Fifth Grade Math on a Stormy Sunday in February

February is a fickle month in New England.  It can rain, it can snow, it can sleet. Sometimes it can do all three within a few hours. Today happens to be one of those days.

The TV stations had it all laid out

Last evening at 10 p.m. it was beginning to snow. The forecast for southwest suburban Boston was for four to five inches of snow overnight, changing over to sleet and freezing rain around 4 a.m., and then to all rain at 7 a.m. with a likely accumulation of about an inch of water total.

Though having been born and raised in Florida, I have learned a few things about winter. One of them is that rain does not melt snow, especially when the rain falling is about 35 degrees. Instead, the snow becomes waterlogged. You are essentially shoveling water, which is not an especially healthy thing to do. And, if you don't shovel it, the waterlogged snow turns to concrete overnight.

If I waited until the system moved
out, the snow would be waterlogged

As I watched that forecast, I wondered how much water I would have to shovel if I stayed inside, snug and warm, and waited until the rain passed? That’s the kind of math problem I used to enjoy solving back in fifth grade: area (or volume) multiplied by weight.

The area: I have a two-car garage roughly 20 feet wide, and the depth of the parking/turning area is also about 20 feet. OK, 400 square feet. The driveway is ten feet wide and 60 feet long. That’s another 600 square feet. Plus, there’s a sidewalk that’s four feet wide and 50 feet long. Two hundred square feet. Add them up and you get 1200 square feet as the area to be shoveled.

At this point, you’re wondering to yourself, why isn’t this guy using a snow blower? 

Good only for light,
powdery snow

That’s a good question with a complicated answer. I do, in fact, have a snow blower; and it works. But, for very sound environmental reasons, I have a crushed stone driveway rather than asphalt. So as not to scoop up and throw stones from the driveway into the garden, I mounted the maw of the snowblower mounted on skis. It works wonderfully well on light, powdery snow. It does not work at all on wet, heavy snow (and neither do most snow blowers going over asphalt).

Back to the math problem. There are two numbers that have stuck in my head for almost seven decades. The first the mnemonic, “a pint’s a pound the world around”. The other is that a cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds.

The sidewalk

I could solve the math with the pint/pound thing, but it’s easier with the cubic foot method. If I have 1200 square feet of driveway and it was covered to a depth of one foot, I would have 1200 gallons of water which would weigh 74,880 pounds. But I have one inch, which is one-twelfth of that or 6,240 pounds of water… just over three tons. Three tons. That is a monumental amount of water to pick up and move one shovelful at a time.

It even has a hood! 

I do not want to shovel three tons of water. So, I awakened at 5:30 a.m. and dressed for sleet. Twelve years ago, Betty took me to Niagara Falls; a place she had been to numerous times as a child. We went in mid-summer and, as a special treat, we took the Maid of the Mist boat right up to the American Falls. Because there is lots of spray involved in going to the business end of a waterfall, your passage on the boat includes a thin plastic rain slicker. Most people leave them behind; I thought it was a fun memento and brought it home.  Well, this morning I found it and decided it was the ideal complement to my ratty jeans and duct-taped snow boots.

Down to the stone driveway

I started at 5:45 a.m.; got the sidewalk and lower part of the driveway done, then came in and had breakfast, The snow was dense, but not nearly as heavy as it would be later in the morning. I worked for two hours on the first shift, then another two shoveling the parking pad. Both sessions involved either sleet or rain.

I would guess I moved just over a ton of water. That’s pretty good exercise for a 75-year-old body. Do I want to do it again anytime soon?  

Hell, no.

Spring Training - Community Garden Style

In baseball, teams take a winter break. Then, in early February, busses ferry supplies to Florida or Arizona. Pitchers and catchers come back. Then, the team reunites and the old guard gets to look over the crop of rookies. In late March, the regular season begins.

Amazingly, much the same happens in community vegetable gardens, or at least at the Medfield Community Garden I have overseen for the (gulp) past 15 years in Boston’s southwest suburbs.

Back at the end of October, the garden shut down for the winter. On November 1, I sent an email to all ‘gardeners in good standing’ asking if they wanted to return for the 2025 season. Once I had those results in hand, I put my feet up for a few months. Except I didn’t. That November email also asked gardeners what went right and what went wrong over the course of the season. I mostly focused on the ‘where we screwed up’ responses and figured out ways to address them, just like any good team manager.

Public enemy Number One

This past season, what was on everyone’s mind were “critters” digging under or chewing through fences, and the stronger fences everyone was putting up to keep the critters out. The complaint, though, was the hard work of taking down those fences in the fall, only to have to re-install them five months later. To save the three days of work at the beginning and end of the season, could the fences stay up?

