Well, as predicted and expected, Mother Nature and Old Man Winter have returned to Cleveland to heap upon us a new batch of wintery abuse and I am left with only a heap of seed packets to console my weary soul. I want to plant them, I really do.  But I have been doing this long enough to know that I need to wait at least a month to start my seeds, lest I end up with seedlings that are making a go at becoming NBA stars straight out of the indoor high school. Too tall, too skinny and just not enough roots to ground them in the big world outdoors.

*Sigh* You just have to laugh about it all really.  Except S.A.D. makes that hard sometimes.  Which is why you sometimes need to turn to outside help (and not the sunshine kind) to help you laugh during the dark and dreary days.

My outside help came in the form of a short email sent to the contact desk at work. It simply said “I think you might like this” followed by a YouTube link.  No name, no email, nothing else. I clicked expecting the worst, or at least a bit of soft core porn. But truly, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is serendipity in the universe. 

The video was one of a set of videos about, wait for it, How To Care For Your Opossum. How awesome is that? And the format is great! Imagine your cat lady great aunt – or maybe the dag lady one. Not the scary one who will end up on Hoarders.  No, the one with one pet that they pay WAY TOO MUCH attention to.  The pet that replaces human interaction. Yeah, that one. Now instead of a moody cat or a yappy dog, picture an opossum as the pet. That is the heart of these videos. It is satire at its finest.

So, for your laughing-to-get-away-from-the-snow-and-ice-outside-and-I-can’t-garden pleasure… I present ME Pearl’s Guide to a Proper Opossum Pedicure (be sure to check out all the other opossum care videos as well! You can waste a whole afternoon on them):

I was watching funny commercials on YouTube the other day when I had a revelation (And it was not that men in kilts are really hot – I have known that one for quite some time).   Thanks to Garrison Keillor and Honda, I learned that hate can be a good thing.

We don’t like to admit it, but hate more than any other emotion inspires us to change something. When you hate your job, you go get a new one. When you hate your hair, you get a haircut. When you hate the fact that Johnny Depp is apparently not in the market for a 34 year old, slightly frumpy woman from Cleveland… well there is not much you can do about that except to watch Pirates of the Caribbean one more time.

But, back to the main point. Hate, like nuclear power and American Idol, can be a good thing when used properly.

There are several things I hate about my garden.  For example, I hate the Canada thistle. Every year, I try to get rid of the stuff and every year, it apparently thinks that my garden is a prime location for Canada thistle family reunions.  I hate it so much, that this year, I swear that I will diligently snip the leaves off of every Canada thistle that I see.

I hate the weigela on the side of my house. It has been there for as long as I have owned the house and I am sure that the previous owner thought it was a brilliant plant to place in the narrow confines between my house and my neighbors, but I am here to tell them (9 years later) that this was not the case.  Yes, I am that lazy that for 9 years I have cursed and hated that damn bush and did nothing about it (I had other things that I hated more). This year, that will change. It is now at the top of my hate list.

I hate the fact that I cannot seem to grow zucchini. While the rest of the world grows so much zucchini that even the food banks in August have a hard time giving it away, I have not managed to grow a zucchini in well nigh over 5 years.  That stops this year.  I have found neem oil and vine borers better beware.  I am coming for them.

This year is going to be a great year in my garden.  I have the power of hate on my side and I plan to use it to its fullest extent.  May the hate be with you as well.  Sing it with me “Hate something, change something, hate something, change something, make something beeeeetter!”

You might be a gardener if…

…Your vegetable crisper drawer holds more vegetable seeds than actual vegetables

…When you go to the circus and step in elephant dung and your first thought is “I wonder if that would be good on the garden” and your second thought is “I wonder if they have a “U-haul it free” program.

…If you have convinced your fiancé that The Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes a really good honeymoon destination.

…When you buy a house, your realtor’s checklist of gotta haves to look for before showing you a house contains no bishop weed on property, good southern light, and organic material rich soil (bonus if you provided a Tupperware container of desired soil type).

