Rock of ages.

You know, you don't have to hit Social Security age to realize you just don't bounce back the way you used to. A couple of weeks ago I was putting down some nice store-bought rocks around the front-yard bushes to make the place look nicer, hoping to entire a buyer for the house. I had already distributed mulch and dug up weeds, and so far all was well. 

Then the irony. 

Because while it's called egg rock, it was I that broke.

Well, not broken eggactly (har!). I lifted properly, showed good form, but then I turned in a funny way, and my body took a funny turn. It was one of those muscle pulls that you feel as it happens, and it happens that I felt it. 

It didn't seem that bad at first, but it was pretty painful. When I was a strapping young lad (well, not that strapping) I could bounce back in a couple of days from this kind of thing. But it took me most of a week to stop groaning every time I bent over or stood up. Worse, my ability to twist to the right was severely impacted -- there, the pain was so bad it was almost impossible to force myself to do it. You never know how often you make a particular motion until it hurts every time you do it. 

I'm glad to have recovered now, and the place does look a bit better with the new rocks. 

All this got me thinking about getting older, and thus about an elderly friend of mine who retired to The Villages in Florida. If you are not familiar with that particular patch of real estate, it is a community for people 55 and up about 20 miles south of Ocala, Florida. In the year 2000 it had about eight thousand people, but now almost EIGHTY THOUSAND people live there. 

My friend tells me that on Friday nights the widow women still doll themselves up and go to the bars (people get around by trolley and golf cart, I hear). A couple of years ago the place was labeled "The STD Capital of America," although that turned out to be a myth. However, I'm willing to bet there's a lot of shenanigans afoot all the same. It may be a foot that needs podiatric care, but afoot all the same. 

My question is: Why is there no reality show about The Villages? It's a natural! And it would appeal to the people who still use cable for most of their TV watching -- that is, the 55+ folks. 

I think it would be huge. People would get caught up in the drama. Who's sleeping with whom? Whose kids are visiting and likely to cause trouble? Which guys are doing drunk wheelchair races in the middle of the night? Which black widow is looking to land a rich dude with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel? 

It'd be a regular Polident Place. The Old and the Restless. Medicare Hospital. All My Great Grandchildren. Dwindling Days of Our Lives. Insert your own jokes in the comments. 

I can only assume that the governing body of the tri-county Villages frowns on such coverage. Well, more's the pity. Not that I'd watch the show -- at least, not until I'm riding a wheelchair myself. Which, if I keep fooling around with these sacks of rocks, could happen sooner than I think. 

Sprung.

As I noted, and you know if you're in this hemisphere along with most of the population, spring has arrived. And that means hope! Dreams! Young love! And WORK WORK WORK.

Yesterday I was in the giant houseware store, which I'll call Loam Depot because I was buying mulch and rocks. Rocks! When you're a kid you think rocks just happen. They're not something you buy. They're all over. Why spend money on rocks? Why torture the poor suspension (yours and the car's) with a load of rocks? And why buy mulch when you can mow over leaves and make it?

I know, I know. I don't care why. It just is. Spring comes and my un-mulched areas look like crap. As for the rocks, like most people in the 'burbs whose mailbox is on the devil's strip twixt sidewalk and road, I am not content to just let the mailbox post stand in dirt. But I am not so foolish as to think something planted in primo dog zone would survive. Once one dog hits the spot they all want to, and there's no plant alive that can withstand that kind of barrage. Some people cover the ground at the base of the post with bricks or mulch, and some use decorative pebbles, like moi. I use red ones. They match the mulch. 

My dad was a great one for landscaping, and he absolutely 100% did not pass that love down to me. I envy people like him, people who love gardening and tending the lawn and all the other things that make the property look dandy. They get exercise and fresh air and have more to show to the world for the effort than sweaty gym clothes. I like growing individual plants, but nothing more than I can grow in a pot, and that includes grape tomatoes and bell peppers. I cannot stand the idea of turning a large plot of earth, shoving in seeds, then fighting off deer and rabbits and bugs all summer. Unless I can develop a plant that produces Krugerrands, I think I'm just not going to maintain the motivation necessary. 

Today, though, is one of those days I have to buckle down and get some things done. Putting down some tick-murdering poison along the border of the property, for example -- one of the ways we keep the dog tickless. Killing weeds in walkways and other places plants don't belong. Washing the cars -- I feel confident that the big freeze is done, and there's no point in have a vehicle that looks like a pretzel. 

I guess that shows just how close to nature I am, that my spring endeavors are all about cars and poison. Oh, and I got the grill going yesterday, so that's propane for burning meat. I'm a one-man Anti-UN Environmental Programme. And for that, at least, I am proud. 

As I look back on today's blog entry, I realize I've covered this ground in years gone by. And that's what spring is -- covering the same old ground, year after year. With mulch.

Hither and thither.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Nah, I'll just show some pictures of where I've been lately and what they're all about. 

You all know how much I love my mulch. But this gentleman really went game. He got a pile of red mulch so big that in one of your flatter states like Florida or North Dakota it would have been considered a mountain range. Then he mulched everything, even this tree stump. 

So, what's the advantage of mulching a tree stump? Er... Well, his young kids like to play baseball, so maybe this is a warning track!   

From the window of a local Chase branch. Doesn't this look a little Christmassy to you? I guess they're stars but they look like snowflakes, most having eight points. Not sure what the idea is here. 

This is sad. After something like 30 years, the garden center/florist/café in town is closing. Actually, this is after the closing; they sold everything half off. The owners are very decent people but were getting too old for the work. They kept afloat for almost 20 years after a Home Depot and later a Lowe's moved into the area. They had a personal touch and a great location, and their plants were always in better condition than the ones at the big box stores. Still, with the competition I doubt anyone would have bought their business. 

I heard the people who did buy the property are planning to build a hotel, which is odd. This isn't the kind of town that screams "We need a Holiday Inn Express!" or the like. We shall see. 

Personal note: This store was the inspiration for Houghton Holly’s Garden Center in my MacFinster novels, although the hard-charging fictional owner, Holly Starke, is nothing like the nice people who owned this place. 

Finally, here's an interesting piece a neighbor put out on the lawn. It's a Farmall Model H tractor. The Model H was manufactured between 1939 and 1953, but I don't know the year of this one. I don't even know if it's in working condition, although it looks great. I'll let you know if I see it chugging down the street or around the yard. 

It's all too mulch.

On Monday, which was very hot, I took the dogs out to go lay down mulch around the plants and the trees in the front yard. Finally. I've had the stuff in the garage for weeks but at last had a chance. The dogs, being exceptionally hairy beasts, were sent inside after a while, but no such luck for me. Ah, but now the place is well mulched. 

He mulcheth here...

He mulcheth there...

That Freddy mulcheth everywhere.

I prefer the red mulch to the black mulch for two reasons:

1) My wife likes the red one better and
2) See #1.

Now that the job is done, let's consult Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens to see what I did wrong. 

Well, I think I did all right. You shouldn't use too much mulch and cause root rot, and you shouldn't use too little or the weeds will not be discouraged from coming up. Don't make a volcano of mulch around the base of the trees -- not I! I make a mulch dinner plate. You note the top picture, where I put down damp garden soil topped with mulch to protect the feets of the baby tree I just planted. The old, grumpy trees get the same dinner-plate mulch serving. 

To my surprise, Good Housekeeping actually recommends plastic mulch in certain circumstances, such as promoting vegetable growth by keeping soil moist and warm. Well, I'm not growing any vegetables this year, so I went au naturale, mulchwise. 

