My garden has a new resident and I am tickled green (because it would be silly for a gardener to be tickled pink). A garden spider has seen fit to build her sturdy web in a patch of weeds in the middle of my flower bed. I will overlook the fact that I only found her because I had planned on removing said weeds and now the weeds must stay for her sake. That’s ok. I’ll deal. It is not often you find a garden spider in your garden. I have not seen one since I was a child, when every summer a garden spider would take up residence outside the kitchen window. My mother would point her out and we would watch her with great fascination.

I know that there is a segment of the population that has certain prejudices towards the arachnid family, but this is not an ordinary spider. This is a special spider. This is a garden spider. And when I read the classic Charlotte’s Web, in my mind Charlotte is a garden spider. She had to be, because garden spiders are just like Charlotte. They are loyal and beautiful and make the most wondrous webs.

Garden spiders are also known as writing spiders, though their fancy schmancy name is Argiope aurantia.  They are called a writing spider because their webs always contain a strip of thickly woven web down the center that looks as though the spider was practicing her Zs.  This strip is called the stabilimentum.  The reason for this strip of web is uncertain, though it is theorized that it may be as a visual stop sign for birds to keep them from flying into the webs or to attract bugs to the web who might think it is a safe solid place to land.  I suppose the second theory might be true and if it is, you could kind of thing of that as nature’s way of cleaning out the stupid bugs as I am not sure why a bug would think a spot in the middle of a web would be any safer than the outside of the web.

You may have noticed that I keep referring to my garden spider as a she and you may have been asking how I know that it is a female. And perhaps a bizarre image of me sneaking up and lifting the spider’s skirts to check came to mind (and if it did not before, it comes to mind now, doesn’t it?), but no. I know she is a she because all garden spiders you see are likely to be female.  The females are huge, with bodies (not including the legs) that can be an inch or more in length. The males, on the other hand, are often only 1/2 of an inch or smaller.  The female of the species is a loyal homebody. Once she finds a place she likes, she builds a web and often stays there for the rest of her life.  While the males wander, looking for mates and a sex driven death, and rarely make webs. So, if you see a garden spider, A) it was big enough to see,  B) it likely is in a web and C) it is still alive – ergo, it is a female.

Garden spiders can be recognized by their distinctive black and yellow markings. And, for as scary as she may look, a garden spider is much like many spiders. If you don’t bother her, she won’t bother with you. Meaning, yes, they can bite, but only if you touch her first.

She lives about a year, but once a garden spider takes up residence in a spot, normally one of her children will replace her in that spot in subsequent years, so your garden will never be without her beauty again.

She is a tidy spider as well. Every evening she will take her web down and eat it and then will rebuild it the next day.  They also have a unique habit of bouncing their web if they feel the web is threatened. Again, it is not known why they do this, but it is thought that it may be a way for the spider to draw attention to itself, as in to say “My web is here, dumbass. Don’t be clumsy and knock down my home!”  I accidentally triggered this reaction while gently moving some weeds so I could show my neighbor the spider and it was odd to see.  It is like watching the spider suddenly turn her web into a big trampoline swing.

But my garden spider has nothing to fear from me.  I won’t knock down her web.  I have take steps to protect her, such as leaving the weed patch intact and forbidding my budding entomologist of a son from collecting her into one of his dozens of bug jars that are now scattered around my home.  Now instead, he sits watching her for hours on end (or emptying the contents of one of his bug jars onto her web), reminding me of myself when I was his age. It almost makes me want to run out and get a runty piglet to place back there as well.

I know I have not been posting much, but I have a good reason. It’s because I have not been GARDENING much.  I kid you not that it has rained heavily almost every day since I last bitched about the fact that it was raining heavily every day. It was a most disconcerting drive from Cleveland to my parents’ house this weekend where I did not pass a single field that had even been plowed yet – and there are A LOT of fields between here and there. This will be tough year for Ohio farmers, that is for sure.

But, even though I did not do much gardening this weekend because I was out of town, we did find an interesting visitor in the middle of the road near our home.  Yes, I said middle of the road. We found an Eastern Box Turtle sunning itself on the yellow line of a busy road. Apparently turtles and toddlers have the same level of desire when it comes to attempting to end their lives through potentially unsafe activities.   Due to the turtle’s obvious suicidal tendencies, it was brought back to our house for a 72 hours observation period and when it is found to no longer be a danger to itself or others, it will be released back into the wild.  In the meantime, she is serving as a small summer educational project for my kids.

