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How to plant an easy garden: Part Three
Does this seem dumb by now? Have you mastered Part One and Part Two and are feeling a little jipped information-wise or that the tips I’m giving are so obvious that they are just stupid? Well, you should. That’s the point.*
Might as well finish the story:
3. The Rest. Buy some little plants (I never get around to starting seeds inside while it’s still sleeting out, but you might) and put the dirt most of the way up in the pot, and then take the plantling out of its cozy little plastic rectangle and stick it in the pot. Repeat as often as necessary, and then put water on the plants. Keep putting water on the plants whenever the dirt seems dry-ish. Pull off dead flowers and leaves so new ones have room to grow (pruning, right?) Now, instead of spinning your wheel barrows, you have a satisfactory garden. yay.
*Also the point is that perfectionism is paralyzing and we should just go and do stuff if we ever really want to do it.
How to plant an easy garden: Part Two
If you’re as overwhelmed by all the gardening tip garbage on the interwebs, do what I did and get some dirt and some plants and put them together and put water on them!
After you’ve accepted this (see Part One), you’re ready for the next step.
2. Soap is soap. Or in this case, dirt is dirt. This comes from a weird Internet Lady who helps other people figure out their housecleaning woes; I did not create it. Anyways, one of her mantras is that soap is soap. Shampoo=hand soap=body wash=dish soap=whatever. You probably won’t die too badly if you shave with shampoo or clean your toilet with pomegranate scrub. I know this isn’t entirely accurate, but like I said – I’m not trying to produce a prize-winning pumpkin – so I just grabbed a big bag of dirt. I would not recommend getting dirt out of your yard, even though that may seem like an easy way to cut corners, because your yard dirt is likely to suck. Buy a bag of dirt that they sell specifically for growing plants. You can tell because it will have horribly composed images of happy green plants on the front of the bag.
How to plant an easy garden: Part One
I have these raised-beds-in-the-sky dreams of having a really cool vegetable/herb pretty garden. But it’s just not going to happen. I try to wade through all of the tips and the verbage about container plants and sunlight and purple basil versus boll weevil basil and I just get lost. too many ratios of soil and vermicticle (what is this?) makes my head spin. I don’t want or need to spend 2 hours a day doing whatever it is you have to do to get those perfect sketched gardens in order to enjoy growing some plants.
I urge you, seekers of easy gardening advice, to just do what I did and put some dirt in some pots and put some plants in there. If you’re feeling trepidation, here I break it down into three-ish steps. And a series! So you only have to take in a few sentences at a time.
1. Details are for suckers. A friend of mine once had a party and invited people on Facebook. The event said something like “come over Saturday night to my house. details are for suckers.” I love this, because nothing gets on my nerves more than unnecessary planning. Go ahead and put that the party is from 10-2 and BYOB and still everyone will show up empty handed at 12:30. And then you’ll go to the Mapco and get a bunch of Yuengling and have a blast and no one will remember what the event invite said. I’m not gardening to win The Biggest Eggplant contest, I just want to grow some plants, so I closed my 300 page Burpee’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening and just went for it.
On the Job Training
It was my first non-wedding-story freelance assignment before I was full-time at the CA, and it was the cover story for Spoon. I was to wrangle Coach Josh Pastner and Coach Lionel Hollins together for a “meal” and interview on the same day. On one hand, this was a tough first assignment. I felt weird and self-conscious about calling media coordinators and PR people. These are fancy people, I thought. On the other hand, it was a great first assignment, because I got to know that fear up-close-and-personally. After you’ve convinced Coach Pastner to join you for an hour in a wine cellar*, your confidence in gathering local personalities is pretty strong. Moving on.
First, I’m the type of person who is going to do my homework, whether it’s a waste of time or not. I had read that Pastner was a no-alcohol, no-caffeine person. But when we got in the wine cellar, and got the table all set up, and the restaurant owners put wine on the table, red flags went up in my head. But there were about 10 people standing around–the photographer, the coaches’ entourages, servers, the owners, my coworkers…and I didn’t want to make a big deal. Mostly, I was afraid of speaking up where all of these people could hear me form words with my mouth in case something dumb came out. So I stayed silent and let Pastner look like he was getting in some quality time with a quality Cabernet. I crossed my fingers and hoped no one would notice.But they did. And his people called my people, and thank GOD we sent them a proof before we printed, because I would have really hated to misrepresent the guy if it bothered him – even if it was just a glass of wine. Luckily, our Magical Art Director was able to do a 180 Reverse-Jesus move at the VERY last minute in Photoshop to turn the wine back into water. Very impressive.
If I was in that situation now, I would suck up any anxiety and say or do something, anything, if I had a feeling something wasn’t just right. I don’t have to say OMG COACH WATCH OUT FOR JESUS’ BLOOD but I could have simply said, “this doesn’t look quite right…it blocks the view for the picture of this delicious-looking steak” or any number of things. The same thing I do now when I arrive at a home for Fix Magazine to photograph the “picturesque” backyard SURPRISE filled with plastic trolls.
*This sounds completely different then I meant it to sound, but I’m leaving it.
Memphis Drivers
People suck at driving all over the world, but often I hear complaints that Memphis drivers are particularly incapable behind the wheel. I have time to ponder this as I scurry around in my car, late for this or that. I try to come up with a succinct way of describing the particular nature of Memphis Driving Problems.
Two Possible Succinct Explanations:
One: There are ridiculous turn-lane issues on Union, meaning that there are no turn lanes.
Two: The lanes on Poplar are very narrow. There are three lanes, but if a city bus is in one of them, there are only 2.7 lanes and you cannot be adjacent to anyone or pass anyone unless you feel like losing your side-view mirrors.
There’s more to it than that. Even on less congested streets, I am either tailpipe-raped or impeded by a crawling car with no working blinkers. I’ve decided that the problem with Memphis drivers is the same problem that we have with American politics: polarization. Half of the drivers have somewhere to be, and about the other half have nowhere to be but are driving around anyways. These respective parties refuse to move on or get into their own lane (the left lane is the passing lane, the right lane is for being slow, did you know?) and instead destroy any possibility for smooth progress by being oblivious to the actual flow of traffic.
Let’s all drive along, politely agreeing to disagree with each other’s speed, get passed or pass, stop or go (rather than taking sudden turns, or worse, turns at 10 mph) and no one would be worse for wear.
From Whence I Came
Screen Shot When The Internet Told Me I Got Hired By A National Publishing Corporation
I grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Some things happened there. Then, I made my way to Memphis for college, where I started out in the Architecture program at the University of Memphis. Here, I learned the value of sleep, the value of not sleeping, and a bunch of stuff about design and attention to detail and constructing things. Also time management, which in architecture school basically means “don’t do anything besides architecture school work.”After 3 grueling semesters, I told everyone I was “going to accept my fate of living in a cardboard box as a starving artist/writer” and switched to studying graphic design and writing, specifically creative nonfiction.
A great friend recommended me for a design internship at the Commercial Appeal (Scripps Howard Publishing) newspaper in their “niche” division – basically, a magazine division. I did that for a semester.
After college, I worked a stint as a part-time designer for an up-and-coming firm. Great opportunity. Great learning experience. Got let go. Started writing freelance for my old pals at the CA, and the next thing you know, I’ve quit my serving job (which I actually kind of loved) to jump on a sales rep job opening in the department. I sold advertising, started and produced a brand-new annual publication and wrote things in between hassling people for their advertising dollars.
Then, the Editor left, and there I was ready to turn in my Sales Badge. I’ve been full-time at the CA since September 2010 and the Editorial Director for the Dept. since May 2011. I can’t help it. I love magazines.