The “folk music revival” of the beginning of the last century reached the end of the road in the mid 1960s. Anodyne groups like the Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul and Mary were marketed and promoted to older children, teenagers and college students. I found them a bit too refined and, literally, a “head trip”, as we said in those days. They didn’t “swing”.

Probably ADD, restless and always on the move, even sleepwalking at night, I soon became enamored of popular dance. I learned all the rock’n’roll steps, practicing them with everyone and everything that moved. Lounging around listening to “Puff the Magic Dragon” didn’t do it for me.

My friends and I went to dances every chance we got. We were in “the sticks”, 20 miles west of Chicago—which was more like 30 miles east of DeKalb, home of the field corn company. We would sneak into teen clubs, and later into adult clubs, where we discovered the dancing was a bit different.

There were the weekend dance joints out on St. Charles and Geneva Roads and the even racier, rougher clubs on North Avenue, where our fellow clubgoers included men with stubble and women who were the age of our mothers. Motorcycles were a tip-off that trouble was brewing, but we’d go anyway, just to feel the buzz of being “bad” (“scared” is more precise). It’s like sneaking into the circus: If you crawl under the tent, you end up with either the clowns or the lions.

The bands were generally groups modeled on late 60s pop, but, once in a while, Chicago-based outfits like “The Riddles” (who were especially good), “Grope” and “Pontiac Angels” would show up. Greaser bands too, like “The Top Kats”. There was one called “Next Of Kin” who covered The Rascals and Wilson Pickett with great energy and flair.

Fights broke out, even without alcohol served. Maybe it was the music, Coca-Colas and cigarettes. Too much stimulation! But fights are fights. Black eyes, bloody noses, loosened teeth and concussions over girls. Had we been less well educated, poorer and closer to Chicago, we’d have used knives and guns.

Grounded by my parents for one of these forays—and lying about it—one day I read in the liner notes of a Folkways album a short bio of the late, great blues singer Leadbelly. Leadbelly, whose real name was Huddie (or Hude) Ledbetter, was reputed to have killed at least two men, one with a knife and the other with a gun. His showdowns tended to take place in bars or streets along “saloon rows”, rife with gambling and prostitution and fueled by the cheapest liquor available—the hooch that fuels nights “when the wolves are shining and the moon is howling”.

But he was so charming and outstanding a musician that he sang his way out of prison twice. Once in east Texas, and another time in Louisiana. His story reminded me of the faraway world of my mother’s relatives, the sort of folks who lived near a creek or a river, or along a rural two lane where trucks roared past in the night. Colorful and very intense people who could have stepped out of a Southern Gothic novel.

I saw only a few of the blues groups in Chicago. In those days there were no “white” blues clubs, as they’re called now, in Lincoln Park or the Loop. We had to lie to our parents and take the train into the city and then all the way down to “Silvio’s” and “The Apartment” on the South Side. A frightening neighborhood to us kids, but what fabulous groups. The serious looking Muddy Waters, who put on a phenomenal stage show. Howlin’ Wolf wore janitor clothes—olive shirt and pants and plain steel-toed work shoes. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen and had an electrifying voice. My favorite singer was Junior Wells—very smooth, well dressed and funny. It was incredible. All of them would easily lay waste to any popular band today. If the audience wasn’t on its feet in a matter of minutes, it was a miracle.

The very names of the bluesmen indicated that they sprang from a reality wholly different from my leafy suburban realm. It was magic enough to enter a world where performers’ names had such mythic resonance: Sleepy John Estes, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Champion Jack Dupree. My parent’s friends did not have names like this.

Leadbelly had long since passed away, but his records were stunning: a big, booming voice matched with an enormous 12-string guitar. His repertoire had no limits. He sang about everything and everybody. No one could categorize Leadbelly. He was a legendary giant who put chills down my spine. Also, he sang as often a cappella as with his great 12-string. I learned many songs from him, such as “Goodnight, Irene”, “Julie Ann Johnson”, “Stewball” and “Poor Howard”. It was impossible to have a favorite Leadbelly song—all were sensational.

But there came a time when I was distracted and weakened by the partitioning of adolescence. I let Leadbelly go, and Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry, Big Bill Broonzy and Brownie McGhee. Seduced by electric guitars! I shuffled off to boarding school and college and left the folk LPs behind.

Now that I’m older, I find these earliest musical memories to be the sweetest and the purest. Today we use the word “original” to signify innovation and newness. In fact, the word relates, of course, to origins, or beginnings, the roots from which we grow, our culture.

As Elizabeth Lawrence said about gardening,

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”

Simon Crawford collects extremely rare plants, both wild and tame, around the world. From the high mountains of Nepal to the obscure markets of Europe to the botanical gardens of faraway South America, he tracks down new and interesting meadow plants as well as historic old cultivars from discarded breeding programs of companies that have long since closed. A bit like the old song collectors who travelled through Europe and the UK in the 19th century and the Lomaxes (father and son) who did the same in America in the 20th. Our relationship with Simon goes back to the mid 1980s. He runs all of our collection programs in the UK.

Here he has come across, not a rare plant, but an “unusually great” specimen of Verbascum thapsus—not in an exotic locate, but in the Happiness Garden here at our main research gardens just outside Philadelphia. It’s been a terrible season for most vegetables. However, it’s been a fantastic year for flowering plants.

