This is an important day for this scribbler of words: It marks the 12th anniversary of writing this weekly column without missing a single deadline! Let’s see: 52 weeks in a year for 12 years adds up to 572 columns. With a minimum of 600 words per column — it means I’ve bought enough expensive printer ink cartridges to write nearly 350,000 words!
Even my friend Gordon Aadland didn’t quite reach his twelve year mark before he left us, too soon, in his 90s. His words always seemed to blend together and paint pictures far better than I was able to match — no matter how hard I tried. He was much kinder, too, but I might have been able to surpass him in gardening skills.
As a 12th anniversary present to myself, I’m going to release a bit of doggerel for which I’ve been halfheartedly trying to find a home over the years. A much shorter and less meaningful version did acquire a rejection slip from a garden magazine editor once. But it also elicited a hand written reason from him. Hint: reading the following seems to work best if you do so out loud, but quietly.
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Herkimer Holmes is as thin as old bones, his manner both dour and pedantic, while Simeon Soames is a writer of poems; some silly but some quite romantic. And so it was thus — or it seemed so to us — that the two men had opposite leanings, but little we knew that, between them, the two had developed their lives full of meaning.
In old age they met, each unmarried yet, and solidly set in his ways. Each one liked to toil in sandy loam soil, the action of so many days spent mulching and weeding, and even re-seeding where sometimes their plants would not grow. Each did try his best to outshine the rest for his roses to win “Best of Show.”
But then Holmes fell ill as old people will and his garden became quite neglected, and Soames knew that he would be troubled to see his own garden as such, and suspected that he could proceed to help water and weed in little more time than for one. His attention was turned and you have just learned the reason this poem was begun.
The rose show was nearing and Soames began hearing that prizes this year would be grand. So he watered and fed roses —yellow and red — til some blooms were big as his hand. It wasn’t so hard to pick one from each yard, so he entered a rose from both homes. But here is the quirk that, for all of his work, the “Best of Show” prize went to Holmes!
With much gratitude Holmes considered it rude not to offer Soames some sort of present. He had bottled some wine made from Spring dandelion (which he modestly thought was quite pleasant). Together they tasted and no wine was wasted as camaraderie started to blossom. And they even snickered where once they had bickered. The result was — surprise — simply awesome.
So that’s how these two decided that who beat the other was not the main reason why they labored so hard in their garden and yard through all of each fine growing season. In their gardens each found that he had common ground with the other so they came together. And now, side by side — with justified pride — they garden through all kinds of weather!
With no need for manuals, their perennials and annuals grow swiftly to plants of all sizes, and Herkimer Holmes and Simeon Soames — together — will win far more prizes.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
