Like popular music, at its core a form of theater, blogs and websites are little “plays in a box”. For example, the internet’s threat to television is likely what terrifies the PRC’s totalitarian government. China could literally disintegrate into democratic regions—an outcome greatly wished. Apparently, Iran has a huge and increasing number of blogs and websites; their development is hastening the slippage of the religious death-grip its government has on Iranian society. Seeing these events play out makes one wish he were thirty years younger. Autocratic regimes have always feared widespread literacy, and the web promises a great future for the dissemination of not only knowledge but culture generally, especially in the form of story, comedy and drama. The internet promises great social and cultural exposition and interaction.

Aside from certain avant-garde symphonic and chamber works, virtually all music is based on either dance or theater. Its origins are religious—the “big theater”—and with the decline of religion in the modern world, music has moved into prominence as a surrogate for telling stories and conveying a sense of alternative realities, much as religions used to do, especially for the young. This subject came up recently in a conversation with Bob Koester, the founder of Delmark Records and a legend in the music business. He produces jazz and blues records, mainly in the Chicago area. Business has been a bit shaky lately, so I floated the idea that he branch into folk music of England, Ireland and Scotland. He calmly replied, “Oh, no, that’s not the same as jazz or blues—it’s theater music.” Startled, I discussed with him the pros and cons of his assertion. But he convinced me that African American, slavery-based music is a unique art form, quite distinct from other forms of ethnic and folk music. He also pointed out that virtually all other popular music—from easy listening to rock ‘n’ roll—is derived entirely from either theater or movies, and I was stunned to realize that he was correct. Even the serious classical music of Europe had long ago originated from the tunes and melodies of theater, festivals and musical shows and plays. He also pointed out that much white teenage music derives from marching bands and nursery rhymes.

In the 1800s, theater buildings in American cities and towns became music halls. In poor neighborhoods, saloons and dance halls would have a small stage that existed primarily for the musical plays, whose songs would be excerpts to which patrons would dance into the early hours of Saturday night. When people stopped dancing, they sat and watched the stage, which is what nearly everyone does now, except the most adventuresome youth. Thus, the internet seems like a little theater-in-a-box.

I walked away from this conversation with my old music mentor a changed man. I hadn’t noticed before that I rarely play the guitar or piano by myself (unless practicing chords and scales). Even an audience of one is sufficient, and I play not only songs, but also stories, and even a few tunes put together in a theatrical “stage” theme.

Indeed, music is theater. And the overwhelming majority of popular music is based on children’s theater. I shall never forget the first time I traveled through the cities of Central America, and stopped into “record stores”. Invariably, they were small sections of neighborhood toy stores. No adult took recorded music seriously, unless it was for an after-work dance party.

Later, when my parents became ill, I returned to playing and singing Baptist hymns for them, and singing in church to clean out my pipes. I realized what I’d never been taught—that when I play music, I’m creating a sort of “love story” in rhythm and melody. These insights over the last few years have resulted in a strengthening of my perception of music in all its forms. I understand the stories, theatrical performances, “shows”, “audiences”, and “players”. And that’s all the internet is.

Here are some gardenesque blogs:

In addition to the great ones I mentioned last week

Cincinnati Cape Cod – Although infrequent “CCC” offers a sidelong glance at Kasmira and her goofy world.

Country Doctor’s Wife – Rural families are very misunderstood. This blog is a small step toward a cure.

Old Garden Roses and Beyond – Contains an excellent, concise overview of rose breeding by Ralph S. Moore.

Renegade Gardener – Takes staunch positions with a charming and folksy manner. I wish he’d blog more frequently.

Seedhead – Well written, cultivar-oriented blog.

What tha. . .? – An amusing horticulturist from Oregon. Also called, “Fer Crying Out Loud“.

Food Blogs

Unless the author writes well, he can ruin the last meal on earth. However, I’ve found a few folks so enthusiastic that they make up for content or style shortcomings.

Deep End Dining – As opposed to “high end” . . . oddball food blog.

Food On the Brain – Gourmet home cooking.

Fortune Cookie Chronicles – Hot and spicy Chinese food related.

A Guy In New York – Couple of urban foodies.

Southern Foodway Alliance – Home of the “Tennessee hog killing”, and a whole archive on gravy.

Tommy: eats – “New Jersey-centric thoughts and opinions on food, wine, dining and cooking.” Tommy is great – a candid, tasteful style.

Miscellaneous Blogs

Meet Me In Ataxia, Baby – Curious journal about photography and the travails of a library scholar.

New Rambler – Another fascinating library science scholar blog.

The Other Side of the Ocean – Nothing works my stuff like a Polish immigrant’s sensibility.

Photowalking.org – New hobby, which I needed.

The precept that inspired the free press for several centuries was to make the comfortable less so, and to give hope to those lacking in comfort. It did this through commentary, ideas and opinions that swayed both “the readers and the leaders”. But what of the gardening press? Cultural tips, seasonal reminders, new cultivar descriptions and design ideas have been the staples of garden writing, along with occasional gardener profiles and plant portraits. Add the coverage of horticultural current events, and the garden writing world has been a fertile ground of diverse journalism for many years.

However, trends have appeared that should concern the gardening community. With glimmering exceptions here and there, most TV and radio personalities have vanished. There has been an obvious decline in the number of full time garden writers at newspapers and magazines. Often they are assigned to cover a vast general area, called “Living” or “Inside and Out”. Many have been retired or let go, while others ordered to focus on one angle, such as “tips and tasks” or “local clubs, non-profits and public gardens”. At least, they are still writing. But it is odd that the prime boomer gardening demographic is cresting just when the journalists best qualified are being redeployed.

On the other hand, there have blossomed many fascinating blogs and websites that are lively, fun and informative. Kym Pokorny’s site is a good example. Also great are The Blogging Nurseryman, Doug Green’s Garden, Today In The Garden–which is especially sweet, Fast Grow The Weeds, A Not So Simple Garden, View From Federal Twist, Rainy Side, Garden Path, Mr. Mc Gregor’s Daughter (A friendly Mid Western one) and the True Dirt.

Interestingly, many garden blogs and posts are like newspaper stories of old: short, personal, and often light-hearted “feullitons” from a lost optimistic age. Odd too, because the internet seems to be a perfect vehicle for the illustrated long form–the very stories the print media find too expensive to produce. Yet, I haven’t found any on my web journeys. There should be, in my view, an online “National Geographic” style site for gardening. But I’m no expert. For example, my secretary types these blogs from my longhand. I don’t even have a cell phone.

Alas, the market will decide, as usual. Meanwhile, it is amusing to ramble through these little gardenhoods.

