Atwater Drift

Garden log: Matillijas up, but more sparse than last year. Tomatoes already setting fruit, if you can believe it. Ryan's dream Big Max pumpkin plant (reputed to produce 75 lb pumpkins) in the ground. Love-in-a-mist blooming.


I'm sure everyone has this, you go out somewhere, the garden, shopping, bike riding, whatever, and you come up with this really terrific idea. You think about it and you're just in love with it.

Then you come home, get a drink of water, check the mail, feed the kids, whatever, and suddenly that idea is gone.

It's sad but true, even if you remember the idea, a lot of the fire behind it has disappeared.

"What the heck did I think that was so great for?"

Though there may be the case that the idea might not be so great anyway and it's probably best forgotten about.

Especially when you should be paying attention to the task at hand instead of drifting.

I'm a big drifter out in the garden. It's actually an observation I've had about writers, even garden writers, when you see the projects they're describing it's usually accompanied by a, "that's it?" feeling.

"That's the garden you've been going on and on about?"

Garden writers have a tendency to try a lot of different things, but they're essentially different people than great garden designers.

The garden writer for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Smaus, was always going over his new finds, creations, and critiques of flowers, vegetables, and the like. When I finally found his garden online I had that feeling described above. It was a very small garden with things pulled out, this set by the other, this needing weeding.

Martha Stewart Magazine it was not.

I still love Robert Smaus, and his work, but I wouldn't recommend him coming over to your house and redoing your garden. For the same reason (and more), I would tell you I'm fine bringing over bottles of wine, but probably not a trowel.

There was an amazing designer over at a nursery called Hortus years ago in Pasadena. My neighbor Dan just came over and was talking about it today and we recalled how stunning it was. I should have taken pictures, but there was a huge clock tower with the entire face made out of old farm equipment, a beautiful 1900's era steel hothouse, a working vegetable garden (I'm not kidding, the guy had a grounds crew whose job it was to tend to the plants including this veggie garden), four koi ponds... The place was magic.

It had two drawbacks. One really only pertaining to me, which was that you could pick up a beautiful little something only to turn it over and discover that it's $1,300. The other was apparently he wasn't such a great businessman. I heard one of his gardeners tell me that he owed so much money by the end that someone was yelling at him while he was at the cash register who proceeded to grab him by the collar and pull him across the counter. The owner broke free and took off down the street. And that was the last the gardener ever saw of him.

Good designer. Bad money guy.

I guess the point is you can't be good at everything. Or maybe very few people are good at everything. Or that that the old adage is true, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym."