That’s the euphemism, right — woman of a certain age? Okay, fine. People in their late 50s, like the
Takoma Gardener, will take any euphemism they can get.
But the Boomer tag I really like. It conjures up hippies and idealists and people who thought they could change the world. Shit, people who really did change the world, though in less sweeping ways than we imagined in our most grandiose moments. I know my friend Ronni at Time Goes By hates the term "Boomer," but isn’t that because she missed it? I’d hate it, too if, like my older sister, I’d been born a few years too early.
Ronni believes that Boomers are getting too much attention, and that’s absolutely true. Just this week, PBS is running a show about the Boomers that’s TOTALLY INANE in its cheery generalizations. So Ronni, I sympathize, but I’ll always cherish my memories of the late ’60s and early ’70s, memories of being part of a group of kids who were passionate, who felt a bond with one another in our rejection of the repressive mentality of the ’50s. Funny thing, though. While for us the term conjures up coolness of decades gone by, in the population at large it’s become synonymous with OLD. Good lord.
And where are my compatriots today? Well, our lives aren’t as radical as we thought they’d be, but dammit, they’re not like our parents lives, so we’ve accomplished something.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
Yes, today’s my birthday and it’s a mighty fine one. Early spring, 70°, and sunny. Cherry blossoms blooming, not to mention sweeps of cheerful daffodils and other early bulbs. And it’s a day of total leisure for me, except for a thoroughly enjoyable initial visit with a new client whose garden will be transformed, I tell you, and all for the better! Garden Coaching is such fun – if only it paid the utilities.
So here’s some Birthday News from this Boomer Gardener. I’ve worked my butt off for enough years that I can pretty much coast nowadays and just enjoy having a beautiful garden. The tulips I planted last fall will do their thing. The mulch I’ve ordered will arrive, laborers will be hired to put it where it belongs. A little grass seed will be broadcast about and watered. And that’s it. It’s payback time.
BOOMER BLOGGING
I’m luckier than many people my age, and the only downside I’m experiencing has nothing to do with gardening and everything to do with sitting at this damn computer and typing. You see, the hands are shot. Once they’ve diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome (a return engagement after surgery a few years ago) AND arthritis, it’s time to start thinking about accommodation. So this very post is being brought to you via voice recognition software – Dragon Naturally Speaking. I sure can’t say I love it because it’s frustrating as hell and there is no fricking customer support AT ALL, but it works for quadraplegics and it works for me, so God love it. Yeah, I’m adopting an attitude of gratitude because really, what’s the alternative? After all, I have friends who, like Elizabeth Edwards, are fighting for their lives and I just feel lucky to be healthy, bum hands or not.
Washington Gardener editor Kathy Jentz has done it again – another successful event, this one showcasing winners of the first-ever DC Garden Photography Contest. Great turn-out, great photos, and lots of energy. Yes, she’s doing it again next year and keep that in mind this season when you’re snapping photos anywhere near Washington, D.C. (Kathy’s all about LOCAL.) Categories will be Garden Views, Small Wonders and Garden Creatures.
Here’s a sampling. This field of tulips by Iris Posner won an Honorable Mention, but I should add that Iris also won the Grand Prize for a photo I don’t have (I actually like this one better, anyway.) She spotted these tulips at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD.
Next, on the right, won Second Place in the Garden Views Category. Melissa Clark eyed these cool gloves at the Children’s Garden at Green Springs in Alexandria, VA.
This terrific tulip+funky old building shot was taken by my neighbor Rob Rudick. He spotted it while on a ritzy garden tour in Upperville, VA. So while most tour-goers were madly photographing every fuschia azalea in sight, Rob was looking for a bit of character, and found lots of it.
This snowy scene on the right reminds us
of what we love about winter. Patricia Deege of Vienna, VA calls it "Meadowlark Snow Bridge."
The last (amazing) shot is by my old Ethical Society friend, Evelyn Jacob. So maybe for old time’s sake she’ll tell me how she did it because I’m dying to know.* It’s no wonder it excelled in the Small Wonders category.
