Book Review: The Gardener’s Year

Posted on March 15, 2020 by John Kevin Hickey

Karel Capek (1890-1938), the author of this little book, was an Czech author, playwright, critic and political philosopher who opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe. He wrote several science fiction novels, his most notable being “R.U.R”, where he introduced to the world the word “robot”. (Here’s his Wikipedia entry if you’re interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Čapek).

So you might think a treatise on gardening by this deep thinking philosopher would be a profound dive into the art of horticulture. You would be mistaken. The Gardener’s Year is a humorous and self-deprecating look at the foibles and manias of the gardener. Dare I say it is even a cute? Sure, why not. This is indeed a cute and fun book.

Mr. Capek delves into such subjects as the gardener’s eternal battle with the water hose, why it is unfair that the extra day in leap-years are in February as opposed to May, and how gardeners are able to recognize one another in public even if they should be strangers.

The most humorous chapter (in my opinion) is when a gardener goes on holiday. He or she asks a neighbor to look after the garden and leaves copious notes on what needs to be done. While away on vacation the gardener sends daily notes on new requirements and anxiously requests updates on the status of the garden. Eventually the gardener returns home early to take care of the garden himself. I could so relate!

Most of the book could have easily been written today, but there are chapters that are charmingly anachronistic. At one point Mr. Capek suggests scooping up horse droppings from the street to help amend the soil. While we modern gardeners no longer need to scrounge the roads for ruminate or equine crap, we are still locked into the same eternal battle to somehow improve our always less than perfect soil. Mr. Capek himself states in this book, “the gardener doesn’t cultivate flowers, he cultivates dirt”.

The chapters are broken into months, i.e. “The Gardeners June” that deal specifically with the gardeners trials for that particular month. There are additional chapters that deal with subjects such as rain, cacti and the gardening life. My e-book version was only 100 pages long, so it is a very quick read. If you enjoy gardening, or even if you don’t, you will enjoy this fun and breezy book about the gardener and his neurosis.

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Signs of spring’s impending arrival

Posted on March 9, 2020 by John Kevin Hickey

We are in the last few weeks of winter. Spring officially arrives in my neck of the woods at 9:50 p.m. on March 19th. By the way, that is the earliest spring equinox in over 124 years. In my opinion, the sooner spring arrives the better.

That being said, the months of March and April are two of the biggest teases in the whole calendar year. Yes, the average high temperature begins slowing climbing out of the cellar, but these two months are also among the snowiest parts of the year here in Colorado.

One day you’re enjoying a warm spring afternoon soaking up the sun in shorts and flip-flops, the next day you’re shoveling a foot of heavy and slushy snow off the driveway. That’s springtime in the Rockies for you.

Even though several parts of my yard and garden are still under piles of snow (the pile in the front yard has been there ever since we got our first snowstorm in October), the temps have risen high enough to thaw out the rest of the garden so that I have been able to start the annual clean up. While doing so, I have noticed several encouraging signs indicating that winter’s icy grip is weakening.

Pile of ice and snow that covers part of the front yard.
Ice and snow along the fence of the back border.

While I haven’t seen much in the way of swelling buds on the trees and shrubs yet, I have detected the first shoots of perennials and bulbs popping up here and there. These signs of green, however small, gladden the gardener’s heart.

Tulip bulbs pushing up through remains of last year’s garden.
Iris leaves making their appearance in the section behind the patio.
“Autumn Joy” sedum returning for another engagement.
I’ll be honest, I’m not 100% sure what this plant is. Could be a weed for all I know. However, it is green and around this time of year that is all that matters!

I always somewhat amused at how our perceptions of the weather changes depending upon what we are acclimatized to. One of the days I was working outside the temperatures were in the mid-50s, with a fairly stiff breeze that brought the wind chill down closer to 50 degrees.

But after months of winter cold, this was t-shirt weather as far as I was concerned. I even had most of the doors and windows open in the house (albeit with the thermostat turned down). All-in-all, a very nice and sunny late winter day.

