My apologies for the lack of posts these past two weeks. I’ve been head down, day and night, writing the book. It’s been a blast but exhausting. Here’s hoping the final product comes out OK.

A huge thank-you to all who left a comment with a suggested book title. I loved them all  and appreciate you taking the time out to do it.

Guess what? I still don’t have a title.

The manuscript has been completed and sent to the editor as of yesterday and I’m still no closer to making a decision.

Uh oh.

The struggle has been that while the book dives into gardening quite a bit, it really isn’t about that. It’s more about how I found my passion along the way. It involved finding gardening but also finding writing. I’ve done my best to make the book inspirational and hopefully to get the reader to take a closer look at their own life.

I promise this isn’t self-help nonsense. It’s still me and light and goofy, just with a twist of trying to help.

Below is another excerpt for your reading pleasure. It should give you a better idea of the feel of the book.

If you get inspired and come up with a potential book title, I’m still all ears.

And I will need all of your feedback when it comes to picking out a book cover, etc.

Thank you in advance.

Spiders

Spiders so large they appear to be wearing the pelts of small mammals.
― Dave Barry

I wasn’t the kid who was intrigued by or ever sought out any type of critter. I didn’t play in the dirt and I didn’t pick up worms. I had friends who would turn over rocks in the woods just to see what creatures could be found underneath. When they did that, I squirmed, looked away and thought about baseball.

In fact, there is quite a legendary story in Markowski family lore about my deep fear of butterflies as a young lad. My mother reminds me of it regularly, now that she sees that I enjoy nothing more than chasing the Monarch butterflies around in my own garden. As a kid I refused to step outside if there were any signs of a butterfly nearby. If I was forced to confront my fears by my unsympathetic parents, I would physically shake and fall down in a heap.

Side note: Lepidopterophobia is the fear of butterflies. If it has an official name I couldn’t have been that crazy. Nicole Kidman allegedly suffers from this fear. It’s not so weird any more is it?.

I remember one giant spider that resided on a jalousie on our enclosed porch. It was there for weeks and we all completely avoided the porch, other than making sure it hadn’t left its perch. I couldn’t sleep at night. I had nightmares. I vowed to avoid the outdoors for eternity.

I don’t know how the spider issue ultimately resolved itself, but I do know that I’m not alone in recalling just how traumatized we all were by that mammoth arachnid.

Our region had awful caterpillar problems when I was young. The black and furry critters would completely cover our trees in spring/summer and it was a regular occurrence to see them smashed all over the roadways. They were creepy and everywhere and infiltrated our lives from every angle.

One day we kids were all forced to stay home from school making sure all windows and doors were shut so a helicopter could fly overhead and spray some toxic chemicals on all of the town’s trees. One neighbor protested by sitting on her roof. I thought she was nuts then but I really like her now.

I broke my right wrist in 1^st grade sliding down the giant playground slide. My body went down the slide as the kids pushed me, but my arm stayed behind, hooked around the top of the slide. I remember Patty Huff greeting a crying me at the bottom of the slide and escorting me to the nurse’s office that afternoon.

This was the same Patty Huff who was mercilessly mocked throughout middle school and all the way up through high school. I befriended her on Facebook years ago and was happy to see she was doing OK. Sadly she passed away soon after that from a medical issue I never fully understood. I wish I had thanked her for her kindness back in 1979 and that I had stood up for her more in school.

Those words ring hollow now because I did nothing. I don’t get to pat myself on the back now.

When I broke my wrist, I had this overwhelmingly strange skin reaction underneath my cast and I was convinced it was the result of a stray caterpillar that found its way up my arm. I would laugh until I cried and fall down and beg my mom to make it stop. She would sympathize through tears of laughter. The day I got that cast cut off was the most freeing day of my life.

When I found gardening or when it found me, I quickly realized I had to confront my fear of the critters that inhabited the soil. Worms were fine and I learned early on to appreciate their worth. I would pick them up, pat their squishy backs and place them back down so they could do their good work and improve my soil.

The spiders were another story. I squealed a lot at first. I would throw my trowel at them and run away. There were a lot of false alarms as my paranoia grew.

Then one day I spotted a mother spider scurrying with baby eggs still attached after I nearly decapitated her with my shovel. This changed everything. I had immediate sympathy and felt her fear. I was a lot bigger than her. So what if she has 8 fuzzy legs and always looks pissed off. She’s just trying to survive.

So we reached an unwritten agreement. I left them alone if they promised to quietly announce themselves; no jump scares, no surprises.

