Sow There!

Saturday is one of those events that should be on the top of the gardener’s to-do list.
The 13th Annual Rose Show, sponsored by the Butte Rose Society, will take place from 1-5 p.m. at the Newman Center, Third and Cherry streets.
For many, the real fun starts hours earlier.
The show is free, as is entrance to the exhibits.
Many members who are regulars in the rose circuit will be entering the competitions that require prior planning, such as container-grown roses, English boxes, rose in a bowl, rose arrangements, dried roses, rose artwork and photography, etc.

However, roses can be clipped the day of the show and entered.
Last year there were more than 600 entries.
Show chairman Bill Reynolds said entry in the competition can be a fun way for gardeners to figure out what kind of roses they are growing. Helpers will help decide in which class to enter the flowers. There’s also a “mystery” category if the rose can’t be identified during the show.
Registration begins at 6:30 a.m. and ends at 10 a.m.
Viewing takes place from 1-5 p.m.
Bill explained that roses are exhibited at half to three-fourths of the open stages. Unlike a bouquet delivered to your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day or after a bad relationship boo-boo, judges are not looking for roses in the bud stage.
There are also categories for roses in full bloom, which means the stamen is showing.
Bill said tips for exhibiting roses include cutting as much stem length as possible, as the stems can always be shortened. Also, wipe down the leaves so the natural oils make them shiny.
The event will also offer a rose sale, from donated items from local nurseries. Shop early because the prices will be very reasonable, Bill said.
On the Internet: www.butte-rose-society.org/roseshow.html.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s been more than three years now that I’ve been wearing a purple plastic bracelet around my right wrist. It’s not the most fashionable of accessories, but it’s a reminder of the G.I.s serving throughout the world.
My niece gave it to me before she and her husband Eric moved to Germany, where he was stationed in the Army.
Plastic bracelets have been around for a while. I’ve seen them for all sorts of causes, the most prominent being bicyclist Lance Armstrong’s yellow wristband for cancer awareness.
For a time, there seemed to be a bracelet for almost every cause — global awareness, fighting poverty, breast cancer, Hurricane Katrina, and most diseases.

You can buy generic silicone armbands at convenience stores that are embedded with the words “hope” and “love.”
I had friends who wore half a dozen on one arm.
Mine reads: “For Those Who Serve.”
When my niece Cassie and her husband were in Germany, it seemed almost imminent Eric would be sent to Iraq. Then the plans changed to Afghanistan.
The plans were always murky, and re-told from family member to family member.
I try not to give in too much to worrying. Frankly, if I did, I’d probably have stomach ulcers and indentations on my palms from my fingernails digging into my skin.
Without serious concentration — some might say prayer — I can quickly develop panic disorder by allowing the worst-case scenario to fester in my head:
First stage
Wow, something bad could happen.
• Feelings of concern, brief shot of anxiety, feeling of gratefulness that things aren’t the way they could be.
Second-level worry
There’s a real possibility that bad thing could happen.
• More concern, slight doubt things will be OK.
Red-level worry
That bad thing probably will happen.
• Panic, cold sweats, inability to focus on anything else but the likelihood of that bad thing happening.
Utter angst
• That terrible, terrible thing will happen.
• Remorse. How could this bad thing happen? Where is God? What am I ever going to do to get over this bad thing that will happen? How will our family ever get past this terrible, terrible thing?
Letting your mind worry in that sort of progression is really easy, but only causes stomachaches and possibly other serious medical complications.
Instead, the purple arm band became a prayer accessory, not unlike a rosary.
I’m superstitious about some things, and have never taken it off, despite the fact that it smells and has soap scum build-up.
The possibilities for my niece slowly turned for the better. Their first child, Lorelei, came into the world and another one, this time a boy, is on the way.
Meanwhile, over time, her husband Eric made progress toward a promotion that ultimately landed the family in Alabama.
A big sigh made a ripple effect throughout the family.
Somehow, after having the dark cloud of possible Middle East deployment in the back of our collective minds, it’s almost comical to hear the tales of woe about the size of the cockroaches in Alabama or the difficulties of enduring high humidity.
Being that there are so many other families with loved ones in the military, and families caught up in the craziness of war, I am still wearing the purple band.
However, it does make me wonder if there is an arm band I can buy to wish for comfort for loved ones who find themselves living in Alabama.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been thinking about growing old.

Certain parts of the body hurt if I cross my legs for too long and I’ve found myself buying really expensive anti-wrinkle cream from the sale rack.

When I chit-chat with friends, occasionally the conversations dwell on which hair products they use to cover their gray or worries about how they will afford college for their children.

