John,
I just bought Lewisias at Home Depot. Where the heck did they get ahold of them? Can you imagine?

Good "bad bamboo garden writing" titles.
Here are more:

"Leptomorphs: From Here to Eternity"

"Don't Shoot"

"Night of the Living Rhizome"

"How Green Was My Moso"

Probably from a PNW grower. They're very common in our nursery shops each spring. I used to kill the ones I planted until a nursery owner told me not to put them into the ground but plant them in a pot instead and move them out of the rain, under an overhang, in winter. So far it seems to be working.

More bamboo titles:

Bad Seed.

The Flower Doom Song.

Reaching For The Sky.

I'm putting them in a scree trough. Right now they're in a sand-potting mix on the windowsill, but after some research, I decided to put them in a coarser material. I learned that they need acidic soil, so they can't go with the thyme and other chalk-lovers. Fussy critters.

Space Invaders

The Culm Before the Storm

Raising Cane

Am I My Bamboo's Keeper?

How Stella Got Her Yellow Groove Back

Cady:
That sounds like a good approach, They are fussy about too much moisture -- you ought to see the sere places where they live in the wild.

Bamboozled.

The Culminator.

A Culm Grew in Brooklyn

Culming Home.

If the conditions are anything like the ones in New Hampshire's White Mountains (where many rare alpines grow), I have a good idea of the dry environment that's natural habitat for Lewisia. I'm determined to keep these specimens from developing crown rot. They are blooming right now, and seem to be fine. Once they're done flowering, I'll cut the water drastically.

Culm Up and See Me Sometime
Citizen Cane
The Big Bambu
Node Time For Sergeants
Fargesia and Away

They're too early if they're blooming right now. I wonder if they were forced.

If you can create White Mountain conditions, you should be fine.

I'm running out of movie titles (considering I rarely watch movies), but here's one more:

Bambu, the story of a deer.

I figured they were forced, since their natural bloom time supposedly starts in May. Lewisia foliage is unremarkable, so the plants would have to be in flower for Home Depot to consider selling them. Some PNW nursery must have made a special order.

I think we've used up the Bad Bamboo Writing category. Time to move on to another garden category (conifers, maybe: Tales from the Cryptomeria...La Cage a Foliage) or let someone else contribute bad garden writing!

Cady
P.S. Catcher in the Rhizome (The story of a young, confused bamboo barrier installer.)

I like Tales from the Cryptomeria, and isn't there something about Death and Taxus?

Yew bet, there is!

Then, there's:
Sir Arthur Conifer Doyle's The Adventures of Hemlock Holmes

Kipling's How the Chamaecyperus Got Its Hump (a paeon to C. obtusa bun-form cultivars)

Cedar House Rules

The Wreck of the HeSPRUCE

and, the coniferous remake of Fargesia and Away: Fir and Away.

I'm a tad slow this morning, but how about

Pine and Prejudice

The Taming Of The Spruce

and

Mother Spruce?

Not bad. How about an open botanical category now:

The Prince and the Pawpaw
Raiders of the Lost Bark
The Wizard of Osmanthium
Begonia with the Wind
The Perfect Corm
Deep Space Pine
Tubby the Tuber
Iron Schefflera
Tree's Company
Born Freesia
Roots

Let's see"

Antimony and Clematis

The Heart of Mistletoe

Cranberry Row

East of Echium

From Ragweed to Beeches

Skimmia Irises' Ride

Wattles and Pears

The Gums of Notocactus.

What am I doing? I need to wake up and thaw out the bird baths.

heh heh.
I need to be writing a marketing publication. Anyway, we've come up with enough bad garden writing titles to keep the atrocious would-be authors busy for years. Go thaw the birdbaths.

Cady

P.S.
Pollyannathus
Beeches
The Pittosporum and the Pendulum
Malus Aforethought
Guys and Dahlias

The bird baths are thawed and the robins are splashing.

Did you ever see

The Crucifer

or read

The Grapes of Lath?

No, but I've sung
Kale to the Chef

How about

The Cattle Heading For The Turnips?

or

O Papayá?

I do like humming tunes from Okrahoma.
Surry With The Fringe Tree On Top is my favorite. But I relate best to Poor (V.) juddii Is Dead because it touches so close to home.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mum
Olive Twist
Return of the Native (hey, I didn't even have to change this one!)

heehee :)

Hee Hee? Shouldn't that be "Ha Ha"?