The first thing they learned is that box turtles should not be permanently removed from the wild and when returned, they should be returned to the place they were removed from (though probably not the middle of the road). It turns out box turtles have little biological homing beacons that make it so they will try to get back home again.  So, if we don’t return her to where she lives, what we may accomplish is finding out exactly what happens when the old joke “why did the turtle cross the road?” gets interrupted by vehicular turtleslaughter  as she tries to cross the roads that stand between here and where we found her (though given this turtle’s propensity to find roads to be good sun beds, this could happen anyway).

Next, box turtles are omnivores. I kind of wish that we could convince her to stay here because of this.  They love to eat slugs and bugs and other baddies in the garden (though they like to eat earthworms too, but we all can’t be perfect). They will also eat fruit and veggies if they can find them.

And, I keep calling her SHE. How do I know that? Because she does not have red eyes. Male Eastern Box Turtles mostly have red eyes.

So, our little house guest will stay a day or so and then we will free her, but in the meantime, it was interesting to find out a little more about her.

According to my mother, the last words uttered prior to me emerging into this world were “Oh shit.” As the story goes, my mother had been in labor for near 24 hours. The doctor and nurses where bamboozled.   I was right there and I should have come out by now and, while my mother pushed and pushed and pushed and I did not appear to be showing any signs of life threatening stress, my mother was reaching the stage of complete exhaustion and talk of an emergency c-section was being considered.  As a last measure, the doctor took another peek up my mother’s yoohoo and that was when he uttered the now family legendary famous words of “Oh shit.”

The doctor had missed a very important detail. I was upside down. Babies ideally should be born head first and face down. The birth canal is designed to allow to slide a baby out when it is in this position.  I was head first but face up, so all that time I had been hitting my head on my mother’s pelvis bone (which probably explains a lot about me today). The doctor immediately grabbed a pair or forceps (which according to my mother were HUGE) and gently popped me loose.

The point of this story is that sometimes a baby needs a little help to get into this world safely and it is no different for baby plants.  Sometimes seedlings need a little extra TLC too to make it safely into our garden world.

As usual, I have planted several dozen cups of seedlings but this spring, I seem to have a pervasive issue among my seedlings and that is helmet head (which is very different from helmet hair, although aesthetically they look the same.) A high percentage of my seedlings this year have the seed coats stuck to the cotyledon leaves.

A quick search on the internet revealed a few different causes for this condition. Some people felt that the seeds had not been planted deep enough, others thought the seedlings had not been kept in high enough humidity, some people thought that this was caused by using old seeds while still others felt that this was a sign that the seedling was weak and should just be mercilessly thinned out.

In my case, I think the cause was a lack of humidity.  This year I decided to try using a radiator as a source of bottom heat and had set the seedlings on a frame over the radiator.  The seedlings came up quickly, but I do now wonder if the heat from the radiator dried out the air too much around them.

But whatever the reason, my little seedlings are in need of a little extra TLC. Interestingly enough, the most often suggested solution to this problem was spit. Apparently the enzymes in saliva help to break down the seed coat  and the sliminess of spit helps to lubricate it off.

Prior to learning this, I was gently pinching the seed coats and sliding them off.  It works well enough but occasionally I pinch too hard and end up crushing the poor little seedling, which creates my own personal “oh shit” moment. So, I will give the spit method a try.

Seedlings and babies all sometimes need a little extra care when making their way into the world. The trick is to pay attention to any potential problems, which saves everyone involved a whole lot of pain and labor.

Hello from sunny snowy Montana. I know what many of you are thinking. Hanna, WTH are you doing in a snowy spot that is currently sporting 10 feet of snow and 12 weeks till it melts?  Have you completely lost your gardening mind?!?  These, ladies and gentlemen, are the things we do for love.

My husband of (give or take) 10 years is from a skiing family.  I am not from a skiing family.  It is kind of like the snow version of Romeo & Juliet, without the yelling, fighting and suicide at the end. But, because my husband is from a skiing family, his dream vacation was to be able to ski “Out West” where they have REAL mountains. Here in Ohio, we have mole hills that they try to pass off as mountains and in New York, they have mountains that forgot to take their Rockies steroids. So, here we are, crossing one off the bucket list, in Whitefish, MT so my husband can ski Big Mountain. Apparently people in Montana are as good at naming things as gardeners are.

