Nancy Martin's Blog, page 23

Extreme Gardening

by Barbara O'Neal

It's garden season, and for the first time in six years, I have a real garden of my own.  It's quite a project.  My beloved, probably weary of hearing me bitch about the idiocy of using scarce water to (barely) keep a backyard full of blue grass alive in a climate where it was never meant to grow, gave me a Christmas gift of a garden plan and the people to put it into operation.   

We started with a very bland rectangle. The most boring suburban backyard (complete with winter-killed grass) you can imagine.  

 

Over the past month, we've come to a series of raised beds.

Which I'm in the process of planting.

Now, a garden project in most places sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea.  Grow some roses, and some corn, a little lettuce and some dahlias. 

In the Rockies, even on the Front Range where I live, gardening is not a sport for the faint of heart.  We live at 7000 feet above sea level.  The air is thin, which means less oxygen (babies born here actually develop larger lungs than other people).  It also means the sun is scorching.  

The weather is also…er…challenging.  It's almost June and we had a hard freeze last week.  This morning, at eleven am, it's 46 degrees.  My neighbor, looking over my fence at the newly created raised beds in the backyard said, "You're putting in a garden? What about all the hail?"

It will hail.  It has already hailed three times on my baby little plants.  I will build hail-protectors out of PVC pipe and window screens to haul out as necessary, because I have lost entire gardens to bad storms more than once. 

But what is a gardener to do?  Give it up because it's hard? 

I am a gardener, thus I garden.

In England, gardening is a national sport, and for good reason.  I am astonished anew every time we go back to visit CR's mother.  She has foxgloves large enough

 to sail the seas in.  Roses climbing to heaven, grass thick and starred with buttercups. Everything grows with hedonistic abandon, and naturally, everyone gardens.  CR's mother is quite a talent, which doesn't sit well with her neighbor.  That neighbor, (Barbara, too, as it turns out), takes me aside secretly to show off her wisterias and exotics, all called properly by their Latin names.  These two older English ladies are thrilled that I share their passion, and send me home with gloves and potato bags and all manner of beautiful gardening treasures. 

It would be lovely to garden in England.  Or California (oh, for an orange tree! For avocados!).  Or the south where wisteria drips from every surface.

Here I am, however, in the high desert where it will not rain enough and then fling hailstones.  Where the sun will scorch baby plants and give me wrinkles, but eventually coaxes out roses and corn, squash and sage.  Since mailing my book last Monday, the only thing I've cared to do is plant and dig and arrange and make notes on my plantings.  (Imagining myself to be Vita Sackville-West, composing my own tiny Sissinghurst.)  My neighbors will pity me, they with all their grass, but in August when the corn is over my head, when I'm bringing them tomatoes hot off the vine, filled with the flavor of sunny days and cool nights, they'll envy me. When I'm plucking peaches from my tree, and collecting new potatoes in jackets the color of garnets,

they'll know why I stick with it.  In the spring, my lilacs will explode, and the tulips will dance.  Next year, it will be even better, and the year after that….and the year after that.   

I am a gardener, so I garden.

What is gardening like where you are? Love it? Hate it?

 

Small Tainted Fortunes

By Elaine Viets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Drug dealing is a business, like Kmart, Home Depot or McDonald's," Phil said. "The dealers set up a surprisingly corporate structure with a regular chain of command. There's a CEO at the top, far removed from the street sales. The lower levels have lots of employees. Ahmet was like the manager of a McDonald's and Mark was a lowly burger flipper. He'd be wearing a hairnet at Mickey D's.

"Dealers usually let the low-level players walk away. They can't kill them without a good reason. A death invites too much attention. Drug dealing breeds in the dark, like vermin."

"So we've got low-level Mark selling drugs," Helen said, "asking people if they want fries with their coke. Why did he need a gun? Was he afraid someone would shoot him when he hung out in the projects?"

"Mark? Selling in the projects? Not a chance," Phil said. "People like Mark do not go into the ghetto to sell. He probably peddled coke at parties."

"I've never been to any parties like that," Helen said.

"Yes, you have, you just didn't know it," Phil said. "You were probably drinking or dancing in the main rooms. The drug users congregate in a basement, a rec room or a bedroom. They use coded language like: I'm really stressed. I need to relax and mellow out. Or I need some energy. That's the cue to bring out the drugs."

"That's just middle-class drug use," Helen said and shrugged.

"Drug dealers are businessmen, Helen, and the middle class has lots of those. The good dealers ones are smart businessmen. They have to be.