Fordhook Farm is the new (since 2006) headquarters for Heronswood rare plant research and adaptation. It encompasses 15 gardens on a 60 acre estate that was once the home of the Burpee family as well as the site of the oldest continuously operated private research garden in all of horticulture. But now our emphasis includes trees, shrubs, vines, grasses and many other perennials as well as vegetables, herbs and annual flowers for Burpee and The Cook’s Garden. Our next Open House is Friday and Saturday, August 21 and 22. Please mark your calendars.

Simon is about 5′ 11″, so that puts this extraordinary mullein (in this unusual growing season) at well over 10 feet tall. This photograph was taken on July 14th, and the spire extended even a few inches higher until the nights began to cool as well as lengthen. Since perennials have extraordinarily fine senses to day-length, or sunlight quantity and quality, the “little fellow” as I call him finally lost verticality about six days ago. Now he bends, having lost just the amount of energy required to hold himself straight up.

It takes a lot to defy gravity, especially as you begin to lose your “food supply” at the same time your many young seeds that you carry around your sides begin maturing.

Throughout my childhood in a small town outside Chicago, I idolized just three larger-than-life figures:  Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley and Leadbelly, aka “Huddie Ledbetter”.  Everything and everyone else in popular culture washed over me.  I worshipped each god in this trinity, so to speak, in equal strength and measure.

Elvis was the problematic idol—he had a widespread cult among both boys and girls and especially young women.  Only men disliked him:  they knew trouble when they saw it. Elvis initiated what became known later as “the sexual revolution”. Therefore, although he was like the proverbial older brother you never had, he also seemed a bit weird and androgynous—off putting to us boys approaching puberty.

Our dads worked in distant factories or in offices in “the city”.  Their influences on our social life and perceptions of culture, if any, were weak.  Thus, Elvis kept on dancing and singing in our minds uninterrupted, and we were constantly surrounded by fellow cultists.  Girls and women went especially nuts for him.  Even older ladies.  “Oh, he’s such a nice boy!”  They knew fertility when they saw it.

The black community nearby (where Katherine Dunham had spent her childhood) embraced Elvis. They particularly sympathized with a southerner, same as they did my mother, who hired Imogen, a part-time housekeeper and babysitter from the neighborhood.  Oddly, though, my mother didn’t care for him.  She disliked movies (the darkness bothered her) and seldom listened to the radio, and then only to country and western stations.  She preferred the records of folk music from her childhood: The Carter Family, Woody Guthrie and the new interpretations by The Weavers and The Limelighters.

Such was Elvis’ genius that, literally, all of humanity was affected from the first moment he stepped on stage to the present day.  I remembered this when I saw the little logo Amazon.com used to observe Michael Jackson’s death.  It was his figure in a familiar pose:  back arched, knees bent and feet up on the toes of his shoes—a version of  one of many poses Elvis first popularized.  Elvis was popular music’s Beethoven and teenage dance’s Nijinsky, bringing the forces of nature to a sterile, lifeless post WWII world.  Who did it before?  Who’s done it since?

Many dismiss his movies, but they’re wrong.  The 31 musical films he headlined presented the true Elvis, and our cult’s complete program.  I saw only a few, but they were enough.  The Glen Theater in downtown Glen Ellyn showed them on Saturday afternoons, where we’d flock after chores.  Everyone left the movie as if intoxicated and transformed in the bright afternoon light.  In the following weeks we’d dress differently, depending on the movie’s theme.  Lighter, darker, tougher, gentler, smoother.  We also applied large gobs of hair cream to shape what hair we had into side sweeps and the little conch in front.  I practiced my left eyebrow lift-up for hours.  This was not exactly a mystery cult.

Elvis was a great actor—very resourceful with throw away stories and scripts.  He played troubled teens well; an aimless, happy-go-lucky drifter adequately; but he was best as a challenged young man, be it from business worries or as an ex-soldier returning to his dad’s company.  Overall these B-flicks were formulaic and, by today’s standards, dreadful.  But as vehicles for the Elvis gospel, they were magnificent.  We’d sit and wait for the songs and dances, most of which were breathtaking.  He was always amusing, with the personality of a genie from a bottle.  There was the air of a cunning trickster about him, perhaps the influence of his Cherokee grandmother. Recently I saw both “Blue Hawaii” and “King Creole” and they were so fresh and exciting that they could’ve been made yesterday.

A masterful guitarist, he also competently played bass, piano and drums.  (He was even a certified Black Belt in karate.)  His music composing consisted of only a few songs, but he arranged all the others.  He molded and shaped each song, rather than learned and read it.  (In this he was similar to Sinatra, who hated him.)  Performing music was his greatest passion, even more than his family or many other diverse pursuits.  It is revealing that he won only three Grammys—all for his gospel records.

His mom’s early illness and death in 1958, most of which Elvis missed while stationed two years with the US Army in Germany, almost killed him.  (Quick—name a pop star in the last 30 years who served in the military overseas.)  Always shy, he gradually felt more so and, over the remaining two decades of his life, withdrew from the enormous potential of his career.  It is almost incomprehensible, but Elvis could have been much more popular than he was.  Yet, with this psychic limitation, he became the greatest selling solo performer in the history of music.

A manipulative manager, who was afraid of sending him overseas due to his own legal and immigration problems, convinced him to stay in the U.S.  “These are your real fans”, etc.  Of course, it was baloney and the results were tragic.  Had Elvis toured the world the way the Beatles did the U.S., he’d have prevented the “British Invasion” and spared us the many adenoidal mop tops.  In turn, the UK, Europe and Asia might have broken their postwar cultural molds much earlier than the 1980s-1990s.