But, while I do not ski (never will ski, not gonna ski, yes, I know it’s fun but still not gonna ski), we choose this place because there were still lots of things that I could do, being a non-skier.  So one of those things I did the other day was to buy a walking lift ticket all the way to the top of Big Mountain.

It is a breathtaking view. On a clear day, you can see for miles – though good luck getting a clear day around here for as often as it snows, but even without full visibility it is still a stunning view.

But, it seems these mountains  are haunted by spirits with tenacious determination and solemn beauty. Snow Ghosts, as the locals call them, come to haunt the slopes every year as the winter progresses.

Snow ghosts are alpine tundra trees that have built up a coating of snow over the course of months of wind, snow and freezing weather. When you think about how often the plants near us die when it reaches just below freezing, it is pretty amazing how these trees survive.  Not only are these trees covered in snow and ice for months at a time, but in that picture they are standing in TEN FEET, yes TEN FEET of snow. Yes, that means in the summer, the trees in those pictures look 10 feet taller.  This is the kind of snow I shiver and hide from but these trees deal and move on.  Talk about fortitude…

So how come these alpine trees can survive this kind of weather – buried under 10 of snow and temperatures of up to -40 below zero? Because Mother Nature is the WOMAN, that’s why.  First, evergreen trees are a tenacious lot thanks to their leaves. Area space allows for evaporation.  Evaporation is the enemy of plants in the freezing temperatures  as they have a hard time taking up water that is frozen in the ground. If you need a self comparison, think about how well your skin deals with the winter weather.  Yeah, it’s like that but without the Burt’s Bees lotion to help us to get through it.

This is actually the reason why most plants lose their leaves.  Those broad pretty leaves make for lovely shade in the summer and a sure case of tree eczema and dehydration in the winter if those leaves were to stick around.  So many just drop them.  Pine  trees though are the beauty queens of winter. They have thin, slender leaves (needles) that have less surface area, so less evaporation in the dry winter air.

They also have a waxy covering on their leaves that further helps prevent drying from evaporation.

Second, the cone shape of the tree and the dense nature of their leaves and branches helps it better withstand the weight of that fabulously stylish and cuddly cold snow coat.   The sturdy center trunk stands tall when branching trees would snap and crack under the weight.

Third, pine trees have less water in their leaves, which means that there is less ice crystals.  Ice crystals are what often kills a plant as they pop the cell walls and all the water leaks out.

So, while these ghosts don’t go “woo-woo”, drag chains and really scare anybody (except for occasional skiers who lose control of their skis), they are spirits we have to admire for their clever adaptations in the face of seemingly impossible environment.  And for the record, still not gonna ski – mainly because I am fairly certain I will run into one of these trees. And while they may be called ghosts, they are in fact very, very solid.

Right now, I am dreaming of real tomatoes. Real, real tomatoes… not those ping pong balls they pass off as tomatoes at the grocery store. The tomatoes at the grocery store have more in common with a Nerf ball than they do a real tomato.

But what is it that makes a garden ripened tomato taste so damn good. I mean, the tomatoes in the store have a tomato flavor (well, the ones that are sold as “vine-ripened”, anyway), but it seems pale and pathetic when I remember what the taste of a real tomato is like.  It is not that a store bought tomato is sweeter, or more sour, or more bitter.  It seems to be that they are just… less… a lot less.

It turns out that there is a reason for this and its name is umami. While that may sound like a game that sends children in movies to terrifying places and my children to bed with nightmares, it is not. It is in fact the secret life of your tongue and taste buds. That’s right, your tongue has been steppin’ out on you all these years and you didn’t even know it.  Well, not exactly, you were there.  You can kind of think of umami as the ménage trois (actually ménage cinq) in your food life.

We all grew up learning about the four basic food tastes – sweet, salty, bitter and sour.  These had been established since the days of the ancient Greeks when the philosopher Democritus decided (apparently on a whim) that there were 4 flavors. No more, no less and anybody who thought differently could go fly a toga.

But, if there is one thing we have learned over the past few decades is the big fancy medical and science ideas of the Western world can’t hold a dim candle to the mysteries solved by the Eastern world. (And if you don’t agree with that, than you explain who were the test guinea pigs for acupuncture.)