"In the eighties, it seemed like everyone was either using coke, selling it, or both. Ordinary blue-
collar guys were stashing drug money in their closets. The handy ones built secret compartments in the bedroom closet. The cops always knew where to look. They'd lift up the carpet on the closet floor, and the secret was revealed. Or the cops would see some cheesy door cut into the Sheetrock closet wall with boxes of Christmas decorations piled in front of it. Obvious as hell. Once the small timers were caught, they usually folded."

"My ex, Rob, and I were offered a chance to bankroll a couple of drug dealers in St. Louis," Helen said. "They promised we could make fifty thousand dollars. It was presented as an investment opportunity."

"And you turned them down?" Phil said.

"Of course. Rob wanted to go for it. He thought we could make one big score and quit. I was too scared."

"You were too moral," Phil said.

"No, I knew I'd get caught."

"You might have," Phil said. "But you'd be surprised who got away with dealing. A lot of respectable business people got their nest egg selling drugs. They got in, made some money and got out. I kept hearing, 'I'm just in this until I can buy a house.' Sometimes it was a restaurant. Or a boat. Or a flashy vacation. They had a goal. They wanted to make a hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand. Enough to open the restaurant, take the luxury cruise, or start their dream business.

"The 'buy the restaurant' guy was more likely to quit when he reached his goal. Some small timers did that in the eighties. They scored and got out of the business. Or something happened and the middle-class ones got frightened back into being so-called good citizens. The ones who didn't either died or got busted."

"Behind every great fortune is a great crime," Helen said. "And behind many small fortunes are small crimes."

***

Win a $50 gift card to the bookstore of your choice, online or on land. Click on Contests at www.elaineviets.com .

 

 

"You'd be surprised how many comfortably off people are living off a small, tainted fortune," a detective told me when I researched "Pumped for Murder."

 

 

In my new Dead-End Job Mystery, Helen and Phil open their own private eye agency. They investigate a cold case from 1986, the days of the cocaine cowboys, a wild time in South Florida. A dress shop owner swears she closed her business so a drug dealer could spend $50,000 on clothes for his lady friends in one afternoon.

Veteran cops know these stories. But they also talk about the ones who walked away – ordinary citizens who made a fortune and quit the drug scene.

In this scene from "Pumped for Murder," Phil and Helen discover that phenomenon when they look into the death of Mark Behr, a mechanic who worked for a mid-level drug dealer named Ahmet.

Remember Your First?

by Margaret Maron

They say you never forget your first time. . . I mean the first time behind the wheel of the first car you yourself owned the title to.  What did you think I meant?

 

Oh, okay.  That, too, but Sarah's post yesterday has me remembering past cars.  I learned to drive on my mother's old beat-up Studebaker with a stick shift.

  

It was impossible to look cool in one of those bullet-nosed oddities, so it didn't bother me when that young naval officer who'd asked me out showed up at my apartment driving a 1948 Plymouth that he'd paid $100 for.  

Rusty and battered, it had been a D.C. taxi in its youth and my hair kept getting caught in the wires that dangled down from the rooftop where the lighted sign had once ridden.  I was amused, not embarrassed to be seen in it, and I even came to have a genuine affection for it when, shortly before  we were married, he confessed that a general's daughter had turned him down after two dates because she didn't want to be seen driving up to the O Club in that car. 

 

 

The first car that had my name on the title was the first car my husband and I owned together:  a 1960 VW Beetle that we bought on his tour of duty in Italy.  Stick-shift, of course.  It held a pup tent, sleeping bags, and a Sterno stove; and we camped all over Europe in it.  Because we didn't have much money though, we got the stripped-down version.  No extras.  Among the features considered "extras" were a radio and a fuel gauge.  If the car started to sputter, there was a lever under the glove compartment that you could turn to get an extra liter of gas.  Believe it or not, in the 10 years we owned that bug, we never once ran out of gas.

After that, the cars blur.  I vaguely recall a Hornet, a couple of Fords and a Mercury and I still mourn the old used  Lincoln I drove till it got totaled last November.  It was so comfortable on long trips and wasn't all that bad on gas either, all things considered.  I'd planned to keep it till it died a natural death.

 

These days I'm driving a plain vanilla Toyota and my husband clings to his 1986 Ford F150 pickup. The snow covers a load of rust and dents, but he's still the same guy that picked me up in that 1948 Plymouth.  "It's my mule," he tells me.  "What do I care what it looks like?"

Unlike  the other men in my family, he's never waxed lyrical over cars.  I guess when you grow up in NYC and don't learn to drive till you're 25, it's not the same as growing up out in the country and hungering for the freedom of your first set of wheels.  My brother can tell you every car he's ever owned:  how much it cost him, how he worked out the money, why he traded it.  Same for most of my male friends.  My women friends?  They might remember the guy with the cool Jag or the car they learned how to drive in or the one they got on their 16th birthday, but after that?

