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Originally published on October 16, 2020.
Installment #20: “An Ode to a Plastic Watering Can”
In the greater scheme of things, especially these days, it’s not a big deal, but it’s time to mourn just a little. After 31 years and innumerable liters of water, my first watering can died of age-related wear and tear, and it deserves a fair eulogy.
The long strange trip that currently ends with the Texas Triffid Ranch originally started in the spring of 1989. Like most Gen Xers, I previously had precious little time for gardening both because of endless hours of doing the zut work in my parents’ gardens over the years and with the general “I don’t have time for the likes of YOU” attitudes of garden centers at that time. One day at the grocery store, though, I found a packet of luffa squash seeds dumped on a shelf where someone had decided that they didn’t want to take it back to where they’d picked it up, and remembering reading a magazine article about a week before about how those odd sponges occasionally offered for sale came from a plant and not from some odd sea creature, I figured that I didn’t have anything to lose. Besides, I was working nights: back then, that meant that a weeknight home life consisted of watching the one or two television stations that hadn’t signed off at midnight, reading, or staring at the ceiling.
Raising luffa squashes was definitely a diversion.
That year’s gardening plan was about as pathetic as you could expect from a pre-Internet 22-year-old with no guidance and no mentorship. Said luffas were planted in reused gallon milk jugs full of potting soil purchased from the 24-hour grocery store next to my apartment, with lots of “compost” (orange peels and dead refrigerator leftovers) in the bottom, with no idea of what the adult plants looked like or what they needed. That first year, expectedly, was a nightmare, but one of the side benefits was realizing that watering a good dozen jugs every day meant needing a sturdier container than another recycled milk jug. This meant making another trip to that 24-hour Skaggs Alpha-Beta and grabbing a watering can from its “Seasonal” aisle.
The can itself wasn’t anything special, but it was. That year, several grocery stores in the Dallas area carried the same green plastic watering can with a white plastic rose (sprinkling rose, not flower rose) on the end, with a stout handle and a sturdy short neck. Apparently multitudes of younger gardeners than I have very fond memories of their grandmothers using that same style of watering can, and more memories of said grandmothers searching for a replacement when it finally wore out. In my case, it was large enough to be practical for apartment gardening without necessitating constant trips back to the sink for refilling, short enough that it could get into tight places, and tough enough to handle sitting on an apartment porch in a North Texas summer without cracking or degrading. For what I was trying to do, it was perfect.
Even better, it kept being perfect. The next year included a move to a new apartment with a much larger balcony, which necessitated a much wider collection of plants. During the winter, that can was essential in watering a big philodendron chunk I had rescued, and that plant stayed with me for years. That can stayed with me for a further move to Dallas’s Exposition Park, where it was invaluable in assisting the owners of the long-defunct Club No in turning a former dry cleaners storage area into a vine-covered back patio. It moved with me to Portland, Oregon, and then back to Texas. It lasted through two marriages, the whole of my writing career, several subsequent moves, and the beginnings of the Triffid Ranch as a hobby with delusions of grandeur. Even after the start of the gallery, it saw use in the greenhouse for watering individual plants for shows and events, and it acted as if it would last forever.
Well, it lasted until it didn’t. One day while ladling out rainwater from one of the rain barrels, it started to leak. That little watering can, which had survived so much, finally blew out along the bottom edge, both from a loss of plasticizers over the last three decades and general wear, and attempting to fix it with silicone or epoxy putty just meant that it would blow out again in another spot before too much longer. It was relegated ceremoniously to the recycling bin, with the hope that after being chopped and reconstituted, no matter the item, it is appreciated and loved as much as that can was.
Hail and farewell, watering can: I’ve searched for a month for a comparable can, and know I probably won’t find one as great as you were.
Shameless Plugs
A word out for an old friend and friendly adversary: folks in the Portland area may be familiar with tax lawyer and desperately needed blogging gadfly Jack Bogdanski, and he and I have been friends from a distance for about a decade. Although we may disagree fervently on specific issues all over the place, one of the reasons why I respect him so much is that he has the same change-it-or-lose-it love for Portland that I have for Dallas, and at the same intensity. Mr. Bogdanski famously quit blogging several years back in order to focus on serious law research, but he’s now back, he’s continuing his wild swings between Portland politics and little joys (his recent discussion of analog music was wonderfully nostalgic), and I have a desperate need to take him out for dinner and thank him for playing Harlequin to Portland’s City Hall Ticktockmen once it’s safe to do so.
Recommended Reading
The latest Spectrum fantastic art collection just arrived, and that’s all I’m going to say other than “Buy it now.” Next year, I AM entering the competition.
Music
One of the good things about having friends who are so much cooler than I’ll ever be is getting exposure to all sorts of cultural detritus that wouldn’t have floated this way otherwise. That’s why I have to thank the Canadian actress and model Tristan Risk for turning me onto the garage surf band the Neptunas, because the band’s latest album is a very welcome antidote to the usual impending winter blues. I suspect that it’s time to pay royalties to play their newest album at the next big gallery open house (either November or December), because life is too short not to.