THIS JUST IN

Few may be aware of it, but there is a “second Christmas”, not in any religious sense, but for Santa and the crew. We do not forget the big man’s contributions to our happiness, and when we found out there were no prospects for him after New Year’s, we contacted the North Pole and let him know we were interested. To be specific, we are letting Santa rest up, as well as the elves recover, and also the reindeer. They have to sleep off not only last Monday/Tuesday’s climax, but also the celebrations they themselves had afterwards .

You see, we at Burpee and The Cook’s Garden appreciate the seasonal business such as Santa faces every year. We share his angst— in short, we “feel” him. Our two and a half million catalogues arrive in the world’s mailboxes the day after Christmas, and orders begin processing and shipping out in late January, depending on the weather and the plant zone. This interval gives Santa and Co. time to crash, so to speak. However, cash flow is as important to him as to anyone in a highly seasonal business. Therefore, Santa needs a second job, and we’re proud to say that we can give him one. Indeed, we give Santa, the missus, the elves and the entire workshop employment assembling and shipping the plants and seeds that make up the beginnings of home gardens across the nation. In his words—but softly because he’s asleep— “Hoe, hoe, hoe!”

Last summer I noticed that my cats prefer the flower garden to the vegetable patch. The former’s superior canopy and fortress-like qualities, as well as the feline sense of style, spur the attraction. However, the “keeks” seem also to share a deep sympathy with flowers—“uber” as well as “unten”. I think it’s in their eyes.

Everyone in the flower business agrees that “the eyes have it”, so to speak. It is so obvious that folks forget it. Paradoxically, the visual sense fades from view in the flower industry. Also, there are many distracting categories now, such as home décor, organics and natives. And “bridal” is a separate industry by itself. The simple, undiluted beauty that ordinary, unadorned flowers possess gets lost in the clutter. However, if a plant or garden bed is not visually appealing on a basic, unconscious level, it is not going to survive. Perhaps the Europeans haven’t forgotten this yet, but Americans have. Our tumultuous markets are dynamic and volatile, and customers are quickly lured by novelty. But the sense of sight wins in the end, as it must.

Returning to cats: although I adore them all, I prefer the compelling ones. My eyes dictate the choice. The mere appearance of a cat is seductive. I take special care of the cats particularly so that they look as good as possible, or at least unblemished and healthy. The same rule applies to the flower garden.

On the other hand, the dogs prefer the kitchen garden. They visit the flower beds and borders from time to time, digging, hunting and breaking labels. But the veggies enchant them. Their many shapes and sizes amuse them and, at harvest, their smells attract them. The dogs fit well among the mounds, towers, fences and vines. Their aggressive natures find expression amidst the blocks and rows of beans, tomatoes and squash. Their best portraits are taken there, as they lounge in strategic spots after sticking their noses in the harvest bushels and gardeners’ aprons.

My opinions are biased by a preference in pet gender. My dogs are male, cats are female. Interestingly, this clicks with human garden gender orientation as well, with the exception of Great Britain, where the masculine, “home as castle” principle and aesthetic are very strong. Men are the flower gardeners in the UK. They dominate the front and side yards. On the other hand, the vegetable garden is an extension of the woman’s traditional indoor domain.

These customary garden gender roles have been the opposite in the US, where the men raise the crops and the women grow the flowers. I’ve always thought it was the pervasive effect of rural culture in our recent, land-rich past, in contrast to England’s industrial urban population and limited private land—a matter of consciousness and attention to surroundings. We have never put such a premium on privacy, nor on residences as refuges, as the British have. We’ve been able to keep the monarchy out for over 230 years—more than 11 generations living in relative freedom. Americans have always been public with our homes—loose, informal and rustic. Our “garden design” sensibility, if we really had one, would originate in the poor, remote, rural areas of the UK, Ireland, Scotland and Northern Europe. We have a simple (not simplistic) foundation—not fancy, sophisticated or especially profound, such as one finds in the high cultures of Europe and Asia. It may be a cliché, but we’re from peasant stock. When we imitate the aristocracy, we hunt and fish.

In conclusion, vegetables = nose = dogs; flowers = eyes = cats. I’m going to try to get a dog and cat from the UK. I’ll see how they sort out and report back. I certainly hope they assimilate.

Published in the 1997 edition of ‘The Bardian’

In May 24, 1996, the day before Bard College’s one hundred thirty-sixth commencement, Bard trustee George Ball, who is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the giant seed producer W. Atlee Burpee & Co., and poet Robert Kelly, who is Asher B. Edelman Professor of English at Bard and was a teacher of Ball’s during the latter’s undergraduate days at the College, conversed on topics ranging from the place of plant life in a young person’s education to the gustatory delights of French sorrel soup, with myriad stops in between. The conversation took place at a home in Tivoli, New York, not far from the Bard campus in Annandale-on-Hudson.

Ball was born in the suburbs of Chicago and grew up there and in northern Arizona. As a youth he began harvesting petunia seed for his family’s business, Ball Seed. He continued to work for the company–in Illinois and Costa Rica–during summers throughout high school and college. After studying at Bard and at De Paul University he joined Ball Seed as assistant grower. His rise through the ranks of the company and its affiliates included two years producing seed in Costa Rica and culminated in his appointment as president of Pan American Seed, a research and seed production company, in 1984. Under his direction, Pan American Seed expanded into the European and Japanese cut flower markets and introduced a wide range of home garden varieties worldwide. In 1991 Ball entered the consumer market, acquiring the Burpee company. Ball has literary as well as horticultural interests. At Bard he studied Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners in a course taught by Kelly. He has translated several short stories by the Costa Rican writer Carlos Salazar Herrera and poems by the German writer Else Lasker-Schuler. His essay on the work of the American poet Christine Zawadiwsky was published in the magazine Two Hands in 1980. Ball is a past president of the American Horticultural Society and member of the board of directors of The Horticultural Society of New York. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of Bard College in 1995. Kelly was born in New York City and graduated from City College of New York. He is the author of forty-seven books of poetry, the most recent of which is Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993 (Black Sparrow Press, 1995), and ten books of fiction. His poetry appears in several anthologies. He has had editorial affiliations with numerous journals and magazines and is the recipient of many honors and awards, including an honorary doctor of letters degree from SUNY Oneonta in 1994 and the Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986. Before joining the Bard faculty in 1961 he held teaching positions at Wagner College, SUNY Buffalo, and Tufts University and was poet in residence at Yale University’s Calhoun College, Kansas University, California Institute of Technology, Dickinson College, the University of Southern California, and California Institute of the Arts. He and his wife live near Bard and often spend summers on an island off Cape Cod. His interests include the relationships between plant migration and human migration and between plant life and human history.

The conversation begins following some desultory talk about the host’s brood of animals, which includes dogs, cats, rabbits, and goats.

