Biologist wreaks havoc in wife's garden

Out & About, by Howard Delo

The name of this column is Out and About, but, when it comes to holiday weekends, I prefer Home and Almost Alone. This past Memorial Day weekend signaled the official beginning of yet another summer season in Alaska.

To be honest, I didn't stay home all weekend. My teaching partner, Ron, and I taught our first class in boating safety on Saturday at Susitna Landing, mile 82.5 on the Parks Highway. The course is Alaska Water Wise and is the curriculum for recreational boating safety promoted by the state parks office of boating safety. We had fun teaching and, judging from the student course critique sheets, even managed to impress a few safety ideas on folks.

After class, I managed to get out and check the bear bait -- no activity yet. We never have had bear activity on that site until June -- why, I'm not sure. Anyhow, that's how my Saturday went.

After Sunday morning church, my wife suggested catching the matinee at the movie theater. We were interested in seeing the new Jim Carrey film, "Bruce Almighty." As best as we could remember, we hadn't been to a movie since "The Perfect Storm," maybe three years ago. I'm not much for the usual noisy crowds, out-of-control kids and people who always seem to walk in front of you during the movie because they need a candy bar or something.

The movie was good, though the crowd was just as I remembered. It'll take some spectacular kind of special effects movie to get me back into a theater seat again. Either that or another three or four years will go by and I will have forgotten about the noise and oftentimes rude behavior of the movie-going public. That's how I spent Sunday.

I actually managed to stay home on Monday. Memorial Day weekend also means that planting season has arrived. My wife was busy getting her hanging flower baskets planted and planning some of the other floral arrangements she enjoys planting every spring season around the yard. I helped, sort of.

While my wife is blessed with a green thumb, my thumb is the kiss of death to any plant it touches. I learned that a long time ago. Back in the '70s, one of my younger sisters gave me a fern-like houseplant and told me I didn't need to do anything to it -- leave it alone and it would gather everything it needed from the air. Up until then, every plant I had brought into my house had quickly died. This plant thrived, mainly because I didn't touch it, I thought.

A couple of years went by and the hanging plant was doing fine. I decided to change jobs and was readying my move when I found out the secret to that plant's success in remaining green instead of the withered brown I usually saw develop. The plant was dried, stuck in cardboard in the hanging pot and had been spray painted green. I had been "nurturing" the equivalent of a painted chunk of lumber for two years. I trust my sister meant well in her deception.

Anyway, back to Monday. We have a garden plot my wife developed when we first moved into the house, but which had been neglected for the past four or five years because of work and busy schedules. We decided to reclaim the garden. That's where I could help -- killing plants was my specialty.

I fired up the roto-tiller and chewed up the ground, first in one direction and then another, biting deeper into the ground with the second pass. I managed to miss her iris, but took out her currant and gooseberry bushes, thinking they weren't still alive -- plus two points for roto-tilling, but minus five points for taking out her favorite bushes.

That was my Memorial Day weekend -- I can't wait for Independence Day!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist living in Big Lake.