This arrangement worked and it worked beautifully. We were able to coexist. I came to sympathize with their purpose in life. They ate all of the bad bugs even if I didn’t know who those “bad bugs” were. I came to appreciate that they had work to do just like I had work to do.

I lost all fear of spiders.

This new found comfort with the spider allowed me to play hero to my wife soon after.

It was the day after Christmas in 2002. My newborn son was 5 months old and my wife was still on maternity leave. It was our first Christmas as a “family”.

I was at work and my wife was home with our son, watching him roll around and coo under the Christmas tree. This Christmas tree was a beauty. It was the perfect shade of blue/green and flawlessly shaped with the only drawback being that the needles were so sharp; we had to place the ornaments on the tree while wearing gloves.

The sacrifices we make.

We had cut the tree down weeks earlier on an official family outing. We have fantastic photos of triumphant me holding the tree in one hand and a saw in the other. A great shot of my father-in-law holding baby Jack in the snow. A borderline obnoxiously perfect holiday moment. But damn how happy I am now that we took those photos.

Here’s a tip for you all if you want to cut down your own Christmas tree. Sharp needles are a great means for protecting whatever wants to reside within the bowels of the tree. And more often than I realized then, spiders like to live in said trees; like a lot of spiders.

The call to my office was straight out of a horror movie. My wife was whispering like she was holed up in a closet, trying to escape her captors. She and my son had taken shelter in our bedroom. It was the only safe place in the house. As she recounted, it started with a peripheral glance at something jumping from ornament to ornament and ended with the realization that there was a full blown spider invasion. I can only assume all of the spider eggs hatched at the same time and they then agreed to set out and wreak havoc.

I jumped off of my conference call and raced home. Fortunately for my family, I was less than 10 minutes away.

I raced up the stairs, ignored the grisly scene in the family room, and consoled my wife. With the utmost confidence, I told her “I got this” and proceeded to head back down the stairs and directly into the line of fire. I did so with a smirk on my face because this guy no longer had a fear of spiders.

I got rid of every last one of them.

I took off every individual ornament, inspecting each for not only spiders but spider eggs and carefully packed them away. I carried the didn’t-know-what-hit-it tree out to the street, daggers from the branches and all.

I continued to monitor the house for weeks to ensure no stragglers were left behind.

My wife swooned when it was all done.

I was totally her Prince Charming.

We could go back to hanging-with-the-infant bliss.

Since that day, I have become the spider whisperer. Out here in the country, we get terrifyingly large spiders in our garage, in our basement and they are good at stealthily sneaking through our front door.

All the family needs to say is “Dad” and I’m there with a paper towel. I don’t kill them. I lure them into my paper toweled hand, gently ball it up and place them in their natural environment. They don’t scare me no matter how hairy or sinister they look.

I’m currently considering going into the spider removal business. Who needs help?

Chew on this: Do you explore what scares you? Lean into those fears and see where it takes you.

Good afternoon friends.

Hope you had a decent week and hope you are looking forward to this upcoming weekend. It’s supposed to be warmer here in NJ which will hopefully remove all of the snow and ice that I’ve grown to despise more and more each year.

The 2nd book has been written. That was the fun part. That was the easy part.

Now it’s time to edit and determine how it will be pulled together. There are 42 short stories and I really hope they all make it to the final product. Grouping them into sections/chapters and creating a flow has been challenging. I know what I want to say and why. I just need to ensure that it translates to the reader as well.

I hired a freelancer to assist with copy editing, cover (front and back) design, proofreading and file creation so this book can be created as hardcover, softcover and as an e-book (Kindle). This will ensure a great looking final product. I’ll just have to cross my fingers and hope the writing can keep up.

As of right now, I have two weeks to submit the final manuscript so her work can then commence. I’m thrilled to have an actual deadline and will be head down for the next 14 days. I look forward to it and have massive anxiety at the same time.

Here’s where you all come in: I still don’t have a working title. I desperately need your help. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Here are the tentative section/chapter names as a guide:

“Early gardening interest” (Childhood)

“Finding my way” (College, writing, jobs, early adulthood)

“Getting educated” (On all things gardening)

“Taking it to the next level” (Hardcore gardening)

“Looking back to look forward” (Looking to childhood joys for inspiration)

“Worlds collide” (Gardening and writing)

“All in the family” (Gardening + Writing + Family)

“Inspiration” (Who and what keeps me going)

“Evolving” (Gardening and in life)

“Navigating through” (Fun times, tough times, the future)

Let’s up the stakes. If I choose your title, I’ll send you a gift card to one of my favorite online plant purveyors.