Kathy’s excellent judge was the terrific photography teache
r/garden club speaker, Joshua Taylor.
[This just in from Evelyn: "The butterfly was resting on the salvia and was stationary (they are more likely to do this early in the morning before their bodies warm up). I used a tripod and a macro lens on my digital SLR camera; macro lenses allow you to take closeup shots. I took the photo in the Brookside Gardens Conservatory during their butterfly show last year. I had signed up (and paid) for a program that allows a limited number of photographers to use tripods and come in two hours before the conservatory opens to the public." Thanks, Evelyn.]
So I was listening to the Q&A following the showing of a movie about American elms, part of DC’s
Environmental Film Festival. A panel of professional treehuggers was answering questions from the crowd, a couple of hundred more treehuggers. Having been impressed by the film’s high praise for the disease-resistant Princeton elm and eager to buy one, an audience member asks: Where can a homeowner buy one? Hearing another audience member yell out "Home Depot", the questioner continues, "No, seriously. I really want to buy one."
So here’s where it gets weird. The person blurting out "Home Depot" represents
River Edge Farm in Georgia, which happens to be a major grower of American elms, and he further declared that he’s recently delivered 12,000 of the prized, hard-to-get Princeton elms to Home Depots along the East Coast. "And they’re really promoting them," he tells us, by featuring them prominently in the stores. Another audience member pipes up to say "Buy ‘em quick before they kill ‘em," which elicited a knowing laugh from the crowd.
So why DOES Home Depot kill its plants by giving them no care at all? Like not watering them, even after they’ve placed them in the blazing sun. Well, the blogging nurseryman at The Golden Gecko in California explains that it’s because Home Depot and other mass merchant stores like Lowes only pay for the plants when they’re sold, so they have no financial incentive to keep them alive. When they kill ‘em by neglect, it’s the grower who suffers. So growers are banding together to hire their own plant care staff to drive around to the plant-killing big boxes and water their plants. Amazing what terms you can negotiate when you have all the power.
Oops. Looks like I’ve returned to the more familiar subject matter for me or anyone who’s ever shopped there – griping about Home Depot. We’ve all been there, right? But just this once, head on over to your nearest plant-killing hardware store and pick up a Princeton elm – quick.
"Prunettes" are what I would have named this team of DC-area lady pruners, who actually go by the
name Yankee Clippers. Yankees in D.C.? Well, I guess that’s because president Elizabeth Doyle started the company in New York way back in 1994. Here’s Elizabeth with one of her crew hard at work in an extremely overgrown garden. (Growth happens!) After leaving the business world, she taught herself the art of pruning and decided to create a female-friendly company, with work hours ending at 2 every afternoon so moms could be home for their kids after school. Now she employs about 35 women, who work on their own loosey-goosey schedules as needed, but descend en masse in groups of 6-10 to transform the shrubs and small trees of the many Yankee Clipper clients.
Wanna be a Yankee Clipper? Well, you don’t even have to be a gardener. In fact, the less you know, the better, because Elizabeth has her own style and likes to train with a clean slate.
And what IS the Yankee Clipper style? Leave the garden looking good, with even the cuts cleverly hidden. (There’s a technique for this; who knew?) This is art, not plant butchery. And prune for health. That means NO SHEARING. Learn how each plant grows so you can work with it, not against it.
For more information I consulted the hand-out given by Mary Ellen Fernandez, pictured here practically hidden by the killer rose she’s tackling, at a recent garden club talk. And student of pruning t
hat I am, I read it carefully and hyper-critically and to my amazement, agree with everything except the advice to prune spireas like forsythias – at the base. Readers may remember this is my favorite shrub for sun and I have oodles of them, none of which have ever been hacked back so brutally, a treatment I’d bet my Felcos would kill the poor things. But these ladies have probably pruned even more of them than I have so – drumroll – maybe I’m mistaken! See how open-minded I can be? As a last resort, of course.