Sometimes Tommy and I go downtown to play pinball when the college “kids” are roaming. I feel sorry for some who already appear to be heading down an alcoholic road. Or I worry about young women wobbling in ridiculously tall shoes and ridiculously short skirts. I dread what bad things could happen to them during the night.

Looking back over one’s own life is like watching a movie.

In a film, the storyteller only describes the pertinent points — those things that had an impact and forever changed the story.

The older we get, our personal movies become epics. We’re all our own Scarlett O’Haras, making indelible mistakes and building our own triumphs, even if we don’t necessarily recognize it at the time.

And sometimes along the way we’ve lost friends who, for unknown reasons, have chosen not to continue the epic. Unlike Scarlett, they were unable to see that “tomorrow is another day.”

Thanks, Mom
My mother came to visit this week.

In the bustle of life, I don’t always remember all the silly times we had when we were “kids.”

Mom had recently been to a high school reunion with three friends from high school. The married “girls” took the trip without their spouses, so they were a giggly gang of four.

As mom recounted the reunion the other night, she was relaxing on a blow-up mattress on my living room floor, wearing jammies with the blanket pulled up to her chest.

She told the story the way she always does — with lots of facial expressions and pauses to punctuate the important points.

She said there had been about five “boys” who she was curious to see at the reunion, to see what they looked like after 40-something years.

Not all of the “boys” attended the reunion, she shrugged. That’s how it is. For whatever reason, some people decide not to take that look back.

One of the stories she heard was tragic, as some stories are.

There had been a boy who had tried to kiss my mother. I guess back then it seemed like a romantic gesture to try to drag a girl into the school bathroom.

That boy wasn’t at the reunion either. My mother and her three friends learned from the boy’s sister that he had died young, murdered in bed by the drugged-out boyfriend of his adulterous wife.

Another “boy,” one who made it to the reunion with his wife, had taken my mother to the prom when she was a freshman. Mom’s best friend from high school, my “Auntie Innie,” made it her personal goal to track him down at the reunion and asked if he remembered who he had taken to his prom. He still remembered my mom’s name.

When she told me the stories, there was light behind her from a floor lamp. Her wild, curly hair, with haphazardly-covered gray, was going every which direction as her head moved with animation.

She said she and her three friends went back to their hotel room that night, the four of them stretched out side-by-side in two queen-sized beds, and told old stories about their high school days. They giggled like the “girls” they were and had been.

My mom can be like that sometimes — silly and drenched in light — and the next moment poignant.
She’s always been that way — when she was 14, 26 and 44 — despite and because of all the mistakes and triumphs of this world.

Talking with her that night made me not so afraid of getting old.

Pearing down
I’ve been really fortunate this year as I have managed to thoroughly exploit my friends who have fruit trees. All throughout the summer, I stashed away apricots, nectarines and plums in the freezer.

Each morning Tommy and I make a smoothie, unloading the fresh or frozen fruit into the blender for a quick pick-me-up.

Alas, the fruit season started to wane and I’ve dipped seriously into my reserves.

But just when I thought it was all over, my friend Mandy visited. The visit was disappointingly short, but I managed to score three huge bags of pears.

Pears aren’t as suited for smoothies, but they make a good filler when mixed with the super-sweet frozen plums and nectarines.

Plus, I’m sure there are many recipes I could cook up this winter with pork and salads. I’d be delighted if readers would share some ideas.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most of us have morning rituals, even if it is simply to brush our teeth. At our house, Tommy treads out and picks up the morning paper and makes a wretchedly strong cup of coffee.
I pad out in my garden clogs and take a look at the garden. Sometimes I put the pruning shears in the pocket of my robe and deadhead flowers. Other times I’ll pull a weed or two.
Lately our work schedules have fallen out of sync and instead of sharing those morning rituals, we’ll write each other Post-it notes.
One recent morning Tommy was off in the wee hours of the morning, and when he kissed my forehead before heading out the door he said, “There’s a present for you on the front porch.”
I murmured and quickly returned to my dream where I was cleaning out an attic and coming across long-forgotten childhood toys.

When I stumbled out to the front porch for the morning garden tour, there was a Post-it note smeared with dark-green goo.
A note from Tommy read: “I cut this tomato hornworm this morning.”
You can imagine my delight and comfort in knowing that he knew just how to brighten my day.
One evening this week he was trying to catch up on some sleep and I didn’t want to wake him when I got home.
During a brief time of solace near the tomato plants, I had the pleasure of clipping the heads off three tomato hornworms. Out of morbid curiosity, I lingered a moment over one inch-and-a-half camouflaged hornworm and watched as it devoured a leaf about the size of its head in about 10 seconds.

