The Grumpy Gardener by Bender Steve

Author:Bender, Steve [Bender, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxmoor House
Published: 2017-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

[RULE #20]

Choose the perfect tree for a small space.

People often ask me for a recommendation. My first thought is Japanese maple; it’s my second thought too.

JAPANESE MAPLE

Everyone who knows how much Grumpy loves fall color knows how miserably depressed he is when he doesn't get a colorful show. Fall color where I live in central Alabama was awful recently. I called it “Fifty Shades of Mud.” Yet one person in Tyler, Texas, showed me no mercy. Every 15 minutes, she posted a picture on Facebook of yet another glorious Japanese maple in her yard. Please, Sharon, in the name of all that is sacred and merciful, stop.

She would not. Sharon is the past president of the North American Branch of the Maple Society. Think about this for a minute. This is obviously a group of disturbed individuals who live, breathe, think, and dream about Japanese maples. The fact that she belongs to the “North American Branch” of this organization means that this fanaticism exists worldwide. What do we really know about these people?

Now don’t get me wrong. I like Japanese maples (Acer palmatum ). When a person asks me for my number one choice of a small tree for a small yard, my answer is always the same—Japanese maple. Its genetic diversity permits it to exist in more colors, shapes, and sizes than any tree I know. It can be upright. It can be weeping. It can be 30 feet tall. It can be 3 feet tall. You can grow it in the yard. You can grow it in a pot. Its leaves can be scarlet, crimson, burgundy, purple, orange, salmon, yellow, pink, or variegated. (And blue, if you spray-paint them, which I’m sure Sharon is doing right now.)

But not in my yard. I get dirt, taupe, sandstone, beige, cardboard, and mud. For example, I have a 20-year-old maple near the street called ‘Osakazuki’ that’s supposed to display some of the prettiest fall color of all. This year, like every other year, it turned muddy red for two days and then brown.

This is so cruel. While she posts another photo of an incandescent maple in her yard. I can hear this Maple Maven cackling all the way from east Texas.

I have begged Sharon to stop her sadism, but she will not. She suggested that I become a member of the Maple Society, of all things. Next, she stated her intention to buy the empty house across the street from me and plant 150 Japanese maples there.

This is a person familiar with waterboarding.

But, as always, Grumpy will take the high road. I won’t post pictures of my cat on Sharon’s Facebook page every day or pepper her with invites to play Candy Crush Saga.

I will, however, remind this rabid Texas A&M football fan of the time I derided the Aggie Hort Department for introducing new Texas bluebonnets whose colors included pink and white. “What were [they] thinking when they took the blue out of bluebonnets?” I asked. “I mean, who wants

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