Nothing But Iron: Might As Well Hurl August 5, 2008, before Midnight by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. The challenge of writing this column is that I don’t really have anything to write about. But rather than retreat to the due-date-free sanctuary of my garden, I choose the challenge of walking a few paragraphs in the shoes of writers who suffer the anxieties of weekly deadlines. I can’t really recreate the pressure of having to concoct something on a regular basis because my livelihood is not at risk and my readers have no idea that I have set the deadline for publication for midnight on August 3rd, err . . . I mean August 5th, because I can change that with a few taps on the keyboard. Still, I want to see if I can pull something out of thin air that might be suitable for reader consumption. I could write about Brett Favre, but I already did that. It didn’t help. Nobody took my advice, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to do. I find it interesting that there are so many opinions, and I don’t mean that critically. I might say I am saturated with the Favre saga, but the fact is I am still interested. Not riveted, but curious about the impending resolution, that may not really be impending at all. I am not angry at either side, choosing instead to accept the debate and the emotion and passion it elicits. I did hear that the Packers considered offering Favre a lifetime paid position with the organization, but it would not have involved playing football. That role is hard to imagine. I suppose he could coach and I suppose he could catch punts and kicks during practice and warm ups, and get them back to the punters and kickers with remarkable efficiency, as long as the punters and kickers didn’t mind a few broken fingers, but I don’t imagine he is much good with spreadsheets. There are more creative solutions. For example, I came up with the idea of trading Favre . . . to the Brewers. This is most intriguing because I am the one who thought of it. Claims to the contrary will require corroboration. Smirk and taunt if you like, and, by the way, you guys smirk a lot when I come up with outlandish ideas, but Michael Jordan didn’t have a canon attached to his right shoulder. Favre’s skills are infinitely more transferable to baseball than MJ’s jumper. Aren’t you just a little curious to see the gun display on Favre’s fastball? 91? 102? 117? Wouldn’t you be just a little scared to catch one? Yeah, you argue, maybe he can throw hard, but hurling in The Show is just not the same as passing in the NFL. I agree. It’s not the same: In baseball there is only one target. It’s stationary. It’s visible at all times. There’s no hurry to throw. There’s no rain. No snow. Minimal cold, and only then until the roof is closed. No thumb numbing helmet on the end of a hard follow-through. Best of all, the chance of a 265-pound maniac trying to blind side a pitcher without being apprehended by security is close to zero. Sure Favre would need about a week in AAA to learn how to strike out properly, but after that, trust me, he’s in the Brewers’ starting rotation. Am I not a crafty writer for solving the Favre dilemma and simultaneously milking baseball coverage out of a football controversy? That is not to say that I intend to shirk my sportswriter’s responsibility of offering legitimate baseball coverage, but it will have to be concise, since I only follow summer baseball in an occasional newspaper article. It was a rough week for the Brewers, getting swept in what I think (but don’t correct me if I am wrong because I don’t really care that much just yet) was a four-game home stand against the Cubs. That put the Crew about five games back. There is a lot of season left, and if I could pick a team to trail, it would surely be the Cubs and their long tradition of finding ways to lose when it matters most. No doubt the organization is rounding up virgin chickens to sacrifice in order to break the Bartman curse. You remember Steve Bartman–an innocent bystander with intact hand-eye coordination who became the central figure in one of the greatest displays of individual and corporate small mindedness in history. If ever a team has earned a curse, it is the Chicago Cubs. I find it interesting that the Brewers are on pace to get three year’s worth of pitch counts out of CC Sabathia, which makes good financial sense, but wouldn’t you want to make sure his arm doesn’t fall off before September? Favre won’t be able to do it alone, you know. I am surprised by how many readers (three) have made this comment: "Haven’t heard much about your garden this year." Well, thank you, I didn’t know you cared. My garden is vigorous and by that I mean productive and by that I mean, do you want any zucchini? I should disclose, before lose yourselves in false visions of trimmed hedges, flagstone paths, elegant arched gateways and flowered copper trellises, that my garden lacks the manicured aesthetic that would cause a garden to be photographed, toured or otherwise confused with an art form. Mine is a pragmatic, eclectic collection of plants that don’t necessarily belong together. Peppers grow next to lilies, native perennials flank rhubarb, tomatoes share sunlight with gladiolus, pole beans with peonies. I plant in patches, hardly ever in rows. Some varieties, like carrots are grouped, while others like kale, onions and tomatoes are tucked into several different spots in the yard. Haphazard? Only where it’s not random. My only criterion for plant location is