What about you?  Is there one particular car that lives on in your heart?

Scaring the Shift out of Me

By Sarah

My husband was all for Sam getting his permit. The boy turned 15 in October, one of the oldest in his class. He's a guy and apparently guys need to drive (unlike Anna who seemed to be in no rush until the summer before senior year, two weeks before her permit expired). Plus, you've got to clock in 40 hours, 8 of nighttime driving to get a license. Better to start now.

And so Sam  has been driving back from after-school practice when, I figure, the streets are less crowded. This means that every day around 6:30 p.m., I'm gripping the door and jamming my foot against the invisible brake as I channel my dearly departed mother: "Don't worry about the driver behind you. That's their look out. Slow down! Ease to the right at the curb. Give the other guy clear signals what you want to do. Remember, you are on the road with the same idiots/stoners who couldn't pass ninth-grade math. Jesus &%$#@ SLOW DOWN!"

My mother hated teaching me how to drive and I hated learning. The situation was not improved by our two dysfunctional cars - a 1977 VW Dasher that overheated when it reached, oh, 80 degrees and
you sat in traffic more than five minutes and a 1973 Dodge Dart "Swinger" that was anything but. It had a tendency to stall while taking a left turn, a glitch that strangely left my father unperturbed, though I nearly lost my life twice.

Once, on my way to a Brown alumni interview, I stalled, was nearly killed by a tractor trailer huffing it up a steep, blind hill and showed up shaken and stirred. To this day, I can remember the calm faces of preppers in Mr. Brown University's panelled living room as I collapsed in a chair and babbled about my recent escape from the clutches of death.

Speaking of clutches, this is why I didn't drive the Dasher. At first. Like a lot of Pennsylvania towns, Bethlehem frequently placed stop lights at the top of steep hills. (See above.) And while my brother liked to run down th e clutch by stepping on it while remaining in first, I yanked up the emergency brake and proceeded through a serious of complicated steps before burning rubber just to avoid stalling and/or backsliding. 

 

Once a helpful (drunken) man got out of the pickup behind me, knocked on my window and demanded to know if I could drive. Nice, huh? Maybe "accidentally" backsliding into his truck might have answered his question.

ANYWAY...the point is that teaching someone to drive just sucks. On the one hand, you don't want to destroy your offspring's confidence. On the other, you want to... live! This is why schools devote precious taxpayer resources to the matter. 

But being a smart kid, Sam's schedule is so jam packed with honors and AP courses, that fitting in driver's ed doesn't quite work.  Frankly, I don't know when he'll get his license - maybe next fall if we pay for private courses.

And then comes a new flood of worries - Will he come home in one piece? Will his passengers come home in one piece? Will the car? Will he know better than to let road rage get the best of him? Or alcohol? 

The only fact that keeps me from losing sleep over this is my own experience. The night I got my license, I called my friend Lisa (to whom all my books are dedicated) and she came down to my house so we could go out for ice cream. We had a lot to celebrate since it took three tries for me to pass the test. (The second time, I was tricked by a state trooper who told me to pull up to the line and then promptly flunked me because I didn't have a licensed driver sitting next to me ON THE COURSE!)

I backed out of the garage in the Dart and stalled. It hadn't even been a left turn. And when I tried to step on the gas, there was this awful scraping sound. Also, the sound of falling concrete. Plus, I couldn't move.

"Look," Lisa said, pointing to where the car was stuck into the garage wall.

My father was very good about it the next morning. And now I know why he kept the Dart - just for this occasion. And why I'm keeping my 2004 Honda Pilot with 122,000K miles and several dents.

What's your driver's ed story?

 

Sarah

The Dishwasher Must Die!

by Harley

Ever notice how fiction's bad guys these days are always the Russian mob, or the Ukranians? It's like we recycled old Cold War characters, dressing them up in capitalism and leather jackets. I'm guilty of it myself, in my 4th novel--and before you start yelling "xenophobe!" let me say that I'm half Slovak, which is just down the block from Ukraine. But now these people--my people--have shown up in my real life. Here's how it happened.

3 years ago I moved into a "new" house, 25 years old (the house, not me) that came with elderly appliances, plus a home warranty policy that repairs or replaces appliances as they die off. When the policy expired I signed on for another year at $975, and got lucky when my hot water heater burst.

Since the water heater, no appliances have died, but many have gone on the fritz (apologies to any reader named Fritz) including—8 times—my dishwasher.