Alas, the selfish manager, “Colonel Tom Parker”, disabled The King, and thus enabled the Fab Four to leave their home turf in safety and invade our popular music industry.  It was war!  The Beatles look like girls—a big problem for 11-12-13 year old boys. But they were only the first of an assault force of at least a dozen bands of shaggy, thin, and—for the most part—talented and well-trained musicians.  The problem was—except for the Animals—they sang through their noses. But like all invasion forces, the one in 1963 was well planned and provisioned.  The boy ensembles were like musical death squads.  Strangely, too, they all looked alike, as if taking a page from British military dress.

These foreign invaders deliberately used American musical styles—rock, country and blues—and reshaped them into a sort of “super glue” of pop music that American youth found irresistible—especially very young girls, 11-12-13 year olds in particular.  It was a disaster for Elvis and for us, his loyal soldier-fans.  Hence, doubts that we had formed over our years of Elvis worship, crystallized in the face of the British onslaught.  We “had to have” the Beatles.  The girls mobbed them, and we mobbed the girls.  So, in effect, we “fragged” our sergeant!

Elvis made a big target.  He was not a group, but a lone individual, often performing solo with his guitar for a girl or her mother.  Other times he sat surrounded by men beating drums, bongos or tin cans; still other times he fronted an old-fashioned swing band under a simple spot light.  Never was he a member of a group.  That was the Old World, now re-imported from Britain. Too bad for him and too bad, ultimately, in my opinion, for us.  He could have conquered the world with his Caesar-like genius.

However, the Fab Four launched their D-Day invasion of AM radio in the early winter of 1963.  They were a polished product that was well-marketed.  No one had heard their sustained and textured electric guitar sound, artfully constructed songs full of compact syncopations and, especially, Ringo’s fantastic drumming.  As the old saying goes, “It was over before it started”.  I’m not sure Elvis even noticed.

No matter to me.  I always preferred the dancing, singing, facial expressions, clowning and awesome charisma of The King. Elvis had it all and gave it all and we were grateful.  Although, in a way, he abandoned us, it wasn’t his fault.  His manager was monumentally greedy and stupid.  The American public was left with either the aging “Rat Pack”, surf or bubble gum as our signature American musical styles.  No wonder the nation turned to drugs.

As I say, Elvis was the problematic idol.

Once introduced, Americans invariably inquire what business you’re in. While foreigners find the question a bit crass, it’s second nature to us.  The question reflects our work ethic on the one hand, and our democracy on the other: it’s not who you are but what you do that defines you.  We mean business.

When you’re in seeds and plants, as I’ve been most of my life, your profession elicits a striking range of reactions.  Ever a pragmatic breed, gardeners query me about heirloom seed varieties or boast about their bumper crop of Big Boy tomatoes. Teenagers and college kids will offer up a “That’s cool,” and amiably amble off.  That’s cool.

Wall Street high-fliers—investment bankers, brokers and hedge fund profiteers, elaborately upholstered all—tend to regard my business as impossibly outmoded and arcane.  Seeds? Plants? Do I, perhaps, belong to the Flat Earth Society as well?

When I’m at a social function—rare—I invariably find myself chatting with a Wall Street tribe member, replete in tailored suit, collar pin, rep tie and initialed shirt cuffs.  Jared, let’s call him, since that’s always his name, is a player. A pink-cheeked master of the universe fluent in junk bonds, zero-coupon bonds, REITs and interest rate swaps; he knows what business is all about.  His world is one where funds appear from somewhere, go somewhere else, and he pockets the difference.

Seeds clearly have no place in Jared’s business cosmology. Seeds aren’t things, and they aren’t even stylish, prestigious or luxury things.  They make a humble showing in the land of high-end bling. Odd, since in some traditional cultures, they’re used as money; in others, these “botanical eggs” are collected rather like jewels.

Yet, for some reason, a packet of seeds fails to telegraph status and wealth quite as well as a Porsche, a Greenwich estate, a Cartier necklace or a daughter at Brown. In the realm of comestibles, even the rarest of heirloom vegetable seeds lack the impact of a vintage Chateau Talbot, truffle butter or Beluga caviar.

Jared hauls over his pal Nick, attired in the same tribal regalia, though with different initials on his cuff. “Nick, this is George.  He’s in seeds.” They look me up and down, as if I were an exhibit in a natural history museum, their expressions a blend of amusement and disdain. I’m cool with that.

I look them over in turn. Wall Street wheeler-dealers are a curious mix of cockiness and terror. Their eyes dance around, as if always on the outlook for danger. They convey the wariness of fugitives, which they may be some day. I explain to them that seeds are God’s microchips:  miniature devices programmed with information and algorithms to generate life.  This fuddles them for a moment. Are they missing the next big thing? Or am I playing the players?  Again I look them over—more closely this time.

Wall Street players like Jared and Nick would be a worthy subject for anthropological study.  Their wardrobes provide a scaffolding to their worlds of flux and risk. Each element in their costume is a kind of announcement. The collar, a different color from the body of the shirt, declares its collarness. The collar pin indicates, should there be doubt, that the collar is not likely to collapse into confusion.  The suspenders—striped or patterned—provide visible assurance that the gentlemen’s trousers are unlikely to abruptly fall about their knees.

The pocket square adorning the breast pocket—never to be used as a handkerchief—confirms the pocket is there, lest that detail pass you by. The oversized watch, with its dizzying dials and buttons, indicates the wearer is prepared to descend to the deepest depths of the ocean or sail about the galaxy, his watch accurate to the nanosecond. This highly evolved visual grammar lends an outward coherence, ironically, to a profession built on speculation and caprice, where, on any given day, the market can eat you alive.

