The Obsessive Neurotic Gardener

Category Archives: Garden memoir

Keeping It Real

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“I just want to let you know that I drool quite a bit when I sleep.”

That statement was uttered by yours truly back in October of 1990. It was one of the first sentences I directed towards a beautiful young lady I had just met while a freshman at Trenton State College in bucolic Ewing, New Jersey. That woman just happened to become my wife six years later.

Now before you blast me for one of the worst pick-up lines in the history of courtship, just know that I may have been slightly inebriated when I said it, and I may or may not have been hanging upside down on a bicycle rack when those words spilled out of my mouth. It is all a little blurry in the memory bank. And yes, it was a little forward of me but it felt like an important piece of information to share with the future Mrs. Markowski. She had to know what she was getting into from the get-go.   

The truth is, I have a knack for not only giving up too much information about myself, but also taking self- deprecation a bit too far. I’ve always been that way and it hasn’t slowed down as I march through adulthood. I’ve never stopped to ponder why I am that way or even worried about how people perceive me because of it. I guess if I had to sit in the psychiatrist’s chair and analyze it, I could come up with some reasons for it.    

It could be a defense mechanism where I beat you to the punch before you can point out a deficiency of mine. For example, at family get-togethers, I’ll immediately say something like “How do you like this pathetic attempt at a beard?” (which by the way, is completely accurate) before someone can give me that look that says “What a pathetic beard”. It is me proving to you that I am completely self-aware.

It could also be a means to avoid any nonsensical small talk and get right to “keeping it real”. I spend most of my time at my “day job” letting people know that everything is under control and that there are no “issues”, only “opportunities”. There is no room for admissions of failure or talking about your weaknesses. But once I get outside of that environment, it feels refreshing to tell it like it is or to not be afraid of how you will be perceived if you openly admit to not being so in control. Discussions of flaws can feel liberating as hell.

Or maybe, self-deprecation is simply “funny” and I love nothing more than to make people laugh. The best stand-up comedy comes from a place of brutal honesty where one can easily relate to the topic at hand. I have been listening to Howard Stern on the radio for more than two decades now and the appeal has always been his ability to be completely open with the listener. You may think he is crude and disgusting, but for me it goes beyond that. He openly admits to being unattractive and awkward looking and who can’t relate to that type of neurosis in some way? The comedy here is almost a sense of relief as it makes it OK to admit to our own faults and shortcomings.

Where is this type of discussion going on a gardening blog you ask? Am I announcing a career change to “garden stand-up comedy”? No … but that could be a unique and cool direction to go in. At a minimum, I bet it is an angle no one has attempted before. I’ll give it a try:

Q. Why did the gardener cross the road?

A. To pick up a stray apple peel for the compost bin. Not funny.

A. To take a picture of a mysterious blooming flower in a ditch. Never mind. A lot of work to be done here.

The reason for today’s pontification is I am looking to fully explore the use of video in and about my garden. In doing so, I realize I am opening myself up to exposing some serious flaws. With photography, it is easy to crop out the bad parts and focus on the good parts. With video, it will be a much larger and comprehensive view of the garden and there is no way to shield readers/viewers from the truth.

But that is good.

There are so many beautiful gardens to visit in person and even more to ogle at in books, magazines or on-line. I love and drool (here we go again) over them like the next guy, but I realize I will never reach that level with my garden. Instead, I am looking to portray a more realistic version of how our gardens actually appear and perform. There will be highs and some sweet looking plant combinations, but there will be just as many lows and “what was he thinking?” moments. I hope to capture both of those with these upcoming videos.

So attached below is video #1. It is short, but it is a start.

You can see what the deer did to one of my foundation plantings this past winter. I felt so vulnerable as I recorded it (unlike most, I use a ton of perennials in my foundation plantings so it looks quite bare right now) but I am determined to push on.

You will see/hear plenty of self-deprecation and honest thoughts and just know I am more aware than you are of what doesn’t look so great.

That would be my gardening defense mechanism in full affect.

Enjoy.

Good times at the garden center

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Earlier this week, for the first time in 2014, I made my beloved “day-job-lunch-time-trip” to the local garden center. If you had a camera set up in the parking lot of this nursery, and you had it locked in on my face while I was walking in, you would have seen the f’n happiest man on the planet. I may even track down the surveillance footage just to prove my point.

