Garden
                      Humour (Hortus facetiae). The aphids are coming,
                      the aphids are coming
    Chelsea Flower and Garden Show Tours
    Diary of a Mad Gardener now available as an eBook

    2013 copyright David Hobson

    Get Your Goat

    The phone calls are coming in now, always at suppertime, always when my mouth is full. It's a sure sign of spring — strangers begging to take care of my lawn.

    I resent this. I kinda like taking care of the little bit of lawn I do have myself — that's why I'm a gardener. I tell the callers this very politely, but they don't seem to understand. Sometimes I say, "How dare you suggest my carpets need cleaning!" This usually throws them, giving me the opportunity to hang up.

    I could just hang up anyway, I suppose, but given the number of calls I get it could easily become a habit, then I might find myself hanging up on the important ones — like Publisher's Clearing House phoning about the fifteen million they promised me. I'd hate to hang up on that call.

    Lawn care is obviously big business. I suppose this indicates there are an awful lot of non-gardeners out there with lawns that need care. It's a shame that lawns aren't put to better use, other than providing a place for toxic waste disposal (oops, I'm revealing a slight bias here).

    Of course there is an organic solution — old goats. They'd do a fantastic job of lawn care (I don't mean retirees, although it would be a better way to get exercise than hanging out at the mall upsetting security guards).

    No, what I mean is an environmentally friendly lawn care company that would drop off a goat for a couple of days, then pick them up again after the grass has been trimmed and fertilized — perfect. For an extra charge, the goats could wear spiky hoof adapters and aerate the lawn at the same time too.

    I doubt this would stop the pesky phone calls, but they'd sure be honest, wouldn't they . . . "Hi, this is the Get Your Goat Lawn Care Company" — sound familiar?



    Soiled Again

    Convoys of dump trucks are hurtling through the streets with increasing frequency. It's topsoil time. It happens each spring when gardeners peek into their neighbour's yard and see stuff growing twice as fast as in their own yard -- or at least it appears that way.

    It's actually an optical illusion caused by breathing the fumes of a gas lawnmower mixed with freshly applied lawn chemicals (optical illusions are one of the less serious effects).

    "It's has to be my meagre topsoil," they say, "I have to have more topsoil."

    There's a commonly held belief that more topsoil will solve all garden problems. Fact is, if you live in a newer home it might be true. I've seen yards that had no topsoil, other than the little bit stuck to the back of the turf. There are two ways to remedy this: Make some or buy some.

    Since making topsoil is time consuming (at least half an aeon per inch), the alternative is to buy soil, and the place to buy it is from the grocery store in little plastic bags, or by the truck load. Buying by the bag is very expensive if you need any kind of quantity, especially when you factor in the price of the new shocks the car will need after hauling multiple loads. And the trouble with bags is, the soil vanishes as soon as one is dumped one onto the flowerbed -- "I just emptied a whole bagful there. Where'd it go?"

    This is not an optical illusion. It really happens. What’s more, it may not be soil. What better way to dispose of industrial waste than to have it dispersed in small quantities across the country?

    It’s much better to order by the yard from a local dealer, preferably a whole truckload. It never goes to waste, and you might even get your own soil back. That's right, your very own soil, the very soil that was stripped off a lovely, flower filled meadow and sold to a soil cartel before your house was even built.

    At least you’ll know where it came from. Of course, it will have passed through a few hands before ending up in the back of the dump truck that's hurtling down your street this very moment -- and you'll still have to pay for it -- the street value, not the field value.



    Limp Lettuce

    Lovely! That tray of cress I planted has sprouted already. We usually buy the stuff, but now we’ll be able to eat our very own freshly grown organic produce.

    Except for things like apples and potatoes, all our fruit and veggies are being shipped in from afar at this time of year, from countries that have warmer climates, endless growing seasons, and no snowploughs. It’s okay, but after eating from my own garden for the last few months, I find that veggies with more frequent flyer points than I do tend to lack flavour—if they ever had any.

    And there’s nothing worse than cutting open an avocado that you just know arrived on a truck that had to have taken a wrong turn somewhere south of Tucson and got lost in the desert for a week.