Wall Street’s big risk takers tend to be men, their fearlessness buoyed by testosterone. Their restlessness, tensile nerves and daring are traits they share with male hunter-gatherers of pre-Agricultural times. In ancient times, the Wall Street adventurer’s  derring-do might have enabled Jared to kill a lion with which to feed the tribe, or, conversely, turned him into a delicious dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Lion and their brood. The fear of the ages runs in his veins, assuaged right now by a quick succession of gin martinis.

I spot a friend across the room, or pretend I do. “Fellows,” I say momentously, as I ready to take my leave. I look each in the eye, and say his name, “Jared. Nick.” (Their monogrammed shirt cuffs prove useful here). “The future belongs to seeds.” Their pink faces flush crimson; they whoop with laughter.

Jared and Nick were, and perhaps remain, first-string players in the New Economy, a playground fueled by easy credit, speculation and other peoples’ money. Seeds rightly appeared to them as the barter of another era. And it’s true, the seed business has changed little in the last 500 years. The major shift in the last century has been the transition of the home garden from a necessity—how you feed the family—to a hobby for some, a passion for others.

A few steps into the 21st century, the role of the home garden has once again changed. Standing in my garden, I can almost hear the stampede of new and rededicated American gardeners. Outfitted in jeans, baseball caps and wellingtons, clutching their trowels, Americans pioneer their new frontier—their backyard garden.

Converging on the home garden is an extraordinary array of trends in tastes, health awareness, lifestyle and demographics—a phenomenon I call a “perfect storm of tipping points”.  The Old Economy is new again.

The major catalyst, is, of course, the economy’s downward spiral. Americans are getting wise to the extraordinary savings they can reap, along with their tomatoes, peppers, green beans and squash.  A home garden delivers reliable and extraordinary returns on your investment, a hundred dollars in seeds producing a harvest that would cost you $2,500 at your supermarket. A 25-to-1 return? Snap my striped suspenders!

In the last 10 years, Americans have grown exquisitely attuned to issues of nutrition and food safety.  Their increasing insistence on food quality—optimally nutritious, fresh, flavorful and safe—is well-founded. The vegetables and fruit bought at the supermarket are picked prematurely, spend weeks in trucks and warehouses exposed to carbon monoxide and other contaminants, and frequently gassed to boost their colors. To purchase supermarket produce is to compromise on flavor, nutrition, texture and safety—while getting a swift kick in the budget.

The local food movement has built upon this kind of new awareness, and farmer’s markets are sprouting across the country. But why go to the farmer’s market when a few steps away is a garden bursting with fresh tomatoes, string beans and watermelons? It doesn’t get more local —or fresher—than this.

And in this world of iPhones, PCs, Twitter, 200 cable channels and over the top home entertainment centers, the garden suddenly appears as something new and delightful: a multidimensional, interactive realm of flavor, nourishment, fragrance, pleasure, beauty, recreation, sanctuary and self-realization.

At first, we are smitten with our glittering new techno-toys, only to relearn that these clever machines cannot provide what we really want—a sense of connection and authenticity. Welcome to the garden: it doesn’t get more real or connected than this.

After having the umpteenth business dinner with colleagues, associates, customers or lavish meals with friends, neighbors, family and the dogs, I recalled the story that every child has heard about royalty using feathers to induce vomiting.  I think it might’ve been featured in “Ripley’s”.  (It’s hard to forget the feather.)  The point was that they did this in order to resume stuffing themselves.

We used to be shocked at the decadent, wasteful kings and queens in their gigantic castles tickling their clench reflexes.  We’d imagine them belching at large banquet tables piled high with roasts for marathon day and night repasts.  “How shameful!”

I have another view.  I think they voided their most recent meals, not to repeat the buffet, but to expel their food because they were just sick and tired of eating dinner with yet another lord, squire, duke, visiting nobility and an endless procession of foreign dignitaries.  “Oh god, Henry, it’s them again”, the queen gasps, peering through the gate at the approaching string of courtiers.  I think the Ripley’s vignette was anti-British propaganda, an urban legend carried over from the 18th century. 

Today the guests would be salesmen, consultants, internet providers, robust system analysts, people who explain the meaning of “instance” to you as your gorge rises, manufacturer’s representatives and the like.  Back to the dining room—it’s “relationship management” time!  Unending series of restaurant meals!  Where’s my feather?

No wonder middle class life is in crisis.  No longer do we eat normally—we don’t even live normally.  This has grave consequences for human health.  What we need are more feathers.  Plus, we should remember the original impulse behind a social meal.  It was to gather and share fellowship.  The Last Supper was, after all, just the last of many suppers.  The point wasn’t that they ate, but that they did so together, enjoying each other’s company and conversation.  No suppers, no apostles, no church.

I believe the weaker the original virtue, the stronger the sin of gluttony.  Conversely, the less emphasis on food, per se, the more breathing room for the existence of virtue.  “It starts with the reason why”, as a wise man once said.  If we sit down together only because we’re hungry, it won’t be long before we have our TV trays before us in the flickering gloom.

I remember back in the early 1980s reading an article in one of the New York magazines that the new trend was actually not eating in a restaurant.  Socialites would order a couple of tiny appetizers, or the smallest entrees, and the fashion was that they would hardly start, much less finish.  These “minceurs and minceusses” were replaced a decade later by their gym-dwelling cousins, and two decades later by their triathlete sons and daughters.  People dining but not eating—a salutary trend, if a bummer for the food industry.  I like it—it’s right up there with the feathers.