And something else I learned from Mary Ellen is that even arthritic hands like her own can prune five hours a day if the pruning tool is a ratchet-type. No Felcos! I know; another shocker. She swears by her Florian Ratchet-cut Pruner and on her recommendation I’ll even provide the link.
But here’s what I don’t get. How can these ladies, with no Olympic pentathletes or spring chickens in the bunch, do this really hard work for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS? Good Lord, I’d seriously considered applying for employment myself, thinking I know my pruning and I’m a hard worker, too. But honestly, my version of hard physical labor begins when the sun comes up and ends about an hour later, especially in our summers. Anyway, I’d have to unlearn everything I know, or think I know.
So I won’t be joining these fine ladies in their mission to save and beautify the shrubs of the D.C. area after all. Taking photos and chatting with the homeowner? No problem, even in the heat.
The Yankee Clippers can be reached by email.
It’s official, as of today – the incorporation of the DC Urban Gardeners. And who might they (we) be? The six DC Master Gardeners who’ve been meeting and scheming since last August to create an association in D.C. for volunteer gardeners, whether Master Gardeners or not, because there isn’t one. (And why not? Good question!) As mentioned here before, we’ve put on a couple of functions already – a Plant Swap, and a Composting Talk and Demo – and we have a consulting team that’s already at work helping folks create school gardens. Oh, yeah, school gardens are HOT with our group, and we hope there will be lots more. (Our new mayor has deemed education to be his top priority and we’re there!)
Along with boring old articles of incorporation, I’m happy to also announce the birth of:
The DC Urban Gardeners site, with a full calendar of gardening and environmental events; links to gardening and environmental groups, both local and national; resources – books, mags, sites and blogs; sources of plants, both local and mail order; volunteer "opportunities," with details galore; sources of in-person training, courses and workshops; plus gardens to visit, in town or within day-trip distance. So tell us, readers: What else would you want on the site if you lived here?
The DC Urban Gardener News blog, a companion to the site, to carry news and features of interest to the local gardening and environmental community (and, we hope, residents.) And guess what – I don’t have to write it all myself. I’ll be contributing articles but newbie blogger Ed Bruskie, a former Washington Post food reporter, got the ball rolling and has lots of ideas and energy. We’ll encourage other Urban Gardeners to contribute stories, as well.
The Battle of the Blog
So does anybody remember the old DC Master Gardener News blog that’s been sitting in my sidebar since last summer? Well, it’s been "deleted," the weblog equivalent of being put down. That’s because when we decided we’d get waaay more accomplished if we were independent of DC’s Cooperative Extension Service, the bureaucrats got testy and started throwing around the L word – lawyers – so we changed our name, shut down our blog, and started all over again. (Not that we had to legally; even quacks like Jerry Baker can use the term Master Gardener.) But besides creating a bunch of dead links out there on the web, no harm is done. In fact, this way we can be much more inclusive AND completely free of the stranglehold of restrictions being imposed on us by UDC. Freedom! (Honestly, we can’t understand why more Master Gardener groups haven’t gone independent, like our new friends on Long Island.)
[Editor's note: Here’s a later story about UDC’s campaign against its Master Gardeners. And here’s an article about my testimony to the DC Council about it.
If you’ve found your way here via my guest article on Open Register, the blog of America’s garden center association, welcome to the home of a loyal customer. Do I suggest to readers or clients that they shop at Home Depot? Not on your life. In fact, I haul them to independent nurseries and show them the ropes. Do I promote the excellent free talks and workshops offered by the Behnkes Nurseries? Often enough to be boring, I’m afraid. And I consult horticulturist Mitch Baker at another outstanding Maryland nursery, American Plant Food, for so many of my articles I may be wearing out my welcome with him (hope not – he’s a star in my book).
So consider me a member of the family and take my suggested improvements in the friendly spirit in which they’re offered. Now if you’re reading this, you clearly have a computer and surf the Web, so how about using it to more effectively reach your current and potential customers?
Takoma Gardener, will take any euphemism they can get. 