These lunch time treks to the garden center go back almost two decades and hold a rather warm place in my heart. It is where I first learned the difference between a conifer and an evergreen. It is where I first fell in love with foliage and learned to look beyond the flowers. It is where my finely pressed khakis would get covered in mud and would result in stares from coworkers who questioned what I was doing during my lunch hour. I can’t even begin to name all of the plants I’ve discovered over the years through these trips, but each one of them offered an incredible sense of discovery and were at the time, vital pieces to my garden design puzzle. I hope I can continue to do it for another two decades.

As I think back to the early days of lunch time plant shopping, one of my fondest memories is of stealing the plant tags of those plants I considered for future purchase. It was a simple process:

  • Bend down to look like I am inspecting the plant and/or checking out the price 
  • The tag is then stealthily pulled out of the container with the left hand 
  • At that same time, the right hand runs over the leaves of the victimized plant as a means of distraction
  • The excess soil on the tag is quickly removed by squeezing the thumb and pointer finger and dragging them along the tag
  • The semi-clean tag is then dropped into the pants pocket at the same time as I stand up

Once I had a healthy collection of tags, I would head right for the exit with my head down so this rugged mug could not be identified. I would then head out making sure I wasn’t being tailed by any other vehicles. Once safely home, I headed right to the computer so research could commence. It was a criminal enterprise I still miss to this day now that smart phones have rendered the practice useless.
Through the years, I have had a variety of different vehicles and all of them were on the small/cheap side. Personal fact 1 – I hate cars and have zero interest in them. They get me from point A to point B. That is it. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that means so little to me. Personal fact 2 – I am six foot four and look funny in small cars. I can steer a car with my knees like no one else.

Why am I telling you all this? Imagine big me driving in a tiny little car surrounded by shrubs that are climbing out of each of the windows. It is a sight to behold. I can only imagine what people are thinking as I pull into the parking lot at work. It looks like a tiny jungle on wheels with the faint sight of an actual driver. 

Speaking of the work parking lot, I have to be careful when allowing my precious plants to rest in my car for hours on end until the end of the work day. I have killed my share in the past due to extreme heat and for that, I am not proud. To combat the threat of death and because my cars are not exactly the envy of thieves, I leave the windows down the remainder of the day in the parking lot so the plants can breathe. Even if rain is in the forecast, I leave the windows completely open so the plants can grab a drink. A healthy plant is more important than the suffering that comes with a wet and smelly car.  

When I am walking the grounds at my garden center, I stick out like a sore thumb in my business wares; not the typical dress code when shopping for plants. I’d kill to be in my shorts and t-shirt but work day lunch is one of the only times I am free to spend an hour or so just walking aimlessly through a maze of plants. Sweaty pits be damned. It is worth it.

True story: A nursery I used to frequent fell on hard times financially. I don’t know all of the details but the government had to intervene and shut them down. They must have been selling illegal hostas or something. Actually, I think I would shut them down for selling hostas at all. But I digress …

Eventually the nursery opened back up so I made it a point to check things out during another lunch break. As I approached the entrance, one of the owners asked me “Are you Brian?”. I laughed and said “not this guy” and went on my way. That was weird, I thought. However, upon further review, I believe they mistook me for an inspector or a government employee since I wasn’t exactly dressed like a dude who was looking for the new collection of Viburnums. On at least two more occasions, I was greeted in the same manner but instead of laughing it off each time, I gave them a slight nod and simply proceeded inside. I figured it would be fun to keep them on their toes and act like I was there for business purposes only. I’m not sure what they thought when I eventually rolled up with a cart full of bee balm, but I do know that I had fun.

As you can see, I’ve had my fun and had some shady times (pun intended) at the local nurseries over the years during my lunch hour. But more than anything else, I valued the escape. The escape from the corporate culture and mindset and into a relaxed environment that also happens to smell damn good. I feel at home amongst plants and the people who feel the same way as I do. For an hour each week , I am a garden designer or a plant doctor or a really obsessive and neurotic home gardener.

And now that we have marched into April, I couldn’t be happier.

John

All fired up in the morning

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March 24th – 6:18 AM

Casey is barking at the bottom of the stairs and I couldn’t be more excited to hear her. I may have only had a few good hours of sleep the prior night (thanks “Walking Dead” you evil bastards) but it is the first time in days that our 14 1/2 year old Lab woke us up with her typical morning greeting.