Kelly: Why don’t we eat horses? The Chinese called the Christians–the Indo-European people whom the Chinese knew in northern and western China–“the ones who don’t eat the horse.”

Ball: Was it because of the value that we place on horses, the status accorded them, unlike the ox and the mule and such?

Kelly: The horse must be our totem animal, and you don’t eat your totem. Evidently the Chinese felt that we Indo-Europeans were horse worshippers.

Ball: How did the cow become the totem animal of the Vedic areas? Maybe a sort of differentiation occurred between horse and cow. And there’s the special quality of milk and butter, a quality not available from the mare.

Kelly: I asked you a question about eating horses to get us started and because it seems so strange that we don’t know anything about why we do what we do. We don’t know anything about the world. We don’t really know why Jews don’t eat pork or why Christians don’t eat horses, yet these matters are part of our deep structural history and, in some ways, deep parts of our personal identity.

Ball: Possibly the animal and the plant are just really so alien to us; there’s still so much that we don’t know. I was speaking with one of our seed physiologists, who had just come back from a conference. He told me that one of the experts in the field had said in a talk that far more is known about the human brain than about the seed. What we know is purely descriptive, after it happens. We know the effect of germination, but the germination process itself is still relatively unknown. It’s one of the last mysteries.

Kelly: Here’s the seed, which remains in what we would perceive as a dormant state for weeks, months, years perhaps, maybe even centuries at a time, and then something happens. Is it that phase you’re talking about as being unknown–whatever it is that triggers the germination?

Ball: No, usually what triggers the germination is fairly well known–temperature and humidity, for instance–but again, that’s strictly contextual. It’s what germination is that is not known. We don’t really know how it occurs, especially at the start. You wet it and warm it and nick the shell, depending on how thick the shell is, like a nut’s. But what then goes on is not really known.

Kelly: Seed is so available, in its infinite numbers, for inspection. You can do anything you like with it, you can put it in any solvent.

Ball: I think the growth process is the process that we struggle with, and plants are really the front line of growth. In our lives we’re surrounded so often with plants. It reminds me of that saying, that we’re estranged from that with which we’re most familiar. I’ve always thought about that in association with plants. When I was a child, plant life was completely green, simply a green mass.

Kelly: The generalization with which the child looks at this other thing–were you fascinated by it?

Ball: I was fascinated by it. My grandmother planted bulbs. I was endlessly fascinated by the bugs that crawled into the flowers of the tulips. That was my first entry point into this undifferentiated mass of green stuff. It is the flower, the luminous coloration, that fascinates somebody so simple as a child, and yet we regard it also as the highest point of horticulture.

Kelly: It’s the real end point of the plant’s existence–to produce that flower that you delight in looking at and that sits on the table for three days.

Ball: And which is very facelike. Some flowers are very facelike, there’s almost a human-like focal point. There is something like an eye to a flower. If you take the eyes out of a human being you can’t identify the human being. I think it’s the same thing with a flower. So that was my entry point into my field. But you really need knowledge in order to become comfortable with the growth process, to make sense of the mass of green, which is the analogue to having the growth process occur within us as well.

Kelly: I think that anytime you learn anything about plants, your relationship with the world–not just the world of plants, but the world of people and of birth itself–becomes more focused and meaningful. Even the names of plants are helpful to know, as it is important to know the relationship between the history of the plant that you see growing, your history, and the history of the town around you.

Ball: Right, you have to open up to the plant world.

Kelly: The last time you were in Annandale–it seems like a few weeks ago, but it was actually probably a year or two ago–you said something that fascinated me and I wanted to ask you about it, try to call you on it, because it’s so unlikely that I find myself believing you. Someone had brought up the subject of hybrid plants, and you pointed out that there is now a kind of sentimental, puritanical dislike of or contempt for hybrids; a sort of notion that you have to go back to the primal stock, that hybrids are somehow wrong and false, like spreading Crisco on white bread.

Ball: That’s true. There are folks with scientifically uninformed views, who would take that notion and apply it to our industry. It’s a good example of sophistry. The people who are advancing this back-to-the-original-natural-sources idea are saying that hybrids deplete the gene pool. In fact, hybrids don’t deplete the gene pool at all. If anything, they actually contribute to the development of the gene pool because through the process of creating a hybrid you must create new inbred lines, so you’re actually increasing the diversity available to nature. You can’t really create genes; they’re there. That’s God’s gift to us, genes. We can’t increase the gene pool or reduce the gene pool through hybridization. The only thing that decreases the gene pool is habitat destruction in which there’s no habitat for the plant or animal carrying the gene to live, so the very last plant or animal dies and its line, its lineage, dies out. Sounds Biblical! Then the genes die. But that’s through habitat destruction and not as a result of the choice of a hybrid versus another type of plant, an older plant. The genes are always going to be in these plants, whether in the hybrids or in the old plants, because many hybrids are combinations of older plants, or combinations of older plants that then give rise to newer plants.

Kelly: So do you see that quest for primal plants or the earliest forms of plants as essentially sentimental and puritanical?

Ball: No, I don’t. There’s a wide spectrum of people, with many responses. Many people, like myself, feel that old varieties are intrinsically valuable–I’m actually an advocate of many older varieties, depending on their quality. But what I was describing was a defensiveness that I had built up to people unilaterally attacking my flowers and vegetables in their modern technological form. It’s like the computer, which is sometimes attacked by people who say it is going to do damage because we’re going to stop reading newspapers. Well, that’s not true. If anything, more knowledge is generated by the availability of knowledge, and that’s the way it is with hybrids. A new yellow impatiens excites people about all impatiens.

Kelly: It sounds like a fountain pen compared to cuneiform writing–it’s just easier. How can it all be bad?

Ball: Exactly. In many ways, economic plants particularly are somewhat tool-like. They’re not tools in terms of being completely subject to our ability to devise them and use them as instruments, but there’s an interaction that goes on that’s very much like that. But you have to be respectful of the gene pool, and in my work I’m advocating the use of hybrids because it reduces habitat destruction in the third world, in developing countries. If they use hybrids, they need less of their valuable land and far fewer chemical inputs because hybrids in and of themselves are stronger and yield a greater harvest. Like the plants around us here, many of them are contemporary plants. They’ve developed because they’re vigorous. They’ve been chosen because they’re resistant to diseases, they’re healthy. Similarly with economic plants, and in these third world countries if some fellow has to use ten acres to produce the crop for the village, he’ll clear ten acres. If he can produce the same yield from two or three acres, that is far preferable because there’s less habitat destruction. In the third world, the devastation of the environment–if you think it’s bad in this country, it’s just beginning in these other countries, and there are far more fragile ecosystems in some of these tropical countries than there are here. That’s my little speech.