Finally, I recall one of the first supermodels—I think it was either Twiggy or Verushka—who was asked how she stayed so thin.  “I eat lettuce most of the time”, she replied and batted her eyelashes at the reporter, who asked how such a strange (1980s) diet made her feel.  “It makes me feel light and airy—it’s the greatest feeling in the world.” 

She was talking about eating salad.  A girl after my heart.

My thoughts grow in the garden. Every time I garden, it is as if I have been transplanted to a different psychic realm. Here my thoughts take a cosmic turn. Big Questions seem to flourish among the tomatoes, zucchini and corn. The static of the day’s practical concerns is replaced by tangible forms of Life, Freedom, Eternity, Faith.

Standing in the garden the other day, pondering the effects of the insistent spring rains on the vegetables and flowers, I drifted from the damp earth to the vastnesses of space and time.
I had read about the Hubbell telescope and the new cosmic realms that it was uncovering. I found myself pondering how, as science progresses, time and space grow ever larger, while our world and tenure of existence are ever shrinking.

In a radio interview, a paleohistorian was expressing how relatively brief our time on earth has been. Putting it in terms I might understand, he compared the age of the planet to a football field. By his reckoning, the entire history of mankind would occupy the place of a single blade of grass at the very end of the final yard.
Since hearing that remarkable statistic, I have imagined the entire history of mankind holding on to a single blade of freshly mowed grass. I was skeptical of the assertion, as my gut feeling told me we were at least around the 8-yard line.

I did the math.  Deep breath. Okay. The first creatures identified as men appeared 50,000 years ago. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. 50,000 is one nine-hundred-thousandth of 4.5 billion. So you could look at it like we haven’t been here very long. Or you might look on the bright side: in 50,00 years, we are that close to making a touchdown—that is, if we have possession. We are .004 inches from the goal line! With luck we’ll get there by 52009.  Interestingly, I feel comforted by this thought, rocking in the bosom of Abraham, so to speak.

If we compare human existence with the age of the universe, the universe has us beat hollow. Our 50,000 years is soundly trounced by the universe’s 14.2 billion years of existence.  So if we go back on the football field, chronologically speaking this time, we squeak in for the last eighth of a second of play.  Such traffic! And on a Sunday.

To think that just a millionth of a second ago, in the 1500s, we thought the heavens revolved around the earth. It does seem our calculations were a bit off, doesn’t it?

My friends, the earth is ridiculously tiny. I know, as you’re driving on the freeway, walking or riding a bike, it seems like the earth is pretty big. Say you decide to drive around the Earth. Let’s reckon you go at commuter traffic speed—25 m.p.h. or so (the tie-ups around Istanbul are legendary). As the earth’s circumference is 24,859.82 miles—it will take you about 994 hours, or 41-and-a-half days of 24-hour driving, and that doesn’t take into account getting gas, food and bathroom breaks.

Conservatively, you’re looking at a 2-month drive, and you don’t get a chance to see the sites. If you ask me, the drive you’re planning is ill-advised. My point is, though, that the earth’s circumference—let’s round it off at 25,000 miles—is TINY. The earth is a blue dot in the galaxy. The human race is a tiny race of tiny creatures on a tiny planet that’s been around for only a tiny time.

Indeed, Mother Earth is extraordinarily diminutive. Neptune is 3.8 times larger, Uranus four times larger, Saturn is 9.4 times larger and Jupiter 11 times larger than Earth, while the radius of the Sun is 109 times larger than Earth’s.

Before the sun gets a big head, it should remember it is just a medium-sized star among the 100 thousand million of stars in the Milky Way alone. And the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies.

The superstar of all stars, VY Canis Majoris, a class M red supergiant, is 10,000 times more luminous than our Sun, with a diameter 2,100 times larger.  It would take light 8 hours to travel around it; light can travel around the Sun in 4.5 seconds. Now get this, it would take 7 quadrillion (7,000,000,000,000,000) earths to fill VY Canis Majoris.  Makes you wonder about the size of its solar system.

My tiny brothers and sisters of this miniscule orb, let us embrace our tinyness: tiny is beautiful.  If small is the new big, then tiny is the new huge.  Our palpable insignificance in time and space reminds me of the line from the 40s movie classic “Sunset Boulevard.” Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson), a silent screen star whose luster has dimmed, declares, “I’m still big, it’s the pictures that got small.”

We’re still big. Rather than bemoan our insignificance, we should embrace it.  It is as if all of us who live here on earth—man, plant, insect, animal and microbe—have won the celestial lottery. Theologically, even if we’re wrong, we’re right.  The odds against us being alive are close to infinite: making us all infinitely fortunate.

As I yank weeds, I remember we’ve landed in a planet like no other yet observed, a planet that is a garden. This planetary garden is what sustains us. With that thought, I look in on the cherry tomatoes. I pluck one—red, ripe, fragrant—and pop it in my mouth. It magically answers all of life’s questions—at least for today.

“You seem to think because you got chicken to go you’re in luck”

                                          -Gordon Lightfoot, ‘Seven Island Suite’
                                       
 

I’ll never forget Mike Bloomfield’s memoir (‘Me And Big Joe’) about travelling and performing through Arkansas and Missouri on a tour with Big Joe Williams, the legendary bluesman and composer of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’.  Bloomfield was a young guitarist who later achieved fame in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  The book was published 25 years ago and quickly disappeared.  Too bad:  it is a rare glimpse into a fading world.

