The Holidays - 5

For the first Christmas in a decade, my African violets are blooming. I finally found a place to live that has enough light to allow them to set buds. After such a long time, this seems like a miracle, even though light was the top item on my list when I went out searching for a new apartment early last spring.

The red blooming violet with the thin white edge has been blooming almost since we got here in May. I feel that the plant wanted to bloom, wanted so badly to bloom, and when it finally got some sunshine, it exploded in to bloom. Just when I think it must be finished, at least for now, I see that new buds have formed hidden down in the leaves.

The red and pink blooming violets came to me directly from a breeder. They were just one tiny leaf each, in a cell-sized pot, when I got them. After a couple of weeks, I up potted them to three inch pots. When they had multiple leaves, I up potted them to four inch pots. They stayed in the four inch pots for a year or so. When they reached their current size, I planted them in the pretty decorative pots they are now in which are antique pots similar to the kind of pots my grandmother's African violets grew in.

The blue blooming violet came from a garden center and is in a new pot too. I didn't get it for the bloom color but for the leaf variegation. I'm a sucker for variegated leaves on any plant, but it is so unusual for violets to be variegated that I saw it and had to have it before someone else bought it. Now I love the blue bloom too.

I love all my houseplants, since besides dreaming, they are how I garden in the winter, but the African violets are special because they remind me of my grandmother. She seems a little closer this Christmas because the violets are blooming.

The Holidays - 4

I have, in my garage, an artificial Christmas tree I purchased from my employer at the time, some five years ago. It was a back model and cost me about $75, having retailed for close to $400. Now I'd never buy it at any price, but at that time I was immersed in products from China, and hadn't put together any notions about American economic sustainability (that no one else had either is no excuse since I started to be very concerned even before the 2008 financial debacle). I figured that any damage from manufacturing plastic had already been done a few years earlier. My employer was insisting that all new trees would be prelit, and this one was light-free. Prelit trees weight three times what naked trees do and that was a big issue for me. I didn't want a tree I couldn't handle myself.

I've put up the tree and decorated it two times, the year I bought it, and the Christmas my granddaughter moved from Texas to Minnesota when I wanted to show her all my heirloom blown glass ornaments. Every other Christmas, I can't bring myself to deal with the disruption of a seven foot tall tree covered with small breakable objects taking over my living space.

Last year I went to my favorite consignment shop and got a whole bunch of cool and weird little Christmas trees--some made from sequins, some made of trees with the corky bark still attached, and some that are miniatures of the seven foot tree, but cemented in to pots, and several other fun trees. Last year that seemed quite festive and I was very pleased. This year the trees just disappear. But I still don't want to put up a seven foot tree, drape it in four strings of regular lights and three strings of bubble lights, coat it in blown glass ornaments shaped like birds and horns and Teddy bears and angels and snowmen and icicles and baubles.

I have an idea about framing my slider in fake pine roping and lights and hanging a selection of the heirloom ornaments in the roping. I love the ornaments. They are charming and festive and some belonged to my great-grandmother, the one born in Norway, though the ornaments are completely American in an Edwardian sort of way. Others were Grandma's and all of the oldest ones were part of my childhood. Then I started collecting my own and those go back to 1975, the first year I made my own Christmas for my own family the first time. Some of those were gifts from my mother and others ones I bought for myself. I now have hundreds of ornaments. I'm especially fond of the birds.

We'll see what I decide to do, if anything. But I do long to be at least a little festive.

The Holidays - 3

Most natural Christmas trees are a crop grown on tree farms by farmers who work very hard to grow superior products. I don't have any problem with the farming practices of tree farmers. They plant more new trees than they cut each year, and care for the trees until cutting as though each was a loved child.

But once the trees are cut, everything changes. The trees are tied up in nets and thousands of them are thrown unto trucks and transported hundreds if not thousands of miles to Christmas tree lots in parking lots and empty fields and the occasional garden center. The cutting usually takes place in late September or early October so by the time a customer comes to the lot to choose a tree, it has been dead for about two months. If the weather was cold during October and November, the trees might still be somewhat fresh. The branches might be quite flexible and the tree's needles might still mostly be on the tree and rubbery. The tree might still smell like an evergreen. But as soon as the tree comes in doors, in a room that's 65 to 75 degrees, keeping water in the tree stand reservoir will be too little, too late. The tree will immediately begin to behave like a dead tree, browning and dropping needles and whole branches.