I loathe my dishwasher. Not to name names, but the brand starts with "M" and rhymes with Paytag.

Here's the drill. The dishwasher breaks. I call up Crabby Home Warranty (not its real name) and a computer answers, saying, "Please state the nature of your problem. For instance, if your air conditioner is not cooling the air, you could say, 'my air conditioner is not cooling the air.' Or—"

            I say, "My dishwasher isn't washing my dishes."

            "I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please state the nature of your problem. For instance, if—"

            "My dishwasher won't wash dishes."

            "I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please state the—"

            "MY STUPID CHEAP DISHWASHER IS BAKING SCUM ONTO MY PLATES AND I NEED A BLOWTORCH TO GET IT OFF."

            "I'm sorry, I didn't get that. I'll connect you with a human being so sullen you'll wish you were talking to me."

The human assigns me a case number and turns my file over to Kremlin Appliance Repair (not its real name).

Kremlin Appliance Repair sends over Yuri or Yaroslaw or Mikhail. Never the same guy twice. I pay him the $60 service fee. Yuri examines the Paytag, orders a part, and leaves. A week later Yaroslaw shows up with the part, does the repair, and lectures me about liquid detergent and over-rinsing my dishes, explaining that detergent needs food particles to stick to. I switch detergents and leave food on plates. 2 months later the Paytag stops working, only now Mikhail shows up, orders parts, tells me sternly, "you must scour plates before you load. Anyone knows this." Six weeks later, it's Boris, who wags a finger at me, saying dishwashers are only as good as their rinse agent, but even so, a dishwasher cannot be expected to truly clean dishes.

Wha—?

Because there's a 30-day warranty on service calls, the Paytag always waits 5 weeks between breakdowns, ensuring that I will go broke, $60 at a time. I was explaining this to Cindy, my Jenny Craig counselor, by way of justifying my need to self-medicate with cookies, when Cindy looked around furtively, then whispered, "Harley—you're not using Kremlin Appliance Repair, are you?" the way people do when discussing Satanic cults or mafiosi. And that's when it hit me. In our troubled economy, people trained in one trade--schoolteachers, carpenters, assassins--find themselves flipping burgers and repairing appliances. Yet therein lies my solution.

The Paytag must die. Bronislav or Leonid or Dmitri must pronounce it dead, so that Crabby Home Warranty will buy me a new one (perhaps a Bosch!) I know this won't come cheap. I know Kremlin is getting kickbacks from the appliance parts company. I don't care. The Paytag has had eight service calls in fifteen months. I'm losing the will to live.

My question is, what's the going rate for an appliance hit? And what's the etiquette? I've never negotiated with the mob before. Do I just blurt it out? And is it immoral? Illegal? Am I a racketeer?

Is there an inanimate object you'd send to sleep with the fishes? And how would you do it?

добрый день!

Harley

 

 

 

Trash-Tastic Weavery

by Karen Abbott

My name is Joshilyn Jackson, and I freely confess that I love me some Karen Abbott.

She's more fun than a bucket full of drugged-into-a-state-of-bliss confessional poets, and under that bombshell bod beats the heart of a lion. Not the kind of lion who stalks you and kills you and eats you and pukes your bits back up to feed the cubs, mind you. More an English FLAG kind of lion, rampant and mighty. A lion who always has your back.

She's also the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author who, according to USA Today, "pioneered sizzle history," with her debut Sin in the Second City.

Most recently, Newsday said, "Abbott creates a brainy striptease similar to the one her subject may have performed: uncovering doozies," while rave-reviewing her most recent book, American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee.

 

PS! This means that not only does she have the inside skinny on the best burlesque shows running, but if you go to see them with HER, you get to claim you are only there to help do RESEARCH.

A note on images: The Madonna pic shows Madge's Ray of Light look, and the white dress pic is Karen rockin' her old school hair. The brunette pic is Karen now, and then I toss in one more OLD SCHOOL HAIR pic because---PEEP THE SLEEVES ON THE DRESS! It is just so Luke-and-Laura's-Wedding, I could DIE! Here's Karen:

Joshilyn Jackson and I were on the phone having one of those conversations borne of a desperate need to procrastinate. We don't care what we're talking about—or even if it makes any practical sense—so long as it blithely, stealthily takes the place of actual work.

Previous topics of this vein have included a debate on the hotness of erstwhile presidents (neither one of us would've kicked Warren Harding out of bed, for example, and didn't Andrew Jackson have quite a rakish sweep of hair?) to whether Matthew McConaughey's strangely bloated skull should be classified as "fetal chicken head" or "amniotic sac head."

