little overboard. This year, I had edible plants on my mind, and here's a partial list of what I've got growing or on the way:

Lemon balm, borage, hyssop, scarlet runner beans, welsh onions, Egyptian walking onions, hamburg parsnips, Manchurian cherry bushes, licorice, Chinese artichoke, goji berry, goumi fruit, pawpaw, chinese blueberry, hardy kiwi, Japanese plum yew, nut pine.

My enthusiasm far exceeds my yard space, and if anyone I know wants some seedlings (and if you're willing to listen to me prattle on about food sustainability) let me know.

Roses and retail

I read this quote a while back, "Sooner or later, every gardener comes around to roses". I might not have the quote exactly right, but something tells me it was from author Christine Allen. Most everyone has a turn at retail too, and in this post, I'll write about both roses and retail. So if you're not interested in the one topic, hopefully it'll be worth reading about the other.

Let me start by saying that I don't love every rose. Some are more garden-worthy than others, and the best of them aren't always the ones that take up the most space at your local garden center. But why? Why doesn't the best plant always produce the most sales?

Because retail can be incredibly superficial, perhaps even in my beloved garden centers. This statement could be applied to sales in general, but since I've spent a lot of time in retail, I'll limit my comments to what I know.

Take the famous example of the 'Peace' rose. Here's a picture:

Nice picture, and definitely beyond my skills as a photographer. It was taken from a flickr user audreyjm529, who shared it for others to use, so long as they give credit. Thanks muchly.

It's a nice looking rose too, on its best days. I don't own it anymore, though - I shovel pruned it. I found it to be susceptible to disease, the flowers faded too quickly, and I didn't much like the overall look of the shrub. I won't argue much about its merits in the garden, but there's no question that it's been an incredibly successful rose commercially.

Did this rose deserve this level of commercial success? I don't know. One thing that seems to be commonly agreed upon, though, is that it's unlikely to have been as successful if it were sold under it's original name: Madame A. Meilland. This rose was the beneficiary of a certain amount of marketing genius, which had the rose rebranded as 'Peace' just in time to commemorate the ending of World War II. It's a decision that has carried it through the decades, and I would be surprised if this rose were not available in every Wal-Mart in North America each spring for the rest of my natural life.

Have a look at another rose, 'Earth Song':

This one's my photo, so don't judge the rose by the photographer. This rose, bred by Dr. Griffith Buck in 1975, is un-freakin-stoppable. It has large, attractive flowers all season, on a vigorous plant and it doesn't require any kind of spraying to keep healthy (a requirement in my garden).

Now, why don't you find 'Earth Song' in any of those cute little Wal-Mart rose boxes in early spring? Does the rose have some failing that I've missed? Or is it just that a rose bred by a reasearcher at Iowa State Univeristy, in a program designed to develop disease resistance in roses, lacks the wow factor to anchor any amount of retail space.

(But wait... 'Earth Song'... isn't that a newly released song from the late Michael Jackson? Maybe good ol' Dr. Buck could have his day in the sun too, if only some clever marketer could make the right pitch.)

That's the retail climate we have. The merits of the product are sometimes secondary. It's more important that a product has a story to tell. Which brings me to this:

Okay, I didn't take this picture either (obviously), but the way I understand it, it's considered fair use to put it in my blog for the purposes of making commentary. So here's my commentary: what the heck is the Sham-wow doing on the shelves at my previous employer, Staples?

Seriously. I'm not picking on Staples. They were very good to me as an employer. I still have a lot of friends who work there. But I have to question, why they risk their reputation (or do they call it a "brand story" these days?) by allowing product onto the shelves that would make their most important customer pause for a moment, shake her head, and question if this is really her kind of store.

Sure, it makes for great margin to expand into budget console video games, Kraft dinner, and "As Seen on TV", but what the heck does a Slap Chop or a Snuggie have to do with running an office?

Staples isn't alone in this, of course. And they have a good excuse. They wouldn't be stocking it if customers weren't buying it.

I know that my ranting is pointless (or as a colleague of mine once said, more colourfully "You're farting into thunder, Jason") BUT...

Products should be stocked and sold because of their merits, not because they appear in an ad with Avril Lavigne (who did a bang-up job improving sales of Canon cameras when I was running the technology department at Staples, despite the fact that her credentials as a photographer are left to the imagination). Likewise, a rose should make its way into your garden because it has merit as a plant, not because it's the newest introduction from a company that pumps out 10 new rose hybrids a year. Most of these new introductions will be eventually dropped from their selection, and quietly forgotten - despite the glossy prictures and descriptions on their tags.

