I was reading the other day that people in the South feel like they can say anything they want about somebody as long as they end it with "bless his heart!" Now I can distinctly remember laying on the couch when I was a boy, nursing my tongue that I had just almost bitten in two by riding my trike off the back steps, and hearing my Mom talking to my Aunt Floy on the phone, saying, "Well, he did it again, bless his heart!" I remember thinking it was odd that she didn't even have to say who HE was. I may have had a mite more than my share of dumbness over the years, but I did survive childhood (no sure thing according to my brother, who over Thanksgiving told for about the thousandth time the story about how I and my best friend- whose nickname was Squirrely- set up our fishing poles below the hydroelectric plant in what proved to be the overflow chute, right before it was opened up). Now in adulthood I like to think i'm past all of that, though my wife, Liz, does have what I call "the look", that I get to see rather often. How she can get puzzlement, sympathy, disbelief, and resignation, all in one glance, is a complete mystery to me. From time to time, however, I still do a few little things that surprise even me, and some of these things are in the garden. What inspired this revery was the Wayside catalogue coming in the mail today. On page 99 is listed Blechnum spicant, the deer fern.I had bought that plant several years ago. I'm always on the lookout for new plants for my wooded garden, and this evergreen fern seemed like a winner at $6.95 (it's up to $10.95 now). I planted it and promptly forgot about it; it looks three feet tall in the catalogue photo, but in real life it's about 4 inches tall, and a fern only a Mother deer fern could love, having about as much pizzaz as a clump of plantain. Well, a year or so after planting it, I ran across it again while weeding, and it seemed oddly familiar. I looked around, and found there were hundreds of these ferns in the woods. Oh, well! Now I don't suppose any of YOU have done anything like this, bless your hearts!
Don
This message was edited Dec 4, 2004 5:36 PM