In not too ancient Japan (circa 1908), a chemistry professor named Kikunae Ikeda isolated a flavor he called Umami, which roughly translated to English means “really, really yummy” (no joke, it does mean “tastes really good”).  The compound he discovered was later patented as a flavor agent. The East embraced it. We here in the West said “What could a modern scientist figure out better with fancy smancy scientific thingies than old guy who made up the four flavors over 2000 years ago? We ain’t buying it.” (Hmm, funny how the tables turn).  The West got their asses handed to them when in 2000, a receptor for umami was identified.

Chances are if you have eaten Chinese food (and just about anything from a can), you have had that patented substance. It is called MSG. And no, despite the bad press it got a few decades back, it is not bad or dangerous. In fact, it is a naturally occurring substance. Glutamate (the G in MSG) appears in a lot of foods, including… drumroll… fully ripe tomatoes. That is what your grocery store tomato is missing, as they are not really truly ripe and therefore lack the richness and depth that umami brings to your garden grown tomato.

So, during these dark and dreary last days of winter, while you are pining for the flavor a real tomato, you now know who to thank. “Umami is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all tomato gardeners.”

Do you see those lovely, lovely zucchini?  Are they not the most lovely zucchini in the whole, wide, freaking world?  They are to me and I will tell you why.   Because I grew them in my very own garden.  I can hear what you are thinking, “yeah, you and everyone else.  I get so many of them that I grow them like baseball bats just so the kids have something to play with.”

I know that everyone and their cousin Bob can grow zucchini, but up until this year, I have not yet been successful with this seemingly easy plant.  In fact, I have not been able to get a squash plant of any kind to for darn near 8 years.  How crazy is that?

The reason was vine borers. Every year those insidious little fuckers would invade my squash plants like Russian spies in the American suburbia.  Quietly and stealthily they would bore into the base of the squash plant,  and run a destructive gauntlet down the hollow core of the plant.

I tried the covering, I tried the surveillance and seek and destroy, but every time they got past me.  But not this year. This year I had a secret weapon and that was neem oil.  The best damn pesticide I have ever, ever used.

Ah, right now so many of you are scurrying to the bottom of this post to leave a comment that starts with “But Hanna” that I can hear the collective squeak of mouse roller balls.  But if you don’t know about neem oil, you need to finish reading this post.  I swear you will be amazed.

You are thinking how could I use a pesticide on my garden.  Think of the bees. Think of the butterflies.  How could I be such a ruthless bitch all for the sake of a few zucchini. Ah-ha! I will say back to you.  I am not.  (Ok, maybe you were not thinking that. Maybe I am just paranoid.)

#1 most awesome thing about neem oil – it only kills bad bugs and does not harm good bugs (or people or pets for that matter). 

As a matter of fact, bee keepers have been experimenting with neem oil to try to treat mite infections in bees.  They found that you had to use a high percentage solution of neem oil to even start to hurt bees.  Neem oil is typically sold at a high solution percentage and then diluted to a very low solution percentage before being applied.  Even extension services say that neem oil application in the home garden is safe for bees at any time.

#2 most awesome thing about neem oil – as mentioned, it is safe for people and pets. 

Don’t believe me, just go ask the approximately 1 BILLION Indian people who have been using it in cosmetics, medicines and as a contraceptive for generations. Studies have been done and the most dangerous thing they can come up with is that if you eat a lot of it, over a long period of time, it may cause liver damage.  I don’t need to eat it.  I have my wine to help me with my liver damage, thank you very much.

#3 most awesome thing about neem oil – It works systemically.

All those other insecticidal oils wash right off if it rains or you water from above.  Neem oil gets into the plant.  Which is why it worked on my vine borers.   Any part of the plant becomes dangerous to the bad bug, inside and out. So where normal pesticides would fail, because they only stay on the surface, neem oil can succeed because it moves through the plant.  So very cool.

 #4 most awesome thing about neem oil – It takes care of other gardening problems too.

Neem oil is also effective as a fungicide and a miticide.  All your gardening pest needs rolled into one.

I have to say that the only thing that neem oil lacks is that visceral satisfaction you get when watching harmful pests die.  Neem oil is not an instant kill pesticide.  It works like the Pax on Miranda.   For reasons science is still not clear on, they don’t fall over dead, they just “stop fighting…and then they stop doing everything else. They stop going to work, they stop breeding, talking, eating.”  Except about bad bugs, instead of innocent people.