…You ever did not a pay a bill because you had spent your money buying a plant or seeds.

…If you spent more on plants than groceries in one month.

…Your kitchen cooking utensils also serve as gardening implements.

…You buy potting soil by the bale.

…You regularly trash pick for plastic pots and seedling cells.

…Killing slugs is a pleasurable and fulfilling pastime.

…Accidentally ruined pants because you mysteriously found yourself weeding.

…You have ever rescued a plant from an abandoned lot, building or yard.

…You have ever peed in your garden in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have hired a shaman to cast a spell in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have spent more on deer repellents than plants in an attempt to keep deer away.

…You have just said “fuck it” and have run out into your front yard in a nightgown holding a loaded semi-automatic weapon and chased a deer down the street.

Feel free to add your own!

While my seedlings are growing and the weather has given some indication that it remembers what spring is, I still find myself itching to get some real gardening in.

Case in point, I was at Goodwill the other day (I love Goodwill. It is even better that my Goodwill is also next to a Marc’s – which sadly for all of you non Clevelanders, is an awesome but only local chain) and found the coolest old bottle. The cap says Gallo (as in the wine maker) but the bottle is shaped like an apple, with a window.

For some reason, when I saw it I thought “that would make a really neat aquarium.” Yeah, logic and my bright ideas don’t really mesh sometimes.

But I was determined and I plunked down the $4 for the bottle (Goodwill is getting pretty pricy these days) and brought it home. My husband, the supportive, dream crusher that his is, immediately informed me that with no way to aerate the water and only a narrow opening at the top, my fantasy fish would be dead in a week.

Plus, he reminded me of another issue that I have. (If you are a member of PETA, skip to the next paragraph) I tend to forget to feed small animals that don’t make noise of some kind.  Which thus far, has only been fish. We are an anti-hamster household and the dog, cat and children get pretty noisy if I don’t feed them.

But, for the record, while I have not been able to keep fish alive in the house, I have been very successful at keeping them alive in my small pond. My secret to keeping them alive is to simply forget that they are there (which means that I get to be delighted every time I look at my pond.  Oh lookie – FISH!)

So how do the feral fish do it, how do they survive summer and winter in my pond that has no aeration system and no fish flakes?  Because I have pond plants.

I then started thinking about these spheres I saw as a kid that were marketed as self contained world. There was a plant and a fish. What happened after the fish died was a mystery to me, but in theory this tiny aquarium had all that a fish needed to survive.

So off to the pet store I went.  I bought a $2.50 fish and $25 in aquarium plants. Such is the addiction that afflicts a gardener.

What I found odd was that a great many of the “aquatic” plants they had there were in fact houseplants that had simply been submerged. Luck bamboo, what I would swear was hosta and peace lilies to name a few.

But they also had genuine aquatic plants. As a matter of fact, a significant portion of my plant costs came out of the fact that I bought a marimo – AKA Japanese aquatic moss ball.  It looks a little like a tribble that was exposed to too many gamma rays.

So, thus began my experiment in enclosed aquatic gardening. So far Castle (the fish – as in Little Plastic) is a happy and productive goldfish. I bet this week she has swam around the bottle at least 300 times and has yet failed to be amazed that there is an angry tribble in the water with her.  I think now that a week has gone by, and Castle is not dead or swimming upside down (as I have told my children in the past that fish are apt to do) that this experiment looks to be successful.

Now, if I could just train my goldfish to grow some underwater tomatoes, I would really have an amazing aquarium terrarium.

I am a huge YouTube fan. There has to be no better way to kill a few hours than to flit like a bee on video flowers. So, by random chance, I came upon the funniest gardening related videos I had seen in a long time. Isabella Rossellini has created 8 short films entitled “Green Porno” and they are being shown on the Sundance Channel now. They illustrate, in very plain language, how the insects in your garden copulate.

But, by lucky chance, you can watch them now. Below is the Praying Mantis film. The rest can be seen here at the Sundance site. Prepare to be educated and amazed. Arousal is purely optional.