And that is supposing that the tree was one selected my a customer to become a Christmas tree. Many, many trees are never purchased. Hundreds are shredded and chipped into compost or dumped in a landfill.

I used to take the kids to a tree farm where we would stomp through three feet of snow, feet turning to ice, running from one tree to another out in a woods, until we found one that everybody agreed was perfect--not too tall, not too fat, no big branchless holes, and a straight trunk. Then we'd cut it down with a cross saw we got at a yard sale, drag it back to the car, and pay the tree farm people who would help tie it on top of the car. At home, we would keep it in the garage for a day, its trunk in a pail of water.

After Christmas, the tree would be stuck into a pile of snow plowed from the street to be a bird tree with peanut butter pine cones and suet seed balls, until the trash collector took it. Sometimes that wouldn't be until spring when I'd drape the tree with string and threads and drier lint, things birds treasure for building nests.

Like children, I want all Christmas trees to be wanted. I don't want trees cut unless someone wants that tree. I hate the waste. I want all people to go to tree farms to cut their own tree if they must have a natural tree in their home during the holidays. And if they can't do that, let's find some other alternatives.

The Holidays - 2

Our traditional Christmas Morning breakfast was a bit unusual, consisting of a half grapefruit with a maraschino cherry in the center; Kellogg's Rice Krispies with half-and-half; and a platter of breads, always containing Julagaga and Lefse and banana bread, and sometimes having other breads, such as date-nut or cranberry-orange, as well.

Julagaga is a Norwegian-American yeast bread. I've seen many recipes over the years, but mine, which I made up years ago, has candied fruit peel and cherries, raisins, and lots of freshly ground black cardamom. I also frost the newly-baked round loaves and then sprinkle the frosting with red and green Christmas sugar and put a whole red candied cherry in the center with a green cherry cut into leaf shapes--a poinsettia, of sorts.

Lefsa is a Norwegian-American flat bread made of mashed potatoes, flour and water. It is white with brown spots and we slather it with butter, sprinkle on brown sugar and wrap it up into a tube. I do not make lefse though I still own a lefse rolling pin and the long flat stick used to flip a sheet of lefse from the first side to the second when it's being baked on a lefse griddle. I do not own a lefse griddle.

My banana bread is made a bit differently, too. The butter is melted and poured on the batter with the nuts at the end, just before filling the pans. My fruit bread pans were given to me by my mother early in the time when I was running a household and I'm not sure if I could find pans like them now. They are aluminum, 3 x 6 x 3" and accommodate perfectly the batter of one recipe-worth of fruit bread. The slices from bread baked in my pans are square, with a slight rounding on one side, the top of the loaf.

I am very fond of date-nut bread, but none of the kids liked it. Years ago, I was willing and happy to eat the whole loaf. Now I'd much perfer to have one slice here, and possibly another there, and then go on into the new year eating more usual, everyday food. So it is with Rice Krispies. They are a Christmas treat, eaten at no other time. My kids did not eat Fruit Loops and that sort of thing. When I was pregnant with Brian, my first son, I read that children crave sugar-laden things like candy and Fruit Loops because they don't get enough fruit. Whether or not that's true, I fed the kids great amounts of fruit and almost no candy. And Rice Krispies was the special cereal, served with the grapefruit and bread on Christmas morning.

Banana Nut Bread

1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon soda
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup nutmeats, chopped
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix mashed bananas, sugar and beaten eggs together. Add sifted dry ingreients alternately with the milk. Add melted butter, nutmeats and vanilla. Pour into greased 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan and bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or until done.

The Holidays - 1

I don't remember what year it was when I discovered the recipe for lemon bars in my Farm Journal cookbook. Sometime in the years when I was running a household and raising four sons. The cook book called them lemon slices. They were in a section of the cookies chapter called either prize winners (meaning a blue ribbon at some state's fair) or heirlooms. There was a section of Christmas cookies too which is where I had discovered my cut-out sugar cookie recipe some years earlier. But I tried the lemon bar recipe that Christmas because in those days I tried new cookie recipes every holiday baking season. And until I made my first pan of lemon bars, I'd never had a lemon bar before, or heard of one, for that matter.

Lemon bars were a revelation. Lusciously rich, sweet and tart at the same time, and gooey and crisp at the same time too. Paradoxes are always interesting. These paradoxes were poetry in my mouth. If they weren't so rich I'd have eaten the whole pan, four dozen lemon bars!

