Gardening: A Guide for the Horticulturally Impaired

For the last several years I have tried my hand at growing my own plant organisms of the "flora" variety using clay pots, potting soil, seeds of a certain type, and armed with my intuition and knowledge of the biological engineering required to produce a successful garden. It was soon after my very first expedition into horticulture that I realized that the whole "intuition and knowledge" thing is fairly important, and it's also something that I lack.

Unfortunately something that I do not lack in the slightest is stubbornness. So, every year I keep trying my hand at growing plants, and every year I realize that i suck massively at it. Why do I keep trying? I don't know. Trust me, if I knew, I wouldn't keep doing it.

So last year I did tomatoes. They struggled hopelessly for the months that I was in charge of their well-being. Frankly, they deserve a vegetation medal just for being able to survive on the irregular waterings they got (pretty much whenever I remembered to do it) and the ridiculous amount of sun that very nearly turned their leaves into something resembling kettle chips. When I went on vacation for abut three weeks and asked a friend to look after them, they thrived! I came back and they were twice the size with actual tomato flowers! Go figure. That's when I realized that it wasn't just bad luck that made me fail at growing plants, it was that I was just generally terrible at gardening.

In the years before that (in which the plants included green beans, carrots, and wildflowers) I had just chocked their utter failure up to the fact that Canada was just an inhospitable climate to grow anything. It couldn't possibly have been me. Not a chance.

In my five or so spring-summers of growing things (or attempting to, at least) I have learned a fair bit about the practice. Not necessarily about how to grow things, but mostly about how not to grow things. Have any of you seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? This guide will kind of be like that. If you haven't seen it. Good on you.

Don't plant a single seed and expect it to grow.
My virgin year of gardening I planted wildflowers, but being the niave gardener that I was, I only planted a single seed in each pot. So I had three pots, each with only one seed. As a result I waited nearly a month for... one tiny sprout in one pot and absolutely nothing in the other two. At that point I just dumped the remaining seeds, which was probably like... 40 into each pot in a last stitch effort to grow something. Mostly a last stitch effort not to feel like a failure at something as simple as germination. Dandelions do it all the freaking time when nobody wants them to, yet I couldn't get a freaking daisy to grow without effing it up! The secret is sheer volume. Simple as that. They don't write on the package that some of the seeds don't work, or that they're dead, or they malfunction, or... What's the proper term for a seed that doesn't grow into a plant?

Anti-Seed?

Don't underwater them.
Not watering your plants and expecting them to grow is like trying to have a cup of tea by sucking on a dry teabag. Unsuccessful. Water is one of those things that is key for photosynthesis, which is kind of a big deal to plants. However, if you are planning on neglecting your plants (which makes no sense, why would you plant them in the first place?) my recommendation is that you dehydrate them before they sprout and not after. It's a lot more cruel and depressing to let a little plantling shrivel up into a brown twig-like thing with crusty leaves than to let a seed just dry up under a hardened pot of soil. Think about it. Consider their feelings.

Don't overwater them.
This is where things get delicate. It's also the area that I cannot seem to master. I was tired of my plants getting dried up and frantically watering them in order to rescue them from the brink of becoming an interior decoration for pretentious sun-dried-flower connoisseurs. So I decided to just flood them with as much water as would fit in the pot, as frequently as I could. Turns out that just a great way to get your seeds to float to the top of your little garden pond of sadness and get waterlogged. Oh, and if it gets humid outside, the soil will start to mold. Just bad all around (unless you enjoy the smell of baked penicillin).

Don't grow carrots in a neighbourhood that is known to have an abundance of rabbits.
It was like a scene from a freaking Bugs Bunny cartoon. The moment my carrots were of any substantial size (which was, at most, about an inch long), I would wake up to find a quarter of them either gone, or dug up and dumped across my back yard. Thanks rabbits. It only took me an agonizing three months and daily waterings and depressing moments of feeling inadequate should I ever need to grow my own food in case of an apocalypse, to grow those gosh-darn carrots (that still only grew to a couple of centimeters) and then you had to go and eat them all! I'm glad you've been fed, there aren't enough of you in my neighbourhood already. Just watch, the next time I see the carrots you stole from me will be when they're all over the road after your innards have been scraped across the pavement by an SUV.

If it gets really hot, take them out of the direct sunlight.
Like I mentioned earlier, I almost made sun-dried tomatoes while they were still on the plant. The surfaces of the little tomatoes were actually getting sunburnt! I looked it up! I didn't even think they could do that!

I'll stop here because I've once again realized that I am really not the person that should be giving gardening advice to anyone.

I have decided that growing plants is a lot like raising children. If you don't have time to take care of them yourself, give them to someone who does, but preferably don't have them in the first place. Give them lots of water and protect them from sunburns, but they'll still always be happier with the babysitter.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

Stray by Sheri Joseph

Taking Public Transit: A Guide for Impatient Germaphobes

This morning I decided to make a list. This list would be of things that we all hate with every fragment of our substance but would complain tirelessly if they were to suddenly disappear. And while I did come up with some other options (corporations, government, traffic cops) I found something that went straight to the top of the list: public transit.