Out of the blue a few days earlier, she struggled to walk and appeared to develop severe pain in her right front leg. It got to the point where I had to carry her outside each time she had to use the facilities.

But after sweating it out for a few days and an eventual visit to the vet, we thankfully discovered it was only her arthritis flaring up again. A few laser treatments and some good meds later, she was close to being her self again. Including the morning wake-up call.

So I happily jump out of bed, jog down the stairs, shut off the alarm and head outside with my little girl (no need to carry any more). Of course, I forget that we are still in our eighth consecutive month of winter and proceed to freeze my friggin ass off. A t-shirt and boxers in 19 degree temps kind of hurts.

But now a dramatic pause …

You feeling it?

Because even though I have icicles hanging from my eyelids, I yelp like a teenage girl when I saw this:

That would be the first sign of Allium ‘Globemaster’, she of the softball sized bloom. I can’t truly explain the jolt I receive when I set eyes on this beauty but it is enough to get me to not only ignore the cold, but to subsequently get properly dressed and head back outdoors prior to leaving for work that morning.

All I want to do is spend fifteen minutes cutting back some perennials so I could look at the new growth. It feels like a calling and I am ready to oblige. F the winter.

B-bye Peony dead foliage:  

Time to make way for the “new”:

Later Baptisia deadness:

Let the sun shine in and grow you little bastard:

The energy I have is palpable. I roll right from perennial cutting to Crabapple tree pruning. Nothing major but enough to clean things up a bit.

Here is the “before”:

And the “after”:

I then quickly head indoors and acknowledge that I should probably take down the Christmas lights one of these days:

Elapsed time ends up being closer to thirty minutes but I still have enough time to shower, get the kids on the bus and make it to work on time.

The ideal start to the work week.

One day in New York City

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We interrupt this garden blog for a story about one couple’s love for the Big Apple …

My wife and I have an annual tradition where we spend one night in New York City over the course of President’s Day Weekend. It is a gift from my parents each Christmas and something we long for each friggin long winter. We always head out that particular weekend as it is THE only weekend all fall/winter where there are no basketball games, dance classes or any other school related activities.

This past weekend was “Operation Escape the Snow, Ice, Kids and All Other Daily Responsibilities” and when all was said and done, our escape was right around 28 hours in duration. And while it cannot be classified as “sufficient”, it was still pretty kick-ass.

Here are the details:

Saturday

  • 11:30 AM – Arrive in the Tribeca section of Manhattan in yet another snow storm. The GPS indicates the hotel is 100 feet away yet we see nothing with the word “hotel” in sight. I think NYC gets off on not making things easy for visitors. It is part of the charm.
  • 12:02 PM – We pull up along side of the unmarked, legendary Tribeca Grand Hotel in the valet area that is clearly not marked. 
  • 12:15 PM – Drop the bags off because it is too early to check in. A quick glance around the lobby and I know I am not hip, young or European. Love it. 
  • 1:00 PM – Here is why NYC is the greatest place on earth. A quick Yelp search and we find a world renowned coffee shop within two blocks. The expectations are off the charts and yes, they are exceeded. La Colombe coffee is the best coffee I’ve ever had. And there was no menu. So cool.
  • 2:30 PM – Show up at Artisanal Bistro for our lunch reservation after a fun and terrifying cab ride. Here is our M.O. Eat a huge mid day lunch and then snack at night while hitting up the bars/lounges/speakeasies. Lunch lasts for two and a half hours and we eat like kings. My wife introduces me to the world of gougeres and I am a better man for it. Frites are to die for. I can’t walk and it hurts. Perfect.
  • 4:50 PM – This was the cab ride from hell. Like for realz. Worst in my lifetime. Dude had the scariest looking scowl I’ve ever seen in a mirror. And he doesn’t talk. And has orange hair. He takes us to the wrong hotel but we happily jump out and walk the remaining three blocks.
  • 6:15 PM – Power nap. First in like a decade.
  • 8:10 PM – I use Google map to give us walking directions to our first destination for the evening. It is only .4 miles away. I still screw it up as we head in the opposite direction. We both step in puddles a foot deep. It is snowing heavily and an impossible walk. Couldn’t be happier.
  • 8:30 PM – Arrive at Brandy Library. Again, no indication you have arrived other than the address. Meet the hostess and all tables upstairs are reserved. All others are filled by hipsters with cool caps and horrendous shoes. I still look all kinds of awesome in my sensible jeans and sneakers. We are taken downstairs where old people go but it still rocks. Fireplace, wooden shelves filled with all sorts of spirits. Cozy as hell. We are each given the drink “menu”, which has a Table of Contents and is no lie, eighty pages long.