The kids loved them too. Dennis especially loved them. He still asks for them. Last year I gave him a whole pan of lemon bars for Christmas, cut up, and stored one at a time in neat rows, then in neat stacks, with waxed paper between the layers, in a tin box. When I make them for me, I store them the same way, only in a plastic food container. They last into the new year usually, because I mostly serve them to guests, having one myself every now and again, but four dozen cookies is a lot of cookies.

Christmas isn't Christmas without lemon bars. Of course, I could go by Patrick's French Bakery and buy a small number--six, let's say. I now know that lemon bars are not the exclusive possession of Farm Journal and me. Bakeries even make them. But they're not quite the festive lemon bars I make for Christmas.

LEMON SLICES

Rich and lemony--these bars will become a "regular" with your family

2 c. sifted flour
1/2 c. sifted confectioners sugar
1 c. butter or margarine
4 eggs
2 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. lemon juice

1 tsp. grated lemon rind
1/4 c. unsifted flour
2 tsp. confectioners sugar
Confectioners sugar

Combine 2 c. flour and 1/2 c. confectioners sugar in a bowl. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Press mixture into ungreased 13 x 9 x 2" pan.

Bake in moderate oven (350o) 25 minutes or until golden.

Beat eggs until thick and lemon-colored. Slowly beat in sugar, salt, lemon juice and lemon rind. Combine 1/4 c. flour and 2 tsp. confectioners sugar. Stir into egg mixture. Pour over baked crust and return to oven and bake 25 minutes or until brown.

Cool in pan on rack. Cut into 2 x 1" bars. Roll bars in confectioners sugar. Makes about 4 dozen.

Roast Turkey

I always dither over how to prepare the turkey on Thanksgiving and it's that time of the year again. So I've read eighty recipes and read fifty discussions and here's what I've concluded: whatever I do will be fine.

I'm going to go to Byerly's and buy a fresh turkey that's been humanely raised to assuage my notions of food politics (I can't raise my own turkey, after all). Then I'll bring it home, bring it to room temperature, stuff it with lemon, orange, onion and rosemary, rub it with a butter and olive oil and dry herb mixture, then roast it at 425 for about 2 hours. I'll let it rest under foil and a towel for half an hour and then do the best I can to carve it.

While it's resting, I'll make gravy, serve up all the other parts of the meal (which have been assigned to the others), and converse with my guests. The food is important and I want it to be delicious, but the people are much more important.

Larkyn

My companion is a dachshund named Larkyn. He came to me when he was 10 weeks old, huge flappy ears and great big paws, with the softest fur imaginable. He came from a breeder of championship smooth red dachshunds who I found on-line. She emailed me pictures of Larkyn's parents, his mother Breeze and his father Chester (who Larkyn resembles very closely). When the litter arrived, she sent me pictures of all the little baby dachshunds, with their mother and playing dog with each other.

When he was a puppy, Dennis and Kevin, my second and fourth sons, still lived with me. Kevin often brought his whole tennis team around and they all picked up tiny Larkyn and petted him and passed him among them and laughed at him as boys will laugh at a puppy. Since I wanted Larkyn to be a social and welcoming dog, I encouraged all the interaction. I had no idea I would spend more of Larkyn's life being just the two of us. After years of raising children, I could not at that time imagine having a bathroom all my own or cooking for one or a dog who would only go for walks with me.

Larkyn is an AKC registered dog with champion parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, so he is beautiful. Many people find dachshunds to be comical but I think hounds are lovely, especially the smooth-coated ones. Dachshunds are the smallest breed of hound and make up in chutzpah for what they lack in size. Originally used to hunt badgers, dachshunds have very strong front legs and paws so they can dig into badger tunnels and very strong back legs so they can back out of the tunnel with the fighting badger clamped in their jaws. Once a dachshund clamps his mouth around something, he will not let go.

Larkyn's greatest adventure was the trip we took together, driving from Minneapolis to Austin, TX, where my oldest son, Brian, lives with his wife Wendy. I drove and Larkyn was my navigator. His job was to make sure we stayed on I-35. The first day, we drove to Wichita, KS, stopping at a dog-friendly motel, after nine hours of driving, with only a few stops at road-side rest stops. After a breakfast supplied by the motel, we got going early the next morning and reached Brian's house at about 4:00 having crossed the Oklahoma-Texas border around 11 in the morning. Texas really is huge! Both Larkyn and I were glad to get out of the car and stay out of it for a week. On the way back, Larkyn didn't want to stop for the night. I had to insist. I might have driven all the way through, but I hate driving in the dark. As it was, we shaved almost two hours off our return time and we were both very glad to get home. We were also really glad we went and when I go anywhere else, Larkyn is the first to want to go too.