available space and the lack of proof that it can’t grow there. If you look closely you’ll see novel adaptations of rebar, and you can’t miss the rusty cages and supports fashioned from reinforced wire mesh–both gifts from the concrete industry. I use fishing line and reshaped metal hoops harvested from old Christmas wreaths to support climbing plants. But for occasional Roundup applications to kill lawn or dandelions (which don’t fight fair) and burdock (which doesn’t fight fair) in a huge weed-patch-trying-to-become prairie, I omit pesticides or herbicides. Consequently my lettuce and spinach has holes. I tell Kelly she doesn’t have to eat the holes. There is one theory that plants subjected to predators and diseases emerge stronger and more nutritious (if they survive) because they have more highly developed immune systems. So maybe the holes are good for you. I irrigate with rain water collected easily in two large barrels, and I carry the water to my plants and patches in watering cans and 5-gallon pails. Only during drought, when the rain barrels are dry, do I irrigate with municipal water, and even then I water manually. Why? Mostly to avoid convenience. Half the benefit of gardening is its opportunity of physical labor, as in sweat and fatigue and elevated heart rate. The amount of sweat produced by attaching a sprinkler to a hose and turning a faucet handle is akin to that produced by using a TV remote. Secondarily, or perhaps primarily, I water by hand because I am ashamed of the quantity of drinkable water we waste on a daily basis, not to mention a bit fearful that we may someday exhaust the supply of useable water that might otherwise be available to our children and grandchildren. I admit that we includes me. You can probably guess that my lawn looks like crap? No way I’m watering that by hand. My parched lawn doesn’t bother me as much as it probably does some of my neighbors, a few of whom have been known to run their sprinklers in the rain. In my arrogant opinion grass is possibly the most useless plant known to man. (My views may change if I ever get a herd of goats or cows.) My goal is to replace as much lawn as possible with useful plants before I die or move to a condo. At the current rate I could be down to a yard-square patch of lawn by 2010. That’s an awfully big garden though. Let me know if you want to help me water. I will charge you just half of what a health club does and I will even throw in a couple dozen zucchini. The high point of each garden season is the tomato harvest, which starts in late July and ends with the first killing frost, usually in October. The tomatocentricity of my garden is unmistakable; if everything else was eaten by locusts, but the tomatoes flourished, it would still be a successful season. This year I have ten different heirloom varieties, each grown from seeds I saved from last year. They have cool names like Nebraska Wedding, Costoluto Genovese and German Strawberry. Once a summer I go to the farmers market to check out potential additions to the roster. If a tomato passes rigorous taste testing, I will save the seeds and plant them next year. It pains me to pay $4 per pound for market tomatoes when I have such a surplus in my own back yard, but I can’t help it. The first tomato harvested this year was called Red Brown Mystery. It was an 11 on the 10-point flavor scale. I don’t know if the high rating is because it was the first real tomato I have had in 8 months–no apologies to our local grocer–or because it was just that good. There is an amusing story behind Red Brown Mystery. The tomato got its name in 2007 because I forgot what the farmers market lady said it was called. Hence, Red Brown Mystery. I will grow it next year, and short of DNA analysis, its true identity will remain a mystery. Ironically, one of my sharpest agricultural tools is the internet. If you have even wondered what to do with Swiss chard, the internet knows. It knows when to pick garlic. It knows why tomatoes crack and how to avoid blossom end rot, which is good because I occasionally awaken in a cold sweat having dreamt that the end of my blossom is rotting. It knows how to recycle dahlias and how to catch a wood chuck and how to eat a kohlrabi and even how to spell it, and I would bet there is a recipe for wood chuck kohlrabi stew, which I won’t be trying ever. Speaking of wood chucks, the internet knows where to order an electric fence. And, yes, I have one. (It’s not a knock you on your ass electric fence, but it does get your attention.) In short, the internet is a portal to the minds of plant pathologists, master gardeners, chefs, seed sellers and regular old curious farmer wannabes like me. Without it I would still be buying beans and peas in from the Jolly Green Giant and I hate to think about the freshness of my blossom. So that’s a synopsis of my garden. I recommend it for everyone with a patch of dirt and a stomach. I guarantee you’ll either like it or you won’t. __________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column sometimes partly devoted to amateur agriculture. This issue is dedicated to my brother Bruce, who will soon entertain himself by offering disparaging remarks about my emasculating pastime. In a preemptive strike I remind him that chicks dig flowers, that sweating, playing in dirt and eating good food are widely-accepted manly activities and that if he comes to my house I saved him some Cardboard Mystery store tomatoes for his BLT. ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.