Harvesting This Year’s Stories

Since writers on other human endeavors are recording the most interesting stories form the final year of the millennium, here is your happy horticulturist’s short list for those of the gardening fraternity.

• Lord Berners of England is reported as attempting to raise peaches under glass by feeding them with ham. 

• Furniture impregnated with the scent of rose, lavender or vanilla went on sale, manufactured by the British firm of Contour Model.  The sofas, presently the only offering available, run something over $5, 000.00 each.

• Wife-murderer Dolin Thatcher, incarcerated at Ferndale, B.C., low-security prison, helps out at a nearby commercial greenhouse, raising bedding plants for sale at local retail outlets.  He can also enjoy the prison’s own golf course.

• The Casket Stores, on of Canada’s largest retailers of coffins and elated products decides to offer garden monuments to mourners in which the loved one’s cremated remains may be sealed.  President Alex Carey says his company hopes later to have a similar line suitable for apartment dwellers to use on their balconies.

• A bonsai tree that once made a 19^th century Japanese emperor smile is auctioned off at Sotheby’s London, for $117, 000.  It is a Yew over six centuries old.  “If you can keep a houseplant or a pot plant, you can keep a bonsai growing” said Mark Hill, a representative for the venerable auctioneers.

• In return for regularly mowing an elderly neighbour’s grass, 15-year-old Dean Pateman of Edmonton is left a 1975 pink Fleetwood Cadillac when the neighbour dies.

• A 43-year-old Newfoundlander of Green’s Harbour is charged with drunk driving after he crashes his garden tractor down a steep slope and has to be rescued by a neighbour.  Later in the year a Woodstock, Ontario man (49) is similarly charged by the OPP when he sideswipes a parked car.

• Ray Fall, a scientist at the University of Colorado, reports that the familiar odor of a new-mown lawn is, in fact, cause by pollutants.  These in turn may contribute to urban air quality, But not to worry, the U.S. researcher reports, “Mowing the lawn is no more hazardous than eating raw vegetables.”

• Three beavers are blamed for chomping happily away on Washington, D.C. Japanese cherry trees, famed for their display world-wide.  The three culprits were live-trapped by Washington Park Rangers after destroying four trees.

• Big melons are out for the British.  Women shoppers simply will not purchase them.  Models have smaller breasts these days, so female shoppers want the same size in melons, claims a psychologist for the U.K.’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco PLC.

• Landscape designers are reported to frown upon the colours of the all-too-familiar lawn election signs displayed in the Ontario provincial election.  Red Liberal, deep blue Conservative or Orange NDP; none blend in to the garden, so the experts say.  Note: reds and oranges may be hot, exciting colours in the landscaping lexicon, but blues are famed for their cool, depth-creating effects.

• Warning to plant-nappers: if you are going to steal plants, stay away from Montreal.  Security guards spotted a man stealing plants from a Zeller’s store.  Attempting to flee the scene in his car, the unarmed man was shot in the back by a Montreal Urban Community police officer.  Following a prolonged investigation, and the recovery of the suspect, he was charged.

• An ornamental plastic garden goose dressed in a graduation gown and cap was stolen from an Edmonton front porch.  Retired seamstress Rita Turner, owner of the ornament, reportedly has another 50 outfits for her departed goose to wear.

• A “crack flosser” is the latest invention Canada has to offer the world.  Said to be one of the season’s hottest selling garden items, it is designed to clean out weeds from between paving stones and deck planks.  Selling price is about $35.00 plus GST, of course.

• Fellow garden writer Bill Keller of the Orillia Packet & Times says that cut flowers last longer if placed in water to which Viagra, the male anti impotence drug, has been added.

• English mailmen refuse to deliver mail to a Nottinghamshire veterinarian because they object to the half-century-old hydrangea bush near his front door.

• Toronto Councilor George Mammoliti protests against planting 60, 000 new trees in the city, claiming that older specimens are bursting pipes while destroying driveways and sidewalks.  Meanwhile another city councilor, Brian Ashton, terns the proposed trees a “new set of lungs” for Toronto.

• The International Journal of Clinical Practice reports that “vigorous sexual activity” uses up more energy than does gardening or golf.

Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant.

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