Probably the one dumb thing I did is the same thing pretty much everything does -- BH&G says not to let mulch touch your house. "When damp mulch touches your siding, it creates a path for termites and other pests to use to get to your home." Oops. But hold on -- my mulch doesn't touch the siding, although it does get up against the lattice of the porch. Maybe that's too much, too. Oh, who the hell knows. I've been doing it for ages and the termites haven't taken us out yet.

My feeling is -- I'm gonna mulch once a year, I'm gonna do it in the spring, and the hell with it after that. The shrubs don't lie awake at night worrying about me, so I'm going to do the same regarding them. 

Have some dirt!

Don't ask me what search terms I used that ralphed up this 2017 story on the web, because I don't remember. But this headline is hard to forget:

Rise in Dirt-Eating Means Booming Business For Soil-Selling Stands in Zimbabwe

Yes indeed, this story from the Global Press Journal tells us all about Zimbabwe's successful dirt entrepreneurs, selling soil for human consumption to hungry customers. 

For as little as a few cents per packet, Ndlovu saves the women the trouble of collecting the soil themselves. And his stand boasts an enviable assortment. Some options are brown, some are reddish. There is rough and smooth, sour-tasting or rich. The white, creamy soil comes from anthills in Harare, the capital city and the namesake for that variety. Cheaper options are the colored soils that include the Bellevue flavor, which is named after one of the Bulawayo neighborhoods where it’s found. Just 10 cents buys a packet.

 

So... What's with all the dirt eating? Isn't it bad enough that our social and scientific betters want us all to eat bugs, as I noted a couple of weeks ago? Now dirt-eating is the thing to do?

Dig in!

As the story notes:

Dirt consumption is associated with a condition known as pica, doctors say, which causes people, to crave nonfood items. Often, the condition is associated with a nutritional deficiency.

We certainly have heard legends about women, especially pregnant women, craving weird things. I've heard of women devouring jars of giardiniera, or anything from the Chinese restaurant, or even the famous pickles & ice cream. Pica can be a serious problem, especially when people eat nonorganic indigestible matter (plastics, metal, gasoline, Tide pods, etc.). Dirt seems pretty harmless by comparison, but of course dirt can also carry all sorts of harmful microorganisms as well as other nasty stuff. Healthline tells us, "Eating dirt can expose you to parasites, bacteria, and toxic heavy metals. Dirt that contains a lot of potassium could lead to high blood potassium, increasing your risk for cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac arrest." So I wouldn't recommend it. But indeed, the story notes, 

Some people who are anemic also eat dirt, as do some pregnant women worldwide. In fact, many pregnant women often crave dirt, possibly because of the potential protection dirt can provide against some toxins and parasites, according to research.

We also learn that the eating of dirt has a special name: geophagia. While no pregnant woman has ever told me that she fancies a nice bowl of soil, it is a surprisingly common craving: 

Many pregnant women crave dirt or clay. Experts haven’t yet discovered a clear reason why this happens.

One theory links pica cravings to iron deficiencies. Another theory suggests these cravings develop as an adaptive response to the way the immune system changes during pregnancy.

Changes in immune system function could slightly increase your risk of being affected by toxins and foodborne illness, such as listeria. But multiple animal studies have suggested clay consumption offers protection against a range of toxins.

Whatever the cause for dirt cravings during pregnancy, eating dirt can create health risks not only for you, but also the developing fetus.

Even if the dirt you eat is free of toxins and has been baked or prepared safely, it can still bind in your stomach to the nutrients you get from other sources, preventing your body from absorbing them properly. This can put your health at risk.

This could be why, as one of the dirt lovers in Zimbabwe told the GPJ, "It’s not my wish to eat it, but I just find myself wanting to eat it."

I get the feeling that Prince Ndlovu (not an actual prince), the dirt vendor, probably is not able to put his dirt through an autoclave to sanitize it, nor take other steps to get out any potential hazards. Still, his dirt is sold in small portions, so perhaps it is not likely to be harmful for that reason. And it comes with another benefit: 

“By the end of the week, I can make as much as $200, which is more than someone seated jobless at home would make,” Ndlovu says. “It’s definitely better than stealing.”

