Potting the Antebellum Contagious

I confess I was mildly disturbed when my wife told me we had a Contorted Filbert in our yard. I pictured a scruffy guy recently fired from Cirque du Soleil standing out by the crepe myrtle with his leg wrapped around his head. Not criminal, but certainly unseemly for our neighborhood. I thought my wife was taking it awfully calmly. Then I saw her rolling out the garden hose and figured I’d better provide backup if she was going to start waterboarding some muscular French-Canadian hot-head from the circus. So I grabbed my axe handle and followed her out to the side of the house and saw her watering a wilted little tree whose limbs were ... very ... um ... contorted. 

 

Okay, so horticulture’s not my strong suit. In fact, I feel like I’ve stumbled into foreign territory when I go to Otte’s nursery because they speak a language with which I’m not familiar. “You could go with these colonoscopies, they’ve got nice catkins, but the plantar fasciitis won’t need the sphagnum and duodenum mulch.” You’d expect this from a professor using PowerPoint, but it’s disconcerting coming from a manly man with rough hands and a beard. Most guys don’t really get into gardening until after their first marriage, when chasing women becomes more hazardous than fun. I remember the withering glares I’d get from the ladies in my neighborhood when I was single. They’d glance at the positively-absolutely-undeniably-reliably dead perennials in my forsaken yard and look at me like I was Casey Anthony.

 

Anyway, it turns out that a Contorted Filbert is a little tree that’s also called a corkscrew hazel, but it’s most commonly known as – get this – Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick. Wow.  Quite a moniker for a twisted little shrub. Most plants can be I.D.’d by one or two words – dogwood, wisteria, nostrilhair, trachea, phlegmweed – but this little guy gets practically a whole sentence. 

 

“Nice plants, Marv, what are they?”

 

“That’s an Aunt Mabel’s Trumpet-Style Hearing Aid in the front, and the one with the little white flowers is a Birdie Finklestein’s Left-Handed Corset Pull.” 

 

I looked up Harry Lauder on Wikipedia and it said: “The guy the Contorted Filbert is named after.” 

 

I made that up.  Harry Lauder was actually the world’s most famous singer/comedian back around World War I; and, as a Scotsman, he always appeared onstage in the traditional kilt and tam o’shanter and carried a twisted walking stick. So now you know ... the REST ... of the story.

 

I was inspired by that, since I can’t tell a hydrangea from a cerebellum. So now I’m naming all of our plants after famous people’s stage props. In our front yard we have a plant with purple leaves that’s now a Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress. By the deck in the back is a row of spindly things with shiny leaves that kind of lean to one side, commonly known around here as Elvis Presley’s Bell Bottoms. Our Pete Townshend’s Busted Guitar is flowering nicely, and I think the Alice Cooper’s Python Vine will cover the side of the garage in another year. 

 

My wife is not entirely onboard with this new labeling system, but knows I won’t move as quickly if she tells me to water the variegated hostas. “Ohhhh,” I’ll exclaim after wandering past them a couple of times. “You mean the Janet Jackson Nipple Rings!” 

 

The new system has certainly made my trips to Otte’s more entertaining, albeit a tad longer.  The other day it took the guy forever to find a flower I was looking for. Turned out they’d put some stupid Latin name on the Boy George Feather Boas.