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Gardens and Grains



The life of a professor (this professor and my family at least) does not lend itself well to typical planting times for flowers and gardens. In my neck of the woods, most plantings occur during the week preceeding through the end of Memorial Day. However, inevitably, there is a huge plethora of University related work details I find myself engrossed (forced engrossment) in during that time. So, inevitably, work on the yard and planting of flowers/gardens etc is late for us.

Happily, I have had far better luck in regards to getting yard work and plantings underway this year than in the last several. I was able to get the ornamental flowers planted in their various locations in the yard on Wednesday of this week and planted the vegetable garden on Thursday of this week. I am even relatively close to being on top of things regarding mowing/trimming/laying down mulch in the various locations in the yard.... relative being the operative word... I am far behind most of the neighbors, but far ahead of my usual pace.

My planting choices were designed around the philosophy of "keep it simple" this year. As we have a rather shady yard, all the flowers I planted are Impatients other than two pots of geraniums (purchased for placement on the graves of my parents and grandparents at the cemetery for Memorial Day and then brought home as a symbol of having them close to us), and a large barrel planted with the smaller flowers also originally used at the cemetery (for uncles, aunts, cousins) and brought back as well. Vegetable garden choices were also kept simple this year... tomatoes all of the same variety, green bell peppers (no wild colors this year, because we would inevitably forget which were which and leave them on the vine too long), cabbage, and kohlrabi.

Earlier in the midst of winter, I had schemed and planned to go for a lot of exotic plantings and my elderly father-in-law also had similar plans. He did get around to getting a few odd varieties of melons and peppers into the ground, but like me, for the most part he reverted to keeping it simple this year. The one exotic I think both he and I had strongly contemplated but neither of us attempted was to grow some pipe tobacco. We had been pouring over various gardening catalogs and stumbled upon actual smoking tobacco plants that were available for purchase, and one of the varieties was for a form of tobacco especially suitable for pipe smoking. That intrigued both of us, for it sounded fun and very different to grow. Tobacco (other than non-smokable ornamental varieties) is hardly ever seen available from most gardening supply catalogs. As we are both pipe smokers, we would have enjoyed the challenge of growing these plants, but somehow it fell by the wayside for both of us. I think in reality, it slipped our minds due to other things happening in life until it was too late in the season to make them a viable planting choice.

Oh well, perhaps next year. I think I will take the afternoon off today, and head on over to my father-in-law's to see his garden, talk and laugh, and to enjoy some pipes and libations.

PipeTobacco