And I think we can all agree on that. Hats off to you, Mr. Ndlovu! Perhaps one day you will found a chain like Waldirt or McDirtle's or a high-class place like Outback Dirthouse (containing actual outback!) or Top Soil (Try our surf & turf!). It may be a dirty job, but your customers know what they're getting. 

Mulch ado.

My favorite supermarket was having a springtime mulch sale. What a coincidence -- I needed some mulch! And they had the red dyed stuff, my favorite! Why not buy what I need now, and avoid the hassle of going to a garden store?

Seems like a boring blog entry, doesn't it? Stay with me a second.

The good news is, the mulch was on skids right outside by the shopping carts. The bad news is, I still had to bring them inside to pay for them. And I needed nine bags, each containing 1.5 cubic feet and weighing about 30 pounds damp. 

A normal guy might take one bag in and ask for it to be rung up nine times, but as I am sure you know, Fred is no normal guy. No, I thought that might look dishonest. So I loaded three bags on the bottom rack of the cart, five in the basket, and one in the toddler seat. Then, mask in place, I bumbled into the store, humming a light tune like this was nothing weird, past the produce, past the florist, past the customer service desk, and into the checkout area. And I checked out. So far, so good.

But I should note that this supermarket sits high on a hill, and its parking lot is steep and progressively steeper the farther from the store one gets. So it was me, a (roughly) 60-pound cart, and 270 pounds of mulch starting a descent to where I'd foolishly parked a number of spaces away from the store itself. 

At first it was no problem, but as it got steeper the cart started to steer toward shiny new cars owned by others. All humming ceased. Seeing chaos about to ensue, I exchanged my grip on the handle and sidled alongside the side, using my body as a shield to keep the cart on a diagonal path toward my car. And luckily, I was able to make it there and move around to the front to make sure the cart did not go past my car, because from there is the road out of the lot and into the wilds of the world beyond. 

That's an extreme case, but the steepness of the lot can be challenging. This is especially true at the holidays, when people get big orders. I'm surprised that I haven't ever pulled in before Thanksgiving and seen a little ol' lady chasing a cart full of feast supplies down that hill. That damn turkey mayn't have flown in its life, but by damn, is it flyin' now!

Anyhow, mission accomplished, and now I don't have to go back to Home Depot for a while. Which is nice, because they leave the mulch sacks out in the rain and so they weigh more like fifty pounds each. Although their parking lot is flat.

Killing frost.

Between Thursday evening and Friday morning we got the first frost of the season. The killing frost.

Welp, there went the dahlias.

I planted them in May and we have enjoyed beautiful blooms all summer, into the fall, right up until Thursday evening. Then, wham. All at once. I've never seen such a vivid example of the killing frost in action.

Of course I can't think of killing frost without thinking of 1975's "Wildfire." It was one of those horribly tragic story songs of the sixties and seventies, wherein a story is told and it looks like someone meets a bad end. It could be suicide ("Ode to Billy Joe"), a fugitive caught by the law ("Indiana Wants Me"), needless death in war ("Billy Don't Be a Hero"), hanging of an innocent man ("The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"), a trapped miner getting eaten by his coworkers ("Timothy"), a crippled veteran abandoned by his wife ("Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town"), miscellaneous death ("Seasons in the Sun"), or procreation of vermin ("Muskrat Love"). All tragic. In the case of "Wildfire," it was the story of the eponymous pony who busted out of his stall and got lost in a blizzard. His female owner ran out into the blizzard after him and I guess they both froze to death.

Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down its stall
In a blizzard he was lost

Now, this is awfully sad. But I first really became aware of this song when Dave Barry solicited entries for a column, and later a book, of the worst pop songs ever recorded. One of his respondents, Steele Hinton, nominated "Wildfire," noting that a killing frost is only deadly to "flowers and garden vegetables" and "no normal person or pony would freeze as a result of getting lost in the killing frost." And, "Nobody ever got lost in one that wouldn't get lost in July as well."