Still, I can live without the quick kill as long as it works.  And, as evidenced by the fact that I now have more zucchini than I know what to do with, it does work.

P.S. Still waiting on ripe tomatoes.

We’ve covered the fact that our gardens are essentially a botanical brothel. There is enough flower power sex going on in our yards to make Jenna Jameson blush.  But, there is one kind of plant in the vegetable garden that is like a nightclub without a cover charge, age limit and free drinks for the ladies and that is the Cucurbits (kind of like the Kardashians, but without the money and thinly veiled poor taste).

Cucurbits are a family of plants that include melons, cucumbers and squash. They produce flowers that are either male or female. And just like a nightclub (at least the straight variety) where things don’t really get going well unless you have a little bit of both the XX and XY action going on.

But, there is a reason that nightclubs have ladies’ nights (and free libations for them).   Because the male of the species is a bit more motivated in the sexual area than the female. Ever go to a nightclub early in the evening?  You will look around and you will see a dozen or so over eager guys sitting around waiting for the action to begin.  Yes, the guys are losers and clueless, but there they are. Sipping drinks, eyeing the competition, perhaps sipping a bit more quickly than they should due to the need to build up some courage.  Next thing you know, the ground is littered with drunk guys about 2 minutes before the ladies make their grand entrance.

Your cucurbits are no different. 

Many male blossoms show up early.  Too early to really catch the wave of women flowers coming their way, they normally fall to the ground, spent and useless and mumbling something about an ex-girl blossom they need to call right now.

Shortly after this, all the single lady blossoms show up, the cooler, more suave male flowers saunter in, and you have a bona fide cucurbit orgy going on in your garden.  (This will explain the teeny-tiny popcorn boxes you see next to your tomato and lettuce plants.  They are just enjoying the free show.)

I think one of the most common questions I answer at my other job at this time of year is “Help! All the flowers on my squash are falling off (or are being eaten, and a spent male blossom does look like it has been bitten off).  How can I stop it?”  You can’t. You just have to wait for the pretty ladies to appear, and as we all know, we ladies like to take our time and make a fashionably late entrance.

Note:  if you are looking for something to do with your loser male blossoms, you can make a tasty treat out of them, so that they don’t get completely wasted (and start the pathetic drunk dialing).

I pulled my hamstring this past weekend.  Actually, I strained my hamstring last week and choose to ignore it because only sissies let a little thing like pain stop them . Besides, damn it, I had 3 trees that needed to go into the ground this weekend (it is already a little late to be planting trees) so the little ache in the back of my thigh was not going to stop me.

THEN I pulled my hamstring, hard, and entered a whole new level of pain.  What was a little ache turned into a full fledged hurting akin to stabbing a knife, albeit a modestly sized knife but a knife nonetheless, into the back of my leg – again and again and again. Every. Time. I. Bend. My. Leg.  It’s like there is a sprite size sadist back there.

Basically, this means that my leg needs to stay tightly secured in a brace for a week or two and none of that kneeling, bending, weight bearing stuff that gardening normally requires.  My husband has taken to calling me Hop Along Hanna. *sigh*

But I am fiending hard for a dirt fix, so what is a girl to do.?

I can’t be the only person in the world who has a medical issue that could keep them from gardening.  There are many ailments that can make the chores of everyday gardening rather difficult, and some of them *gulp* are permanent conditions.  Yet, these allegedly disabled people can be  enabled gardeners, so there has to be a way, right?

While I can’t get down and dirty as usual in the garden, there are a few things I can do in the meantime to still play in the dirt without causing me undue pain and suffering.

1. Get your garden on  at waist level – My sweet spousal unit placed my potting soil on the picnic table along with my plants and pots. I have been making containers galore. With everything at waist level, I can either sit or stand (flamingo style) as I see fit. Waist level dirt does not have to stop at simply filling containers.  We are lucky that at our house, we have a great many retaining walls that the containers can be placed on, making them super easy to water and care for.  If I didn’t have these retaining walls, numerous plant stands and pedestals would make great stand ins.

   If I needed a permanent solution (like my husband’s grandfather did a few years ago when his knees really went), you can convert your entire garden to waist high management.  His super raised beds are built out of cinder block, but wood framed raised beds would work as well.