Putting up and taking down fences every
season was the chief complaint

That’s what I did over the winter break: devised a rationale that would get the approval of the Baseball Commission – er, the Medfield Conservation Commission. Last evening, the Commission voted to try a ‘fences-stay-up’ experiment for the winter of 2025-2026. I don’t expect anyone to offer to carry me into the garden on their shoulders. More like I’ll get a bucket of Gatorade dumped over me,

I try to make everyone happy. It isn't easy.

On January 1, I emailed returning gardeners asking if they really plan to come back and, if so, do they want to stay in the same size plot and same location. A surprising number of respondents wanted a change. Seven gardeners with half plots were ready to move up to full ones (from 300 to 600 square feet). One gardener elected to downsize. Them I sent around the plot plan to those returning gardeners showing the plots that would be available to new gardeners. Half a dozen gardeners ask to be switched to greener pastures (or richer soil, maybe). After three weeks, everyone was happy with their location.

On February 1, I asked returning gardeners to pony up for their plots. At the same time, I reminded everyone that the best seeds aren’t found on the shelves of big box stores. The gardening equivalent of those team busses began collecting and disgorging seed orders as gardeners began going through the Johnny’s of Maine and Pine Tree Seed catalogs and web sites.

The wheelbarrows need to work
to make food cupboard 
pickups possible

At the same time, the management roster was pulled into shape. Yes, community gardens have committees. The most important one deals with food cupboard collections. We now have two dedicated 600 square foot plots where volunteers grow food specifically to deliver to food pantries in Medfield and nearby Medway. In advance of every distribution date, wheelbarrows need to be set up at the front of the garden and ‘sweeps’ made to collect the produce contributed by gardeners from their own plots. In weeks where both pantries are having distributions, there will be twice-a-day sweeps four days a week. It takes a lot of coordination.

Two people are required to mow the perimeter of the garden using lawn mowers either donated or salvaged from the town’s transfer station. Another person is needed to keep the lawn mowers running and yet another volunteer has the inglorious task of keeping a fleet of 12 wheelbarrows upright. Did I miss anyone? Probably.

I collected lots of names

On March 1, I will throw open the garden to new registrants. I have 18 spots on the roster (OK, gardens) to fill. Fortunately, I collected 22 names at Discover Medfield Day. How many of those people will want to sign up? I have no earthly idea. That’s why I do a full-court press (sorry, that’s basketball) to get as many interested gardeners as possible. Ideally, I’ll even have a wait list.

Staking the garden for the new season

In the last week of March, two events take place that tell everyone the new season has started. There’s a talk on vegetable gardening at the town library on Saturday morning which usually draws a standing-room-only crowd (new gardeners are “strongly encouraged” to go). The nice part is old hands also show up and introduce themselves to the rookies. The offers to help are genuine. Friendships are born.

And, the next day, a team of a dozen volunteers marks out the garden and puts down 240 stakes to show the corners of each full plot. It is usually a comedy of errors, but it gets done. Eventually.

As soon as that’s finished, I throw the garden for everyone to start doing their thing. Except, just like those painful-to-watch early season baseball games where the snow has to be shoveled out of the stands, it’s really too cold to start planting in New England. But, it’s all part of the tradition, and who am I to question it?

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Jasiecki

 This is a blog about gardening, which can be reasonably defined as growing, nurturing, caring, and cultivation.  However this edition of the Principal Undergardener will not be about the gardening of flowers or vegetables but, rather, the nurturing of young people's minds, the cultivation of their intellects, and urging the growth of their curiosity.  More specifically, it will be about a very special gardener of young minds: a teacher named Dorothy Jasiecki.

Dorothy Jasiecki circa 1968

I am by trade a writer, and I say that with pride.  For 35 years, I plied a very different craft that occasionally required me to put words to paper, but which I can say with complete honesty never gave me anything like the personal and professional satisfaction I have felt for the past 19 years.  The reason this blog exists is because writers, like (for example) pianists, need to practice.  Just as a pianist does not sit down at a concert grand and begin playing ‘The Appassionata’, so a writer does not go to his or her keyboard and begin writing that Great American Novel.  The pianist begins with ‘etudes’ – literally, study pieces - that stretch the fingers and make the mind warm up. 

Me in 1967.  The less
said, the better

This blog is my equivalent of an etude.  It is about gardening because I am married to a virtuoso gardener and I am her helper, and also because writing about gardening is considerably more interesting than opining about, say, politics or wine.  Each entry is as carefully thought through as a short story and is polished to fit within a prescribed length.