So get those brains churning, feel free to ask me any questions and please, save me from myself.

Thank you.

A few weeks back (or maybe it’s a few months, I’ve lost all track of time) I mentioned that my next book was going to focus on ornamental grasses. As you may or may not know, they are the focal point of my garden, especially right now as we head into winter. They changed my entire outlook on what a garden can be once I discovered them and I’m forever indebted to the Miscanthus, the Calamagrostis, the Panicum, the Pennisetum, the Andropogon and many others I’m sure I’m forgetting to thank.

But that book isn’t ready to be written.

Not yet.

I have work to do out in the garden, at wholesalers, at public gardens and in the research lab before it can be attempted. I need further education both in my own garden and from others.

But there will still be a book #2.

Book #2 is going to be very different from book#1:

• I’ve written 35,000 words to date with 31 chapters.
• There will more than likely be no photos in book #2.
• I’m attempting to find a publisher as we speak but I’m prepared to self-publish if necessary.
• If I do self-publish I plan on creating it as a hardcover book, a paperback and an e-book.
• If I do self-publish I will be working closely with editors and designers rather than tackling it all on my own.
• You will laugh
• You will cry
• You will be inspired
• I hope

Here’s a sample “rough draft chapter” from the book. I hope you dig the vibe.

I honestly want your feedback and please be as candid as possible. I need the critique and I need different eyes on it.

Too short?

Too long?

Too boring?

Too awesome?

Thank you.

Falling Leaves

Every child must have chores to do. It gives them dignity in work and the joy of labor.
— Earl Hamner Jr.

Every gardener I talk to or read about has an origin story.

“I grew up watching Grandma tend to her garden and together we used to watch the bees jump from flower to flower in search of pollen.”

“I remember running through fields of wildflowers as a child and spending hours there, free as can be.”

“My dad put a trowel in my hands when I was 2 years old.”

“The sight of those plump tomatoes in summer never left me.”

Me? I got nothing.

I’ve searched the archival footage of my childhood and after hours of research I can confidently say there is nothing that stands out.

In fact, I’m disturbed by how singularly focused I was as a child. It was all sports, all the time. If I wasn’t watching it on TV, I was in the backyard throwing a baseball into the tree branches above, trying to make diving catches like Fred Lynn.

The obsession I had with organizing my baseball cards is therapy worthy as you’ll see in a future chapter.

I was studying the Vegas NFL point spreads and competing in football pools against my Dad’s fellow teachers before I understood fractions and decimals.

I distinctly remember convincing my 5^th grade class to bet on Georgetown in the 1982 NCAA Basketball Championship game  against our teacher, Mr. Isola. We lost and had extra homework.

Not one sign of a future gardener.

But then I realized I was looking at it all wrong. It was a much more subtle route; a series of connected events that laid the groundwork for my love of the outdoors (and when I say outdoors, I mean the “yard” and not camping and the like).

And I feel confident in saying that it all started with my father’s obsession with getting rid of the fallen leaves in fall.

I grew up on Oak Ave, an appropriately named street as our 1950’s Cape Cod-styled home sat underneath many gigantic oak trees. Those trees produced quite the bounty of leaves in autumn; as did all of the neighbors’ trees. Our backyard was one big leaf orgy.

Every Saturday, starting in early October and running through November, was dedicated to eradicating said leaves.

In the early years it was all done via raking. Rake one section at a time onto a giant tarp and then drag that tarp to the front yard where the leaves were deposited over the front wall. The township would then pick them up on a weekly basis.

As technology advanced we invested in a leaf blower and our job was that much less labor intensive. The leaves could be blown on to the tarp and our forearms were spared. I’d still have to drag the tarp to the front wall, but the limited raking was a blessing.

Rinse and repeat with the tarp walk until almost all of the leaves were removed.

It all ended with a lawn cutting where the few remaining leaves would be cut up and destroyed. It looked perfect outside each Saturday evening as we settled in, nursed our wounds and watched “Chips” or “Solid Gold” or “The Price is Right”.

The next day, however, more leaves would fall or find their way from our neighbors yards after a strong wind.

Let’s do this again next Saturday morning.

As a kid there was nothing I wanted to do less than tackle those leaves each weekend. I would try to talk my way out of it, pray for rain or pray something else would come up. 99% of the time those efforts were futile and there we were again, Dad and I ankle deep in crispy brown leaves.

