I debated whether to write a column this week. Since this is the start of my 40th year of writing this column, I figured this would be a good time to finally skip a week. What the heck, I thought. Just don't turn one in.
Now this may sound easy to the casual reader, but I've handed in a column, every week for the past 39 years. There were columns when I was on vacations or away on business trips. There were even columns when my parents died.
The reason is simple: You skip a week and the ADN publishes your picture with an announcement when you will return to print. To me that screamed: "Rob his house. He isn't home!" Of course, thinking about it a bit more this week, it occurred to me, if I skip this column, I will be home, so who cares? How silly I have been all these years.
Anyhow, sometime way back in the beginning years, my mantra became, "I have to write a garden column." I said the phrase so much that Judith made a needlepoint pillow that read, "I've got to write a column." The longer I went without missing a week, the louder the mantra became. What started out as a hobby fast became a passion, a religion complete with Sunday rituals. At times, "the column" became the needed excuse to skip some chore or not to attend an obligatory event, but mostly writing a column became an excuse to spend a couple of hours each week doing something I loved to do.
Oh, sure, there was the "record" aspect. I remember when I hit 10 years, longer than any other Anchorage Daily News columnist had been writing, Howard Weaver snickered and said something like, "Let me know when its been 25 years!" I am not a sports fan and I barely know who Cal Ripken was, but he played game after game after game of baseball, never missing one, year in and year out. I liked the idea of being the Cal Ripken of newspaper columnists.
So there I was the other day, sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight, returning from an Outside talk on soil microbes. "I am starting my 40th year. It is time to skip a column!" I convinced myself, put my computer aside and enjoyed the free bloody mary my Gold status affords. By the time the digiplayers were being passed out, I fell asleep.
I dreamed of the Alaska gardens I have visited. I dreamed of the time an Alaska Supreme Court Justice asked a gardening question while Outside counsel representing the three big oil producers wondered what just happened. I dreamt of discussions of bonsai, cabbages and flowers with Japanese, Chinese and Korean LNG buyers (who, like me, had more fun discussing gardening). I reflected on being flown to England to give a 30-minute talk, lecturing in Costa Rica, having books translated into more than half a dozen languages, watching Plant a Row for the Hungry and the Alaska Botanical Garden grow and seeing Southcentral Alaska beautify.
So many great garden memories drifted though my dream, all manner of fun things that have happened as a direct result of writing these columns.
The best part, however, and the thing that kept me going for 39 years, is that I got to see the best of Alaska: its gardeners. As a result of these columns, you let me be your friend. You invite me into your homes and your gardens. Such universal friendship (except once, back when I believed a lawn needed to be raked clean in the fall, when a big guy chased me with a rake as I jogged by his almost-clean yard).
It's been such a terrific experience. In fact, I am the luckiest guy in the state because gardeners are always friendly and always interesting and are everywhere. Can you imagine if everyone you met was pleasant? What a special, special place to be.
Along the way you've shared the birth of my children, the death of my parents, the birthdays of my wife. You've tolerated my ongoing love-hate relationship with dandelions, stuck with me through my abrupt transition from chemicals to organics, didn't abandon me after the umpteenth time I noted it is pronounced "FEWK-SEE-ah" or all those tulips died after we had that mass planting. And my favorite part: You never hesitated to come up to me with questions and suggestions, stories, antidotes and pictures.
It was a good dream. It's been a great career.
As the flight attendants were picking up the digiplayers, however, I woke and automatically started thinking about what needs to be done this week: Spider mites have been reported all over the place (isolate infested plants and use neem oil-based sprays), several readers have spring-flowering bulbs they didn't get in the ground (you may be able to still dig the soil and plant them or you can pot and force them indoors, but they will not be any good stored in the garage for planting next spring) and, of course, the subject of my very first column, poinsettias (going to need to do the 40th annual column on their care).
What was I thinking? I can't skip a column.
Thanks to you, dear readers, it is just too hard to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Here's to 40 more years, my friends.
Jeffs Alaska Garden Calendar
Lights: OK, what did you think? I would change? One more time: What are you waiting for? Go out and get some sort of lighting system to keep you and your plants happy this winter. Remember, the bonus -- besides nine months of great growing -- is that you can use these lights to start the plants you will need for the meager three months left in the year.
Alaska Botanical Garden: Now is the time to join. Remember, it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Go to www.alaskabg.org.
Jeff Lowenfels has been writing this column for 40 years and never missed a week. He is the author of the best-selling, award-winning books "Teaming with Microbes" and "Teaming With Nutrients."