I am a writer because, from September 1964 until June 1967, Dorothy Jasiecki taught me to love language, literature and words.  She had been recruited by a young principal named John M. Jenkins to teach at a spanking new school, Miami Springs Senior High .  I was in one of her classes that first year strictly by happenstance.  The following two years, she was my English teacher by design.

Me, as I look these 
days. The less
said the better

Miss Jasiecki (the notion of calling teachers by anything other than ‘Mister’, ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.’ lay many years in the future) created and followed a lesson plan that ensured we read and mastered the material that would appear on tests.  What made her so extraordinary was how she conveyed that information and that she demanded we go far beyond what was required by the Dade County Board of Public Instruction.  She effectively had a second syllabus, one of her own devising, that was intended to stretch – and open - our minds. 

Our reading list was designed to
stretch the mind

Part of her methodology was to reach deep into her own knowledge of literature to awaken our own senses.  She spent much of one class session reading Beowulf in a way that I felt I was gathered around a hearth fire, listening to oral tradition being made.  We delved into poetry far beyond Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost and spent several days dissecting The Wasteland and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; titles that almost certainly were not sanctioned by the bureaucrats at Lindsey Hopkins.

The balance of her teaching style was to challenge us to think about what we were reading.  To be in her class meant you came to school prepared, and ‘prepared’ meant you had not only read the assigned book but that you had understood it.  And God forbid you came into class spouting something from Cliff’s Notes.  (I tried that once and was found out almost immediately.)

All of this was leavened with philosophy and humor.  The final five minutes of class could comprise a discourse on the importance of shaking hands or a treatise on elbows.  These ‘sermonettes’ as we called them stretched us further still, if for no other reason than because we had no idea of what was coming next.

Miss Jasiecki was a tough grader.  I made very few ‘A’s’ in her class.  But I tried harder than I did in any other subject both because she expected it and I knew it pleased her. 

She was recognized for her skills.  Florida named her a ‘Star Teacher’ and sent her on a statewide tour with a similarly high achieving student from my class.  My great hope is that she inspired other educators as much as she inspired us.

At the 2007 reunion with Ms. J.
That's classmate Jane Greer at right

In 2005, I made a detour on a business trip to Tucson, where she had retired, and took her out to dinner.  I last saw Miss Jasiecki  at my 40^th reunion and spent both evenings listening to her reminisce about her years in the classroom.  Time had taken its toll on her body, though not on her mind.  It turns out that her best memories were of her first years at Miami Springs and at her predecessor school, Norland High. 

She passed away in 2015.  Were she alive, she would have turned 99 on October 30th.  And, in an important sense, Dorothy Jasiecki is still very much alive in 2024.  She touched thousands of lives and, for a certain number of them (including mine), she left an indelible impression that transcends time.  She still looks over my shoulder as I write; ‘tsking’ at lax grammar and use of ‘easy’ adjectives.

Ms. J circa 2015

We did not all become writers or poets.  We went into computer science, construction, sales, engineering or education; we raised families or went into the military.  But we all learned how to think and, regardless of future occupation, that skill made us better individuals.

Principal Jenkins attracted a pool of talent in those first years that made Miami Springs a school unlike any other.  I had many teachers – Jack Gonzalez, Agustin Ramirez, and Phil Giberson come immediately to mind – who were outstanding and committed to quality education.  But I can draw a direct line back to Dorothy Jasiecki and say, without hesitation, that she was the teacher who most inspired me.  I would not be the person I am today were it not for her.

Happy birthday, Dorothy Jasiecki, and thank you for being the teacher you were, and the inspiration you still are.

Facebook Follies

What I saw from the driveway

Two days ago, I walked out in the early morning light to collect the newspapers at the end of our driveway. (Yes, there are still dinosaurs who subscribe to the print edition of newspapers.) As I turned to walk back to the house, I paused to admire the way the trees in our front garden had turned wonderful shades of yellow, gold, orange and red.

I though to myself, “I ought to take a picture of this.” And so, I went back into our home, found my camera (yes, there are still dinosaurs who take photos with ‘cameras’ instead of their phones), and took shots from several angles.

The resulting post

There was one photo that looked especially attractive. I thought to myself, “I ought to share this with the world on Facebook,” (Yes, I know only dinosaurs still use Facebook.) The perfect audience would be a group catering to people who either have created, are in the process of creating, or yearn to create what is called a ‘Home-grown National Park’ – a phrase coined by naturalist and rock star Doug Tallamy.

The photo, I thought, ought to bear the names of the trees and shrubs in it. And so, I painstakingly used Microsoft Paint (yes, dinosaurs, etc.) to place little circles of white with numbers in them at unambiguous points. The post was a marvel of economy while providing the photo’s location and all necessary botanical information, right down to the common name and Linnaean binomials.