        

  • 8:50 PM – $18 drinks arrive and they are worth every penny. No sarcasm. We do it once a year and why not do it big. I have no memory of what I had other than there was ginger beer and fresh ginger involved. Food was a version of sushi including egg whites and guacamole and then simple ham and cheese sandwiches, which by the way, were the best ever because of the comte cheese. My wife promises they will be duplicated and I fully trust her. My foodie wife has never let me down.
  • 10:00 PM – Arrive at B Flat after yet another frozen sojourn down the streets of lower Manhattan. Still fun when you are with your bestie. Best drink of the night had here. “Autumn Leaves” with dark rum and cinnamon.
  • 11:15 PM – Back to the hotel bar. The weather and our age and the non-stop-on-the-go the week prior have worn us down. A bunch of hummus and an Ithaca Flower Power IPA and I am good to go. We attempt some selfies with my phone and fail miserably, like twelve year olds. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the planet at that moment.

Sunday

  • 9:00 AM – Slept late. No call from the dog at 5:45 AM. No kids arguing over the TV. And most importantly, no headache. Heaven.
  • 11:00 AM – Check out and pay a most reasonable fee of $65 for the car to be parked overnight. That is sarcasm.
  • 11:30 AM – Arrive at Locanda Verde for brunch. This is vintage NYC in the “Village”. Hipsters, vaguely familiar local celebrities and all other walks of life all enjoying their coffee and New York Times, most reading on their phones. We have done our homework and know what to order first.                            

11:45 AM – We have finished our Sheep’s Milk Ricotta with local honey and thyme on burnt orange toast. We cannot stop talking about it and I cannot stop tweeting about and taking photos of it for Instagram. Must be top 5 best thing I’ve ever eaten. No exaggeration. Are you sensing a theme from this little trip?

12:25 PM – I cannot move after having downed an order of lemon ricotta pancakes with blueberries and lemon curd. I am now ready to take on the job of a food critic. I just want to eat my way through New York City and write about it. I will one day convince my wife to quit our jobs and team up with me to do just that. I even have a name for the blog picked out. It is killer.

2:15 PM – We arrive at my parents house to get the children and cry when we arrive.        

An evening with Fine Gardening magazine

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February 5th, 2014 – 7:00 PM

Well that sucked.

An overnight ice storm crippled us, but we were fortunate enough to not lose power like so many others in the area. The inch or so of ice on top of the snow from Monday makes for a good time outside. The poor dog can’t find her footing or a good spot to take care of her business.

All of my trees are painfully covered in ice, but the young River Birch trees are suffering the most.      

But I cannot bear to talk about the weather any longer. It is what it is. And that is my deep analysis for the day.

Time to move on.

I’ve been sitting on a copy of the “Fine Gardening” December issue for a few weeks now (yes, I did receive it way too late, but I’m over it now). I needed to pick the right moment to sit down with it and really allow myself to get lost in it all. A bathroom read wouldn’t suffice. I wanted to attack the magazine as a true escape, without any distractions. Tonight was the night to do just that.

With coffee in hand, television off and the rest of the family otherwise engaged, I am ready to jump into a world of ornamental grasses, native shrubs, fantastic foliage and even some pronunciation studies. 

Even though I haven’t formally researched it, I’m fairly certain that this advertisement below is always on the first five or so pages of every Fine Gardening issue.    

All we need is love. Ha. More like all we need is the lottery. But I digress.

Every time I see this ad, I wander off into a dream of owning my own greenhouse. Seriously, imagine one large enough for tables and chairs so meals could be eaten in there during the winter? I could even build a formal path that leads to it from the house. And have it lined with a variety of different grasses. I can dream of housing like twenty seven citrus trees that bear fruit all winter. This would be the solution to my seasonal affect disorder. I wonder if my insurance would cover that cost?

But what if I made such an investment and the ice, like we have now, destroyed it? I’d be devastated. The money could have gone towards the kids college fund or our retirement. The family would disown me and I’d be slumming it in my ’99 Honda Civic.     

Dream over. Back to more realistic dreaming.

I love Viburnums. I love the foliage, the shrub shape, the scented blooms, the some times appearance of berries and the fall color. So when I see mention of a viburnum I’ve never heard of, I am all in.             

This is Viburnum ‘Eskimo’ and I am intrigued by the phrase “its deer resistant leaves are semievergreen”. Hmmm. Would this occur in my zone, 6B? Color me intrigued. Now to find a company that sells it online.

This photo on page 21 jumped off the page and pulled me right in. Beautiful contrast and form and texture.
      

But now I’m angry as it reminds me of how many Cotinus (Smoke Bush) I have killed over the years. I could never replicate anything close to this. Unless we move. Which right now sounds unbelievable. I hate New Jersey right now.

Here we go a few pages later. Always a good headline.
 

Let’s page through to my ‘hood, the Northeast.

There are a lot of intriguing native plant choices here but I am now fixated on Summersweet. This shrub is really the key to my landscape the more I think about it.  It is one of the few shrubs that has truly thrived for me considering my poorly draining soil and deer issues. I have ‘Hummingbird’ and ‘Ruby Spice’ and really should think about adding a lot more of these.

Now if I could find an evergreen shrub that the deer ignore and handles wet soil …

It’s February so this headline is dead to me.
 

And here we go. This is the big kahuna.

This is directly in my wheelhouse. Some tried and true trials and the results.

Let’s see what grasses we are adding to the off season shopping list:

Pennisetum ‘Red Head’ – bloom colors look phenomenal

Molinia ‘Cordoba’ – 7 feet tall with “larger than life presence”

Andropogon ‘Indian Warrior’ – “sturdy stems pointing skyward” but no wet soil. Have to rethink this.

Andropogon ‘Red October’ – Fall color is ridiculous. Wow.

Bouteloua ‘ Blonde Ambition’ – “Full size in one summer” and those seedheads. Let’s do this.

The full listing of the trial results could take up my entire night as I see many of the grasses I’ve struggled with in the past did not perform well. Makes me feel a little bit better. And as expected, my personal favorite Panicum ‘Northwind’ scored off the charts. Will need to divide a few of these this spring.

Moving on.

Amen. A mantra I live by.

Pruning of fruit trees. I love this level of detail and do my best to memorize it so I can then use that knowledge at the next cocktail party I attend.  

Of course I can’t remember the last cocktail party I attended. And I don’t have a fruit tree to prune.

Finally we get to the end of the issue and it is time to test my Latin speaking knowledge. I consider myself rather fluent in plant latinese, but every once in a while I find one that I have had wrong for years. It didn’t take long to find one this evening. Starting right off in the “A’s” listing.       

I had no friggin idea that the correct pronunciation is “ah-SKLEE-pee-us”. I have been confidently pronouncing it as “ah-SLEP-ee-us” for the longest time. Somewhere there is someone who heard me say it that way and I no doubt lost all credibility with them. I am crushed. I can’t even look any further down the list for fear of landing in a deep depression.

And we are done.

I managed to forget about the disaster outside for an hour or so. I am sitting on two additional Fine Gardening issues that I haven’t opened yet but will dive into those at another time. My next mission is to purchase those grasses at a decent price.

Good times.          

College

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January 25, 2014 – 6:50 P.M. – The campus of Rutgers University

My son and I walk into the Rutgers Athletic Center (The RAC) to watch a college basketball game and this overwhelming feeling, overwhelms me.

It had been a long time since I had been in a college atmosphere like this and damn, have I gotten old quickly. The students looked like they could have been my own children and that made me want to grab my son and physically prevent him from aging another day.

My son is in sixth grade and I would be happy if he stayed there forever. We can have adult-like conversations and hang like two buds, yet he still waves to me when he leaves on the bus each morning. The best of both worlds. I can’t envision the day when he is on his own at college (shit, we have some serious life skills training to get on) and doesn’t need us any longer. I felt a lump in my throat as I typed that last sentence.

But enough about him, this is supposed to be all about me.

After successfully pushing the age issue to the recesses of my brain so it could be reconciled another day, I began to study the faces of the college students as they went about their merry way. Every single one of them had that “It’s all in front of me” look and it kind of pissed me off. Lucky bastards. I have no desire to go back and be 19 years old again, but I would love to go back in time with my true passion in tow. I would like a shot to pursue that passion professionally from a much younger age.

I entered college in 1990 as a journalism major with a semi-mullet and a few pairs of pegged jeans (look the term up). I was going to expose wrongdoings on campus. I was going to rail against the PRC and censorship of music. I was going to get the great locker room interview.

Didn’t happen.

I wrote a few fluff stories for The Signal, the Trenton State College (now known as The College of New Jersey) newspaper but it ended there.  

By my sophomore year, I some how managed to convince myself that I would be doing nothing more than writing obituaries when I graduated from school. I needed to find a major that would allow me to walk right into a fantastic job fresh out of college. Mistake number one. I would love to go back and slap my early 90’s self and remind him that you work your way up dumb ass and that you should enjoy that process. Nothing comes easy and it shouldn’t.

Quick aside – I’d also tell my 90’s self that jean shorts don’t work.    

I eventually graduated with a B.S. degree (pun intended) in Criminal Justice and also minored in Psychology. I didn’t want to be a lawyer or a cop; something in between. Like Jodie Foster in “Silence of the Lambs”. I ended up taking the LSAT’s for law school any way and did get “wait listed” at Seton Hall Law School. However, within seconds of getting that letter in the mail, I knew I wasn’t going to go down that path.

My first job out of college was working for a serious private investigation firm and it was never dull. True story, my biggest “mission” was to present a “summons to appear in court” to some ridiculously wealthy dude who had apparently knowingly passed on a disease to a woman he had “met” (wink wink) on vacation. I volunteered to drive hours to make that delivery. Big ambition guy. When I arrived, the house was guarded by a number of nasty looking dogs barking from every angle. I quickly rang the door bell once, making the legally required attempt and got the hell out of there. My first and only mission was complete.

Fast forward to today and I work for a great company as a project manager. I cannot complain. But damn if I don’t wonder what could have come if I had some cojones and stuck with the writing. And if I also knew that this passion for gardening was simmering beneath the surface at a younger age? Well that would have been nice. I think we need to rethink this college thing, specifically the timing. I was a dope coming out of high school and my own future wasn’t even on my radar. If I could go back to college now at this age, I’d get it right. I haven’t figured out the logistics yet, but give me time. I don’t think my employer would be OK with me taking a sabbatical to study horticulture and garden writing.      

On the car ride home after the basketball game, I never turned the radio on. I enjoyed having a conversation with my son and did my best to reinforce the message of “do what you love” (Minecraft not included). I don’t know if that means anything to him now, but it will be a theme for the next decade so he better get used to it.                                                 

      

Leaving the house is a good thing

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January 19, 2014 – 8:17 A.M.

My family and I are all homebodies and I am the worst offender.

But it isn’t my fault. I come from a long line of homebodies and it is all I ever knew. In fact, if you trace my lineage back a few generations, you will see that my great great grandfather, Herman Homebodinski, was the first Homebodinski to come to the U.S. from Poland and he laid the groundwork for what we commonly known as the “homebody” today. I’ll do my best to share the old time pics with you if I can dig them up. I have some of him sleeping on a couch in front of a fire, others of him sitting at the kitchen table eating perogies and a few others of him just staring longingly at his bed. Once you see them, you will better understand me and where I come from.

So Sunday morning we were all sitting around debating what we were going to eat for breakfast (the kids vote for “mom’s pancakes” 100% of the time – even knowing they are made with some mix of sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, wheat germ, coconut oil – sorry, a story for another day) when my wife went all wacky and suggested we “go out” for breakfast. Really? Like get dressed and move about in the eight o’clock hour? On a weekend? Are you off your meds my dear?

The kids and I all chuckled heartily and went about our business of chillin. Crazy mom. Ha.

But then that all changed when she uttered the words “Lovin’ Oven”. Within seconds we were all dressed and headed out the door, time and frigid weather be damned. In all seriousness, those may be the only two words that could have elicited that type of reaction from all of us.  

Here is all that you need to know about “Lovin’ Oven”. We have taken five different trips to this establishment with family or friends over the past two years and without fail, all have said “this is the best breakfast we have ever had”. Not an ounce of hyperbole. It is that damn delicious. Check out their menu by clicking here. Even the kids go wild when we eat here. My future-food-critic-son can’t talk enough about the chocolate cherry scone. And to add to their street cred, check out this story from the Food Network about their ridiculously off the charts good chocolate caramel sea salt tart. You feeling me?