Mostly we walk and where we live now, we have lots of interesting paths to follow without leaving the grounds of our apartment complex. Larkyn walks with his nose to the ground and sometimes wants to go under spruces or through large shrubs, places he could manage to go, but I couldn't comfortably follow. We haven't lived here through a winter so I'm not sure what will happen to our walks once snow is on the ground. Larkyn doesn't like walking in the winter because his paws freeze. If we go too far, I end up carrying him home and since he weighs 25 pounds, I try to avoid long outdoor winter walks. We can walk around the apartment inside when it's cold.

Larkyn is eleven years old now and a little gray around the muzzle. He hasn't slowed down any though and I'm sure that if he encountered a rabbit, he'd take off after it and probably catch it, as he did when we lived in Minneapolis. Dachshunds are tenacious hunters when they get a chance. They are tenacious dreamers too: sometimes Larkyn awakens me in the night, having a noisy and energetic dream, probably about hunting badgers. Or maybe he's in the car, keeping me on I-35.

My Apartment

I like my apartment because:

1. It is big, or, at least, the livingroom and bedroom are big. The deck is big too. The bathroom is big enough. The dining area is large enough for a table that will comfortably seat six.

2. There are three closets. Three!

3. There is lots of light. My African violets, that didn't bloom for three years, bloomed once I moved here last May.

4. The walls are tan, not white like most apartments.

5. I have a gas stove.

6. My livingroom and deck look out on a park-like setting with bermed trees, shrubs, evergreens and grass, and picnic tables and benches here and there.

7. There's an indoor swimming pool.

8. The carpet was brand new when I moved here last May. The walls were freshly painted, too, but that's normal with apartments.

9. There's a squirrel's nest in the linden tree just beyond my deck and many different birds visit my feeder. A rabbit lives under the spruce nearest to my deck.

10. Most of the time, it's very quiet here.

11. Larkyn likes to sniff around when we go out for walks, probably because everyone here seems to have at least one dog and there are rabbits and squirrels.

12. I'm a ten minute drive from work.

Two of My Favorite Stores

I had to go through Uptown today so I took advantage of the opportunity to stop at Penzies and Magers and Quinn Bookstore, two of my favorite places to shop. Although I only needed nutmeg, I walked around Penzies, opening the sniffing jars to take a whiff of this and that. There were two kinds of nutmeg and I took a great deal of time deciding which I liked best. Since I'm a big nutmeg fan, that decision was very difficult. I chose East Indies over West Indies, thinking it was just a bit richer smelling. With the holidays coming soon, there's no question I'll use lots of nutmeg in the next few months.

At Magers and Quinn I pretended I had a hundred dollars to spend. Even at half price, the decisions were very difficult. Many paperback novels at roughly eight dollars each? Four or five cookbooks? Two gorgeous art books and a map of Africa? Maybe a book about trees and shrubs and a landscape design book? Finally I decided to get one of everything and by that time the money I'd put in the parking meter was ready to run out so, the hundred dollars and decisions being in fantasy, I left, happy with my little, but potent, jar of nutmeg.

Spruce Tips

My work world has moved outside to what is called the veranda where spruce tips and other greens are stored. My job is to tell people how many bundles of spruce tips or boughs they need for the number and sizes of pots they are filling. A 12 inch diameter pot, for example, requires two or three good-sized spruce tips and a bundle of white pine boughs. But I encourage folks to add red-twigged dogwood sticks and juniper boughs, cedar boughs and red-berried twigs, anything but plain greens. I encourage folks to regard the pots as a flower arrangement. Have fun and please your own eye. Be creative and have fun.

I don't know if people south of Minnesota bother with spruce tips since they can plant a boxwood shrub or an upright juniper in a pot for the winter. We can do that in Minnesota too, but it'll be dead as soon as it thaws in the spring, so few people waste the money on a rooted plant. Spruce tips are the Minnesota answer to that welcoming potted evergreen by the front door.

Or, in my case, on my deck, where my container garden grew last summer. I've missed having anything green on the deck since the horrible frost of early October, so my two pots and two baskets of evergreens are very pleasing even though November is warmer, drier, and altogether more delightful than October, when we got the year's worth of rain day after raw, cold day. I had a great time putting them together, actually following my own advise. I was creative, pleasing my own eye and having fun.

