spring planting – part 1

I wanted to do some planting this spring for the same reason as most men: To serve as an excuse to play in the dirt. Or more to the point, to serve as an acceptable enough of an excuse that your wife won’t insist that you clean the basement instead:

• Acceptable: I’m putting in the garden.
• Unacceptable: I’m recreating the topography of southeastern Virginia so as to better understand the ebb and flow of battle during the Union’s Peninsula Campaign. Could you hand me that figure of McClellan while you’re standing there?

I decided to start with decorative plants of some kind. Now, I couldn’t buy anything overly frilly or feminine. I have a reputation to protect after all. Okay, I have a reputation to dispel, but that’s another story.

A short list of manly plants would include:

Venus fly trap. The only plant that could win at Fear Factor. We’re talking carnivore here. Water and sunshine? Sorry, hippie, that won’t cut it for this bad boy. Fly tartar is more its speed. If Dick Cheney were a plant, this would be it.

Rose bush: Attractive enough from a distance but get too close and you’ll come away bleeding and scarred. This plant is one nationalized health care plan away from being a candidate for Senator from New York.

Cactus: Any plant covered in spikes demands respect. The only thing better would be if it came with firearms training.

Sunflower. Not an obvious choice, but it has three things going for it:

1. It is huge. It will grow taller than you from seed in one season. The only thing that grows faster is kudzu and government deficits under one-party rule.
2. Compelled to follow the sun, it moves all day long. That’s pretty good for a plant. Heck, that’s pretty good for a Teamster.
3. It produces flowers as big as your head. No, bigger. As big as John McCain’s head.

A runner up would be weeds. An odd candidate, yes, and nothing that you would want to plant on purpose, but they do give men the excuse to engage in indiscriminate killing. Give me a jug of Roundup and I’ll make Chemical Ali look like Michael Dukakis.

I settled on the sunflowers since in these perilous times it’s a good idea to have an independent source of food on hand. In fact a single sunflower produces enough seed to provide the average family of four with three days of something to sprinkle on their salad. (How have you taken care of your family’s needs today?)

Here is a shot of my sunflower patch. Okay, they’re making about as much progress as immigration reform but the season is still young.

And plants are non-partisan.

Next week: Part 2 of "Spring Planting," otherwise known as, "When did tomato plants get so complicated?"

J.