So what's the alternative?

I'd say look at the roses that have been around a while. Gardeners have tried them, and the roses have stuck around for a reason - not the least of which is that they have the health and vigour to stay alive without too much attention.

Without further ado, here are some of my recommendations:

This one's named Ispahan. Speaking of longevity, it's been around since around 1830. As a damask rose, it has an amazing scent. Ispahan is healthy, vigourous, and disease resistant.

Zephirine Drouhin is a bourbon climber from the 1860's. And get this: it's thornless.

This photo's from another pro, the flickr user "sportsilliterate". The rose is Sally Holmes, a hybrid musk. It's newer (1976), but from an old family of roses.

If you have some time, and an interest in checking out cool roses, go to www.helpmefind.com for the best source of online info I've found on roses.

Here are some other great roses that have stood the test of time in gardens:

Complicata
Buff Beauty
Ghislaine de Feligonde
Reine des Violettes
Rose de Rescht

There are load of others, and don't get me wrong... I'm not completely against new roses. In particular, I'm a fan of the English Roses being bred by David Austin - maybe because his goal as a breeder is to bring the merits of some of these old garden roses back into modern varieties.

I guess my point is this: if you enjoy gardening at all, you'll probably come around to roses at some point too. But the wrong rose can dampen one's enthusiasm pretty quickly. Don't get sucked in by the latest and greatest, because chances are, you're buying into the "Sham Wow" factor. Have a look around for some of these amazing older varieties, or at the very least, spring for a good Austin rose. I think you'll be a lot happier with the results.

Adventures in sheet mulch

Before I give you the low-down on the mess I'm making of what used to be the back lawn, I took a couple of pictures of some new colour in the yard. The cool part of early spring (okay, still winter at this point, but it defenitely feels like spring) is that there's a whole different palette of colours to get excited over. No, I'm not going to wax all Robert Frost on ya... ("Stay gold, Ponyboy"), but those first greens really have a different look to them.

The lightest green is Sedum spectabile "Brilliant". The leaves at the top left, floating above everything, are from an alba rose, Alba Semi-plena. There are also some columbine seedlings coming up at the bottom of the frame, and it looks like a daffodil in the middle there too.

Green is great, but new shoots come in other colours too. Here you'll see the bronze and purple combination of virginia bluebells (Mertensia Virginica) coming up:

I took a picture of the purple emerging shoots of Blue False Indigo too, but I'm afraid it didn't turn out well enough to post. Maybe it wasn't all that spectacular to begin with, but when I pulled up the fallen leaves, and found them pushing up through the soil, it was enough to convince me to pull out the camera. There's just something about those early purple shades on the shoot of a hosta, or the fresh red on the tops of roses that somehow excites me (strangely) perhaps more than the much more exuberant shades of later in the season.

Okay, on to sheet mulch.

My long-term goal is to have all the grass in the yard taken up by garden space. I can safely admit that here because I'm pretty sure my wife has already figured out my scheme. I usually make up some sort of excuse related to lawn mowing. In this case, the lawn was on a pretty steep slope, and really was a bit of a pain to mow. So I promised to put in some herbs and vegetables, and got the go-ahead to garden it.

When I've previously negotiated away lawn space, it was a mixed blessing. Yes, more space to dig in. But then we had to remove the sod, right? Well, we did remove it, but I'm not all that sure we needed to.

This fall, I read the book Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier (excellent book, as are several others by the same publisher, Chelsea Green). He wrote a short description of some of his personal landscaping. The author wanted to remediate his front yard, where the soil and lawn was in pretty bad shape. Instead of bringing in the heavy equipment, he simply covered it with a layer of cardboard, and then covered that layer with mulch.

The sheet of carboard served to smother the lawn and weeds, and the organic matter layered above would break down over time to make for more fertile soil. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?

So I'm doing something similar. I'm using several layers of newspaper to smother the lawn, and I'm covering it with what I have on hand - mostly fallen leaves from a couple of big native maples (Acer macrophyllum) in my back yard. Here's a picture:

None too pretty at this point, is it? That's pretty much been the feedback from my wife at this point.

"Just wait until I get the borage planted in there... it'll look great!" was my response. Now, I'm not sure if she's looked up images of borage on the internet, and just doesn't share my opinion of the ornamental nature of the plant, but she's not yet convinced.

I'm sure the neighbours have noticed I'm up to something too, but on the whole, they're a pretty easygoing bunch. At least I haven't started planting potatoes in the front yard.

Yet.