We've all been there. Public transit is never perfect, and never will be. The bus or train is always late, or dirty, or cold, or hot, or filled with pungent, obese vagabonds with crazy beards, three fingers, one shoe, grocery bags full of avocadoes, and penchants for small talk that involve the doors closing too fast on their imaginary friends.

In order to deal with these issues properly (and by "properly" I mean swiftly and tolerably), I have prepared a guide. This guide will deal with the primary complaints that (I feel) are most commonly associated with public transit travel: Time, Atmosphere, and People.

Time

In a regular school week, I spend about 500 minutes riding (or waiting for) city transit. That's approximately 8.5 hours (I'm rounding up for obvious reasons) every week. In more of my shoddy calculating skills (even with a calculator I can bastardize the act of calculation, I'm that good), that means I spend about 270 hours of my life every year on city transit and that's just me going to and from school! If I added in the summer months, working, going out with friends etc. it's more like 750 hours. If you take that number and throw it against the 8760 hours in a year, that means I spend approximately (and again I'm rounding up for obvious reasons) 9% of my year riding or waiting for public transit.

Even with that appallingly depressing number, I don't think it's the total number of hours that people complain about, but the number of minutes that they wouldn't have to spend waiting if the bus was always on time. Think of all of the other things I could be doing in the meantime! Watching ten extra minutes of The Best of Just for Laughs, resewing a button on my coat, petting my cat a couple dozen times, spending several more minutes debating whether or not I should make a lunch, playing peek-a-boo with my idiot dog through the window to the backyard, repeating my mantra about not making anyone cry that day, or even learning a phrase or two in another language. The world would just be a better place if I didn't have to wait for the bus.

Unfortunately for you, I don't have a solution for this one. Time is always going to be an issue with public transit. Unless you decide to become a bus driver, I just don't see a solution. Oh wait, here's one.
Get a car.
Oh and bring something along to help pass the time: an iPod (or other such portable music-playing device), a book, a crossword, a Rubik's Cube. Whatever gets you through the hard bits.

Atmosphere

Whether it's cold, hot, or just dirty, public transit has a reputation for being uncomfortable. My theory is that they want people on and off the train/bus as fast as possible, so if you hate being there... It works out perfectly. However, that doesn't help when you need to be stuck in a bus shelter or a cramped train car for a long period of time, whether you're waiting to get on or off. The best time of the day to travel by train is between 3:30am and 5:30am. It's right after they clean the trains, but right before the early morning rush. If you really hate the C-Train enough that you are willing to use it at these insane hours of the morning, I think it's time that you invest in a vehicle. Also, get some counselling, you obviously have bigger issues...

My advice is to find a seat that doesn't have stains, smudges, spills, crumbs, dirt, mold, gum, rotting food, strange smells, single items of clothing, balled-up newspapers, or abandoned infants already in the seat. That's just asking for trouble, for what you think might be just some crumbs, could be anthrax, and what appears to be an abandoned infant could actually be just a really creepy doll. No one wants to sit near that. My advice?
Look before you sit.

Trains and busses are also severely demented when it comes to their heating and cooling systems. In the summer, when it's insanely hot outside, they decide not to use air conditioning at all even though I know they have it. It's like they think "It's Calgary, I'm not going to turn on the AC, it's just going to get cold outside again in 35 minutes." So you walk from the hellfire that is Calgary in the summer, into a slightly more shady hellfire. In winter, they decide to use the equipment. They overcompensate the heat inside the bus because the temperature outside of it is about -30. In my mind, I associate getting on a bus in the dead of winter as being similar to what it must feel like to be thawed after being cryogenically frozen, only in about two-and-a-half seconds. My advice?
Wear layers.

People

If you haven't run into at least one weird guy on the train who will sit staring at you for a good eight stops, then blurt out how much you remind him of his dead mother/wife/child, then try to ask if you are by any chance related to pretty much anybody he's ever met (Are you Marnie's cousin? Or Sally Burns? No? How about Nathan Patricks? No? Really? Spitting image, I tell ya...), then you're just not doing it right.

Alright, let me cut to the chase. Here are your basic "targets of avoidance".
Avoid anyone who sniffles, coughs, wipes their nose on any article of clothing, or is covered in pustulating boils; unless you wish to catch the plague. Avoid anyone who appears to be holding their breath, they can be unpredictable (most likely, they're either crazy or about to explode in a fit of rage). Avoid children, yeah. Avoid anyone wearing glitter, you don't want that stuff on you, you'll never get it off. Avoid people holding open food or drinks, one quick stop and it's everywhere. Avoid overly happy people, they will want to talk to you, you don't want that. Avoid pretty much anyone that looks like they might be about to rape something, because you can never be safe enough.

How do you avoid them? That's easy enough, just don't sit or stand in their general vicinity. However, if there is only one seat left on the bus/train and it is next to one of these "undesirables", and you choose to stand... It's pretty obvious you're avoiding them. I say screw it, your comfort is more important than their freaky-ass feelings. You'll only have to deal with their insulted glances for 15 minutes, tops. My advice?
Put headphones in your ears, wear sunglasses and a thick coat, do not smile at all. This should keep people at bay. You may also wish to take it one step further and pull a hood up over your head and put your hands in your pockets. Nobody will bother you if you look like a criminal. The best way to beat them, is to become one of them...

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

Cell by Stephen King