"What's the trashiest thing you've ever done?" Joss asked. "Not the smuttiness, not the sleaziest, but the trashiest."

"Well," I said, "when I lived in Atlanta, there was the time I bought five dollars' worth of crap at Krystal Burger on Ponce de Leon at 3 a.m.—and put it on my credit card."

"Pretty trashy, Abbott," she said, "but I know you can do better." Of course I could.

It was 1998, and Madonna's "Ray of Light" video played nonstop on MTV. I coveted Madonna's hair (also her abs, waist, and ass, but mostly her hair). At the time my own hair was shoulder-length, recently (and thankfully) downgraded from pure bleached to ashy blonde, and I determined the only way I would acquire that wind-whipped, ringleted golden pelt was via extensions.

Today, the highest-quality extensions—real hair with the outmost cuticle layer intact—cost $200 per package, and are such a hot commodity that roving bands of thieves are stealing them from salons across the country.

 

But back then I was in debt from student loans and didn't bother to do any comparison shopping. Instead, during lunch break one day, I popped into a beauty supply store in Center City Philadelphia and purchased a weave, wrapped tight in clear plastic. Two pieces of long, wavy, blond, hair-like substance for the bargain price of $20.

After work, I ventured to an old-school hair salon in West Philly that specialized in weaves. It was apparent that I was not their typical customer, being the only white person within blocks, and when a stylist approached me I placed the weave in her outstretched hand.

"Girl," she said, "that's the sorriest looking weave I've ever seen, but if you really want it in your head, I know how to put it there."

 

It took about six hours to cornrow my entire head and sew in the weave. If you squinted or were very drunk, I'm sure I looked exactly like Madonna, or at least some crazy cousin, one who was housing a colony of randy squirrels in her head.

 

Since it wasn't real hair, I was told not to wash it. I mostly obeyed this edict, just patting my roots with soap and stuffing the rest in a shower cap. After a week, I grew careless and wayward strands of weave on my left side tumbled out.

I panicked and grabbed my hair dryer. Bad idea: the strands of "hair" melted and fell limp and began separating; you could see the cornrows peeping through.

There was only one thing to do, of course: cough up another ten bucks and buy a replacement weave, just for that left side.

 

I made an appointment for Saturday afternoon, and left the weave in my car.

 

On Friday night, after work, my husband and I went rollerblading in Fairmount Park. After the ten-mile trek, we arrived back at the car to find the passenger's side window smashed open. The culprit stole our house keys, my husband's wedding ring, and my new weave, still wrapped in plastic.

 

It was time, I decided, to become unweaved.

My husband spent two hours sifting though my hair, pulling out pieces of thread and unbraiding cornrows, wondering if the thief would fetch more for my weave or his wedding band.

I consoled myself with a cheesesteak, but at least I paid in cash.

So now it is your turn. Surely you have some work you need to put off!

Let me ask you Joshilyn's question: "What's the trashiest thing you've ever done? Not the smuttiness, not the sleaziest, but the

trashiest."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rapture My Ass

By Cornelia Read

Okay, awesome. I get to blog on the day that some total bozos think the world is going to end. The Rapture, baybay. When all good Christians will be sucked up into the sky like loose Legos into an expensive vacuum cleaner. Or something.

Here is what I think of when I hear the word Rapture:

 

 

Hello, BLONDIE. I mean, Fab Five Freddy and Dinosaurs eating Subarus--that's what the word means to me: cocaine and crappy music videos late nights on MTV in my late teens and early twenties, basically.

This end of the world stuff? Well, not so much.

I mean, it's not like they haven't threatened us with it before. And frankly, I'm more about the bumper stickers:

Though the idea of annoying literalists being sucked up off the face of the earth has a certain appeal, I have to say.

Kind of a whole new interpretation of "Up With People," only twice as lame. Which is saying something.

But, on the bright side, it could be like that thing in the Douglas Adams novel about how a world that was about to blow up sent off two spaceship arks with the entire global population aboard one or the other of them. The "other" one, let's say, was filled with insurance salespeople and telephone sanitizers, if memory serves. That was the one NOT programmed to arrive at the new planet.

Ahem.

I wouldn't mind filling a spaceship with everyone who believes in The Rapture--especially the ones who think they're so special that God will preserve them and then whale on the rest of us with Tsunamis and earthquakes and hellfire and stuff for being secular humanists or what have you.

I'm sorry, I just can't believe God is that much of an asshole. And if he is, I don't think I really want to go there, you know? "There" being wherever such a deity hangs out.

I would rather party with the blue people.