Because the “oven of love” is always bustling, there is going to be a bit of a wait before getting seated. No problem. Attached to the restaurant is Two Buttons, the store owned by Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame. Yes, she lives in our ‘hood. The shop sells antiques, goods and wares from Asia and was inspired by her story told in E, P, L. While I can’t claim to be all knowing about the world of gargoyles and Buddha, a visit to the store is an event unto itself. I am always searching for garden “ornaments” to break up the plant life and while my garden has never sniffed a style resembling anything Asian, who says I cannot mix it up a bit? In fact, I bought myself something there to be revealed in spring. I know, the suspense is overwhelming. Hang in there.                              

As we were about to be seated for breakfast, my wife picked up a copy of the always awesome “Edible Jersey” magazine and immediately handed it to me, noting the words “Native Plants” on the cover. Sold. Give me that periodical now. Inside I found the related story and let me tell you, I couldn’t be more excited. In nearby Hillsborough in the Sourland Mountains, unbeknownst to me, lives a couple with a native plant nursery, Wild Ridge Plants. After reading the back story about the owners and how they propagate the plants that they sell, I started dreaming about owning my own native plant nursery. Inspiration! While I haven’t yet committed to an all native garden, I have come to appreciate native plants way beyond their aesthetic appeal. Check out the couple’s two blogs and you’ll see why I got so excited:

Wild Ridge Plants

The Shagbark Speaks 

I cannot make it out to their nursery soon enough and if I am lucky, I’m hoping to snag them for an upcoming podcast. I vow to continue focusing on natives in my own habitat and spreading the word on this approach. This article reinforced that vision.

By the way, I had and egg scramble for breakfast with sausage/pesto/provolone, rosemary potatoes and a sweet potato biscuit. Another winner.   

So what is the moral of today’s – It is OK to leave your house once in a while.

You’re welcome.   

The Morning Routine

Posted on by Posted in Garden memoir .
January 16th, 2014 – 5:18 A.M.
 
 
First, a little background on the early morning routine.
 
Every morning, at exactly 5:18 A.M, the dog barks up the stairs to let us know she is ready for her day to start. It’s not really a bark as much as it is a shriek. It has been like that for the past fourteen years. A bark would be much easier to handle. The shriek physically pains the ears and forces me to jump out of bed and run down the stairs just to ensure that there isn’t a second verse.  An effective move on her part.
 
 
 
 
I grab my conveniently placed hoodie (I kid you not, I place it right in the path where I jump out of bed so I can run and grab it at the same time) off of the floor and head down the stairs. Three out of ten times I trip on the bottom step; one out of twenty five times I forget to shut off the alarm and send the entire family into a panic; two out of twenty times I try to put sweatpants on my head thinking it is my trusty hoodie and ten out of ten times I look at myself in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs amazed at how old and tired I look. Boxers who just lasted ten rounds look better than I do in the morning. I don’t know if it is lack of sleep, genetics, too much caffeine consumed the prior day or a cocktail of them all, but it is a sight to behold. One day I’ll remember to capture it on film.
 
Once I am outside with the dog (we’ll call her Casey) she is all business, anxious to get back indoors so she can eat the same kibble she has eaten for 14 years. I would estimate that we are actually outside for eleven seconds. But in those eleven seconds, it is enough time for me to spot something in the garden I want to change. The first four seconds are a review of possible deer damage from the night before, the next four seconds are making sure Casey doesn’t eat the deer crap that has been left behind and the final three seconds are where the garden review comes into play.
 
After I’ve fed the dog, walked into the wall and tripped over a balloon (don’t ask), I climb back up the stairs hoping to get back in bed and get some more sleep before the day officially starts. I have the unique ability to go back to sleep within seconds even if I’ve just stepped outside in single digit temps wearing nothing but a hoodie and boxers. A skill I am quite proud of and one that worked well when the kids were newborns. I could take the night shift and easily sleep all morning. Once my wife is awake, she is up for the day. And once up, she could solve a Rubik’s cube in like thirty seconds. She is that “awake”. Me, I can go back to sleep at 5:30 and blissfully sleep until 10:30 A.M. A wonderful marital compromise.
 
