Annual transformation includes ice cream binges

2008 annual weirdness plunges gardener into ice cream bingeing. …

My in-laws are refusing to come out of their house until the temperatures go up to 20-below. I am waddling about in my sleeping bag attire in a futile attempt to ignore Day 5 of proof that I live in an inhospitable place. It’s minus-10 degrees, the wind is roaring past my hood at 30 miles per hour, and I can’t believe there’s anything I really need at the grocery store.

The produce man tells me there’s no fresh basil and the produce is getting pretty thin because two of their trucks are stuck in Tok until the weather breaks. Seed racks with plump, tantalizing packets of summer leer at me as I drag my shopping cart dejectedly over to the frozen vegetable section. Yes, dear reader, I did what any sane Alaskan would do. I headed for the carbohydrate section and larded up on sugar and fat. I bought ice cream. Alaskans are weirdly the top consumers per capita of ice cold, sweet, frozen cream in the nation. Go figure.

I’m taking this as a sign that it’s time, once again, to venture into the weird world of garden news. I’m out of ice cream. A good laugh might generate enough heat to burn off those calories so I don’t wind up in the first bizarre contraption to make the garden news.

Yes, leave it to the Japanese to come up with a self-propelled suit that makes a gardener feel like Ironman. The idea behind the “farming robot suit” developed by the engineers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology is to keep old gardeners from pursuing less strenuous hobbies.

“Many a retiree has gotten a second wind in the garden” with an exoskeleton that “makes the grands look like androids.”

With eight small motors I see this as a possible gardening nightmare. What happens if your right arm motor freezes up just as you’re firing up the lawnmower? Will the lawn wind up looking like you’ve got crop circles? I don’t know. If I have to strap on a motorized suit to “make it easier to bend, kneel and pull out weeds and vegetables,” then I’d rather have a motorized bikini on the beach.

Garden vandals are all the rage these days.

Facebook aficionados in Leeds, U.K. signed up for a water fight at the Millenium Square garden. A bronze medal winner at the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show, the garden is a symbol of the city’s partnership with Nelson Mandela and his hometown of Durban. About 350 revelers armed with water pistols and buckets trashed the gardens and have made history on YouTube.

Wearing green T-shirts doesn’t apparently make one ‘green’ or thoughtful. Where are these idiots when you need the plants watered? After viewing the before and after images of the once beautiful garden, I think we need to award these cretins the Golden Manure Shovel Award. Throw some stripes on those green shirts and shackle them to a bed of chickweed for the summer. Go to /www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-564764/Pictured-The-moment-award-winning-garden-destroyed-hundreds-respond-Facebook-water-fight.html.

Italian sculptor, Franco Covill’s Fab Foliage topiary installation of Liverpool’s most famous band, The Beatles, seems to attract idiots as well. An 18-month effort to cultivate privet shrubs into adenoidal rockers was attacked by a local who apparently had issues with drummers. Ringo’s head was lopped off. Perhaps it was someone in a robotic farmer suit gone awry. Or some loon with shears humming “all you need is shrubs. La, ti, da, ti, dah!”

Growing giant veggies brings out the weird in gardeners. The 1,524-pound winner at the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, Calif., gained 30 pounds a day in August. Oregon gardener Thad Starr originally claimed it was just good soil and pampering, but, his real secret? “You’ll see me kiss all my pumpkins. You develop a bond with your pumpkins . . . They’re almost your friends.” Hey, if he can get $9,144 in prize money for kissing pumpkins what can you get for smooching giant cabbages?

Some people have a serious problem with garden gnomes. They ‘liberate’ them, make bizarre movies about them (see ‘Amelie’), and now German artist Ottmar Horl has installed hundreds of Nazi-saluting black garden gnomes as part of the Flanders Expo LineArt exhibition. Gnomes should remind us that fascist tendencies are always with us. “Achtung, get those chickweeds out of mein garten!”

This is too weird. Maybe I should stick with seed catalogs, a sun lamp and eat some more sugar. I think I’ll plug in the car and make an emergency ice cream run.

Happy New Year!

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is the owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.