Or, you know, THESE guys:

Because Tibetans are pretty much always a good time, especially on a road trip. I think it's the yak cheese. And also, the hot fermented barley tea is pretty fun.

Although I'm also a fan of the Kumari, and female deities generally:

I mean, seriously, if you had to be stuck on a desert island with someone, she'd be way cooler than this guy, right?

So I say "Rapture Away, Buttheads!" It would be lovely if all the intolerant, smug, hateful, ignorant xenophobes and misogynists just up and floated off into the sunset.

Maybe after that, the rest of us can sing about something happy. Like these people:

 

 

But just in case I'm wrong, this is the car I'd like:

 

So if you know of any hardcore Christian likely to float off the planet tomorrow who just happens to drive a black ragtop Porsche 356, do let me know where they keep it garaged, okay?

Although I'd settle for a nice British Racing Green Jaguar, especially a 1959 XK:

How 'bout you guys--what kind of car do you want, after The Rapture?

[And here's a lagniappe, because I'm kvelling--a pic I took of my daughter, just before she left for her first prom last night:

A little Sargent-y, I like to think... verging on one of the cooler Mitfords.]

Posse-Speak

By Joshilyn Jackson

Every inner circle has a private lexicon, your own little language and shorthand steeped in your communal history. It's a vocabulary list used most often when you are secluded with just each other, those times when you wear super soft plane socks and have no make-up (or ties) on.

Things that enter the lexicon are rarely said publicly, so when speaking lexiconically, one is not necessarily always so sugar mouthed or PC as one might be in mixed company. *ahem*

In my writing group, we overtly build ours. We can even apply to the group to get a new term included. If one of us coins a phrase or word think it is super prime, we submit it by sending out an email that says "THIS NEEDS TO GO IN THE LEXICON!" Then we define it, give sample sentences, and even narrate some situations in which it would prove useful.

Recently, I submitted Douche Cue. A Douche Cue usually happens at a meeting or just after an introduction, and it is a sign or a signal that this new person is not one with whom you wish to pursue a deeper relationship, because, um, the guy is a probably a douche.

They are also a warning, in case one's friends run across this person later.

I once met a writer at a festival who introduced himself in this way:

"Hello, I am Namey McNamerson, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed novel, Title of Pretentious Book. I'm sure you've heard of it. I was just talking to *NAME OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL BEST FRIEND* at Swanky Event You Weren't Invited To, and I am sure she would want me to give you a big, warm hello from her."

I count at least four, maybe five douche cues right there, in the first 15 seconds.

Or, for another example, in this Savage Chickens Cartoon, anything from Lanai on up is probably a Douche Cue:

Douche Cue got picked up immediately and is currently in wide circulation in my posse, but if an overt submission FAILS, you can simply use it relentlessly and show the posse how USEFUL a term it is and hope it gets added.

To Succulent Vines for example, entered via its usefulness.

Yes, To Succulent Vines is a verb, and it seems farfetched when you try to explain it as an entry, but one quickly discovers how useful a term it can be when one test drives its practical applications.

One Succulent Vineses when one is trapped in a situation where one MUST say a nice thing about something one truly does not care for.

For example, say you read a book, and a week later, you go to a dinner and the author's mother is there. And someone at the table hollers ALL THE WAY DOWN THE LENGTH OF IT...

"Oh. I know Joshilyn read that book! Joshilyn! What did you THINK OF IT?" (Your name is Joshilyn in this F'rinstance.)

Well, you hated it. HATED. It offended you on every level. You had four therapy sessions to recover from the violent physical paroxysms of convulsive loathing the book induced.

But the mother? OH! She is teeny and ancient and dear and has kind black shiny mouse eyes peering hopefully out at you from behind her copper-rimmed glasses.

What do you do? You can't praise a book you hated. You can't revile it in front of the mother and a table full of her friends. So, you succulent vines it. You say things about it that sound good but are meaningless.

"Oh yes, I DID read that! (true) You must be so proud that your son is a published author! (true) WhenI was readign it, I kept noticing that hehis amazing facility for dovetailing rich, extravagant images!" you might say.

You do not mention that the images made you want to puke up your own spleen and throw it at the author.

Just a heads up? If you ask your friend if a dress makes you look fat and the friend says, "It's such a good color for you!" Well! You have juuuust been Succulent Vines'ed.

Lastly, Lexicon words can come from outside sources.

Fantasy Pants, for example, is a term coined by my brother.

They are big floppy drawstring pants made of soft knit that one wears ONLY in the privacy of one's own home or at a retreat facility, when engaged in the task of flipping one's eyes around backwards to see the story that one is inventing in one's own brain and as you attempt to MOVE story 10,000 light years through space and time, which is the approximate distance from point a (the writer's head) to point b (the page).