Hm. I couldn't decide. Guess I'm a fence sitter...

I guess that's better than splitting rails.

Ha Ha. (Never seen a split-rail ha ha...)

You'd most certainly feel one, however. :-)

I have just collected all of the above into a single volume bound in papyrus, and I plan to keep all the profits for myself, and if you don't like that you can go take a flying fish. But I need a title.

The Worst Of The Wurst?

I Never Promised You a Prose Garden?

"Of Micanthus and Men"

To Kill a Mock Orange

Ditto on the Dirt Doctor.

I never knew you guys had a sense of humor.
I'm guessing that you're making these titles up.
I love the one "I Never Promised You a Prose Garden".

Here's my garden poem for the day.

Spring has sprung.
The grass has riz.
I wonder where my flowers is.

Does this poem make the top 10 worst writers award?

Yup. I think it qualifies.

Thanks John D.
I will now take a bow.

Hey, do I get a boobie prize?

Print out this thread, frame it, and hang it from your parlor wall. :-)

Gosh, this is a great arts and crafts project and will look wonderful on my wall.
Thanks John.

I am absolutely astonished at how many lousy gardening books and for that matter, lousy books in general, are out there. I'm amazed that there are publishers out there willing to publish some of this junk. Having said that, I've come to the conclussion that either the authors are paying to have their junk published or they are not making any money on their books, either from the public or the pub. company itself. I wonder why companies even bother publishing a book that isn't going to sell??? Just my opinion!

If you look at the discount books flooding some of the bargain stores, you'll get an idea of what's going on. Publishing houses have tons of books cheaply printed in China -- costs little to publish them -- then it seems they go directly to discount bins for ridiculous prices (I have paid as little as $3.99 for gardening books from a British publishing companie that prints in China). The sidewalk book rack at the local Borders bookstore always has discounted softcover garden books -- $6.99, $7.99 -- and the retail price printed on the inside dustjacket says $25 to $45.

What I've noticed is that these books tend to come from the same few publishing companies -- Hermes, Paragon to name two. They just crank them out, using prolific English garden writers like Peter McHoy as the authors. They re-use a lot of the same photos and basically just throw together a quick and inexpensive book. Some are pretty good while others are dismal.

How about Jerry Baker. His first book 'Plants are like People' was pretty good, but everything since has been downhill. If it's a garden gimmick he will jump on and tell people to do it. Following label directions doesn't seem to concern him.

One of the worst garden writers, I have read was the garden columnist in my home town. In an article that she wrote on fruit trees she refered to tha apple family, the pear family, the plum family, the peach family, the apricto family and the cherry family. Lady they are all in the same family, the rose family! She died recently so that torture is gone.

There is a writer on the web that 'invented' a sowing practice that is a horrible writer.

Slime~n~Slide!

Fun by the foot for every yard! Make yours today.

All you need for your own Slime~N~Slide are six full bags of fresh grass clippings and a narrow garden path to lay them in.

First, mark out your path. I used old tree limbs, though bricks, rocks or spaghetti laid out end to end can work just as well.

Next, spread out your grass clippings--be sure to lay them at least 6" thick, more if you can!

Now, wait about a week. During this time the wonderful magic of Slime~n~Slide's "Restorative Organic Transformation" (patent pend.) will miraculously turn the inner core of grass clippings into the thick dark green ooze which is the secret to Slime~n~Slide's international growing success.

To use your Slime~n~Slide simply take three steps up the path and be ready for the slide of your life! Your friends will laugh with side-splitting hilarity as your right foot slips forward, locking your knees--causing your legs and pants to do a synchronized full split right to the ground!

For more fun and games Slime~n~Slide can be reloaded with ease. Simply cover over the exposed inner core with more dried grass clippings, sit back in your lawn chair, and wait to watch the fun.

Use Slime~n~Slide at those long all-day never-ending boring block parties or family BBQs. It's sure to become the hit of the party. Take turns luring great aunts or that cranky old neighbor down the proverbial slippery path.

Get Slime~N~Slide today! It's your path to slippery good fun!
================================

Slime-N-Slide is a registered trademark of TrudiCo Enterprises. If it's TrudiCo it's ROT.

There is a writer on the web that 'invented' a sowing practice that is a horrible writer.

She's a HORRENDOUS writer!
Oh my gawd, she writes like she speaks and that Long Island syntax is just theeeeee worst.