In my head, there are just a few things that I don’t think should go together. Pickles and ice cream, snow and my life, Paris Hilton and the front page of the newspaper are a few examples. But as pregnant women, my husband and major media outlets can attest to, what I think and what actual happens are two very different things.

Nevertheless, when I tripped across a reference for an award for a “hot” new magazine called Garden & Gun, my logic meter failed to restart.

Garden and Gun.

Garden and Gun.

Sorry, just trying to get the logic meter to restart.

While I have said that I fully intend to go hunting, these are really not two topics that I would think normally go together, unless their intention is to continuously publish stories about deer, squirrels and rabbits and managing them in your garden.

Their website says that this is a magazine that embodies the essence of “21st Century Southern America”. Really?!? What is it you people do down South? Topiaries of Uzis? I can see the articles now, “Getting a Bang out of Making Bean Pole Tepees from Unused Shotguns”.

I alternately have visions of a 65-year-old elegant southern belle grandma stalking rabbits in her back yard with a double barrel shotgun while wearing camo gardening gloves and apron to a redneck good ol’ boy with missing teeth pruning a rose bush with shots from a .22 (for the light pruning, of course).

Now, I am sure that this is not the case. Probably the target audience is a genteel gentleman who tends dahlias and participates in quail hunts. But the words Garden and Gun seemingly should not go together. I want to know what night of drinking lead to even imagining that there was an audience for this?

I have yet to read the magazine (but if you work there, feel to send me one), but I have to say that just the title may cause me to see if I can find a copy at the local Borders bookstore. Maybe there will be some good tips to help with ridding my garden of those damn deer.

By the way, I am not the only garden blogger perplexed by this:

• Garden and Gun, I kid you NOT!
• Garden & Gun – wha???
• Garden & Gun Magazine (No Joke!)

I am a big fan of the show the Victory Garden. Mostly because I am part of the rare 10% who does not pay for their television and when you only have 7 stations to choose from (8 if I spoke Spanish), your gardening television choices are limited.

This season sees a new host, Jamie Durie,  and he is Australian. Which perturbs me a bit. It is not to say that there is anything wrong with Ozzies, it is just they seem to be taking over the home improvement and gardening world here in the US.  Don’t they have gardens and houses where they live?

I have actually known quite a few Ozzies in my life. I traveled around Europe tortoise style for awhile and in that circle, Ozzies are abundant. Never in that time did they give me the impression of being a nationality steeped in knowledge about all things green and home building. Honestly, the impression I got was they were a nationality steeped in beer and knowledgeable about how to always find a good time and dodging the local police when a good time got to be a little too good. But those are stories for another kind of blog.

Part of what is bothering me is I am not so sure that Mr. Durie could have told you what a Victory Garden was prior to being hired by the show. It is an American idea that even to this day has influenced our home gardens.

So why is it that Australians are taking over the airwaves? Everything from my gardening shows to hawking as seen on TV stuff. Well, one can not deny that they are hot. Mr. Durie is no exception. And this is evidenced by the fact that the man made a living once based only on his looks… top to bottom… as a, ahem, male entertainment professional. Trust me, I am sure he made a good living at it (WARNING: you do not want to click on this link if you are at work). Rumors abound that this is a last ditch effort by the Victory Garden to save the show. Which saddens me. It is sad that gardening shows don’t do well on television and sad that they feel a sexy Australian guy is the only thing that can save the show.

I would say that if The Victory Garden goes off air, I will be forced to get cable, but I hear that the G in HGTV is gone as well. So that is it. I will just have to go insane in the dark winter month without gardening anything to sustain me.  That could be dangerous.

This morning, on Yahoo, one of the featured videos caught my eye.  ABC News did a piece on a group of quirky young NYU students how have devised a way for your plants to CALL you on your PHONE when they need something.  The technology has been dubbed Botanicalls. Not enough water and the plant calls to complain. Too much water and the plant calls to complain. Not enough sun and the plant calls to complain. Does like what you made for dinner and the plant calls to complain… no, wait. That’s my kids that do that. Yeesh… Close enough though. It is like adopting another kid or something.