2. Wave your magic water wand – For $6-35, you can become the proud owner of a water wand with varying degrees of neat features like spray type and water flow control – depending on how much you pay.  Water wands make it easy to get down low or get up high to water without having to stretch or kneel.Really, these are awesome gadgets to have regardless of your current physical state.
3. Kick the bucket – A five gallon bucket makes a great portable seat that you can move with you in the garden so that you are sitting instead of kneeling.  If you want to get fancy, they sell little trolleys and rolling stools that are essentially the same thing. Heck, you want to hit the middle ground, they sell aprons for 5 gallon buckets so you can use it to tote your garden tools as well.
4. Long arm of the trowel – Many garden tools already come with long handles, which means less bending and kneeling.  Even tools you think can only be found in the hand version, can be found with long handles if you look around on the internet. 

No one, whether through temporary or permanent condition, needs to stop gardening. Many of our plants would shrivel and die without their gardeners and many gardeners would shrivel and die without their plants. Well, I have to run hop along now, so I can get back to my own garden.

I like spaghetti squash.  My kids like spaghetti squash. We eat spaghetti squash A LOT.

So, when the spaghetti squash in the pantry was a little soft, I was surprised. I had only bought this squash 2 weeks ago, and since the darn things are meant to be stored for MONTHS, I was a little peeved that I had wasted my money at the store.  So, of course being the little Scottish American girl that I am, I cut it open, just to see if it was really, really not edible.

Turns out it was not rotten, it was growing. Heck, the germination rate in that thing looked to be higher than in my seed cups sitting on the counter next to it.

How does this happen?  While I have heard of germination of seeds inside fruit, I had certainly never seen it and even what I had heard, I had never heard it this severe.

You see, seeds inside fruit (and squash technically is a fruit) is inhibited by abscisic acid. It stops the germination and prevents the seeds from growing before they are out of the fruit.

Abscisic acid works like a treat and is the reason that plants can survive the winter. Without this enforced dormancy, they would simply sprout as soon as the fruit was mature and then their chances of making it through winter would be about the same as the Browns making it to the Super Bowl (and for those of you not from Cleveland, here is what that means – hell froze over, pigs flew, lightening struck the same spot 36 times and the Browns still would not make it to the Super Bowl).

In other words, abscisic acid acts like a mom, keeping the seed safe. But, a genetic mutation (because freak is apparently not politically correct) can occur where the seed becomes a delinquent hooligan bent on killing itself by ignoring his mother and it grows anyway, as soon as it reaches maturity.  It’s like a horticultural Rebel Without A Cause meets Romeo & Juliet (I am hoping that Peter Jackson will direct it).

These seeds are referred to as viviparous mutants. These early germinators can be found commonly in corn, rice, tomatoes and squash.  The mutation can be that the fruit itself does not produce enough abscisic acid or that the seeds ignore the abscisic acid.

Some people had commented that cold could trigger it (perhaps by destroying the abscisic acid), but I did not find that in any of the university papers I looked at. Though, admittedly, they were using some really big words because apparently the normal English language is just not fancy enough for science articles… But I digress… as usual.

Anyway, now that I know I have mutants growing in the pantry, I am beginning to wonder if my husband’s Frankenstein warnings about the leftovers in the fridge might cause a problem.

Added: hehe – I just realized that this was published on April Fools. While Mother Nature played an April Fools on me, I assure you, this is for real.

Psst… I got what you need right here. A whole dime of high quality stuff. You ain’t finding anything better. The richest loam this side of the border, that is a bona fide fact, my friend. You will not find a finer grade of dirt, no way, no how.

I bet you did not know that when you are out there tending those flowers and planting those seeds that you were doping yourself, did you? Turns out that dirt harbors a friendly little bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae. When this bacteria infects humans, it affects our brains and causes it to make extra serotonin.

Serotonin is a funny drug for our bodies. It helps to control everything from how much we eat to how well we can remember to… wait for it… how good we feel. More of the happy, happy serotonin, the hap-hap-happier we feel.

So how does one catch this bacteria and reap the benefits? It is just as easy as playing in the dirt. Do a little barefoot walking, maybe pot up a few seedlings or two, get some weeding in and, voila, you got yourself a genuine dirt high.

This probably explains why many gardeners regard weeding as a meditation rather than a chore. The very act of touching the soil with bare skin, can bring about a chemically induced serenity. Not bad, eh?

So here we are, a bunch of strung out garden junkies, just fiending for our next Mycobacterium vaccae fix. Come on, sister, can you spare a girl a trowel? Just so I can get through to the next day?