Butt, ummmm, that invention thing. I don't think you could ever find The Writer saying that. As a matter of fact, you should search for a while and then paste in the link for it. I would LOVE to see a link.

Despite The Writer's far-less-than 101 writing skills, the information got out there to the public and is now has NAL guidance.

Someday, I could actually learn where to put in all the commas and the proper use of a semi-colons, but I'm not sure when I'll have time.

'til then....

PS......I'm positive The Writer is delighted to find someone--anyone--who calls her a writer, even to just diss ;-)

Three months pass.....unavenged ;-(

I think the Dirt Doctor is kin to Dan Rather.

Trudi, I don't think you a horrible writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed WSing last winter, and will happily do it again this winter.

Janie

Ahhh, a hero at last ;-) Thank you Janie.

I freely admit being a housewife who stumbled onto a miracle ;-) If I kept that information to myself it would have been a sin. I have, since then, bought a few books on syntax and grammer, though I am still bewildered by commas, semi colons, and the elusive--double dash--used to highlight specific points. Most of the books I've bought to assist me with WS are about human psychology (motivations), leadership, dealing with idiots (troll control) differentiated learning and html. Grammer, because of a far greater need for the others, still remains overshadowed and at the bottom of the list for writing skills.

I'll never earn a GWA award, I probably won't ever get one of Eddie's adorable Green Thingies. And I also won't ever make much of a nickel off of WS because I WANT it kept Fair Use. WS is my intellectual property, I locked it up very early on with CRs, and I sought an AgNIC partnership to further protect that. Because of the partnership it MUST all remain as/and continually be created for Fair Use. Anyone, at any time, may copy and duplicate all WS information or photos for educational.nfp.critic use. I don't have to be contacted and I don't even have to be mentioned. From my personal/emotional point of view, Fair Use also eliminates a lot of justification angst that anyone of us would feel if we were to see our words and methods in another body of work, without, at least, a mention of our name(s) as source. This used to be very frustrating to me. VERY frustrating. After I accepted Fair Use as a concept of my heart, rather than a too-bad/too-sad reality, I was able to focus the direction towards educational provision ;-) and write more about the means than the visual results.

I am currently writing (not sure you would/should call it that) interactive educational exercises, otherwise known as quizzes and puzzles, for the website. They teach with term/concept repetition as the learning tool. They work by user input. This, for me, is where accuracy is most important. As an example, Marrubium vulgare is horehound and not hoarhound--though both seem to be used interchangably. I verified with the NAL Thesaurus, which now has a server that cranks out search results as fast as google. (HOORAY!)

Janie, I'm glad you're WSing, I'm glad for everyone who does. WS is like pulling a rabbit out of hat, except that it's not one rabbit. And we all KNOW what rabbits do.

They make easy to strew about, mild to use, fertilizer raisinettes for our gardens ;-)

Vive la Bunny.

I'd nominate Gaylord Moore, our extension horticulturist. He writes a column in the paper.

....I am just visiting;
It may be of interest to garden writers how words tend to lose their original and historic meaning over time.If I could refer to this new method of "winter sowing" by any other name, I would ...

I can understand your point of view Pickwick ;-)

I'm a big fan of doing what works. Trudi's methods have to be adapted in my climate. She knows that; I know that. The big picture is, IMHO, if you never try you never get results. That applies to sowing seeds in any season or writing a column for the locals.

The bottom line is the bottom line, regardless. Was a good time had by all?

Nell

Should we ask the webmaster for a separate forum on winter sowing do you think, because this is the writers forum?

Winter unfazed made me snicker by recommending his Extension Horticulturist (didn't they used to call them county agents?). Some of them do write like they're quoting Extension literature: Plant seed A in hole B at depth C on date D. How exciting.
But INKognito really made me laugh. I think there IS a separate forum (somewhere) on Winter Sowing. Sounds like something that people have just discovered but that nature has been doing all along. In fact, in climates that have winter, that is the ONLY way nature does it.

I like what FoxesEarth (nice name!) says--it is everything. If you don't make an effort to do something it will never happen.

I have on my wall a favorite Shakespeare quote which I have taken to heart--

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

How many writers have put down a pen and quit a piece because someone asked them WHY they were writing it? or WHO would read that? Should you continue, despite the snide remarks, those who made them will step them up because What's the matter with YOU? Didn't you get the hint that you were told you to QUIT? How many times and how many ways are you going to have to be told until you finally GET IT?