Kelly: India is a great example, isn’t it, of that kind of fragility?

Ball: Oh yes. In many cases there’s the matter of regulation, Robert. Chemical fertilizers themselves and pesticides themselves are not intrinsically evil; it’s their abuse that causes problems. Many developing countries have no regulations. Some do. But farmers should be helped.

Kelly: What do you feel about the American government’s attitudes toward regulation of these agents?

Ball: Well, thankfully the American government is so fragmented that there’s plenty of room for everybody to move, and that’s important since we’re a huge country with many climates and pests. There are people who advocate the judicious use of chemicals and pesticides and there are people who advocate organic methods. There’s room for both. I serve all the different constituencies. I’m like a politician, in the sense that I have to take care of everybody in my customer base, which runs the gamut from organic gardeners, the very purest organic gardeners, all the way to people who use pesticides and fertilizers regularly. We advocate the use of proper care.

Kelly: What’s your relationship to the Burpees?

Ball: I purchased the Burpee Company five years ago. My grandfather was a commercial greenhouse analogue to Mr. Burpee’s farmer-and-gardener application. My grandfather was of German background. He grew flowers for the Germans in Chicago and Cincinnati. He grew pot plants and cut flowers, the matthiola, the heavily centered “column stock.” That was his biggest crop. The column stocks have a particularly interesting coloration that occurs in the middle of the flower, and if you can get them to grow stronger or lighter, that can make a more attractive variation.

Kelly: Is it white, the flower itself?

Ball: The flower is actually a light lavender to a blue to a white; there’s also a pink version. The most common and the most popular in my grandpa’s day tended to be the blues. You know, the Germans love flowers. We were talking at lunch about the Germans, their profound ancestry worship and the incredible, almost strange attention they pay to their cemeteries. My grandpa was of that generation, whereas Mr. Burpee was a French Huguenot whose ancestors had emigrated from France to Canada and then down to Pennsylvania.

Kelly: So you’re not related genetically?

Ball: No. Spiritually, but not genetically.

Kelly: What was your family’s company?

Ball: My grandfather started what was called the Ball Seed Company, which sold seed. He started as a grower and a breeder of sweet peas and such, and then his wife, my grandmother, said, “Jacob, you’re doing so well with your breeding, but you’re giving away the seeds to your neighbors. Why don’t you think about doing this as a business, rather than spending all your time in the greenhouse growing the plants?” In other words, she had an eye for specializing in seed. I think Grandma also might have been a bit more interested in the children’s future. So he became a breeder, selling his special strains of stock and aster–German favorites. That gave rise to his selling his special strains. It was the evolution of a business. As he became more research-oriented, he began to sell to people outside just his region. His work became popular with greenhouse growers. By the time he passed away, it was a worldwide company. Then my father and uncles took it over. My father went even further into vegetable research and flower research in terms of the actual genetic breeding and some of the advanced things that are done.

Kelly: I was thinking about the child you were, looking at the bulbs that your grandmother planted and the bugs and such that crawled in and out of the flowers and bulbs. Not many children in my experience are very interested in flowers or green things in general. Let me ask you two questions. Take an audience of smart–that is, problem-solving smart–intelligent, somewhat cultured people, like Bard students, most of them able to handle intellectual, cognitive material and musical or literary demands. How could you get them interested in flowers, trees, grass, leaves, shrubs? And would there be any benefit in that–what could they learn from that?

Ball: That’s a very interesting question. I think it’s perhaps too late, if you are talking about that little gate to nature that my grandmother provided me and that I’m sure was provided you. It’s the benign influence of the family; the family’s regard, the grandmother’s regard. My grandmother lived next door to me. That’s a big difference. Much of education is mimetic, I think. A good teacher can teach, can instill, anything. I learned so much from you that didn’t really have to do with poetry; it was just that you were such a good teacher. I think that’s the way it is with parents, and with great leaders. It was that way with my grandmother: her attention, her regard for flowers, I imitated. I discovered, lo and behold, that this was incredible, fascinating. There was a reason she regarded nature and there was a reason I should, too. I think that when you’re seven or eight years old, you’re still as undifferentiated as the trees you’re seeing in an undifferentiated manner. I don’t know about child psychology, but I would think that the kind of interest you’re talking about is very difficult to engender in an eighteen-year-old. People talk about language learning being like that. They say that if you learn a second language as a child, you have the timbre and pitch and rhythms as long as you live. If you learn it in college, it’s a lot more difficult to achieve that facility. Some can do it, but only those who work extremely hard at it. I think that visual appreciation of color and aural appreciation of tone may be similar, and what enables me to be perhaps somewhat more sensitive than the next average person is the love of and regard for flowers that I learned from my mother and grandmother. I can see so much that perhaps other people might not be able to see. I feel blessed in that sense. To do that with college students, at a time when they’re ascending to adulthood–they’re on a trajectory such that to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak, is difficult. It becomes an “event” if it is not already part of someone’s routine. How to create it late, in a sense, is a good question. I wish I had more time to think about it.

Kelly: You can map every individual in terms of the flowers and trees he knows, he recognizes, and my botanical map of reality would be unlike anybody else’s. Everyone’s botanical map of reality is very individual.

Ball: You use language the way a gardener works with his plants–flowers here, seed heads there, leaves and stems everywhere. You work with color and light. Your words are often like colors.

Kelly: Sometimes I know the name of what I’m looking at and other times I’m looking at meanings. The grotesque, mysterious word weed is one of the most puzzling words, metaphysically, in the language, because we characterize as a “weed” a certain kind of thing which is in every other respect identical to a flower. Of course, weeds do not have a social-cultural-economic-whatever utility.

Ball: They’re not considered desirable. Weeds are invasive, uncontrollable plants.

Kelly: So we have a special word for that, as if we had a word for a bad kind of a cow or a bad kind of a cat. We don’t have words like that. The word weed is fascinating to me.

Ball: Wild animals are considered the weed equivalent of . . .

Kelly: Green varmints,green vermin.

Ball: Taboo plants. A lot of weeds are so called because they take off in all directions, they have qualities of sinfulness. You know this is a garden. There are certain things you just simply can’t have in your yard if you want to have these other objects, and that’s the border between desirable and undesirable. God and the Devil.

Kelly: And right at that border stands the human mind, choosing and deciding, sometimes quite unobtrusively. I had some lily of the valley growing beside my house. Some lovely little weeds were growing up and I went out and grabbed them and yanked them out. And only after I’d yanked all but one out, I thought, What have I done? Here are these little tiny white flowers with shabby little green leaves that this plant has worked with all its strength, its ancient lineage of energy, of genetic reality, to produce, for whatever reason. Who am I to pull that out? And there I was, looking at it in my hand. In what way was this better or worse than the lily of the valley? I felt so stricken by my own complicity.