Barry responded: "This makes sense to me, although I guess the song wouldn't be quite as dramatic if it were about a girl running around desperately calling for her lost tomato, named Wildfire."

I suppose, as Hinton thought, that the meaning of the phrase "killing frost" may have been unclear to those in warmer climates, like Southern California. All they would know was that "frost" rhymes with "lost," and that was the important bit.

I guess I could have saved my flowers from the terrible tragic fate that met Wildfire by protecting them with some fabric, or maybe the grill cover, but it's mid-October and their doom was only a matter of time. I read that you can keep your dahlias over winter by digging up the tubers and keeping them warm inside, but that sounds like work.

Sorry, dahlias. As we say on the ranch, you've gone the way of Wildfire.

LMNO.

I was walking one of the dogs when I came across a property that apparently sees a lot of dog traffic. They'd done some heavy replanting, it appears, because there must have been half a dozen hand-painted stones like this one around the perimeter. 

So... They think dogs can read? Or maybe that people are doing the peeing?

Naw, I know, they want us to keep our dogs off these areas. Silly. It's a nice area to walk the dog, especially in summer, as it's a shady block with lots of trees. But some people say all it takes is one Spot using a spot for, uh, leaving a spot, and that sets off a micturation cascade among all other dogs that pass by.

It's different for different dogs, though. There are different reasons that may compel a particular dog to go in one spot and not another. Some are taggers, like Tralfaz's friend Magic Dog, who uses little shots of urine to leave his scent on everything. My guys seem to prefer more detailed messages. Some dogs like to use the same area over and over, while others never want to repeat themselves. Boy dogs who like to pee on poles often seem to want to get the high-water mark, even tiny dogs who go to extraordinary lengths. Others want to just get the last squirt in (hilarious Twitter feed with bad words here). But I guess some just want to go the same place others have been, and if you're trying to establish some plants in that place, you have to take steps.

When I was a kid my dad started a small garden and the dog next door thought that was the best bathroom ever. We never got any berries.

So I make sure to do my bit, keeping my dogs away from the marked areas. I did see a couple of feral cats by there on Sunday morning, though, and I know they can't read. Good luck, gardeners.

Survival.

Moved into the house more than a decade ago, and there was a row of shrubs along the front yard. Juniper, azalea, evil barberry, azalea, juniper. Repeat on the opposite side.

Thing is, junipers and barberries grow like freaking Jack's beanstalk, and azaleas just hum along, minding their own business. A couple of summers in, the azaleas were getting choked out. The third summer, two of the four had been strangled by the plants on either side.

The surviving two were moved to the side of the house, where they limped along that summer. Sometime during the winter, the third one croaked.

More than ten years later, the last one will not give up. I thought for sure it was kaput this year, after two brutal winters.

Think again.

Azaleas are hearty and can live a stupid long time under ideal conditions. But the fact that the fourth one has lived longer than the other three combined affords it a lot of respect. Even if it were not pretty---and it is, when in full May bloom, and a pleasant green all summer long---I would want to protect and nourish this plant. But it doesn't seem to need much help. It's hanging in there pretty much on its own.

Funny how the last anything of a set will seem to last the longest. Everyone's kitchen cabinet probably has several solo glasses, each from a once-proud set of four. The first three in the set fell quickly to incidents and accidents, spills and chills, but the last glass hangs on and on.

I'm not sure if there's a lesson there, beyond that survival does command respect of a kind, even from things you don't much like, like cockroaches. The gristly actor who waits tables in his 60s, expecting to hear from his agent... The elderly woman who still trudges down the sidewalk to the market every day, rain or shine, whether she needs anything or not... The old guy in the last desk on the row, who people think will still be in that spot for decades, even if the building is destroyed in an earthquake, tapping away on his keyboard, his bit of floor held up by a ragged spire of rubble... Tenacity is admirable.