One afternoon, after a long bout of drinking, playing and singing, Bloomfield woke up (on the floor) to the scene of a young girl eating a fried chicken leg that she had dipped into a mayonnaise jar.  She offered him some.

For a city boy from up North, this seemed weird: a girl on a kitchen stool, fried chicken on the table and a big jar of Duke’s.  However, having a southern mother, I didn’t find it quite so shocking.

We were never tempted to go that far. I take my KFC or Popeye’s neat, so to speak, on the rare occasions I indulge.  I admit that Duke’s is excellent—not as sweet and clingy as other brands.  Many folks pledge allegiance to Hellmann’s, but not me.

Recently, I have felt obliged to put my two cents worth in the “food war”.  You know, the “Kingsolver-Waters-Pollan Talking Blues”.  Which is a warmed-over version of the “Lappé -Are You Sanpaku?-Sugar Blues”, of 35 years ago, back when “magic journalism” was just getting started. 

I recall at the start of second grade Miss Wheeler dropping a couple of molars she got from a local dentist into a jelly jar of Coca Cola and keeping it on her desk. “Look, children!”  She’d refill it every few days, and over the school year the teeth disintegrated into pebbles.

I guarantee it didn’t stop a single one of us—not me anyway, nor anyone I know.  As Bob Garfield of Advertising Age put it, Coke has “a preternatural ability” to combine with all kinds of ethnic street vendor foods, my cuisines of choice.

Of course, I’m also a very big vegetable and herb guy.  Yes, that’s me, making pesto and flavoring bottles of cooking oil . . . not.  I have only one food obsession: making tomato sauce.  Every year in late August and early September, I become a fruit scientist and wolfman. But the rest of the year—forget it.  I don’t much like food.

Ever notice how often food is a drag?  Only in the USA could there be a multi-billion dollar industry devoted to dieting.  This is because most food is addictive, which means that—on an unconscious level—a lot of folks find it unpleasant to eat.  They fear not eating, rather than actually enjoying eating.  Follow that?  It’s a subconscious response to our sedentary lifestyle.

Ever notice also the foods that have almost no flavor?  There are quite a few.  My favorite is the pitifully bland scallop.  A dish for people who hate food.  Scallops possess only heat, fat and “anti-taste”, like anti-matter.

Coke and fried foods like pork, clams and dark meat chicken—these are the “super foods” like giant nebulas in the flavor cosmos.  They consist entirely of taste.  Meatballs hang up there in the galaxy too, like super novas.

Our problem is that we live in Paradise.  This is a big problem.  It’s wrong biologically. We should drink very little milk, for example. Yet not only do we drink a lot, we also eat mountains of cheese.  Even yogurt has been changed into a type of ice cream dessert. It used to be healthy.  Also, cottage cheese has gone out of style. Women used to diet on it.  The small plates with parsley seemed very sensible.

The proverbial foods of our plus-sized Paradise—milk, honey (meaning sugar, including soft drinks and candy), the “golden egg”, and rich foods such as nuts—these are real killers as a regular part of a diet.  The number one cause of death is caloric intake.  Rich food should be made sacred again, even if that means “pagan” or festive.  No more all day, all week, all month and all year food parties.  Also, let’s make fasting fashionable again, along with pilgrimages.  Walking on our knees.  Bitter herbs.

There was a great (but gory) Jack the Ripper-themed film a few years ago titled “From Hell”.  In it, a murderer seduces his poor prostitute victims with grapes.  The period history is correct.  Grapes were a rare delicacy until about 50 years ago.  Their dried form, raisins, is the symbol of ambrosia in traditional cultures—the food of the gods.  And its fermented juice is regarded as the blood of our Lord.  Enjoy with care!

So, let’s forget about striking or boycotting the sugar companies and corn syrup processors—let’s go after big, bad Duke’s and Hellmann’s.  It may be that we shall find it impossible, as a society, to diet.  The government—God help us—may have to restrict our intake for us.  It may look like the “road to serfdom”, but I believe I’ll take it.

The spiritual problem of living in Paradise is that it is a terribly dangerous illusion.  Indeed, the hot topic in the food war is the harm that overconsumption does, not only to ourselves, but also to our families and the environment.  We may wake up dead, but what about everyone and everything else?  A legacy of frugality beats “take-out” every time.

On the upcoming 4th of July we celebrate our country’s independence. The annual commemoration comes loaded with spirited symbolism: fireworks, the Stars and Stripes, the rousing National Anthem, marching bands, bandstands draped with tri-colored bunting, citizens attired in colonial dress. The country’s majestic National Bird, the Bald Eagle, perches on signs and banners. This is the holiday when the country’s iconography is in full flower.

What is missing in this patriotic pageantry is … our National Flower. The rose, our official National Floral Emblem, would seem strikingly out of place amid Independence Day’s blaze of red, white and blue. One can imagine the elegant, demure American rose and her brood arriving at a 4th of July picnic, attired as for a ball, taking in the cacophony of sound and color, gazing with distaste at the motley of polo shirts and Bermuda shorts. She tentatively sniffs the barbecue-scented air, only to turn heel synchronously with her blushing spouse and trailing vine of pink-cheeked children. It’s not the roses’ fault, you understand, this just ain’t their scene.

We see no roses on the 4th of July. Nor are they in evidence on Thanksgiving where they would pose uneasily amid the indian corn, cornstalks and gourds. Roses play no significant role in any of our national holidays—or in our national imagination.