Ball: You have to say, Well, I can have either Convallaria majalis,the lily of the valley, the magical muguet of France, or this proletarian, unnamed mass that just might choke your lily, given enough time. I wish I could have them both, but if you have to choose–this is morality–if you have to choose, what do you do?

Kelly: At that point (in my yard) I wanted not to choose, and I began to remember an old fantasy of mine that I want to share with you. One of my weirdest fantasies is that there could someday be created, somewhere on earth–it could be in Bangalore, it could be in Switzerland, anywhere–a plot of earth a hundred meters one way and a hundred meters the other, a square, tended by a bunch of monks whose sole purpose in life is to sit on the outskirts and watch that hundred-meter square for the rest of recorded history, to see what happens. My fantasy is, What would happen if we stripped it of everything except itself and just left it alone? Someone would be there every day, watching, for the next one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. One day he might see a rat; another day, three crows and a starling, just on this one piece of land. What does the land do by itself?

Ball: That’s a beautiful fantasy; nothing weird about it at all. It would be overrun with your beloved weeds and varmints in a matter of months.

Kelly: It’s weird in that it denies use. Everything we want of the earth is to use it.

Ball: The fantasy would be difficult to enact–I mean to leave it completely empty of plants. It’s a little bit ‘Biospheric,’ in a way. It’s like a reverse Biosphere. It would be difficult to keep out various airborne seeds and fungi.

Kelly: I just want what happens. But we don’t know. My argument is that we have all kinds of ideas about what would happen, from forest fires to airborne agents, but what would happen a hundred years after that, and a hundred years after that? I think we could do a wonderful thing starting a monastic order or an institution to observe that wonderful piece of land; to serve by observing.

Ball: The monks were really the first plant scientists. They looked at plants as an expression of God somewhat related to what is happening here, in your Zenlike empty garden. But they considered plants God’s gifts, especially their usefulness. The monks would frequently introduce herbal remedies and medicines and drugs to a local region. They were often the conduit for plant explorers who would return things to monasteries. They were the original plant observers and plant scientists. Your fantasy is like turning that inside out, saying, OK, we’ve had an overabundance of things, we’ve had all these things that have been introduced, cross-introduced, and not introduced. Now let’s take everything away.

Kelly: And see what it will do by itself.

Ball: Sort of Thomas Merton-like. Let’s take it out and see what happens. Very interesting.

Kelly: Just observe. Yet according to some Heisenbergian principle, no doubt the observation itself is an influence of some kind, but subtle.

Ball: Very subtle.

Kelly: Earlier, at lunch, you talked about Protestant botanists.

Ball: Apparently many early botanists were Protestants, and they had this notion of plants as being God’s “second book,” after the Holy Bible–not otherbook, but God’s second book, as if maybe there would be more books, too, which I always thought was really great. When I was at Bard I remember thinking that animals, like the goats that a Mrs. Bostwick had, were more fascinating than our fellow students. At that age one is encountering the “other” that’s more like oneself; that type of thing, the socialization process. I think if you can teach not gardening, but plants, there are so many ways that plants can be appreciated through their artistic form, their musical form. Plants are very musical forms. Flowers have musical colors. There are ways that you can get at them, through the more conventional arts, like music and painting, and I think it would be a valuable thing, to answer your earlier question.

Kelly: I wish we could figure out ways of making people more aware of them. Bard, like any other rural campus, has its share of interesting botanical reality around it; not only plants, but also strange old trees.

Ball: I’ll never forget when I was walking around once in the early morning at Bard. I used to go on predawn walks. I was on the other side of the waterfall, going through a thicket–I don’t even know if it’s there anymore–and I encountered a sumac. Having gone to school in Arizona and grown up in a suburban environment, I had seen very few sumacs of such size and strength. I’d never seen one like this. It was a vigorous sumac, and it was beautiful; it was giving berries.

Kelly: That staghorn sumac, which used to be all over here, everywhere, is much gone. I had to cut back a lot of them that were growing right outside my house.

Ball: There’s a weedlike concern, isn’t there?

Kelly: Have you ever been to Montreux, in Switzerland?

Ball: I was there once, yes.

Kelly: That’s a wonderful place for flowers because it has an almost tropical lushness.

Ball: And there is a place in Ireland, your ancestral home, that’s supposed to be absolutely tropical, but I can’t remember its name.

Kelly: Cork City, in the south, has actual palm trees growing in it.

Ball: That must be what I’m talking about.

Kelly: It’s not that it’s so warm, but that it’s never so cold. Palm trees don’t need great heat; they just need no cold. I hope that the weather gods are listening, because we would have a wonderful region if it never got colder than 35 degrees and never hotter than 75.

Ball: Right, this is northern Europe. This is our land of the receding glaciers, and our kind follow the glaciers, right? We were looking for the mists and looking for the coolness.

Kelly: We were following them nostalgically, trying to catch up with them.

Ball: And, I guess, following the animals that were feeding off the melting ice. I guess that was the food source, along with the plants from the river valleys. The cradle of civilization occurred in a really inhospitable area. I’ve often wondered why Europe attracted people, since it was not considered as good a place as the Fertile Crescent to grow, for example, the large-seeded grains. I’ve often wondered about Europe–how, exactly, the glacier figured in the process.

Kelly: Certainly there were hunters, presumably meat eaters.

Ball: We have a lot of vegetables to choose from, don’t we? It’s funny how plants were selected for eating. Often we’ll say that something is really sweet, but with many of the plants that man has consumed it was the absence of bitterness that made for sweetness in our imagination. Like the iceberg lettuce that Burpee created–the Celts were really involved in a lot of its development. The heading-type lettuces were actually Celtic, raised by people from the river country of Europe. The Swiss and Austrians and Germans, in that area that the Celts inhabited for a long time, grew the round form of lettuce, but the Egyptians developed closed-leaf lettuce. The Romans took it from the Egyptians. The milkiness of the lettuce was associated with the milkiness of the heavens. It was considered a food of the gods, a gift of God, so it was buried with their dead.

Kelly: The round-headed lettuce?

Ball: The “romaine.” Lettuce will either hug the stem, grow loose, or form a ball. The French and Swiss began selecting out the lettuces that hugged their stem a little bit more, the ones that hugged the stem and made kind of a semi-oval. Then you get a whole population of a thousand semi-ovals, some of which will be a little more ball-like. With Mendelian genetics, boom-boom-boom-boom, pretty soon you get a round ball. And then you grow all the balls and you look for the big ones, or you look for the small ones. That’s how plant breeding is done. Until Mendel, plant breeding was often more a matter of taking out that which you didn’t want than of leaving in what you did want. Mendel taught us how to predict.