When it's something as pleasant as a flowering shrub, what's not to admire?

Gnome man is an island.

One of my earliest memories is going into a lawn center in Brooklyn and being surrounded by every kind of artwork known to man . . . that was made out of cement and rebar. Birdbaths, angels, big giant flowers, deer, bunnies, and what perplexed me at the time, the classic that came to be known disrespectfully as Mary on the Half Shell.

I knew she was nice.

One thing I do not recall seeing then or in neighborhoods around us for years afterward was the garden gnome. I may be wrong, but I believe the garden gnome was an Eurocism that didn't really come to our shores until later, after the American publication of Gnomes, by Wil Huygen, in 1977. I can't begin to tell you how omnipresent this book was if you weren't around then. While the rest of the country was getting its collective freak on in discos, the bookstores were taken over by gnomes.

Small but  mighty: 62 weeks on the Times best-seller list.

Along with the persistence of the Tolkien oeuvre (given a shot in the arm by the publication of The Silmarillion, also in 1977), it marked a change in speculative fiction from a focus on science fiction to a focus on fantasy. I have no stats to back it up, but I would guess that it was the first time fantasy overtook science fiction since the emergence of SF as a distinct genre.

Anyway, we've had gnomes for our gardens ever since, and jolly little chaps they are, too. Found a couple at Lowe's last week, in fact.

The gnome on the right is seated, with one leg up and the other crossed in front. In case you were wondering.

There are still many things that you can get for your yard, but small as he is, the gnome stands tall. After all, how many other things in the garden store inspired an animated movie?

We're not really gnome people here, but we respect the gnome and all his garden pals. Carry on, gnome! You may be small, but in the world of garden statuary, you're 15 feet tall. (Except for one 17-foot-nine-inch gnome in Nowa Sól, Poland---that's rather a bit too much gnome, don't you think?)

One last word on Mary: She deservedly gets a place of honor on many Catholic lawns, but what do they do with my man St. Joseph? Bury him upside down when they want to unload the joint. They even sell kits for the purpose now. Bad enough he has to be in a family where his son is God and his wife is perfect---try winning arguments in that house---but now he gets buried in the sod when you want to ditch the real estate. Awesome.

Tactical error.

The tragic garden.

I don't know what it is, but I have no gift for gardening. I come from city people who could make plastic flowers bloom, but out here in the sun and fresh air of the lovely Hudson Valley, I could kill crabgrass---provided the crabgrass thought I was trying to cultivate it. There's clearly some plant psychology going on here.

Even the bugs are critics.

The worst offender is the lawn itself, or as I call it, The Clover Hill Dandelion Preserve. I think it may be trying to kill me. If so, it is doing a pretty decent job. It sees me walking around on top of it, and has decided it would rather have me resting below it.

We had lots of rain so far this spring, which you'd think would help. Sure has! The mushrooms have never been more varied, plentiful, or (educated guess here) poisonous.

Everything I plant becomes a problem. Unless it's considered an invasive species, it's probably going to turn into a lump of nothing. If it does start to grow, it will choke something more expensive. And if it wins out against all odds, a plucky little ficus battling through to be a new plant or tree and bring joy for generations, I'll probably run over it accidentally with the lawn mower.

Plants I Have Cultivated:

Ginkgo Bloba
Crap Myrtle
Impatience
Dianus
Begone-ia
Morning Gory
Callous Lilies
Nausturtium
Argh-ugula
Rudeabega
Agave Up
Arch Anemones
Hellebacks
Skevia
Hostals
Pink Tarnations
Marjoramistake
Thyme Out Of Mynde
Rottenest Island Pine
Whatsit Torreya
Honeysuck
Krudzu

I'm sure there is lots and lots more garbage I can try to grow, and will likely get the same results. Stay tuned!