Don't Ask Me Blog
January 17, 2012
Last summer, a client gave me a copy of The Man Who Planted Trees published in 1953 by Jean Giono. It is the first person (fictional) account of a shepherd, Elzeard Bouffier, who plants 100,000 acorns in a ruined, deforested valley of the Alps near Provence, France around 1910. Years later the narrator returns to find a forest complete with flowing streams, green meadows, flocks of birds and wild game in what had been a windswept, barren place. My two youngest girls loved the story when I read it to them, over three installments, at bedtime. They were captivated by the idea that a single person could effect so much change. They admired Bouffier for his solitary anonymity in doing his good work. They dreamt of mountain streams, perfumed breezes, and (once) of thousands of tree swings to choose from. My daughters wanted to see if the place described still existed. If the forest so clearly described in the book, so imbedded in their dreams, still grew. Times (and technology)...more
February 11, 2011
 I must begin to plant seeds again, some vegetable seeds or rye
And all I ask is a bright space and the hope that they won’t die,
And the soil’s smell and the sun’s beams and the quiet joy of pottering,
And the straight rows of tidy trays, and a trusty can for watering.
I must begin to plant seeds again, for the call of a gardener’s pride
Is a clear call and an annual call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is for longer days with no white snow flying,
And sturdy seedlings and a garden plan, and another year’s trying.
I must begin to plant seeds again, to escape this winter life,
To escape the frost and bitter cold and wind like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a cheerful tale from a smiling fellow grower,
And quiet sleep and plant-filled dreams when the transplanting’s over.
With apologies to
John Masefield (1878-1967)
“Sea Fever”
Click here to read "Sea Fever" by John Masefield
September 27, 2010
I have two ash trees in my yard. They have grown there for 10 years. They have begun to show purple as Autumn approaches and I can’t help but sigh. My ash trees are doomed. Emerald Ash Borer. EAB. They’re in the papers, on the news. Working at a nursery, I’ve known about them for years. They’re coming, they’re coming, and now they are in my yard. Now they are killing my trees. The odd thing is, EAB is an attractive little bug as an adult. Bright and shiny green, like small colorful grasshoppers minus the big back legs, ash borers do not look menacing. They don’t look dangerous. Looks, of course, are deceiving. Tuberculosis probably doesn’t look dangerous either. The larvae of EAB burrows back and forth in crazy patterns eating the cambium layer of the ash trees. Eventually they girdle the entire circumference of the tree and fatally interrupt the flow of nutrients between the crown and roots. It is as if our blood vessels would be severed all the way through at the elbow...more
July 19, 2010
My yard is a cataclysm of misfit trees. Virtually every tree in my yard is a reclamation project. Each one is a distorted unsatisfactory (unsaleable) specimen that I am ‘saving’. I have an Autumn Blaze Maple in the shape of an S. There is the multi-stem Swamp White/Bur Oak which stands 24” tall with a 36” spread centered in my front yard. (“Look dear! A new shrub with leaves like an Oak!”) I have an Ironwood with two central leaders, a Dawn Redwood with no lower branches, a “C” shaped Evans Cherry tree, and a single stem Firebird Crabapple® in the shape of “F” (because branches stubbornly refuse to emerge from its South side) in my yard. All are visible—to my wife’s horror—from the street. The oddest looking tree, the one which draws the most comments, is the most normal. I have a healthy, typical 9’ tall Kentucky Coffeetree growing in my front yard. If you can imagine a slender, tough, coarse, gray-brown trunk shooting straight out of the ground without a single knob...more
May 20, 2010
In the ultra-urban district of Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan—six city blocks that are internationally famous for high fashion and modern culture—there is a statue of a lop-eared dog. The dog’s name was Hachiko. Hachiko was an akita. He belonged to University of Tokyo professor of agriculture Hidesaburo Ueno. Beginning in 1924, Hachiko faithfully accompanied his master to the Shibuya train station in the morning and returned every afternoon, at the correct time, to meet his master’s train and to accompany him home. In May of 1925, Mr. Ueno suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died at work. Hachiko waited. Ueno never returned. Every afternoon—for the next nine years—Hachiko waited at the appointed time for his master to return. Other commuters, touched by his loyalty, began offering him treats and patting his head as they passed by. Hachiko waited patiently. Every day. For nine years. Hachiko was found dead on the streets of Shibuya in March, 1935. The regular commuters through the...more
April 5, 2010