Kelly: You mentioned sorrel before. That’s a vegetable I wish were more popular in America–hint, hint.

Ball: Oh, the sorrel soup of the French. After a night of carousing, you go . . .

Kelly: L’oseille.

Ball: L’oseille,that’s what the gangsters call it. That’s “dough” in the old gangster movies. Bob le Flambeur in that famous French movie of the forties always talked about it–this green, these “bucks.” What a great slang word for money, because it is really like money, it’s so delicious, and it has that oxalic acid that gives you this little sort of buzz that’s so wonderful for the hangover blues. A couple of eggs on top and a French wine, you know . . .heaven!

Kelly: My mother-in-law makes a wonderful sorrel soup, but she doesn’t get the sorrel here. They have a place in France and they bring back sorrel seeds.

Ball: I’m bringing back sorrel seeds this summer from Vilmorin, the famous French breeders outside of Paris. The sorrel that we grow over here, the American sorrel, is not the same as the French sorrel; it’s a sort of coarse thing that doesn’t work. But the true French sorrel, there’s nothing like it. I visit friends over there, near Chablis. In France, I think it has to do with the skill of their farmers, and the soil is almost perfect. It’s not quite as rich as in Illinois, but it has this perfect balance of mineral and structural elements.

Kelly: Do you know the Jewish soup called schav? You can buy it in jars in the grocery store, in the supermarket, just as you buy borscht or matzohs. Go to the Jewish food section. Schav is a pale-green sorrel soup. It’s made from sorrel. It’s not the French sorrel soup, but it’s still pretty good. Have it cold in the summertime, with a little sour cream or creme fraiche. It’s very good.

Ball: I must write that down.

Kelly: And you could eat it and poach an egg in it and you’d be happy. To return to a subject we touched on earlier, I find extraordinary the whole question of hybrids and the sentimental fondness for older plants because I find that sentiment in all of our attitudes about philosophy, religion, et cetera–that old-time religion, that fundamentalist religion. When people stop being religious fundamentalists they switch over to being food purists; it simply transposes itself from one domain to another.

Ball: There’s a lot of that. I didn’t want to get into that, but there’s a lot of false morality involved.

Kelly: Instead of pounding the Bible, they pound the organic food manual.

Ball: I wish they would be as concerned about poor people not being able to read. For example, there’s a lot of countercultural-type people getting involved in my business who are saying we must have pure this and pure that, and they attack a lot of the commercial companies for sins that the companies haven’t committed. You think, if only that fervor, that energy, that passion–for us the cause was the Vietnam War–could just be directed toward what I think is the great sin of the contemporary world, which is that so many people are completely illiterate. It’s not just a matter of being ignorant, it’s a matter of not even having a chance to start. So many of these people are people of color, people from deprived neighborhoods. What are they going to do if they don’t know how to read? How are they going to access knowledge? Who is going to talk with them?

2006 saw the quiet passing away of two little-known figures of amazing accomplishment. In music, Bobby Doyle and in journalism, Oriana Fallaci. Doyle was a Texas-based composer, jazz pianist and one of the most versatile R & B singers who ever lived. David Letterman asked Kenny Rogers, then at the height of his fame in the late 80s, who his musical hero was and without hesitation he answered, “Bobby Doyle”. No one, not even in Letterman’s excellent band, knew who he was. However, he launched Roger’s career, then had his own brief success with a few singles and two albums in the late 60s and early 70s, that have pretty much everything you want on them, from smoking-hot raves to heartbreaking ballads. He was tagged as a “white Ray Charles”, because he was influenced by him, as well as blind. But this is inaccurate. Like Charles, Doyle had an imitable tone and style, and an unmistakable passion all his own. Texas has produced an astounding number of high quality R & B singers. I’ve never heard a good explanation, except for the one about music teachers in Texas public schools being especially great, combined with the singing involved in a church-going community, of which there are thousands in the state. But that can be said for Iowa. I wonder if it might be state pride: growing up with the need not just to excel, but to be different and distinct. Who knows? Bobby Doyle ended his days playing to crowds in music venues and nightclubs across Texas, a state that loves its musicians. He will be missed.

In 1977, the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, wrote a book that changed my life, ‘Interview With History’. After reading the transcripts of her conversations with Henry Kissinger, Yasir Arafat, President Thieu and General Giap, among many others, I felt that anything was possible. I was 25 and needed such reassurance given by her example of fearlessness. She was the toughest journalist among her generation, and perhaps of all time. She made her own history when she defiantly removed her mandatory veil during her interview of Khomeini. He was truly moved, and even weakened, by the experience. (Alas, it has never been published in book form.) Fallaci put most other journalists to shame, and still does by her example, especially those we have today. Robert Kaplan is the only one who rivals her, in my opinion, and half the time he’s cribbing from Israeli military history. She died last summer, hardly noticed except in her native Italy. At the risk of sounding sexist, I recommend ‘Interview With History’ to American girls and young women. I fear they’re missing a true heroine, a writer with proven, battle-tested courage. She was a woman whose shoes they can’t fill, who makes them understand they must wear their own.

Three days with no water and electricity—odd how little it bothered me. In fact, it was both amusing and instructive. A psychosomatic spot quiz. The irritation lasted only a few minutes. My dad’s motto, “Expect the worst, and when the good comes, it feels better”, has become meaningful with age. However, I experience a profound sense of detachment at both ends.

Of course, the dogs and cats noticed nothing, which dawned on me the second day. Duh. We live on a farm, so the buildings and people matter little to them. The bugs took closer notice.

Wool became essential. All other fabrics are useless against the chill. Cotton especially betrays its tropical roots. After all, it is a luxury—the crushed pineapple of clothing. Wool is like acorn squash. A friend from Northern Wisconsin phoned, and he agreed that synthetics are worthless. His wife works for Land’s End, so he gets lots of samples. I wore a wool watch cap day and night, and a wool sweater most of the time.

Weirdly, the house was less drafty at night than when the heat was on. My Wisconsin friend said convection currents are stirred up by temperature change. The rare, quiet stillness throughout the house blended with the even temperature. It was like being in another world. The sense of solidity surprised me.

Eating so little, I haven’t much food to rot. All the fruits and veggies are in natural storage. The only things I missed, if at all, were a couple ball games on television, and reading myself to sleep. The moon was spectacular, as was the glowing ribbon of asters in the Happiness Garden behind the house (Aster novi-belgii ‘Porzallan’ and Aster novae-angliae ‘Lachsglut’).

