Time to Take a Break

This is the 55^th week in a row I’ve written about The Painful Education of a Type A Gardener. Last year I started writing short pieces I thought would become chapters in a book about gardening. My brother, Larry, bless his heart, suggested the whole project might work better as a blog, and it appears that he was right. Fifty-five posts, which average a little more than 1,400 words in length, adds up to about 80,000 words about drama, tragedy, excitement, enthusiasm, betrayal, and ultimately, perhaps a little wisdom, on the subject of getting started as perennial gardener. Who would have possibly thought there could be so much to say about killing plants?

In retrospect, I ended up writing two different types of posts. One was explanatory and described what was going on in the garden at that point in time. The other was just plain silly and had no purpose whatsoever other than to entertain myself immensely, and hopefully maybe my readers a little. Perhaps in the real world there is no Golden Plant of the Year Award Ceremony held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, but there should be. The same can be said for opening my mailbag, which, in the spirit of full disclosure, might have less than the hundreds of emails I (may have) implied I receive every day. I don’t know if plants actually visit their therapist for anger management, and it’s possible that one of the most important gardening lessons is not avoiding eye contact with the other customers at your local nursery when returning dead plants for a refund. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

I’m ready to see spring flowers. Hellebore (Lenten Rose), Photo by Me. March 31, 2024

I can’t prove it, but I think the most popular post with my readers had to do with the unsettling appearance of the black snake in the garden. That post about unexpected guests in the garden still generates comments, including advice from strangers offering helpful tips on how to live with snakes in general. Thank you for your advice about snakes, and snapping turtles, and the birds that ate my succulents, and the other critters that appeared in the garden in the past year. It’s all part of the painful education of a Type A gardener.

Looking back at this body of work, I noticed that the botanical, or scientific, names for the plants in my garden began to appear more frequently in posts over the past few months. Perhaps I’m becoming a gardening snob who wants to prove that I’m an expert by using names that sound important. Or maybe I enjoy confusing readers who are trying to keep up with my antics in the garden. However, it might be possible that I’m becoming more knowledgeable about the names and want to use them correctly. I’ve heard from several friends that using the common names for plants is confusing enough, and I should knock off trying to sound hoity-toity. I’ll keep it in mind. And yes, I’ll continue to wear my stupid-looking, wide-brimmed gardening hat.

Another thing that happened over the past year is I’ve become something of a camera bug and can’t go on Morning Patrol without snapping pictures on my iPhone. The Photos app on my phone is absolutely crammed with garden photos, with the best making their way into posts here. Writing the captions for the photos turned out to be just as much fun as writing the main text. One lesson I still need to learn (among many) is when to put the text in the main body of writing, and when I should put it under the photos as a caption. It seems I find myself more amusing when I write a picture caption, although it still adds to my word count, which I struggle (and fail) to keep to 1,300 words each week. Regardless, the photos have created a great diary of the changes in the garden this year, and I regularly refer to them when I want to know how things have changed over the course of the year. I hope you enjoyed the photos. It’s been suggested that the photos were a lot more entertaining than my writing, but I’ve learned to ignore comments from immature and uninformed people who know nothing about my craft.

Last year I enlisted the aid of two willing enablers who helped me get this project going, and who have been absolutely indispensable in getting something published every week. Brian Saint Paul is a past associate of mine who worked with me at Pinnacle Advisory Group. Brian volunteers his time to load each week’s newsletter on Substack, where it gets blasted out to my 75 FREE subscribers every Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. I’m embarrassed to say that I still haven’t the slightest idea how Substack works, what it does, and how to use it in the best way possible. For that matter, the same can be said for any kind of social media. (For the record, I average about 120 views and 55 opens each week, whatever that means.) Thanks for helping me this year, Brian. You’ve been a wonderful partner in this venture. The other victim, er…. partner, is my line editor, Molly Glassman. Molly is a professional writer and editor, and incredibly enough, is also a master gardener. She has had the grace to laugh with me, and not at me, (I think) as I’ve made too many mistakes to mention in spelling, grammar, and facts about perennial plants. I still don’t know the correct convention for when to capitalize the name of a plant, but Molly does, which allows me to stay focused on writing about anger management therapy for perennial plants and other important topics. Thank you, Molly, for all of your help this year. My goal remains to send you a draft that you can’t find anything to mark up as wrong. It’s a worthy goal, but not very likely.

With that, I’m going to take a well-deserved break from writing. I happened to notice that winter is upon us here in Maryland, and there is nothing to do in the garden but dream about warmer weather. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but it appears that perennial plants grow back every year. Who knew? I’ll be hibernating in Florida for much of the winter but will be back in March to handle my spring gardening chores. You might keep an eye on your inbox because your dreams might be answered with another post from The Painful Education of a Type A Gardener next spring.

Thank you for sticking around this year and reading about my trials and tribulations in the garden. It’s been my pleasure.