YESTERDAY, IT WAS MY READING GLASSES; the week before, a favorite trowel. What is it with the garden that it has to be so hungry, so greedy–swallowing up all my belongings one at a time? Lost anything in your garden lately? (Thanks, Andre Jordan, for this vintage doodle.)
WHEN I TALKED to Doug Tallamy in February around the publication date of his latest book, “Nature’s Best Hope,” I didn’t want to go on and on about the advice in it regarding smart fall cleanup, which is one of the ways I know I’ve dramatically shifted the way I manage my own garden compared to 10 or even five years ago. But we were looking ahead to spring then, not fall.
I’m grateful that Doug returned to the podcast in autumn to do just that. Want to plan your most ecologically minded garden cleanup ever, and understand the consequences of each potential action you can take—including next spring?
The subtitle of University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy’s recent book, “Nature’s Best Hope,” is “A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard.” Meaning: The choices we make all year-round, including the very important one of how we clean up, can help counteract an overdeveloped, fragmented landscape that puts the food web to the test. You and I are nature’s best hope, and I’m glad Doug joined me again to help us learn to support it.
(Stream it below, read the illustrated transcript or subscribe free.)
somehow my grandfather’s hammer disappeared into the garden. We had a friend’s daughter come by with her metal detector and do a full sweep of the yard to no avail. The handle of the hammer was almost exactly the same color as the wood chips carpeting large swaths of the yard and to this day the hammer has not resurfaced…we still live in hope.
Did you hear about the woman who lost her engagement ring and years later it turned up attached to a carrot?
Hi, Kathy. That’s hilarious. Was it proposing to her? :)
Hi, Jamie and Shawn. I have lost hammers outside but so far have always found them. Fingers crossed for your grandfather’s!
My patience!!! My patience when I have to stop gardening and go in because:
– sun went down
– have to make dinner
– someone thinks it’s more important to have clean clothes then a weed free patch
– etc.. etc.. etc..
In two years I will retire and garden until I want to quit.
Lost my glasses, searched everywhere. Found them three years later in the raspberry patch.
Hi, Susan. Was the prescription still good? :)
Oooh, Kathy – you just made retirement look that much better! I lol’d at your comment! Sounds like my life around here! Clean? Cook? WHAT?
This conversation has been wonderfully entertaining. Thanks for bringing it up Margaret. I guess we can all relate to it in one way or another but I’ve been thinking………..maybe it isn’t us after all. Maybe it’s the garden fairies! Just sayin…
Yes, two stories….(well, three)
One year I planted a new “Sunsprite” rose at my S. California home. I could not find my glasses! Unfortunately, the next year the rose died. I dug it out of the ground, and lo and behold, there were my glasses attached to the root!
I had a pair of Fiskar flower clippers. Lost them at my N. California home (we had moved), and the next spring I found them under water in a plastic bin I had left on my potting bench over the winter. They were miraculously in good shape!
My husband, however, never did find his wedding ring he lost in our Owosso, Michigan garden!
Hi, Rhonda. You are quite the clever misplacer of things in the garden — excellent jobs on all counts in hiding them from yourself! Love these stories (except your husband’s rin, so sorry). See you soon.