I missed boiling water. I pondered trying out an old barn stove in the seed house, but it hadn’t been used in years, so I went without coffee two days until I went into town. At the coffee shop, I avoided the regulars. I didn’t want to share familiar stories that end up seeming or sounding gloomy, because mine wasn’t. Returned with papers. The print media has become, generically and permanently, yesterday’s news—instant trash.

The eventual loneliness made me think of Herman Melville at his farm in the Berkshires 150 years ago. He struggled with a meager income, depending on wealthy relatives. His dispirited family worried about his mental health. It was in this rural farmhouse that, in 14 months, he wrote Moby Dick. Incredibly, it was a commercial failure. Much later, in a small New York City apartment, after spending each dreary day as a customs agent, the 70 year old wrote the mystical, globe-spanning epic poem, Clarel.

Melville’s father was a victim of manic-depression and alcoholism. His two sons were very troubled. Both died tragically: one of suicide at home, one later of an unknown illness in a boarding house in California. Melville always had Shakespeare as his touchstone and the Bible as his foundation. His greatness is beyond belief.

He died penniless and forgotten to the world that celebrated him so highly for his travel books 40 years earlier. The obituary listed him as “Henry Melville”.

I thought of the theological nature of fatherhood.

I finally called the electric company on the morning of Sunday’s “big game”. Understandably, it took them until nightfall.

Shakespeare’s Richard II was my introduction to The Great Bard. The perfection of his dramas is blinding. I used to read him with a hand shading my eyes. Too exciting to merely read, Shakespeare is the summit of theater. In contrast, the Bible took me into an outlandish world and made me at home there, walking through dusty villages, rocky deserts, beckoning palms and welcoming olives. I soldier on, the same as any peasant or town dwelling writer or reader has done before me, depressed or not, artificially or naturally lit, for the last five hundred years.

Eventually the dream of the books vanished, and I slipped back in the darkening and powerless day, the township trucks came to fix the line, and I found myself under an ugly yellow light. Until Brett Favre unleashed a Jim McMahon pass that feathered into the receiver’s hands, and all was back to cotton.

Finally, the main house at Fordhook Farm has a great formal piazza, almost as comfortable as Melville’s in his beautiful short story, The Piazza, which mysteriously points out the direction of his entire literary output. We shall announce our Open House dates soon. Fordhook Farm is an incredible location. We’ll leave the lights on for you.

“First the house, then the garden . . .” seems to be an inescapable truth of home ownership. Some folks pretend that the garden holds greater sway, pride of place or center stage. However, wake them at 3 A.M. with the question which is more important. They’ll confess their sins. When the kitchen, toilet, easy chair and bed find their way into the garden—that will be another story. But for the present, house rules.

I’ve drafted many dream houses over the years, from the fetishistic, carefully laid out tree houses and used brick fortresses and hovels of childhood through versions of one-man sailboats of puberty, and the aircraft, rockets and custom cars of adolescence. All were more than refuges or escape vehicles. They functioned also as headquarters for world takeovers, as long as there was ample sleeping room. I was obsessed with beds for some unknown reason.

As I crashed into adulthood, I drafted diagrams and pictures of extensions to the dormitory-like rocket ships, and eventually moved into the first of several urban apartments I was to occupy, and love, for nearly a decade. From that point, escapist fantasy naturally took the form of luxurious redoubts in rural settings in either Florida, Arizona or the oak-filled dream forests of childhood. But what would I build there? Oddly, I most often designed encampments, and in particular, colonial type military forts—still, in my twenties!—so that I’d be both protected and well-supplied. Thus, garden designs consisted of trees in narrow groves or palisades and crescent forms shielding my house, which was most often a Quonset Hut. In pleasant weather, I’d live in a large tent.

Soon I entered my late 20s and became serious about actually owning a tiny bungalow outside Palookaville. But the 80s business boom kept me moving through a succession of hotel apartments all over the world. Now, after many years, I have the opportunity—and competence—to walk away from the crash site and, finally, to build my dream house.

My vision quest centers on a massive old adobe one-room schoolhouse at the Orme School in Arizona. I shall have a central room and build on a couple of cells for beds and baths. The windows will be few and tiny; the walls thick; and a small, tight-fit clerestory poked through the roof to let daylight brighten the corners. The kitchen will be on a small porch, enclosed by screens, used mainly for boiling water.

No one will see inside. I shall attain the solitude of the high urban apartment but at ground floor—I fear heights. Inside will be no décor; I grew up in a middle-class home with fashionable things all around, such as bowls and knick knacks, and I grew to loathe them, especially the ornate furniture that demanded, and received, more attention than I did. No art around me or mine. And no basement. I’ll sleep on a bed of nails before I spend a night in a basement.

Nor do I want excessive color. In fact, I hate color painted all over a house. I want to feel as though I’m outside; dull grays, stones, and washed out browns are perfect. This stems from an adolescence in the desert. The fewer the rooms, the better, like a bright cave. Open and airy with long lines of sight. One door-like window and a hillbilly screened porch off the side. I shall walk into a sunny, dry and perfectly flat yard. Southern Spain, around Valencia or Western Ohio, south of the lakes. A vegetable plot and fruit trees, if not also olives and figs. The house design can be from a mail order catalog. In fact, I’d prefer it.

My latest godson recently visited me. One morning while making home versions of McMuffins—little turkey sausages between oat-floured English muffins, with smoked Gouda slices added to one, alfalfa sprouts to another, little 4-year old Henry looked over to me from his chair-chair and asked, “Uncle George, where are the strawberries?” “I have some nice ones,” I replied and my housekeeper having overheard brought a bowl of California types, probably ‘Driscoll’ over to the table. I made thick slices under his direction and he replaced the cheese and sprouts with them. The strawberry turkey McMuffins tasted delicious, with an unusual contrast of savory-sweet texture, perfect for the low-key amusement of breakfast.

Later for lunch, Henry asked that we make tiny, mini hamburgers consisting of little pieces of bun, meat, and thick slices of strawberry. This was even tastier and one of those simple children’s ideas that make adults feel a bit stupid. He went on to making normal-sized hamburgers with large fresh cut pear and peach slices, and they were ok. Pears weren’t the match for burgers that the strawberries were. The peach burgers were better.

I was reminded of a story of a friend who left his small liberal arts college in the early 70s to get a job in “the real world” (a trend at the time). Pizza Hut was still new enough to be a big deal for neighborhood birthday parties. He was managing one in the Pittsburgh area, a city of close-knit blue-collar neighborhoods. A family of a dozen or so came in and settled at their table. Soon, a young kid—the birthday boy, so little he couldn’t see over the counter—came up and asked my friend Steve, “Sir, do you have peanut-butter pizza?” Steve noticed his nose was running. At that time, a birthday child could have “whatever pizza combination they want—extra toppings free!” by which they meant store toppings. Steve said, “Why sure, young man”, ordered a bunch of appetizers for the family and darted to a nearby supermarket for the peanut butter. He said it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d expected, and some of the adults tried it. But the kid was transported to heaven. Steve is now a business executive, and active in local politics in Austin, Texas. He often wonders about that kid—what he turned out like. I promised him I’d watch my godson’s progress and see if he ends up “Iron Chef” material—minus the tattoos or I’m not his godfather.