Fantasy Pants are extremely unflattering; they do not bite into your waist or constrict your hips or mold your buttocks into a more pleasing shape. Nor do they inhibit the digestion of the many, many, many Cheesy Poufs that I feel are necessary for art to happen.

What's in your lexicon? Anything you can SHARE? Or is it all too dark-n-dirty and secret for public consumption? OH, tell anyway. It's the internet! Plus I showed you three of mine. Playground Justice dictates that you should show me yours.

Naked in the Garden!

NAKED IN THE GARDEN!

By Nancy Pickard

Made you look, right?  Okay, okay, we all know Nancy Martin wrote a lovely blog about gardening yesterday, and yet here I come with more flowers, and you're probably sighing, because a little gardening goes a long way if you're not a fanatic.  But this is a different garden today.  It's the bare and naked garden.  This is down in the dirt with Nancy.

If you're sick of flowers, skip ahead to the comments and talk about. . .the naked truth, naked ambition, naked desire, the perils of naked cooking, naked on the lawn mower, and splendor in the grass.  Me, I've always been wildly envious of men because they can bare their naked chests on hot summer days. 

 Ahem.  So.  My mom and I inhabit a little condo with a lot of green around it, to which I attempt to add cheerful flowers. I'm still in the planning stage.  Want to help me?  Puhleeze?

Here we have the front walk before I've added any pots or there are any flowers in bloom.  Those little green things on the right are weeds.  O, hai, weeds! >>>>> 

Okay, this is going to be painful to show you because right now it all looks so dreary and impoverished, as if somebody named Winter has salted my earth so nothing will grow here, neither in pots nor in ground.  But you've got to see the Before so you can appreciate the After in a few months, right?  Besides which, I NEED SOME ADVICE, PEOPLE! 

I'm in Zone 6, btw, but lately we can plant more southern things than we used to be able to do.  Of course, there's no such thing as climate change, snarkity-snark-snark-snark.

So here goes the barren truth of how things look now around our place in Kansas.  Our gardens are itsy, but still take a lot of thought and some work.

If these were your window boxes, what would you put in them?  I've used red geranimums, which are gorgeous, but get leggy even with pinching, and don't last as long as I'd like.  Last year I alternated white and hot pink vincas (periwinkles) and they were lovely and long-lived.   

 

 

 

 

That bright yellow plant with the black flower is from the genus fire plug.  I suppose I shouldn't complain.  Would you leave it as is, or would you try to disguise it?  And if so, with what? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Eek!  This is next thing is embarrassing!  My poor neighbors. 

This is the "big" (hahaha) garden that I've just begun to clean up and prepare. 

Somebody needs to straighten those rocks. 

If this were yours, what would you do with it?  And don't say "dynamite" or "grass," you joker, you.   I'm making this photo very small so you can't see it very well.  Hey, I have some pride, if not a lot of pity for my neighors, apparently.  It will get better soon!  I promise you.  And them.  My neighbors on both sides are both fabulous gardeners with big fat flocks of fleurs.  I hate them.  No, I love them, but man, I've gotta scramble to keep up with the not-Joneses! >>>>>

 Now here's where I seriously need advice! Last fall I had a huge-o evergreen bush pulled out, and now you can see the uglies it hid.  Ack!

 
I want to plant something evergreen to hide the heat pump, gas meter, hose, etc.  I don't want it taller than 10 feet or wider than 3 feet.  Any ideas?  I'm thinking maybe Dwarf Alberta Spruce, maybe two or three of them.  Whatever it is, it must stay green and full all year long, and it can't take up much room, so no deciduous trees, please. 

These plants light up two tiny bits of garden that get almost no sun.  Would you believe those leaves stayed that bright yellow-green all winter?! The limpy things in the back that you can't really see yet are Astilbe.  I can't remember what color they'll be, but I think maybe hot pink?  >>>>>>

 

 

 

Finally, this is the back deck, two levels up, before I put any potted plants out here. 

 Gets full sun.  Is a bitch to water.  Just sayin', in case you were thinking of recommending Impatiens that need watering every fifteen minutes in mid-August.

postscript: Between the time I wrote this and now, I've made a few initial improvements to those two teeny plots.  There's some color that's going to sprout there now. . .and doesn't nice framing improve almost anything?

 

Bonus point for reading all the way to the end! 

Now you can give me advice, or ask for advice, or talk about other naked things, your choice!