This morning I watched as two robins hopped across my lawn. They turned their heads sideways in a synchronized way, paused, pecked and hauled back simultaneously on fat sluggish worms. Spring has come. I saw children ride their bikes to the nearby school bus stop, their gossiping mothers following behind. Old men leaned against the coffee counter at the corner gas station speaking of weather from long ago springs, spouting statistics and temperatures like young boys who have memorized the backs of their baseball cards. A Harley-Davidson rumbled by. At work the horse chestnut buds are sticky. Lilac and cherry buds swell, pregnant with fragrant blooms. The crocus clumps flower yellow and purple in loose proximity across the perennial bed like a shawl crotcheted by a beginner. The winter-hued cedars turn from rust to green. Shoals of gnats wheel and dance above an aged compost pile; rich, clean and fertile smelling in the late afternoon sun. Sandhill cranes are nesting...more
March 19, 2010
In August of 1868 Colonel Richard Dunbar, riddled with disease and in the throes of a diabetes induced attack, did something quintessentially human. He sought comfort at the base of a majestic tree. In Dunbar’s case, the tree was a soaring white oak. As many in southeastern Wisconsin (and most in Waukesha) know, Colonel Dunbar drank from a small spring beside the oak and felt better. He continued to drink and contemplate the spreading crown above him and the buttressed trunk beside him. The Colonel, who had been given only months to live, felt cured. He lived for another ten years and made Waukesha, the spring waters (which he named Bethesda) and the white oak world-famous. They called it the Dunbar Oak and made it the focal point of Bethesda Park. Nothing lasts forever…not even oak trees. The Dunbar Oak, weakened by an ice storm in 1976 and by a pocket of decay, came down in July of 1991 when high winds snapped the 5’ diameter trunk off about ten feet above the ground...more
January 20, 2010
I have a confession to make. I am a Wisconsin native who only endures winter. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t look forward to it. I don’t welcome it. I use every ounce of imagination I can muster to survive it. I don’t thrive. I barely cope. I am in the minority. Many people are passionate about winter. I know grown men who spend entire weekends huddled in plastic sheeted shelters the size of port-o-potties pursuing fish they would scoff at in July. I know women who snowshoe along nature trails talking about the play of light in the woods and the whereabouts of their men. I know those who spend thousands of dollars to whip across farm fields on snow machines too fast to appreciate any scenery at all, those who spend endless hours in front of computers and game consoles with space heaters at their feet, and those who use the skates and sleds and skis stored in their garage rafters at every opportunity. None of that works for me. As January deepens and I begin to lose...more
December 10, 2009
As holiday music loops endlessly in the background and this year’s first real snowfall floats down, I find my mind drifting to a conversation held recently between a horticulturist, a nurseryman, and me. The topic was the best way to transplant balled and burlapped nursery stock. What I keep returning to, though, is the larger question of which viewpoint is more valid? The horticulturist has the scientific training to explain what a tree needs to survive a transplant. The master gardener has the instruction of the state of Wisconsin University system—botanists, horticulturists, soil scientists, et al—boiled down to make transplants most likely to succeed for the black thumbed among us. But the nurseryman has decades of practical, ‘hands on’ experience to draw from. Does that trump the book learning? Specifically, the three of us were hung up on the best time and technique to fertilize newly transplanted stock. We disagreed. My experience and training runs toward organic...more
November 13, 2009
Each spring I commit a sin. My father called it the sin of assumption. Every year, on Memorial Day, I sow too many seeds on the assumption that this year (unlike all those in the past) my kids will discover a love of garden fresh vegetables. I put in too many tomato and cucumber seedlings on the assumption that this year (unlike all those in the past) my wife and I will preserve them and enjoy them deep into the winter. I thin the beets and kohlrabi on the assumption that this year (unlike all those in the past) someone, other than myself, will appreciate their perfect symmetrical heft at harvest. This year my sin was great. I have reasons. All sinners do. My wife mentioned that a friend had given her a recipe for zucchini bread and that, if I would only grow some for her, she would be interested in making it for us all summer long. The kids, who it turns out have firm ideas about how mothers should bake warm bread for every meal, cheered this idea. As the only...more
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About Tom Hill
Tom Hill is the Sales/Marketing Manager for Johnson's Nursery and Johnson's Gardens. As an avid gardener, his blog will attempt to descibe the lighter side of gardening. Tom best relates to the passion for plants and will leave the technical writing to the horticulturists.
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