By early afternoon, my photo and caption was posted. I was pleased with my contribution, I went off to do other things. When I returned home, I checked Facebook. To my pleasant surprise, my post had drawn almost a hundred ‘likes’ and a dozen comments. This was wonderful. The endorphins flowed through me. 

Within an hour, though, there was a naysayer. I was using ‘cultivars’ – cross-bred versions of native species that offered a new variant with, say, stronger color or a different shaped leaf. The author of this comment said my poor choices meant native pollinators likely wouldn’t recognize the plant. I had exchanged the needs of native birds, bees and butterflies for the human-centered greed for something prettier.

Almost as inexcusable, I had planted native species out of their range. Yes, the oak leaf hydrangea is a native. But its native range ends in Tennessee. It has no business being grown up here in cold, frozen Massachusetts. I was apparently inviting unwitting middle-south-dwelling pollinators to come north where they would perish with the first hard frost… and it would all be my fault!

I made the mistake of responding. I explained our property had been an ecological disaster zone; full of swallowwort and burning bush. In return, I was taunted again. “So, you like those cultivars, huh?” I replied with an extensive list of native species that weren’t in the photo.

I had an idea. I had a great video of Monarchs swarming over my Vernonia (ironweed). Moreover, these Monarchs were feasting on a cultivar! Mine was Vernonia ‘Iron Butterfly’!  Take that! I posted it.

And got even more scorn. I was serving up Starbucks coffee to migrating butterflies that needed a pre-marathon pasta bar with all the trimmings. By wasting time and energy for my non-nutritious cultivar, those Monarch would never reach Mexico.

I was stung. But a few readers came to my defense. “Don’t be such a snob”, wrote someone. “The whole idea of HNP (Home-grown National Parks) is to be a snob,” was the reply. Clearly, I had waded into a swamp. I had done so with all good intentions, but I was in over my head.  I selectively replied to a few questions, but steered clear of the snipers laying in wait for me.

The two threads have quieted down. Somewhere in the HNP discussion group, some naïve fool has posted a pretty photo of a plant and is now being pummeled for his or sin of having put the wrong thing into the ground.

 

And now for something completely different

I am going through old files this weekend and came across something I thought was worth sharing. I guarantee it has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening.

Our dream trip to Egypt

In the fall of 1997, my wife, Betty, and I were contemplating a late autumn vacation. We wanted to go somewhere we had never been.  Someplace exotic and, hopefully, warm. We had already been to five continents, so why not add Africa? We were keenly interested in history and so why not Egypt?

We usually traveled on our own, but neither Betty nor I could not wrap our tongues around Arabic and so we looked for a tour. We found a two-week excursion through Overseas Adventure Travel and settled on a departure date of November 25, returning December 9. We applied for and received our visas, and were set to go.

Double-click to read the gruesome
details of the murders

Then, on November 18, a heretofore unknown group called the Muslim Brotherhood attacked two busloads of tourists at the Temple of Hatsepshut in Luxor, killing 70 and wounding 30 others. Because the tourists were Europeans, it was not huge news in the U.S. We knew about it, though, and wondered if our trip was cancelled. Two days later came a letter from OAT asking if we wanted to cancel or go somewhere else on the same dates.

OAT offered us a out...

We looked at each other, then talked it over. Our lone dependent was our cat (and Alfred loved for us to travel because it meant he would be overfed). If we put off the trip, we would likely never again find two weeks for such a journey. We decided to go. So, as it turned out, did 12 other souls – out of more than a hundred who had originally signed up. We did not know it then, but rival Abercrombie & Kent was similarly finding almost every one of their travelers were opting out. And, as for Europeans, governments were flatly telling their citizens that no help would be forthcoming if there was further bloodshed.

At Giza. There is no one in the 
background.

And so, we went to Egypt as planned. And, at the height of the tourist season, the outbound EgyptAir jumbo jet carried perhaps two dozen passengers. When we arrived in Cairo, we found the country was empty of foreigners. There were 14 of us and 12 from Abercrombie & Kent. That was the entire tourist population. As a result, we saw Egypt as no one had seen it since before the advent of the Boeing 707. We had entire hotels to ourselves; the river boats that should have clogged the Nile were instead berthed tightly along the river for a hundred miles. At Hatsepshut’s temple, the bullet holes were not yet plugged and we knew the scrubbed red patches on the floors were the remain of blood stains.

Blonde, ergo American!

