You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind

(it's because you just can't win)

By Reid Lewis

"Hello, hooray let the show begin, I've been ready." Just an old line from an old song, and it's a feeling in me at this time of year when the sap's arisin' and the soil's awarmin'. Let's see now, it all started two days ago while I was cleaning seed (and as we all know that's something I'm always doing). I had a bowl full of the stuff that goes with the seed that you don't need, so you clean, sort, pile and then dump the trash outside. Then on to more cleaning etc., etc., till you have seed enough to fill those little baggies (but I digress as I so often do). Anyway, I took my bowl and headed outside and walked down the bar ditch (you always throw your seed trash where a seed or two that you missed might just find a home, and we might talk about that someday). And there smiling up at me was the first Anemone (Anemone heterophylla) of the year, the wind-flower, the harbinger of spring for this child. Oh yes, there is the early Redbud (Cercis canadensis var. texensis) and a Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) or two as always, and I guess you could count things like Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) or even when the Texas Buckeye (Aesculus arguta) leaf out, as a sign of spring. Or maybe it's the length of the day or the color of the sky or some other trigger for you. And yes, I know it's never just any one of these things. But for me it's those little white, blue and pink faces smiling up at the sky on the first warm days of February that say to all who can hear, "Hey, get ready, here it comes."

When I woke up this morning I had this and a few other things on my mind, and it has been a very long time since we talked, so I thought this would be a good subject to start the year off with. Yesterday was warm and sunny and today is cold and cloudy with winds out of the north (but so what, the Anemones are up and they know it will be all too hot, all too soon). If I had not been cleaning seed yesterday, I would not have seen the little flowers, for today you would have a hard time finding them. They hide well in the dormant grass just waiting for the sun to come back. But let's go on just a little if you don't mind indulging me, for like I said, I had things on my mind. For lack of a better term I shall call it the permanence of impermanence (let's just call it the p of i). Now, a lot has happened to me (and I assume with you also) since last we talked. One of the big things is that the folks I used to write to are no longer there! Now it's a whole different group who will be looking at these ramblings, and I have found out in the last few years, you are from all over the planet! Past rambling was for the local chapter of the Native Plant Society Of Texas (Waco) in their monthly newsletter. Well, times change (this is where we start the p of i). Although the chapter is still going, I'm no longer in Waco, nor is the newsletter being written by my good friend Mark. So as another song line goes, " It's just another brick in the wall." Then the website got busy with internet seed orders, and I moved away from Coryell County to the next county over, Bell County. And although that does not sound like much of a move, to me it's a whole new world (in many ways). I started my own nursery and got busy with that, then I spent a short time teaching native landscaping in the evenings, and THEN I was offered a job that I just could not turn down, as the horticulturist for Temple College. So I lost my prairie and gained a campus.

Now I spend a lot of time in what Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) calls the "high country." That is, thinking and writing things in my head (and listening to music on my headphones). I spend a lot of time working alone, planting, weeding, building beds, watering, and all the other things that must be done every week to make the campus look wonderful. I'll think of a subject and chew on it sometimes for days, sometimes only a few moments, like a new plant I have found, i.e. Prairie Fleabane (Erigeron modestus). Although I have known this plant for years, it's one of the plants I would love to see grown and used much more. Another one I'm big on seeing in the nursery trade is Golden Groundsel (Senecio obovatus), as I do believe that one plant is a great shade plant and the other is for sun (now you tell me which one is which). I'll think about the way someone has planted something, i.e. the new shopping center in Temple, Texas, that used Cenizo (which is a West Texas dry land plant) alternating with Wax Myrtle (which is an East Texas plant requiring good moisture) as a hedge! And we are not talking about a couple of each but over 50 of each, and someone actually did this on purpose and got paid for it! And yes, I did get pictures when they were first planted. Now, a year later, I'm ready to get the "after" photo in which half are just about dead! And then there was the Nova program on the treasures of Tibet that I watched the other night, where they showed paintings on walls in temples that after five centuries are falling apart, five centuries!!! (There is that p of i again.) To me that's a long time, but to the Himalayas, just a blink of the eye. And when you're paying off a credit card bill for five years that's a long time, but want to buy a piece of land? Try making those payments for thirty years! Or plant a Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa), and tell your grandchildren to tell their children to sit in the shade of that tree someday and remember you! Oh, the p of i.

So what does all this come back around to? Well it's those little Anemones that every year tell me in my short little life, to look out, here it comes! Even though it was sunny and beautiful two days ago with highs in the 70s and bright blue skies and cirrus clouds that dance in the heavens above, today it's icy and in the mid 20s. Remember those Redbuds and Mexican Plums that thought it was time to bloom? Well, they are not happy campers today and their glory was short lived, but they will get over it and try again next year, and can you guess when? Why, of course, it's when the Anemones are looking up to the sky and saying, "Get ready!"

P.S. I will try to write much more often, and please, you do the same because it's just as much fun for me to hear from you as it is for me to hang my neck out there for you!