 

The Garden of Friends

The Garden of Friends

 by Nancy Martin     

The primary reason I'm unavailable for just about any travel or social events in early May is that in Zone 5 (if you're a gardener, you know what I'm referring to) it's the month when you must move plants in the garden.  These days, my garden boots are muddy by the back door.  I keep a box of latex gloves (for me, a better choice than gardening gloves) on the kitchen counter. My spade and hand trowels stand at the ready. My dear husband spends his Saturdays mulching like crazy.

The first house we bought previously belonged to the manager of the local Agway store, and the property was lush with flowering bushes and fruit trees.  I learned about growing blueberries at that house.  (The trick is knowing when to "recycle" old sheer curtains—throwing them over the bushes just before the birds realize the berries are ripening.) But there weren't any flowers at that house.

Our second house—in a leafy neighborhood in a small town--came with one of the best assets never mentioned on HGTV—a neighbor who loved to garden and share her knowledge. The first flower I received from a friend came from her, my neighbor Mary—who, a couple of years later suddenly gave up gardening when she became obsessed with golf. (My theory about her giving up gardening is that her beloved dog died, and she buried her in the garden.) Mary gave me a plant that we call gooseneck. It used to grow under the fence between our houses, and I loved it, so Mary helped me dig up a clump and move it into my own garden.  It's actually a forbidden plant in my state—it grows rampantly in wetlands, choking out all native plants—so it's very naughty to move it, but I am careful to keep it contained in a dry part of my garden.  The flowers are shaped like the heads of geese, and they bloom just in time for the 4th of July, so they make wonderful holiday bouquets when combined with red bee balm---together, they look like fireworks.

                            

Mary started my life as a gardener.  I'm not very good, mind you.  (I tend to learn from disastrous mistakes.)  She taught me one of the greatest joys of gardening is sharing cherished plants, passing them along to friends.

For my birthday one year, my mother gave me some hard-to-find daylilies that bloom dark red with hardly any yellow in the throat.  I accidentally left most of them at another house when we moved here to Pittsburgh, but I have a small clump I'm gently coaxing to expand.  (Molly W, are you there?  I should consult you on this subject.)

Last week, when I should have been pounding toward my June 1 deadline, I divided some of my favorite plants to share with my daughter, Sarah, who has started her own garden this year.  She gets some of the four o'clock that I divided out of a plant that grew along the side of the house beside Mary's—the house where Sarah grew up.  Sarah's favorite color is purple, and she was fascinated that four o'clock bloomed every day at four o'clock.  So now she has some of her own. Sharing flowers with her has been a great joy to me.  Yes, I could go to a garden center a buy a bunch of flowers to plant in her garden, but where's the challenge and the made memory in that?

Also from the house where Sarah grew up, I took a chunk of variegated hosta that has since been divided so many times that I've lost track of many of the places it's ended up.  But I know some of it grows on my father's grave.  Some ended up at a house where we lived briefly on a Virginia mountaintop.  Some grows along the Delaware sidewalk of my friend Ramona.  Ramona, by the way, has given me the wonderful Siberian iris, which is just about to bloom in front of my house.

My friend Hannah—a creative person who wrote and illustrated a wonderful children's book set in Africa and featuring her magical drawings of animals—gave me Sweet Woodruff, which I planted first at the big house we built twenty years ago. That Sweet Woodruff looked beautiful around a small pond she helped me dig—a pond that was home to some goldfish until the raccoons came for buffet night. (See my earlier note re: disastrous mistakes.) The following year, I was talking on the telephone and looking out at the pond through a window and realized something was swimming around in the pond.  I was delighted—thinking somehow some fish has survived---and then I realized the pond was full of snakes.  (Major disastrous mistake.)  So when the gardening shows gush about "water features," I'm the one shouting at the television:  "Water brings snakes, you fools!" 

So I can't think of Sweet Woodruff without thinking of Hannah. 

We have moved several times since we married over 30 years ago---sometimes by choice (we had a great time building our dream house, and the garden at that house was my masterpiece, but oooh, I am so sad that I can't see what that garden looks like now!) and sometimes we have moved because there was no other choice. When we happily moved here to Pittsburgh, I was glad to have my minivan, which I packed to the gills with the two Dalmatians and their paraphernalia and huge clumps of flowers and plants.  The minivan smelled like dirt for weeks.

Yes, I have books and knickknacks that have been given to me by friends, and I love them. Harley gave me a blue Buddha.    Or is it a Shiva? I don't know the difference, but I love it. (I keep it on the shelf by my desk.  See the lips?  That's from our first TLC reunion at the RT convention here in Pittsburgh.)

But there's something about seeing a plant poke itself up from the dirt in May and start to grow—to come to life—that makes sharing flowers with friends such a circle of life