President Hosni Mubarak learned there were western tourists in the country and flew to Luxor to personally greet us. Betty, with her blonde hair, was singled out to be filmed with Mubarek, and we would see those 30 seconds of videotape everywhere we went for the duration of our stay as the Egyptian government tried to reassure the world it was safe to be in the country.

Abu Simbel, no tourists

We flew to Abu Simbel with two military aircraft as our escort and six of us saw the light enter deep into the Temple of Ramses at dawn the next morning. A year earlier, the crowd would have numbered more than 500. We also saw the then-recently restored Tomb of Nefertari, where tourists lucky enough to get a ticket could spend only ten minutes inside its magnificent space (carbon dioxide and water vapor from breathing are the enemy). We spent an hour inside its walls because we were the only visitors that day.

Were we foolish to go? I can make the argument either way. Certainly, anyone with children under a certain age would have rightly been labeled narcissists or worse. And, as the letter clearly states, we could have shifted to a date when things were more settled. But we sensed this was an opportunity that would not come again, and we were right. Or, perhaps we were just very lucky.

Trolling for Gardeners

Part of my job description as Garden Ogre is to keep the spaces in the Medfield Community Garden filled. Between full (600 square feet) and half (300) plots, there are 75 gardening families needed each year. Many people return season after season, but each year brings dropouts. Medfield is a mobile community: people move. They also put up cottages in Maine and New Hampshire that come to occupy their summers. They started gardening with their toddlers, but now their offspring are tweens who think putting their hands in soil is gross. Some simply age out; get tired of it all and trade pickles for pickleball. And a few don’t get invited back.

Gardening is also cyclical. During the pandemic, there were a dozen names on a waitlist because the Community Garden was one of the few things you could do without a mask. Going organic waxes and wanes. Last year, I entered the March pre-season with 17 gardens to fill. I did so… barely.

Which is why, on a glorious Saturday in September, I spent six hours trolling for the 2025 class of newbie gardeners at Discover Medfield Day.

There used to be a recipe for finding those new gardeners. Back in 2009 when Betty and I first became the Town Garden Committee (everyone else resigned), it was a matter of preparing an article and finding fresh photos for the weekly Medfield Press and its upstart shopper-style competitor, The Hometown Weekly. The print edition of the Press ended in 2021. For the past two years, The Hometown Weekly has filled its limited news hole with high school sports and real-estate-related copy. When the paper failed for the second year to run the article I had prepared, I got the hint.

Social media nicely filled in the gap for the most part. There were (and still are) Facebook groups like ‘Concerned Citizens of Medfield’ and ‘Friends in Medfield’ that yielded terrific results… until they didn’t. Eyeballs got distracted by videos on a dozen other channels. And, while I am no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, turning over even my correct name and date of birth to TikTok scares the bejesus out of me.

Which, as I note above, is why I went ‘old school’ and took a booth at Medfield Day at a cost of $150. I already had the requisite 10’x10’ tent, two folding chairs, and the offer of a table. For $285, a sign-making franchise conjured up a spiffy and colorful 2’x 9’ banner. I printed up handouts on green paper ($26). And, Betty selectively picked the Community Garden of enough ripe vegetables and flowers to cover that table from end to end.

When I first sent out a cheerful email to those 75 gardening families asking if eight of them could volunteer two hours of their choice to chat up Medfield families about the joys of community gardening, I expected to fill all slots within a day. Instead, I got… crickets. Well, not exactly crickets. I got perfectly valid apologies that their Saturday was already spoken for (including half a dozen who were committed to working other booths). So, I tried a second time and got one volunteer. By weeding in my plot at the right time of day, I convinced a second gardener to lend his time. And, on Friday afternoon, one more volunteer surfaced.

It was going to be mostly Betty and me… except Betty was still recovering from back surgery and sitting or standing for extended periods (dictated as 20 minutes by her physical therapist) was verboten. So, it was mostly going to be me.

Have you every tried to set up a tent when your helper is visibly wincing every time you say, ‘Pull!’? Have you ever tried to hang a banner when you forgot to bring a stepladder? We started at 9 a.m. and barely had everything in place when Medfield Day formally opened at 10. In that hour, the loose end of the banner repeatedly knocked over the (plastic) vases of carefully picked flowers; reducing dahlias and zinnias to bare stalks. The handouts scattered with a gust of wind. The tabletop sign stating proudly that all the produce in the display would be given to the Medfield Food Pantry would not stay upright until Betty found enough counterweights.

But the booth did open. And the good weather brought out thousands of people (the majority, alas, not of age to sign up for a garden). I and my three volunteers handed out flyers to more than a hundred interested parties and 25 people provided email addresses asking me to get in touch with them next March when gardens become available.