    People who live in climatically advantaged countries don’t realize how vulnerable we are here in the Great White North. Any disruption in the delivery system and we’re eating limp lettuce at stiff prices. I still remember watching that amazing news footage of OJ Simpson racing down the empty freeway in California.

    All around the world people were glued to their TV sets, fascinated by the chase. Not me, I was thinking about all those truckloads of romaine and iceberg backed up in traffic when they were supposed to be hurtling north to my local grocery store.



    Pollinating Rabbits

    Rabbits in Western Australia doing more good than harm? Professor Harvey Warren of the University of Northern Australia has reported extraordinary findings while studying desert wild flowers. The Nullabor Plain in Western Australia receives very little rain, but when it does arrive, the desert blooms with wild flowers, almost overnight.

    What puzzled Professor Warren was the lack of pollinators for these flowers. Typical insect pollinators are unable to survive the long periods, years even, when there is no moisture or plant material present to enable them to survive, but flowers need pollinators in order to produce viable seed.

    Professor Warren made his astonishing discovery while alone on a field trip in a remote area of the Nullabor Plain. After a rare, intense downpour, plants sprouted and began to bloom, then shortly after, rabbits began to arrive from the more temperate regions to the south. It was as though the flowers had sent a pied piper to fetch them.

    As soon as the rabbits appeared, they began doing what rabbits do best — eating. Nothing unusual in that, but when he observed that the fur of the rabbits was beginning take on a yellowish tinge, the professor was intrigued. He managed to trap a rabbit and examine it closely. To his surprise, he discovered that the yellowness of the rabbit's fur was caused by pollen from the flowers. The rabbits were doused in the stuff.

    Not only were the rabbits shuffling about among the flowers, munching away, they were doing the other thing that rabbits do exceptionally well. All that vigorous activity caused pollen to fall onto the fur of the rabbits. It became clear that while the male rabbits were racing about in amorous pursuit of female rabbits, the flowers were being pollinated by the clouds of pollen rising from the rabbits' fur.

    This was the answer to the pollination question. Professor Warren thoughts were, "Blimey, we've been trying for years to wipe them out, and it turns out the little blighters are the answer to greening the desert." Australia may never be the same!


    Read a story in Belorussian
    Like to read more serious garden stuff?

    Click here
    These stories are available for posting or printing elsewhere -- with permission of the author-- and must include: credit, copyright, e-mail, and URL.

    Email Promise 
    This is not a tacky attempt to get hold of your e-mail address and spam you to death. 
    I have no wish to be a pest to gardeners, or anyone else. 
    I  swear on a stack of seed catalogues that I won't sell your e-mail address to . . . 
    Publishers Clearing House, the National Enquirer, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, George W, 
    or any other living soul or heartless entity -- even Julian Assange (don't kid yourself, he's already got it). 
    Nor will I scrawl it on the wall of any building or in any public washroom, 
    and you will never receive e-mail addressed to "Dear internet friend". 
    That's it! Nothing else. Period. 
    Your e-mail address is safe forever. 
    No salesman will call. 
    Home
    All pages copyright  ©1998/1999/2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007/2008/2009/2010/2011/2012/2013 and beyond

    Email David Hobson

    Home

    Mad Gardeners

    Dibble's Daily Diary
    He's a
                    GARDENER
    Newspaper
    A
                    little more serious
    Contests
    Win a
                    prize
    Soiled Reputations
    A gift for
                    gardeners
    Garden Tour
    The old
                    yard
    Garden News
    Not
                    CNN
    Bugs
    They don't
                    bite
    Stories
    The old
                    yard
    Cat Poll
    What
                    do you think?
    Jokes
    Are you
                    lost in the shrubbery?
    About Me

    Scratch n Sniff
    Revolutionary!
    Links
    You gotta
                    have em
    Garden Survivor

    Past Contests
    Worms
    Garden movies
    Garden songs
    Tee Shirts 
    Gardening outfits
    Weird planters
    Gardening too long
    Garden Clubs
    Zuchinis
    Strange garden
    Bizarre Headlines
    Survivor
    Buried in a garden
    Unlikely books
    Site Search
    Home
    Email