I remember one specific Saturday when I begged to be able to go to the high school football game with my friends but was told that my chores came first. None of my friends ever had to tend to chores. Why was I being punished? And while I’m at it, why aren’t my sisters part of this leaf removal enterprise?

At first I sulked and begrudgingly raked and raked. The sulking then dissipated and I got lost in the joy of hard labor. I took extreme pride in my work. I loved the ache in my arms and legs post shower on Saturday evening. And I never held a grudge after my initial complaints. This was better than watching the high school football team lose by 35 points.

The father/son bonding, while often bound in silence, was something I didn’t appreciate enough at the time. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college, when I was away at school during those leaf-raking months, that I realized how much I missed it and how bad I felt that I couldn’t be there to help my dad.

Autumn was crisp weather. Autumn was football season. Autumn was apples and pumpkins and Halloween. But autumn was also raking leaves with dad, consulting on NFL predictions with dad and eating salt bagels with melted butter with dad.

The leaf management program also foreshadowed my deep appreciation of a well-kept yard. I didn’t help in the yard as much as I too owned that yard.

That notion eventually extended to other “yard” tasks:

• Cutting the lawn
• Trimming the lawn
• Using an edger-with-wheel contraption that created killer straight edges along our front sidewalk.

And one other task became a part of my weekly routine spring through summer:

I would use a small handheld rake that I dragged through our garden beds, breaking up the compacted soil. I would then follow that up with a “smoothing” of the broken up soil so it all was pleasurable to the eye.

I frickin loved it.

I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment. I didn’t care if it served any greater purpose or if it was good for all of the nearby shrubs (I only remember azaleas and rhododendrons in our “garden”), it looked neat and clean.

By the time I was in high school, I was our family landscaper. I couldn’t have told you the difference between an annual and a perennial. I couldn’t identify any shrubs by name.

But I could trim the hell out of hedges. I could cut lines in the lawn like a champ. Lawn edges were always immaculate.

I carried over that notion to my first home many years later.

Where I also came to appreciate a “clean” garden but with the leaves utilized as beneficial to the garden.

John’s tip:

Leaf mold (leaves decomposed over time) is one of the best organic soil amendments. So save some leaves in fall and allow them to transform into an almost black crumbly mold. Add to the soil and reap the benefits.

A few days ago I was all set to officially embark on the journey for book #2.

I was seated comfortably on my favorite couch. I had my favorite mug filled with black coffee. The dog was curled into a pretzel and leaning against my right leg. I had my headphones secured and started listening to my favorite loud and aggressive bands. I had a blank Word document open on the laptop.

The writing process was in motion.

And then nothing.

For hours.

What I thought was a good concept for the next book suddenly was not. It hit me like a ton of bricks. This wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to work because I was choosing what was easiest, not what was best. That never works.

So I’m back to square one. I’m back to evaluating all of the partially formed ideas that reside in my head. Back to the pros and cons columns.

And then I realized what I needed to do.

I need all of you to tell me what I need to do.

Here’s the cold hard truth: The first book was basically 8 years of blog posts curated into a book. Those posts formed the backbone of the book. Once they were pulled together, it wasn’t too difficult to tweak and edit it into a coherent book.

I have no regrets. I still feel strongly about the concept but realize the layout and content could have been better. While hooking up with a publisher wasn’t in the cards and there are limited options when self-publishing, I know there was still room for improvement. But I’m happy I took the plunge and published it.

#2 needs to be different.

I want to know exactly what you as reader would want to see in the next book. Yes, I want all of you to choose the concept/topic of my next book. Who knows better than the actual reading audience?

When that is determined, I then want all of you to weigh in on the layout/outline of the book. In short, I want to crowdsource this next book. I want the entire journey of the book process to be documented. I want the highs and lows accounted for in writing. After all, the fun is in the process and in the journey. If it’s going to be a marathon, I want you all there with me.

With that in mind, here are some of those ideas I referenced earlier. Read through them and let me know your initial thoughts. My best guess is that the topic for the next book isn’t in this first list and that we’ll slowly and methodically work our way there.

Let’s do this:

Ornamental grasses – including my origin story, my favorites, advantages, maintenance, history, etc.

Designing with ornamental grasses and perennials – I’ve got a ton of combos I’ve already identified from my own garden.

Part 2 of “Perennials Through the Seasons” – but presented differently and including bulbs and/or shrubs

Short stories/collection of garden essays – that tie to life – a mix of funny/serious/emotional. Like this:

Committing crimes at the nursery

My favorite shrubs – that match specific criteria in my garden – deer resistant, poor draining