I met people who had been part of the community garden decades ago and cherished their experience. I met people new to town who were amazed the garden existed. I also stopped and gently admonished at least a hundred kids who reached into the bowl of cherry tomatoes, expecting they were one more freebie for the taking.

Was it a success? Yeah. Was it hard on my back standing out in the warm sun for all those hours? Definitely yeah. Did Betty and I polish off a bottle of wine with a takeout pizza when we got home and fall into bed at 8:30 p.m.? Most assuredly yeah.

Would I do it again? Ask me in July.

A Medical Story

The Principal Undergardener is taking a week off from essays about weeding to offer a tale of an encounter with modern medicine. If you’re rolling your eyes with an expectation of another lament about things going horribly wrong in the world of Big Medicine, be advised this story has a happy ending.

DMA's offices

When a career opportunity first brought us to Boston back in 1980, Betty and I asked neighbors and co-workers about where we might go to find a family doctor and dentist. The recurring name we heard was that of Dedham Medical Associates, which was housed in its own building roughly 15 minutes from our new home in Medfield. We went there, felt comfortable, and made it our medical home.

Ten years later, we left Massachusetts for yet another career opportunity but, in 1999, we returned to Medfield and picked up where we left off with the same doctors and dentists. In 2004, DMA joined with two other medical groups to become Atrius Health; adding medical specialties not previously available in-house (but, alas, shedding dentistry). Through all this, we kept the primary care physicians we had known for decades. When Betty and I became eligible for Medicare, we chose a ‘Part C’ plan that specifically included DMA.

Aging, though, brings a need for specialists you never contemplated in your 30s and 40s and, for Betty, osteoporosis reared its unwelcome head while she was still in her 50s. Atrius Health provided superb care. In 2020, she underwent spinal surgery to address continuing pain associated with collapsing vertebrae, receiving an injection of the medical equivalent of cement into two areas of her back.

Few things last forever, though, and this year, the back pain returned. Betty bore it well and insisted no intervention was necessary. Then, two evenings ago, Betty got up in the middle of the night and tripped, wrenching her back in the process. We both knew this wasn’t going away with ibuprofen. I also knew, from experience, that short of a true medical emergency, going to a hospital’s emergency room is an invitation to wait hours for indifferent care.

That’s when I discovered just how good medical care can be. At 6:30 a.m., I wrote a note to Betty’s primary care physician of almost three decades to let her know what had happened. At 7 a.m., I called DMA and got their ‘after-hours referral service’. I explained what had happened and, 30 seconds later, Betty had an 8:30 a.m. appointment at Atrius Health’s ‘Urgent Care’ center at their Norwood location.

There, Betty was taken in immediately. An RN named Megan called up Betty’s medical history, did a series of ‘touch your toes’-type tests, and sent her across the hall to radiology for a spinal x-ray. Fifteen minutes later, that image showed a fresh injury to a vertebrae that had been slowly collapsing. Megan put in a request for an appointment with Physiatry, the folks that deal with spinal and skeletal issues. She also issued a prescription for a drug to help alleviate the pain. Elapsed time from arrival to departure: less than 90 minutes.

We picked up Betty’s prescription - already waiting for us at our local pharmacy - on our way home. There, I called the Physiatry Department at DMA. After first cautioning me that appointments dates were made weeks or even months in advance, the scheduler paused and asked, “Could you be in Dedham at 3:30 today?”

Of course we could be, and at exactly 3:30 p.m., we were ushered into an examination room. A few moments later, we met Dr. Srdjan Nideljkovak.

Over the past several years, enormous sums of money have been devoted to facilitate the integration and digitizing of medical records - $36 billion according to consulting firm PwC. More than a few times, I wondered if the project was simply a government boondoggle doomed to deliver 10% of its promise. I officially admit my suspicions were misplaced.

In less than a minute, Dr. Nideljkovak had in front of him Betty’s complete medical history. He highlighted the multiple osteoporosis treatments Betty had undergone and their dates. He compared x-rays and MRI scans over two decades. In ten minutes, he isolated the likely source of Betty’s pain and confirmed it with a quick examination.

We spoke about treatments and settled on one that should offer long-term relief without further surgical intervention. I marveled that it was not yet 4 p.m.; Betty’s fall had been just 15 hours earlier and her arrival at urgent care was fewer than eight hours ago. And the out-of-pocket cost for all of this was $26 – ten dollars for urgent care, a dollar for the Tramadol tablets, and $15 for Dr. Nideljkovak’s time (seeing a specialist costs more).

All is not perfect. We have an appointment for the treatment in September. But Dr. Nideljkovak also told us about the workaround of calling on specific days to check for last-minute cancellations.