Of course, on the other side, when you do something right for your plant, it will call you for that too. So, your plant could be calling like 20-30 times a day, if you are attentive enough or not attentive enough. Add it a jealous streak and I think you have a being that is on par with some of my ex-boyfriends in terms of annoyance and intelligence levels.

But all kidding aside, this is a bit odd. Brilliant but odd. And you know what is more unusual? This team used the Internet to make this technology possible. PHP and open source technology were major components. So great… Now the internet not only knows about that smutty, little site you like to visit, but it can now know if you are prone to killing your plants.  There is no privacy any more, ladies and gentlemen.

In fact, the technology is so easy to use and recreate, that these guys (well, mostly gals actually) are not even going to be packaging these puppies up and reselling them on late night television for only $19.95. Instead, they are going to give the whole thing away. The team is planning on releasing a DIY kit here shortly. If you are interested, you can sign up for an email that will let you know when the kit is available.

I don’t know if I will be putting this together or not. Knowing my luck, the plants would probably just call to gossip about what the hollyhocks did last night, who is pollinating with who and who they would like to be pollinating next. Really, folks, that is way too much information about my plants’ personal lives.

I have to admit, I have attended more than a few fetish balls in my lifetime. I actually have no interest in the fetish activities themselves, I just really like industrial music played at high volume on a good sound system and over a very large dance floor. Just about the only venue to find this particular combination of things here in Cleveland is at a fetish ball. Besides, it is just a night of deliciously fun people watching as well, and that is never a bad thing.

But, my personal life aside, as I was again marveling over my baby tomatoes in the veggie garden today, it occurred to me that my vegetable beds are very similar to a fetish ball (sans industrial music, 6 inch stilettos and whips… that is unless my vegetables have contracted a DJ and some dominatrix without my knowledge, in which case I need to have a little talk with my vegetables).

Stay with me here…

First of all, in a vegetable garden, there is all kinds sex going on just right there in the open. There are boy flowers and girl flowers and flowers that have both boy and girl parts. In the vegetable garden, plants get pollinated by creatures not of their kind, some are pretty, some are comical, some are mean, and occasionally some are just plain scary. But they all wear fascinating costumes. All of them may be pollinated by dozens of partners in the course of the party. A vegetable garden is a riot of plants that have different ways in which they get pollinated, but anyone who wants to get pollinated will be pollinated.

See, not so far off from a fetish ball after all, is it?

It was a chance of fate that had brought her into my life and it was cruel fate that had taken her away again. It had been eight long months since Old Man Winter and his heavies had snuffed her light and I had missed her every day since.

I shoulda’ know better than to fall in love with a dame like that. She was nothing but a drifter and no good ever comes from those types. Pretty faces are a dime a dozen in this garden and if you don’t make nice to Old Man Winter when he sets his eyes on you, than no pretty face in the world will keep you from facing the cold hard consequences.

Ours had been a short affair, but it was certainly one to treasure. Tall and slim, with curves all over the place. God just doesn’t build creatures like that too often.

Then one day, she went all cold on me. Wasn’t too long after, that this garden did what this garden always does to the pretty ones.

So eight long months and I am still holding a flame for her. Go ahead, call me a fool. Tell me that dead dames are not something I need to be romanticizing over. But even we tough gardeners sometimes have a soft spot.

But that’s not what has got me talkin’ about her today. You see, I was walking past the corner where she use to live and I see this little sprout. You know the kind, not much past the gangly age but still not quite filled out. And I swear that this little thing is the spitting image of her.

Then I see another one and another one. Wouldn’t you know it but the broad had gone and gotten herself knocked up and these were her tots. She must have thought that I’d have turn tail and run if she told me and that’s why she gave me the cold shoulder.

I stopped by her resting place and told her that her little girls are growing up fine. At least as fine as can be in this garden. Who knows, maybe these gals will figure out a way of making it without having to give in to Old Man Winter.