A Cardinal

This morning, as I opened my lap-top, I noticed a bright red, male cardinal sitting on a branch of my now-bare ash tree. Since cardinals generally don't lie far from where they're hatched, he must live near enough to be a regular visitor. Safflower seeds and black-hulled sunflower seeds should insure that he returns.

I've been planning to put some shell-on peanuts on the deck to see whether I can lure black-capped chickadees who are my favorite bird to watch because right-side-up and up-side-down are meaningless to them, the acrobats of the northern bird world.

Anything will draw finches who are considered nuisances by many. I would like them more if I could have a pair instead of a flock, but their internecine bickering can be entertaining for a while and if it becomes too warlike, I can withdraw food for a few days. Many people believe that once they start feeding birds, they must continue forever and don't begin in the first place. Birds will certainly appreciate any and all offerings, but they won't become dependant on your food alone. If you don't refill feeders for a few days, or even weeks, they won't die. They'll find other food sources, whether another feeder, naturally growing plant seeds and fruits, or insects hiding under tree bark for warmth.

Feed birds if and when you want. I have a tube feeder for seeds and I'll also put out peanuts and pieces of bread. I won't do it on days when I'm too busy to enjoy the bird show my food will create, but when I'm home to enjoy the birds, I'll feed them.

Composting

The worst thing about living in an apartment is that I can't compost my kitchen waste. Well, I could spend a small fortune on a system that could go on my deck, but that seems more wasteful than putting kitchen waste into the disposal, as I do now. I'm hoping to get a community garden plot next spring and put in a compost pile as part of my garden. But, until then, I can't compost.

I do fantasize about a world in which other apartment dwellers in my complex would join me in wanting to garden and we could not only save our kitchen waste for good use, but make small garden plots here on the grounds of our apartment.

But then I remember that some people can't hang on to wrappers until they find a waste can, but drop them in the hallways. And other people can't pick up their dog's waste. Just as people like that make life in general less pleasant for the rest of us, people like that would make gardening iffy, I'm afraid. Children and dogs would go trampling through newly planted beds, or if plants actually grew and bore fruit, theft would be a problem.

Far better to wait for an opportunity to have a community garden plot among others who value the endeavor, knowing as they do how much effort and love is involved.

Consignment Stores

One of my favorite consignment acquisitions is my bird vest from a shop in Austin, TX. For years, I've visited consignment stores anywhere I go, usually finding something wonderful or unusual and, since it's a consignment shop, cheap.

I don't know any longer whether I most enjoy how green reusing is, or whether it's the cheapness, or whether it's the unusual that most appeals to me, but nobody else has a bird vest like mine.

I also like hunting for the consignment shops. Even in the Twin Cities, I'll get wind of a new place I've never been to before and then I'll have to go find it. Of course, it'll be located in some strange strip mall in a suburb I've never been in before. Or it'll be in a house turned into a store in St. Paul, where I invariably get lost. Mapquest helps a little bit. But getting lost may be part of the ongoing charm of the hunt.

Right now, I'd like to find two things: a pair of brown leather boots and a plant stand. But my experience tells me, I'll find a treasure I'm not looking for. That's what my bird vest was. I may have been looking for a sweater that day or hoping to find a piece or two of hand-thrown pottery. I don't remember what I may have thought I wanted to find. Because what I did find was the bird vest and after that all other delights vanished. I had my treasure.

October

October is usually my favorite month. Temperatures are perfect for outdoor chores and exploration. The sun causes red and yellow leaves to glow and evergreens begin their subtle color changes. Perennials become architectural and only the hardiest annuals persist, though many roses are undaunted, looking lovelier than in summer when they were under attack from fungus and insects.

But this autumn (2009) has been dismal. Cold, gloomy wet day after day after day. Saturday, October 3, Larkyn and I went out for our morning walk to find ice on hard surfaces and snow on the grass. At 8:15 all the green ash leaves fell off the trees simultaneously. Later in the morning, the ginkgos dropped all their leaves too. Not gold leaves, mind you, green leaves lacking any fall color.

Sunday morning, the snow was still around. The wind was still bitter and mean. The day never brightened. At midweek, it snowed again. Then it warmed just enough so the constant precipitation was rain. The weekend of the 17-18th was pleasant, the only nice days all month. The third week of the month was cold, dark, and rainy again.