Perhaps our luck was exactly that, and the next person with a nighttime fall will spend days or weeks in medical purgatory. Perhaps it is just our good fortune to live in a region with a fabled wealth of medical practitioners. I like to think, though, that this is the way the system works for everyone who is willing to be flexible, to be persistent, and to have had the common sense to take advantage of Medicare’s Part C option.

Wayne Mezitt

Wayne Mezitt, one of the true giants of New England horticulture, died this week. He was 81 and, until felled by a deer tick carrying Babesiosis, he was a tireless advocate for excellence in all things garden-related. You can read his full obituary here. 

I have written about Wayne a number of times over the past 15 years, but the post reprinted below from June 2013 captures the

Wayne Mezitt with Azalea 
'Pink Diamond'

essence of what made him such a remarkable and thoughtful individual. I write this introduction to it while gazing out my library window at a glorious specimen of Cladrastis kentuckyea. The pink-flowering yellowwood was purchased at Weston Nurseries - the gardening mecca founded by Wayne's grandfather - nine years ago as we began to populate our new landscape. Weston was the only nursery in the region that carried such a tree. It has turned out to be a fine specimen that will anchor our garden for decades to come.

* * * * * * *

When Betty and I first came to New England in 1980, we purchased a still-being-built home for which landscaping did not rise even to the level of an afterthought.  We needed to learn about what kinds of trees and shrubs could survive in the deep pine forest out of which our new homestead had been carved.   In our first weeks, we heard about and visited a place called Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton. 

Weston turned out to be the answer to our needs.  It was – and still is – a source of freely offered and sound, professional advice about plants provided by a dedicated and long-serving staff.  We populated our three acres with Weston plant material and it thrived.  We stayed in that home ten years, then decamped for corporate opportunities, first in Connecticut and then in Virginia.  When we returned to New England in 1999, we again gravitated to Weston Nurseries for our landscaping needs, sometimes one or two plants at a time and sometimes in bulk.

A jazz band played at a
1920s-themed party

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure to be on hand as Weston Nurseries celebrated its 90^th birthday.  It is a remarkable achievement for any business to endure ninety years, much less to thrive.  It is all the more remarkable for a family business to reach that milestone. 

Last month, I wrote about Blanchette Garden’s announcement that it will close its doors after 32 years.  Weston Nurseries, by contrast, appears positioned to thrive over the long run.  It has not been easy, though, and it has not been without wrenching change.

Weston Nurseries Chairman Wayne
Mezitt with family memorabilia

Weston’s story begins with Peter John Mezitt, who was born into a family of Latvian farmers in 1885 and studied agriculture before emigrating to America in 1911.  Mezitt found his way to Massachusetts where he would become superintendent of a vegetable farm.  By the early 1920s, he had set his mind to becoming a nurseryman and, in 1923, he and his wife Olga purchased 80 acres in Weston (then a country town far outside of Boston) and began Weston Nurseries.

Their children became part of the business, which grew steadily while establishing a reputation for growing New England-hardy plants.  By 1941, Weston Nurseries encompassed 200 acres.  After World War II, urban development began encroaching on Weston and the family began looking for new land.  They found 300 acres of hilly, rocky abandoned farmland in Hopkinton that had the advantages of having a microclimate of a more southerly region (thus extending the growing season) and being firmly beyond Boston’s urban sphere.  The land was cleared, terraces were built, ponds were dug and roads were created.

Weston's Hopkinton Garden Center
offers a lot more than plants

The course of Weston Nurseries’ history changed in 1945.  For several years, Peter Mezitt’s son Ed had worked to crossbreed rhododendron to create stronger colors and more vigorous plants.  In early May of that year, a remarkable hybrid bloomed and, with it, the PJM rhododendron.  Weston Nurseries can be said to have fairly singlehandedly created the rhododendron (and its taxonomical little brother, the azalea) as a must-have ornamental shrub. 

By the 1970s, a third generation of Mezitts had joined the business.  Ed’s sons, Wayne and Roger, became part of Weston Nurseries, which now sprawled across 900 acres in Hopkinton.  The PJM family of rhododendrons became the gold standard of spring blooming ornamentals and Weston’s Hopkinton retail store a destination for anyone serious about quality horticulture.  Those acres yielded not just rhodies, but a full range of trees and shrubs.  The fourth generation of family members joined the company in 1996 (today, Wayne’s son, Peter Mezitt, is president). 

