The Garden Report #9

August 1st, 2010


• Number Three Son has been home all week (the computer genius, so says his dad) and he has been turning this blog upside down with all sorts of formats. First, we are now on line at rodsgardenreport.com You can read all of the previous blogs at this site and you can now see the photos I have been trying to send. Many of you never got to see the photos because your server would not allow the email through. Apparently, the file was too large. Now that problem has been solved. Patrick also registered the domain name of rodsgardenreport.ca so you can find ‘The Garden Report’ under that name as well.


• Garden Tip: When laying new sod, always water the sod bed three or four days before installing your new lawn. Get the water down into the sub soil, let it dry out so the surface is not muddy and then install the sod. If you do this, you will be able to get the new sod rooted much quicker than if you laid it on a dry bed. I recently installed some sod, and it is fully rooted after only being down for eleven days.


• Garden Tip: Rob Reiger and I were planting five apple trees this week. Four of the trees were well rooted in their containers and slid out of the pots intact. One tree was not fully rooted and we were in danger of losing all of the surrounding soil, which would not be a good thing. Rob had a stroke of genius. The pot was black plastic. He cut the bottom of the pot off with an old steak knife. We dropped the tree, pot and all into the planting hole. We then back filled with a good quality, organic planting soil. Then Rob slid the pot up out of the hole and made one vertical cut down the side of the pot and removed it. We had no transplant shock as the root ball was not disturbed. Seeing as this is my 34th year in the trade, I can safely report that old dogs do learn new tricks.


• I was in the country, showing Number One Daughter In Law (Lisa) a project that I have been working on for almost a year. We had some time to bond (don’t' you just love that overused word). I tutored her on how to bawl Patrick out, properly. You see, she was being much too gentle with her opening. A firm enunciation of his Christian name is paramount to success, I explained. "Patrick!" must be pronounced with enough vigor that he knows he is in deep trouble. His mind will begin racing through all of the things that could have gotten him to this point. I told her she would know that she had done her job properly if by simply saying his name, a bead of sweat breaks out across his forehead. Having written, the above, please do not ask how it is that I know this stuff.




• Political correctness totally annoys me. Words are changed around in a futile attempt to somehow obscure what it is we are talking about. Today we say sociologically and economically deprived instead of poor. And take the phrase mentally challenged. The phrase used to be mentally retarded. Nothing wrong with that description and we all knew what we were trying to say. A few people would use the word as a derogatory comment as in "what are you, a retard?" This was meant to be an insult. So now, we no longer use retard, we use the aforementioned mentally challenged. Does anyone not realize that there are those among us who will simply adapt and the insult will be "what are you, mentally challenged?"


• Being a history buff, I read that the words idiot, imbecile and moron once had a medical and legal definition. People were assigned those names to describe their level of reasoning and comprehension. Of course, they were used as insults and the words fell out of favor and they were replaced with, drum roll please, retarded. It's nothing more than a shell game.


• My all time favorite award for political correctness in the use of language had to go to a school teacher. I volunteered to help out with one of my kid's Grade Eight Graduation. I was working with a mom on the program and the teacher made us change the title from Lakeview School's Graduation to A Farewell to Lakeview. You see dear reader, according to this politically correct commandant of the English language, one of the students could read the word graduation and assume they were finished with their education. So, the word farewell has to be used to encourage them to enter high school in September. Now, I am the first to admit that I thought this was really stupid. Something only a moron could have imagined. But I found out that over half of the Grade eight students were indeed planning on not attending high school. That they truly believed their education was now complete and their plan was to hang out at the Seven Eleven, smoking cigarettes and drinking Slurpee's. But after we changed the word graduation to farewell, they enrolled in high school. Many of them went onto become famous doctors and found cures for fatal diseases. I really want to thank that teacher for her sense of language and how that one word saved humanity.


• Garden Tip: Pruning red stemmed dogwoods is incredibly easy. Just remember this ditty: If it's not red, it's dead. With apologies to Joseph McCarthy.


• Long time Lakeview Gardens’ alumni, Joan Anderson says she is really enjoying the blog. Joan reports that she has been growing a wisteria that is supposedly hardy for our area. We will keep you posted on that one. John Huston is hanging out in Saskatoon these days and says there are tomatoes turning red, growing in patio pots. I assume John is referring to the color and not to the politics of the tomato. Peg St. Godard loves the blog and reports that she is really enjoying her pansies this season. Peg would like to see me do a feature about day light savings time. She said she really misses Bob Hughes’ many columns on the issue. Susan Freedman (Vancouver) says that it has been a great summer in her city but she is out of the gardening game. She does read the blog, but more for the jokes. Now I’ll have to write one. My old friend Jan Pederson, who owned Shelmerdine Nursery in Winnipeg, is now the sales rep for Byland' Nursery out of Kelowna. Amazing how one quality company associates with another? Beth Maclean writes that her friends are enjoying the blog as does Cheryl Ann Smith who is on her pilgrimage through Italy. Cheryl Ann is a very modest person and devoutly religious. She is less than thrilled with the see through body scanners that were derided in the last blog. I wonder if the new age/high tech body scanners will be able to detect that I am wearing underwear, purchased when I was a student in Saskatoon, in 1975? What? They’re clean. Jan Dockham likes the blog because it has ‘personality’ which sounds an awful lot like the Lloyd Price song from the fifties...'she's got...personality'. Okay, so I can't sing, even in cyber space.


