Michael
Hillman
"Remember, the yellow
verbena only gets watered every other day, everything
else in that bed gets water every day," hurriedly
noted my Master Gardener wife as she packed the last of
her clothes for her long trip.
"Got it. Yellow Ver
-bean-um, once every other day, everything else twice a
day . . . Um, err, one more time. Wher'se the bed
again?" I shyly asked.
"It's the one across form
the pond. Also, remember to feed the fish."
"Fish? Fish? When did we
get fish?"
My wife closed her suitcase and
sighed. "Six years ago . . ."
I'm sure if you polled Master
Gardeners on what their worst nightmares are, leaving
their gardens in the care, even if only temporarily, of
well meaning, horticulturally challenged spouses,
probably ranks at the top.
I've long ago given up keeping
track of the plants that now call my wife's many gardens
home. Prior to becoming an Adams' County Master
Gardener, she was satisfied with a simple garden
containing flowers, which I could not only recognized,
but who's names I could pronounce without major
contortions of my lips.
By the time she received her
Master Gardener certificate, her gardens had quadrupled
in size. The simple varieties that once graced the
walkways, perfectly good plants as far as I was
concerned, had been pulled out by their screaming roots,
replace by obscure, albeit 'native', plants.
Having been given a taste of how
spectacular gardens could, she moved on to more advance
and focused training at Longwood Garden. Each new class
brought eclectic new plant additions, and with them, new
garden layouts.
When existing gardens could no
longer meet her needs, she simply appropriated more of
our ever- diminishing lawn. Soon she was buying weed
killer in barrel containers, not to kill weeds, but to
eradicate whole portions of the yard to accommodate her
latest shade garden, raised bed garden, or butterfly
garden.
As one can imagine, the daily
maintenance of such an extensive array of gardens is a
Herculean task at best. A task best suited for a Master
Gardener, not a Master Gardener spouse! While I have
always been ready and willing to help, the scope of my
'acceptable' services has diminished inversely to the
growth in the size and complexity of the gardens.
At first, I was entrusted with
planting 'hardy' plants, ones that didn't need the fine
touch of a Master Gardener. But my unique ability to
step on the most fragile plant in the bed I was assigned
to, caused her to quickly reassign me. Given my unique
ability to kill any plant I touched, weeding seemed a
natural. But I got fired from that position for failing
to master the technique of pulling weeds out by the
root. Since then, my help in the garden has been limited
to 'safe' activities, like dumping buckets of rocks over
the fence line. Anything more than that, my wife claims,
would be hazardous to the health and well-being of the
gardens.
So, when my wife inquired if I
would be willing to take responsibility for watering
while she visited her parents for a week, I jumped at
the chance to prove myself. After all, how hard could
watering be?
I quickly learned that there was
much more to watering then turning on the hose, opening
a beer and stand around waiting to get bitten by
mosquitoes. Apparently, one of the next things you learn
when you become a full fledged Master Gardener, is the
secret equation for determining just how much water a
plant needs on a daily basis.
The equation is made up of
several basic components. At first glance, it was fairly
simplistic, and compared to running a nuclear power
plant, seemed like child's play. Factors Master
Gardeners take into consideration include: deepness of
the roots (DR) - the deeper, the less frequent the need
for watering; plant height or the tallness of the plant
(T) - the taller the plant, the more need for watering;
leaf width (L) - the wider the leaf, the more need for
watering. Of course, flowering plants (FP), need more
water then non-flowering (NFP) plants. Or, in
mathematical speak: ((T x L)/DR) x (FP/NFP)
A good Master Gardner then adds
in some fudge factors. For example: the closer the
proximity of plants in a bed (PP) - the less you have to
water; the windier the day (WD), the more you have to
water; the sunnier the spot (SS) - the more one needs to
water; the shadier (SS1) - the less you need to water.
Or more simply: (WD x SS)/(PP x SS1)
Then, of course, one needs to
factor in whether the soaker hoses you've been meaning
to replace for the past five years leak more at the top
or the bottom of the bed (SHL), the number of mosquito
bites you're willing to accept in any one time period (MSB),
and the number of times you're willing to fuss with a
hose that always seems to kink at the worst possible
time (HK). Or more simply, (SHL)/(MSB x HQ)
Put together, the equation on
how much and how often to water a plant in a Master
Gardener's garden looks like this: (((T x L)/DR) x (FP/NFP))
x ((WD x SS)/(PP x SS1)) x ((WD x SS)/(PP x SS1)). As a
point of comparison, the equation that describes the
chain reaction within a nuclear power plant has only six
factors, and to calculate that requires some pretty
heavy computing power. How Master Gardeners can juggle
all these factors and calculations in their head and get
it right every time is beyond me, but they do, and their
gardens always look beautiful.
Given that the results of my
first calculation for my wife's garden -- 300 inches of
water -- was a little bit suspect, I ran the equation on
my computer. It crashed halfway through and has refused
to start since.
Realizing that what was left of
my reputation as 'mindless' garden help was now at risk,
I did the only thing I could think of -- I multiplied
the whole equation by zero, subtracted 1, and began to
water likes my wife buys plants: non-stop.
Every morning I raced the sun to
the garden. Juggling the coffee IV and the watering hose
took a little getting used to at first, but it was
rewarding. Every garden was filled with a capricious
array of colors and fragrances. Drooping plants, almost
instantaneously rose to meet the rays of the sun after
receiving their fill. Bugs of every shape and size,
invisible to those who hurry through gardens, suddenly
became ever-present. And for the first time, I realized
that my wife had not simply created gardens, but whole
worlds unto themselves.
Everyday I discovered a new
collection of potted plants squirreled away in some
corner of a garden, all with intended purposes that only
my wife could reveal, and all of course, now desperately
wilted from lack of water.
In spite of my efforts, it was
apparent that I was losing the watering battle. Pulling
out all the stops, I fired up the soaker hoses and even
enlisted the help of local kids, all to no apparent
avail. Finally in desperation, I contacted a local pool
water company, and after being assured the water was
untreated, contracted for a shipment.
As I stood watching the deluge
from the tanker flood the gardens, my wife called to
remind me: " . . Remember, over-watering is as bad
as under-watering . . ."
Read
other humor stories by Michael Hillman