(Double yuck)

The sound of a hornworm is grotesque. You have to get close to hear it, but it sounds like a wet noshing, similar to what one would imagine in a vat at a pumpkin pie factory, when they process to separate the seeds, pulp and rind.
If the sound of a hornworm eating was proportionate to its size, a human-sized hornworm would sound like the gurgling of the sulfur pits at Mt. Lassen.
Wednesday morning, this time Tommy was sleeping when I tried to tip-toe around while getting ready for work.
I left a note on the coffee table that said, “Check out the irises. They’re blooming.”

Thanks to a friend
There are irises scattered here and there throughout the yard and this fall they are long overdue to be divided. You can tell when irises are too crowded because you won’t see blooms. If you look at the soil around the green, erect leaves of the plant, you’ll see the corms. They are shaped like small carrots. When they’re too crowded, the corms overlap.
Under the corms, by digging down about five inches, are the roots. To divide irises, dig down so that the roots and corm are intact. Some people like to cut down the leaves of the plant to about six inches.
Then bag up the extra irises and give them to a friend.
The irises in my yard all originated with Laurie Kavenaugh, our Style editor. She separated some irises about 10 years ago. I was a newbie at gardening and she told me how to plant them with the roots pointing down into the ground and the corm just barely covered.
They’re all purple bearded irises. Since then I have divided them and there must be about 100 at this point.
For some reason, the irises bloom at different times in different spots in the yard.
I should do some research to find out why. But in a way it’s just fun to have a pleasant surprise.
Sometimes I’ll have blooms in mid-January. Other times they’ll bloom mid-March. This is the first year I have noticed blooms in mid-September.
The only thing I can figure is that Laurie must have had some magic irises that seem to bloom exactly when I need a surprise in the garden.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(The Yule Logs: Friendly neighbors and a bucket full of fun).

Several weeks ago I chatted with a nice woman who said her son Marty lived just a few doors down from me.

At first it was a bit strange that she knew where I lived, but she said she reads my column and had pieced together clues from things mentioned over time.

A project had been completed in Marty’s backyard and there was a pile of perfectly good topsoil that needed to be removed.

I put the prize of the nearby topsoil in the back of my mind, but soon other clutter occupied that gray space behind my spectacles.

One night we were taking a walk and Tommy exercised absolutely no self control and started petting an adorable puppy that we later found out was lost. The pup had terrorized the neighborhood with cuteness, but people had forced themselves to shut their doors in the puppy’s face, lest his irresistible tail wagging cause them to fall in love.

Anxious not to fall prey to the puppy’s powerful charms, we knocked on several doors trying to find the pup’s loving home.

One of the doors was opened by a neighbor named Dominic. He didn’t know where the dog lived, but graciously offered to put him in his enclosed backyard for the night and help try to find the owner the next day.

He also said he’d mention the canine’s displacement with his neighbor Marty.

Ah, Marty. Suddenly the brain axioms that contained the offer of topsoil were reactivated. Marty wasn’t home that night, but we learned that he lives in the house in the back where we sometimes hear the band practice on weekend afternoons.

A few days passed and Tommy and I decided to have a barbecue for Labor Day. The usual suspects were invited and we decided to sail an invite to the neighbors.

Dominic keeps a really nice garden, and it turns out it was actually his topsoil that was promised to us from Marty’s mom.

Marty is the front-man for the band the Yule Logs.

It’s funny how sometimes a simple thing can open up a lot of happy cells in your body.

Our newly acquainted guests didn’t overpower the party, but they were new so we peppered them with invasive questions.

Marty’s band plays only Christmas songs. They begin playing in November around local venues, but practice quite a bit — thus our notice of their muffled sounds on weekend afternoons.

He said he and the band members, Josh, KC and Jake, dress like elves. In the future I will need to investigate more fully exactly what those costumes entail.

As musical genres go, holiday music really is overlooked. Sure, we can order special Christmas collections including Kenny G’s “The Greatest Holiday Classics,” John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain Christmas,” and Barry Manilow’s “A Christmas Gift of Love.”

As a kid we had some Christmas records (the vinyl kind) with songs by the Carpenters and Anne Murray that we played when we decorated the tree.

However, in my limited wanderings, I have not come across a band dedicated to bringing holiday cheer. (To check them out, go to www.myspace.com and type in “Yule Logs” in the search box at the top of the page. I could go on and on about how cool I think this is, but my editor told me to keep it short this week).

After Dominic and Marty chatted for a while, they said they had to get going. Maybe they had heard about the near fire disaster at our last barbecue, but I tend to believe them when they said they had things to do.

A little later, there was a surprise walking down our alley.

Marty and Dominic had returned with the rest of the Yule Log clan. After posing for a picture with the rubber chicken, they played two of their pop/rock versions of the Christmas songs “Sleigh Ride” and “Winter Wonderland.”

Funny how surprises like that can keep bringing smiles to my face days later.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)