Now starting week four and heading toward Halloween, I'm hoping for a better November, a mild sunny one that brings out the Box Elder Bugs and holds off bundling up in heavy parkas for a few more weeks. Today a milky sun has appeared, giving me some hope.

My Tree

One of the things I like most about my apartment is the ash tree just beyond my deck, making me feel like I live in a tree house. It also keeps me from seeing the apartments across the yard from me, a lovely way to attain privacy. Since I like to write out on the deck, the tree also gives me shade on warm days. Finally, the tree is home to a mourning dove, squirrels, finches, sparrows, and possibly robins, all of which provide me with entertainment.

But today all the leaves, not even having turned color, fell. Three things conspired to bring about this odd occurrence: first, the very dry conditions going back to the spring of 2007. Next, the precipitous temperature drop last night, going down into the mid-20's and remaining that low for a number of hours. Finally, the strong wind whipping the tree violently to and fro.

Now my tree is bare. I can see the building across the yard. The squirrels' nest is clearly visible in the top tree branches. Many, many months will pass before the leaves and their kind protection return.

Creeping Charlie 2

When I was in college taking creative writing workshops, the most common short story featured a survivor as protagonist. Usually, this was a young person who had an epiphany over surviving his or her disfunctional family. The story began with the confused and incompetent young person, perhaps unable to commit to a relationship with a would-be partner. Next there would be a flashback or two, perhaps to the young person's parents interacting. Then the epiphany. The story would end, perhaps with the relationship progressing or, more ironically, with the relationship ending, a double survival. Back in the day, irony was even more valued in creative writing workshops than stories about survivors.

I was reminded of all this as I thought about why I admire creeping Charlie. Creeping Charlie is a survivor. A perennial ground cover with a matlike growth habit, creeping Charlie puts out runners, roots, and then the new runner plant puts out runners and roots. It advances vigorously, especially in thinning grass such as the grass trying to grow in shade, or grass suffering from drought. Creeping Charlie also blooms and then drops tiny seeds into the ground early enough in the growing season to germinate even more new plants. Creeping Charlie eludes eradication, resists control, goes on its own merry way almost all the time. If a plant could thumb its nose, creeping Charlie would.

I admire creeping Charlie's tenacity. I also think it's an attractive plant, emerald green and lush from spring until autumn, with a lovely blue flower in May. In the heat of summer, when turf grass toys with dormancy unless provided with copious amounts of water, creeping Charlie is sprightly and green, water or none. Under fall's fallen brown leaves, creeping Charlie is still green. I think it's green under a foot of snow. And regarless of what kind of winter we have, there's creeping Charlie, back again for a new season, in the spring. That's a survivor!

Creeping Charlie

The weed I'm most frequently asked to help eradicate is Creeping Charlie. Many people feel a deep antipathy, verging on the neurotic, toward the plant. Not only are they willing to dump poison all over it, they are often seriously considering suing neighbors who are making no effort to destroy their Creeping Charlie which is creeping closer and closer to the shared property line. I imagine these people standing in their yards in the evening, watching the lawn, perhaps bringing a yard stick to measure the progress Creeping Charlie has made while they were at work. When they come to me, often carrying a sample in a ziplock bag, they are desperate, as though being attacked by an evil power from a previously unidentified planet.

I want to say to them, it's not about Creeping Charlie, you know. But of course I can't. I lead them to the Weed Free Zone, the Fertilome company's magic Creeping Charlie elixir. It costs about twice what other somewhat similar formulations sell for and does a good job of getting rid of most broadleaf weeds for a year or so. Some people buy two or three quarts of concentrate, apparently believing that they should stock up, have a six year supply on hand. Other people, not making eye contact with, choose the smallest jar, mumbling about giving it a try, waiting to see, as though believing that Creeping Charlie has mutated since Weed Free Zone was invented. The new, improved Creeping Charlie is invincible.

Some Saturdays during late July and August, peak weed season, I run out of Weed Free Zone about mid-afternoon. Customers come looking for it and, not finding it, finding instead an empty spot on the shelf, express despair, as though not only are there no other garden centers that sell Weed Free Zone, but my garden center will never get more, and the Creeping Charlie will fill every yard in the area, exterminating grass. I offer to take their name and phone number to call them the minute I see the new supply arrive. Some rejoice, like a nearly-drowned person pulled safely to land. Others wave their hands no. No, no, no. The Creeping Charlie will take over. It's inevitable. No amount of good customer service can halt inevitability.