Claude Hope was my professional mentor. He was pressed into this service while in his 50s by my father with whom he had worked for many years. Claude was one of the founders of the PanAmerican Seed Company, after working in Costa Rica for already nearly two decades. B. Y. Morrison had sent him down there in WWII to grow quinine for anti-malaria medicine and he remained, becoming a Costa Rican citizen in the early 60s. I worked periodically for him in the 60s, 70s and 80s and finally as a colleague in the early 90s until he officially retired, by which time he had created Linda Vista, the greatest flower seed breeding and production farm in the world, consisting of 75 acres of fiberglass and plastic roof structures, or “techos”, to keep the rain off the hundreds of thousands of seed-bearing plants. The writer, Allen Lacy, described it poetically in the cover essay of his 1988 book, Farther Afield.

One of my last visits with Claude was in spring of 1995, while he was still active in his late 80s. He’d come to Fordhook a couple of times after I’d relocated from Illinois, so I was anxious to return my respect to him. I spent a week reviewing crops and touring the cloud forested countryside. Growing up on a dairy farm in Sweetwater, Texas, and graduating in the first class at Texas Tech, Claude was a living legend, representing a golden era of early 20th century horticulture. Reminiscing with him meant long evenings over Johnny Walker Black, witnessing a chapter of history. He could recall his classes with L. H. Bailey at length and with great clarity. He was as extraordinary a conversationalist as plant breeder. Plus, he introduced me to David Burpee 40 years ago.

At the end of my visit he beckoned me over to his wall of books in the living room of the tiny cottage he shared with his guests. He pulled down a pair of old paperback books and presented them to me saying I’d enjoy them very much. I was taken aback; Claude’s frugality was legendary. I started them immediately. John L. Stephens describes a two-year odyssey in the late 1830s through Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula where, with his companion Francis Catherwood, he discovered most of the Mayan ruins. Catherwood illustrated and Stephens detailed the monuments of Copán, Palenque and Uxmal. However, he chronicled also a wide range of encounters with Spanish colonial society, the same rural world Claude had encountered in the 40s and I had in the 60s. Stephens had been sent to Guatemala by the government, not unlike Claude. In addition, the two-volume set was from the early paperback vintage of Dover Press, a publisher of durable, high quality soft cover classics. They hadn’t aged at all, even in the tropics. Besides being of sentimental value, it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, an early modern American version of the journals of Cabeza de Vaca, another astonishing read.

Within a couple weeks of my spring ’95 visit to Calude, I was invited to Bard College, which I’d attended for several years. I was fortunate to have the poet Robert Kelly as my English professor and faculty advisor. He scribbled across a term paper I’d labored over for weeks, “Do you talk like this?” It changed my life. I had returned to have an interview with him that Bard’s president, Leon Botstein, generously arranged. We drove around the rustic and charming campus and up to Tivoli for a sit-down at the home of the artist Stephen Shore, who had kindly agreed to photograph us for the college’s alumni magazine. It was a rare and memorable afternoon talking for several hours with my second mentor. Kelly writes dense, energetic, allusive, Einstein-like poetry that channels past as well as present worlds. He was fascinated by David Burpee’s search for the white marigold, as one might expect a poet to be.

On the drive back we passed along the Hudson River near Barrytown. Talking leisurely, he mentioned how he met his first wife while she was working at the Brooklyn Museum, near where he’d grown up. She’d been assigned to help catalogue a large collection of pre-Columbian artifacts. “What kind?” “Mayan relics, and you won’t believe this, George, but they’d been housed right here near the college, on a small island right down there”, motioning to the riverbank. “Isn’t that remarkable, that I’d get a job teaching right where my wife’s artifacts had been stored?”

Apparently a gentleman collector had bought them a long time ago. “Where did they come from?” “Well, they were a collection of Mayan objects from an expedition in the 1830s by a man named Stephens. You ever hear of him?”

I happily told him of the visit I’d just made to my old mentor, his gift, and that I was in the middle of reading Incidents of Travel. He was as amazed as I was.

I’ll never forget the colleague, a lady plant breeder, who, while inspecting row after row of late season petunia trials for signs of botrytis resistance, looked up from her stud records and sighed, “I just love being pregnant – if I could, I’d be pregnant all the time”.
She revealed on another occasion – I honestly cannot recall the contexts of our subsequent conversations – the reason men have breasts. “RNA, George. Cytoplasmic inheritance, you know, you guys are all more female than you are male.” She continued beating out golden plates of wisdom for the many years we worked together.

Another breeder, a famous university professor, labored over a large group of several dozen inbred lines of potato plants that he continuously reproduced in his greenhouse for many years. He was trying to transfer the genetic resistance to a rare disease from the wild plants into a domesticated variety. He used to talk to the plants, like to an imaginary friend, sharing professional and personal problems, and listening to baseball games on the radio as he worked. This went on for almost two decades. Still, he was unable to achieve a fertile cross between them. He was preparing to abandon the project when he had a mild emotional breakdown. Occasionally, he’d visit the greenhouse, sobbing miserably. After he recovered, he decided to give the plants another try before shutting them down. He announced to his students and fellow faculty that the plants were going to be destroyed unless the next test crosses “took”, as they say, or reproduced. Sure enough, a few of the plants suddenly, and for no apparent reason, became fertile and produced offspring possessing the exact traits he sought. For many years he insisted – and most of us believed – that the plants “heard” him, not in any audible way, but as a result of the years of gentle but specific force he had exerted on them. Geneticists call this “selection pressure”. In the wild, biological evolution takes millions of years. Several of his students told me, after he retired, that he confessed that it was the strangest and most wonderful experience he’d ever had as a scientist – a miracle, in fact.

I have no talent for plant breeding. The three projects I undertook over the years – coffee, sweet peppers and petunias – went bust. However, I discovered I had a bit of a knack for research management, which is something like hospital administration. For example, surgeons need a relatively unfettered environment, what the Harvard Business School calls “loose-tight” controls. Over the years I’ve learned that the best salesperson usually makes a mediocre sales manager. So it is with doctors – although there are exceptions – and plant breeders as well. While aptitudes vary widely, clusters of them point to particular areas of success, and “square pegs don’t fit into round holes”. So it is also with plant adaptation – gentleness is essential.