One of the tricks that helps me fall back to sleep is to focus deeply on one thought and let that bring me back into REM land. And by now you’ve probably figured it out; I focus on that one garden “flaw” I absorbed just minutes earlier. It could be a simple relocation of a shrub to a better spot in the landscape or an idea for a new perennial that would fit in that empty space perfectly or it could go as far as a complete overhaul of my foundation plantings. You get the point. Within minutes I am out cold and dreaming of dancing with Viburnums.
 
This particular morning was like all others except the aforementioned eleven seconds turned into twenty five seconds. The footing on the front lawn was poor due to the overnight frost so the diva (I kid) needed to take her time before squatting. With the additional fourteen seconds, I debated whether or not I should prune back my red twig dogwood in the next month or so.
 
 
 
 
As I stealthily maneuvered back into bed, the questions that sent me back to la la land included:
 
If I prune it back hard, I will cut off all of the flowers to appear in spring but will get the best red stem color the following winter.
 
Said flowers are not all that great anyway so does that even factor in?
 
Since this was the first year that it really exploded in growth, should I put off the decision for another year?
 
Maybe I’ll cut back a third of the branches like the experts say and try to get the best of both worlds.
 
Could I make better use of my time and not debate pruning options 5:23 in the morning?
 
 

A preview of my “Yet to be titled” garden memoir

Posted on by Posted in Garden memoir .

The following is an excerpt from a yet to be published (or fully written for that matter) memoir about the role gardening and plants play in my every day life. Everything you are about to read is true and really went down as it is conveyed. I can’t promise you it will be interesting, but we will keeps it real.  

January 12th, 2014 (Sunday) –

You know how the sound of rain hitting the roof warms the soul in spring and summer for us gardeners? Well that sound had me friggin livid when I woke up this morning. As I took the dog out at the crack of dawn (a 14 year old bladder will do that) my backyard looked like the Bayou with all of this rain … and not in a cool, creepy and Gothic way. Just plain wet and nasty.
  

I’m fairly certain I saw perennials (planted months before) floating down newly created streams and tributaries after finally heaving themselves out of the ground with all of these extreme temperature changes. Damn I hate January and February here in the Northeast. I can deal with snow cover and some cold temps but this wet and mild weather one day followed by single digits the next day, really shits the bed. Wake me up when the first crocus bulbs emerge in March.

Of course there is more to life than my garden so it was time to put my big boy pants on and enjoy the weekend morning with my wonderful family. The coffee was made and all four of us were on our electronic devices, not communicating with each other. Family bonding of the best kind. I reviewed last night’s hockey scores, scanned my emails to see if Fine Gardening wants me to write a column for them (spoiler alert – nothing of the sort) and laughed heartily at all the wonderfully silly cat pics on Facebook (hope the sarcasm was obvious here). Fantastic use of my time as the coffee ran through my veins.

I fancy myself a garden designer and I have a hard time caring enough about my spring garden planning quite yet. So in order to fulfill that desire, I’ve taken a bit to interior design. Yeah you heard me, interior design. My wife and I have been slowly piecing together our living room (formerly an indoor basketball room) and while I can’t do a thing like hang a door or put up moldings, I have strong opinions when it comes to color and texture and furniture placement. And that all comes from the garden design experience.

While hopped up on caffeine, we reviewed my wife’s stellar Pinterest boards to narrow down our search for wall sconces, chairs and book shelves. THIS is why Pinterest was invented and why my wife could be a spokesperson for them. Actually, she could be a professional pinner. I wonder if that exists? Does it pay well? Note to self: encourage wife to be a pro pinner. Anyways, Pinterest is as simple as see something you like, “pin” it and move on. Once your “board” is filled, simply review the choices and make a decision. Wait, this is my memoir so why am I explaining Pinterest? I need to work these kinks out if I ever want to publish this memoir. Tangent complete.           

So off we headed to the furniture store in search of a chair to work with our couch and other already purchased furniture. Three long hours later we had our chair purchased. We laid out twenty five fabrics samples against each other to find the perfect one and I was way the hell into it.

“This brown truly has hints of green and we don’t want to do that.”

“That pattern won’t work next to the other patterned chair.”

“If we want to get a leather ottoman, this fabric will contrast beautifully.”

Those exact words came out of the mouth of yours truly. It made me long for the days of grabbing plants at the nursery and grouping them together until the combo just popped. This wasn’t the same, but it still got the design juices flowing. You want to know how much it meant to me? I blew off the NFL playoff games.