“If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments”
“The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it”
“A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.”
– Steven Wright

Some interesting excerpts from a Leisure & Arts article by Patti Hagan in The Wall Street Journal, entitled:

“BEHOLD THE BANANA, SUBROSA BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS”

“I was raised a rose bigot. My mother, the organic gardener, forswore roses and all their toxic accoutrements as ‘too much trouble.’ In the 1950s and ‘60s giddy gardening books such as the Miracle Gardening Encyclopedia enthusiastically hyped a poisonous gardening future, substituting the word ‘miracle’ for ‘poison.’ Promising ‘Modern Miracle Control Over Insects, Weeds, Diseases’ courtesy of ‘new wonder-working miracle chemicals’ the encyclopedia congratulated rose growers: ‘You’re lucky that miracle chemicals produced in modern laboratories and factories make it possible for you to protect roses.’ Naturally, assuming the family prejudices, I eschewed miracle poisons and thus roses.

In the mid-‘80s I dropped my hard line and began growing antique or wild-type roses in Brooklyn, New York, that did fine despite my minimalist ministrations. Their astonishing floraison this spring caused fellow gardeners to ask wherefore. Having just concluded a one-year, thoroughly anecdotal, test in the feeding of roses, I am now prepared to answer:’ Bananas. I feed my roses bananas. By hand, by the hand.

My roses get their banana feed three ways: banana-skin fillets laid flat at the base of each rose; buried, one mushy banana per rose, when the Palestinian grocer down the street off-loads gone-by, blackened bananas; and by fermented banana-skin dole (chopped banana skins steeped 14 days in a sealed jar of water). Take, for instance, the tonic effect of bananas on ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, the new/old David Austin English Rose—pink, four-quartered, rosily fragranced. The preceding several years, ere bananas, she had put on a wan performance: grudging June blooms and then a solitary blossom late in July. After a year in my banana belt, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ went bananas, climbed fully six feet and bloomed like gangbusters. In short, when rosa cultura can be reduced to the simplicity of bananas, everything comes up roses.”

AUSSIES UBER ALLES

The last issue of Gardening Suggestions contained some questions about Australia from potential visitors posted on the Australian Tourism Website, sent from down under by friends in Melbourne. Here are a few more, identified by country of origin, and the actual responses from website officials.

Q. Are there ATMs (cash machines) in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
A. What did your last slave die of?

Q. Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A. Depends on how much you’ve been drinking.

Q. I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forgot its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A. It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so-called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking beneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with urine before you go out walking.

Q. Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A. Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q. I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
A. Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q. Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A. Yes, but you will have to learn it first.