Check in with me in about 7 months, say mid-to-late October, after we’ve had months of temperatures in the 80s, 90s and possibly into the 100s and the story will be completely different.

Temps are in the 50s and there’s a stiff breeze? Make sure the windows are sealed up tight, and crank up the furnace! Heck, maybe get the fireplace going! Damn it, where did I stash my jacket and watch cap? Boy, what a chilly autumn day!

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Another sign of spring’s imminent arrival is that Mr. Horny Woodpecker has returned. He has been banging away on my chimney cap every morning this past week, trying to woo any nearby lonely lady woodpeckers.

Jerk.

Woodpeckers are great for eating harmful bugs in the yarden, but I could do without the morning wake up call every single day from this bonehead.

How about you? What signs of springs imminent arrival have you seen so far?

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Bicycling: Motivational failure

Posted on March 5, 2020 by John Kevin Hickey

Do you struggle at times to stay motivated to exercise, even if you normally love the activity that gets you off your butt and into action? This is a normal situation for most of us, and this loss of motivation can occur for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we just don’t feel we are getting the results we want. Perhaps it’s because when life gets hectic it’s easy to make more time for ourselves by cutting out things that makes us healthier. Or, maybe, it’s just that we get bored doing what we are doing.

For myself, I have noticed that it is not unusual for me to lose interest in bicycling sometime in late July or early August. Some of my loss of motivation I suspect is due to the heat during dog days of summer, because I usually get my motivation back when the weather cools down in late summer and early fall.

But I also find that sometimes I just get bored riding, in spite of my efforts to find new places to ride or new destinations to explore. No matter how much you enjoy something, too much of it can lead one to get a little jaded.

With that in mine, I spent last winter researching ways to help me stay motivated for the entire riding season. If you’ve ever read a fitness magazine or online fitness article on ways to stay motivated to exercise, you no doubt have seen that the number one recommendation is usually to sign up for an organized event, preferably some kind of race. The theory being that wanting to finish well in a race will keep you highly motivated. I thought “what the hell, give it a try”.

In the spring I signed up for a metric century scheduled in late September. I figured that picking one so far out would allow me to get prepare all spring and summer, and would help keep my motivation going through my expected “slack” period.

And how did this work out for me you might ask? Well, truth be told, it sucked. I started doing the one thing I swore I didn’t want to do on my bicycle. I started “training” and no longer spent time enjoying my self and taking time to stop and smell the roses. Most of my rides last year were along the same route almost every ride. I knew the distances along this route, so I could track how far I was riding and compare it to the distance I was scheduled to ride. Unlike in years past, I didn’t seek out new routes or spend time off the bike exploring the landscape along the way. Nope, it was ride, ride and ride some more. I quickly grew bored.

Unfortunately, my upcoming race did nothing about my late summer swoon. Because I wasn’t enjoying myself as much, my motivation decline was actually worse than it has been in years past when the full heat of summer hit.

I’m not saying that this technique isn’t effective, or trying to discourage others from trying it. All I’m saying is that it isn’t effective for everyone. I know it wasn’t for me.

As a side note, I was unable to do the race anyway. Just a few weeks before the ride, I had two Grade 1 hamstring tears, one in each leg (and a week apart). Grade 1 are the most “minor” tears, but they still hurt like hell. I had huge bruises on the back of my legs for weeks, and my walking gait was very stiff for quite awhile. Riding was even worse.

This year my plan is to just get back to riding the way I like: going where, when and how far I want to, without the burden of training for a race, and stopping to “smell the roses” along the way.

As to my late summer “swoon”, this year I’m going to try something completely different. I’m not going to fight it. Instead, I’m going to try a different activity when the swoon hits all together. There is a local hiking club that doesn’t look too “hard core”. I’m thinking (hoping?) that getting off the bike and into my hiking shoes will be just the tonic for my loss of motivation.

We shall see.

What techniques or ideas do you use to stay motivated throughout the year? How successful are they? What doesn’t work for you?

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