The rose was established as the National Floral Emblem when President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5574 in 1986, in accordance with the resolution approved by the Senate and House of Representatives. As a proclamation, the measure does not have the power of law. Law or no, it’s time we chose a more suitable flower to symbolize this land of ours.

Roses are splendorous and lovely flowers, let me be clear. The last thing I wish to do is to face off with America’s rose fanciers. Only a fool would argue with thousands of passionate people wielding pruning shears. No, I look to you, my rose-loving fellow Americans. I know you to be a discerning breed. Surely you will agree that the rose has no place as our National Flower.

If the genteel rose is to serve as our National Flower, we might as well name the hummingbird our National Bird. So as not to clash with the rose’s refined and nuanced aura, the Stars and Stripes should be rendered in earth tones, and the White House daubed a tasteful taupe. The national pastime? Croquet would be fitting, don’t you think? The cucumber sandwich will gently shove aside the hamburger as a staple item for Independence Day picnics. It’s important the rose feel comfortable.

The domesticated rose, first of all, is not a native plant, but originates in Asia. Roses didn’t really come on the scene here until the 1700s. The cultivated roses arranged and sold by stateside florists today are nearly all foreign born and bred, their stems and petals never touching American soil before taking refuge in the cool confines of florists’ refrigerators. The profits from cut roses go abroad, which ill becomes the nation’s flower of choice.

The rose is a symbol … well, what does it NOT symbolize? I take Gertrude Stein’s famous dictum, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” to mean that, existing somewhere within the thicket of its symbolism (in poems, paintings, songs and wallpaper) is the actual rose itself. You can hardly see or smell the flower itself in this overgrown garden of metaphors and panoply.

The rose has represented kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, lords, ladies, courts, religious orders and military units of nations near and far, friend and foe. The rose today serves as the symbol of New York State, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Iowa and North Dakota. It is emblematic of a large bouquet of countries as well, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Iran, Iraq, Ecuador, the United Kingdom and Romania. The rose is a universal symbol—and that’s the problem. America is a special kind of place. Its symbols ought to reflect its unique character.

Since the 1880s, flower fanciers have battled to have their favorite flower become the nation’s symbol. Margaret B. Harvey of Pennsylvania initiated the National Flower Movement in 1887. Residing near General Washington’s camp at Valley Forge, she wrote a poem, “The National Flower, or Valley Forge Arbutus.” This charming plant, with its laurel-like leaves and flowers resembling 5-pointed stars, failed to spark the imagination of the nation or its legislators.

Miss Harvey did succeed in making the issue of the National Flower part of the national conversation. More than 70 bills proposing this or that flower have come before Congress. The carnation, tobacco flower, clover, corn tassel, columbine, mountain laurel, and chrysanthemums have been nominated. In the 1890s, Representative Butler from Iowa was nicknamed “Pansy” Butler for his passionate advocacy of that flower. In the 1950s and 60s, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois steadfastly and sonorously made the case for the marigold, cheered on by David Burpee, my predecessor at the company his father founded in 1876.

For 120 years, newspaper letters to the editor across the land have variously proclaimed the merits of the black-eyed susan, the Magnolia glauca (which can grow into a tree 70 feet in height), indian corn, the pumpkin, goldenrod, phlox and the ubiquitous pine tree. In 1905, a botanist proposed creating a unique species to be the National Flower, by crossing the chrysanthemum with the Siberian aster. The critic Lewis Mumford, weary of sprawling new highways in the 1950s, waggishly proposed the cloverleaf to represent the nation.

The rose won the honor in 1986, a full century after Miss Harvey’s poem appeared. The rose was supported by Senator Lindy Boggs of Louisiana and promoted by a large and well-financed rose lobby, which has since vanished into the Colombian jungle.

I hereby nominate the Sunflower as our new National Flower. It is time for the Sunflower to step up and kick some serious rose butt. The sunflower is native to America, and was cultivated both by native Americans and Aztecs in pre-Columbian Mexico.

The sunflower reflects American pragmatism, lending itself to multiple uses. Sunflowers are a native economic powerhouse. The sunflower is one of the four major native crops that have global significance, along with the blueberry, pecan and cranberry. Millions of acres are devoted to sunflower oilseed production. Sunflowers are an enormous blessing to the world economy, rivaling the rose in importance abroad, and blowing its petals off here in the States.

Native Americans have been cultivating the plant since 2300 B.C., probably predating corn, beans and squash. The native American tribes ground the roasted seeds into a fine meal for baking, thickening soups, and making a thick butter akin to peanut butter. They made a tea-like drink from the seeds, dye from the petals and hull, face paint from dried petals and pollen. And, as we do today, the Native Americans used the oil for cooking oil and happily snacked on the roasted seeds.  What would a baseball game be without the dugout denizens spitting shells?

In Mexico, the Spanish invaders tried to suppress cultivation of the sunflower as it symbolized the native solar religion and native political power. The modern word in the Otomi language for sunflower translates to “big flower that looks at the sun god.”

Botanically, the sunflower is technically not a single flower, like the rose, but an amalgam, or “head” of about 1,000 florets, each in a spiral display across its dish-like face. E Pluribus Unum, “Out of many, one,” our nation’s motto, aptly describes the sunflower.  It’s the USA of the botanical world.

Most of all, it is the sunflower’s sunny personality that renders it such an apt icon for our country. Throughout our history, visitors to this country, including Tocqueville and Mrs. Trollope, have remarked on Americans’ cheerfulness and optimism. This upbeat outlook is a key ingredient in American exceptionalism. We don’t do “ennui” or “weltschmerz”: we even have to import the words.

The sunflower is dynamic, too. The heliocentric sunflower’s radiant face follows the sun’s course through the day, a fitting tribute to the origin of life on earth.  Helen Keller wrote, “Keep your face to the sunrise and you cannot see the shadow.  It’s what sunflowers do”.

Most other flowers, by contrast, are “nodding” in form (to avoid raindrops) and seem a bit abstracted.  Perhaps, like many European or Asian visitors, they feel out of place—especially on Independence Day.

And, oh, the sunflower’s large and happy face! Is this not the face of the American people? Bright, cheerful and full of wonder? See how it stands sturdy and tall, its flowering head a beacon of sunshine. Regard this radiant floral friend, aglow with American warmth and happiness.

Ladies and Gentleman, on this day of national celebration, let us all salute the sunflower, the Great American Flower. Let us give praise to this native species that gives us so much beauty, happiness and practical benefit. This land is your land. This flower is your flower.

During high school I performed heavy chores on a large (9,000 acre) cattle ranch.  One year I fed horses, another year I milked cows, but sophomore year I fed pigs.  Our crew was called, naturally, “the pig feeders”.  It was fascinating and disagreeable only when the gas of rotting food scraps became overwhelming on warm days in late spring.  It was like a late 60s version of “Oklahoma”, which is saying something. . .

Later in life I pondered the matter of those kitchen scraps—why didn’t the pig herd have its own feed?  The horses, dairy and range cattle, poultry and lambs all had special meals.  Not the pigs.  They ate surplus food from the ranch, local schools and communities, literally scraped off the plates.  It would sit in old metal oil drums for a day or two and “cheese up”, as we called it—longer if we had visitors. The heavy barrels would accumulate ominously on a cement pad outside the kitchen door, where they’d stew in the sun.  Pig slop is the name, stinking is the game.  However, the pigs were crazy for it.

Being youngsters, we’d occasionally have crew fights with the milkers and horse feeders.  Outnumbered, we were still a potent force, since we had the ultimate weapons, being these indescribably hideous chunks of semi-solid slop, and a profoundly detached attitude.

“. . . the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.”
                                                                        –Mark Twain 

There were only 3 of us and 10 or so milkers and 8 or so horse feeders, but, wisely, they usually picked on each other, the milkers using old curds and you-know-what, and the horse guys using rocks and you-know-what.  We were aliens.  “Provoke us at your peril”, was our unspoken message.  No one could even eat with us on workdays, for good reason.  However, soon the tension became unbearable for the others, and they came at us one day.  We won our only fight against the combined, massive force of the other crews, including the gonzo upperclassmen trash-haulers.  After a brief and colorful skirmish, they scattered before us. 

At one time—mid 20^th century—the rose fought with the marigold for the position of National U.S. Flower.  The rose won in the 1980s, due to its huge lobby which has since disappeared into the Colombian jungle.  Mr. David Burpee, our founder’s first-born, vigorously championed the marigold, even recruiting the great orator, gardener and Illinois native Senator Everett Dirksen, but they lost the public relations campaign by a narrow margin.  Reagan signed it into a sort of proclamation, rather than a law.  Especially in its hybrid, “tea” and cut-flower form, the rose is an unworthy national symbol for several reasons.

First, the well-ogled cultivars are all foreign from breeding to production to wholesale distribution.  Their feet don’t touch our native soil, while the lion’s share of their profits go abroad.  This is hardly appropriate for our national flower.  Second, the rose has already represented kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, lords, ladies, courts, religious orders and military units of nations of all stripes.  Strictly on patriotic grounds, the U.S. should have nothing to do with the rose as its national symbol.  Third, there are a great number of native plants that actually originated in our botanically barren land.

Choicest among these is the sunflower.  The Mexican-native marigold had its chance and lost.  Now it is time for the sunflower to step up and kick some serious rose butt.  Not only did the sunflower originate in eastern Colorado, it’s been an enormous blessing to the world economy, rivaling the rose in importance abroad, and blowing its petals off here in the U.S. The marigold is still a strikingly attractive, valuable garden plant, and a religious ceremonial plant in many parts of India. Yet it is dwarfed, in every way, by the sunflower.

While we’re at it, the tomato—pride of both Aztec and Yankee farmers—was supposed to be our native fruit, according to me, more than twenty years ago.  I was even going to create a commodity futures market for them.  I had meetings on Wall Street!  If they can do it to frozen orange juice and bacon, I thought, they can do it to ‘Big Boy’.  I was wrong.

Again, the apple—a cousin to the rose—became our national fruit, thanks to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who popularized the idea.  Although no declaration has ever been made, it’s been quite unnecessary.  “As American as banana pie” hardly cuts it, so to speak.

But now foreign apples, God bless them, are moving in for the kill.  It began with knocking ‘Jonathan’ off his perch.  By far the best-tasting apple, and as American as its pie, ‘Jonathan’ has had to move aside for “arriviste” yuppie foreigners like the overly sweet ‘Gala’.  It’s as if  ‘Jonathan’ were Mr. Chips, turning at the door to say goodbye to his loving throng of students, but there’s no one left.  No one’s crazy for ‘Jonathan’ anymore.

In any case, the tomato—a North American original—deserves to be the national fruit of the USA, every bit as the sunflower must take its rightful place as our national flower.

Let’s try again!