Employees dressed in flapper
costumes were everywhere

The world – and the industry – does not stand still, though.  The high cost of growing plants from seed to finished product in Hopkinton began pressuring margins in the 1990s.  Bringing in trees and shrubs from specialty growers became much more practical.  In the meantime, Boston’s suburbs grew and prospered… and urbanization headed inexorably west.  By 2005, the 900 acres owned by the Mezitt family was more valuable than the nursery business that occupied the site.

Weston Nurseries' 900 acres.  The
land below Route 135 was sold in
2005 and is being developed

Family pressures can both strengthen and divide an enterprise.  After 2000, Roger Mezitt asked to be bought out of the business.  That began a years-long effort that could have – and nearly did – extinguish Weston Nurseries.  It took a voluntary bankruptcy filing in October 2005 to open the way for the $23.7 million sale of 615 acres – two-thirds of the Mezitts’ land - for residential development that provided the liquidity for Roger’s exit.  The new community, called Legacy Farms, is now rising on the south side of Route 135.  Wayne Mezitt continues as Chairman of Weston Nurseries.

Legacy Farms can fairly be called
the price of securing Weston
Nurseries future

Yesterday afternoon, the events of eight years ago seemed remote.  The retail center hummed with activity when I was there even as guests enjoyed a jazz band and flapper-dressed employees greeted long-time customers.  Weston-created cultivars are well represented at the New York Botanical Garden’s new Azalea Garden. Today, you can purchase everything from upscale lawn furniture and pizza ovens to tropical plants at Weston Nurseries.  There is even a two-year-old satellite operation in Chelmsford, twenty miles away. 

I spoke with Wayne Mezitt at the event.  At 71, he is the steward of a legacy of horticultural quality and no mere figurehead.  He recognizes that Weston Nurseries must continue to evolve, and he and son Peter will guide that evolution.  Weston Nurseries still owns several hundred acres, part of it dominated by hoop houses that are no longer needed.  Planning is underway to determine how best to use surplus acreage.

Betty and I have made our decision to ‘downsize’ from our overly large house in Medfield.  We are looking for property on which we can build our ‘final’ home and where Betty can create a new garden.  We know two things about that pending event: that we will stay in the Boston area and, wherever we build that third home, we will make the drive to Hopkinton to find exactly the right trees and shrubs for it.

July begins, and the garden blooms

I never cease to be amazed how quickly a garden can change at this time of year.  Two weeks ago, the stars of the show were our Carolina lupine and Viburnum Winterthur. There was color in other places, of course, but the dominant color was green.

On July 2, its a different story. A vast sweep of bright red Monarda has come into bloom, flanked by brilliantly white daisies on one side and Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed) 'Hello Yellow' on the other. All of this occupies one bed of our front garden. In the photo at right, the Carolina lupine, now with flower heads removed, towers over the Monarda.

Only a week ago, there was a long, moderately tall row of bright green vegetation along the north (non-garden side) of our stone driveway. It forms a sort of barrier between our property and 20-foot-wide swath of jungle that belongs to our neighbor (the one who, nine years ago, famously spat out, "Not another one of those f***ing meadows!" when we explained no grass would be forthcoming). Seemingly overnight, there is now a cascade of long-blooming Heliopsis. In coming weeks, other tall perennials will horn in for glory but, on this date, it is the sunflowers that have the stage to themselves,

We value our privacy and, from the front of the street, passers-by get only a peek of what lies beyond.  We left in place a berm and low wall that shields a direct view of our house.  But there's no reason why we can't make that barrier - if it even qualifies as one - interesting, or even educational. Anyone who passes by get to see two cultivars of Physocarpus - better known as ninebark. Betty prefers the darker-leave specimens. Diabolo and Little Devil are still in (minor) bloom. Nearby is our Cercis canadensis (forest pansy redbud) 'Burgundy Hearts'. The ground cover trailing over the wall is bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), which started as 12 quart-sized pots.

At the top of that berm, Ceanothus americanus - New Jersey Tea - is in full bloom. Except during its too-brief bloom (about two weeks), it's something of a wallflower of a shrub... it blends into the background even though it is at the front of the bed.  Ceanothus is a useful shrub in that it thrives in soil other plants would find nutritionally lacking.  

Out in the rear of the garden, the Astible are in bloom along with other, less showy plants. We transplanted one Ligularia 'Othello'; it now has multiple progeny spread across the area. What is terrific, though, is that the strawberry, tiarella, heuchera, and other low perennials now provide a green carpet that accepts light foot traffic without complaint.

What I sometimes still have to pinch myself is that, nine years ago, none of this was here. The photo at left is tagged as having been taken on June 26, 2015.  We (or rather, a contractor) had created an enormous planting bed; ready for Betty's creativity and my muscle.  Less than a decade later, it is truly a garden.