• Back to my politically correct rant. Why is it that if you made a reference to someone being cheap because they are a Greek, an East Indian, a Jew, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Arab, Italian, French, Chinese, Korean or any other ethnic group, you would be up on charges. Yet, each and every one of you take great delight in pointing out the frugality of my people, the Scots. Have we eaters of oatmeal not suffered enough? We get tired of hearing the "you know you are flying into Scotland when you see the toilet paper hanging on the clothes line" joke. Don't you realize that it was my people who invented recycling? Our old friend Dieter Martin, who immigrated from Germany, got in on the act. His dog peed on my truck tires and Dieter cracks to the dog: "Don't wash his tires for him. He's a Scotsman. He'll never pay you." Ha! Ha! And every television commercial that wants to extol the value of their product, uses some actor with a fake Scottish accent to communicate cheapness. The next person who vilifies my ancestors will be forced to eat haggis while humming 'Scotland the Brave'. Thank you.


• Haggis. Scots never eat the stuff. Some English tourist said “I want to try something ethnically Scots, an original dish.” Some smart ass (unrelated to me) said “hey, let’s put a bunch of ground up organ meat and oatmeal into a sheep’s stomach and tell them it’s our national dish.” Who knew it would catch on?


• Garden Tip: Some people labor under the illusion that to improve the tilth of clay soil, you should add some sand. Think about this for a moment. Take some sand, some clay and some water and all you need for concrete is a little bit of Portland cement. The best thing to improve clay soil is peat moss and compost material...which I would like to point out is a recycling material, invented by the Scots.


• Garden Tip: Talking to the neighbor next door. Her property borders the back lane and every type of seed has blown into this small strip of land. Lots and I mean lots of seedling trees. Ash, maple and elm. I told her to get them out now while they are small or else one day she will have to pay an arborist several hundred dollars to take down just one. Small seedlings grow into big trees with enough time. So the tip is to remove seedlings when they are small and easy to do so.


• Yesterday was the wedding of my nephew Daniel and his bride Tania. Daniel spent a lot of time staying at Uncle Rod’s house when we were on tour with The Fringe. I assured him that when he has his first big one with Tania, that he can always come stay with me. “Your room will always be available for you,” I said. “No, no, Uncle Rod,” he insisted, “we have decided we’ll never fight.” I am glad to hear that the next generation has that one sorted out. Maybe I could stay at their place when I lose a three rounder.


• For those who know my kid sister Bonnie, who doubles up as Daniel’s mother, yes, she was super bossy at the wedding, just as she always is. Whenever Bonnie organizes anything, and I mean anything, the first thing she does is to ensure that everyone has a job to do. No one gets away without having an assignment. My job was to look after Mom. Yep. That is a job. Look after Mom. Make sure she gets everywhere on time. Now Mom decided that the job description was much too complicated so she shortened it to “do everything I tell you to do”…which means that yes, I was carrying Mom’s purse for her, and it was a big purse. I asked her “Mom, why do you need all of this stuff?” She said “just in case.” There was Kleenex and toilet paper and hand gel and a small umbrella in case it rained, a pair of beige pantyhose in case someone got a run in their stocking, a dictionary in case someone wasn’t sure how to spell a word (you never know) and there was half a sandwich left over from a lunch she was at last week. I decided to be a smart ass (surprise) and I asked Mom why she didn’t have my dad’s cremation urn in her giant purse. She looks at me as if I am dumber than a bag of nails and she says “you know that your father has never liked weddings.” And people want to know how writers get their ideas.


• Purse Story Number Two: Billy Hicke and his wife Leanne used to shop at Lakeview Gardens. Billy had been a hockey player in the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens in the 1950’s. One night they arrived at the garden center and Leanne takes a cart and hands Billy her purse. A big purse. So I ask Billy “when you were playing in the big leagues with Montreal, if Jean Beliveau would have said to you ‘hey Hicke, you carry a purse’…would you have taken him outside and laid a licking on him?” Billy responded “nope, I would have thumped him right there in the dressing room for all to see.” “So Billy, what happened?” I asked. And Billy thought about it for a moment and said “Time.” Leanne looked back from the greenhouse and yelled, “Billy, don’t spend all night yakking with Rod!”


• Garden Tip: To protect new and young trees from whipper snippers, sun scald and other damage, install a plastic, tree guard on the trunk. These are available at many garden centers and if need be, a piece of weeping tile, eighteen to twenty-four inches long, cut down the middle, will work just as well.


• Garden Tip: With the warm weather we have been experiencing, it is best to water in the early morning hours before it is too warm. Water deeply and thoroughly so the water reaches the bottom of the roots.


• Happy Gardening for another week…Rod McDonald in Regina