Having a garden party without all the political balderdash in D.C.

"I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow."

                                  — David Hobson

AUBURN — My garden is growing as fast as the furor over the president’s fusillade of pathetic and juvenile tweets.

If you are looking for fireworks on this Fourth of July, look no farther than our nation’s capital.

Nonsense in the White House thrives and my plants are also flourishing thanks to tender loving care, which is absent in Washington D.C.

There is little evidence of compassion from our leaders, but here on the open range in Maine, we treat our garden like we treat other human beings — with love and devotion.

But you can’t fix stupidity in the nation’s capital, where incessant backbiting and barbs hang over our nation, sparking hate and rage across the country.

Enough about politicians who can’t play well with others and refuse to work for the greater good. There is a garden to tend to in spite of our capital that is hopelessly awash in anger and ineptness. 

Garden of delight

Barring a tornado, tsunami or an errant tweet, my flower and vegetable gardens are looking sturdy and I have seen a bloom or two, giving me confidence in this season’s endeavor.

My potato plants appear to be taking performance-enhancing drugs without my knowledge. This is the first time I have planted to potatoes because my wife wanted fresh taters. I quickly agreed to preserve peace and prosperity in the Blasi household. Of course, I don’t like sleeping on the couch, either.

The zucchini and summer squash plants are on a mission, but I confess that I had to use a touch of pesticide to combat aphids and cucumber bugs to keep those vegetables healthy. The peppers, always late bloomers, are getting there and that could be said for my eggplants. Lettuce and spinach grown from seed are looking real good, especially with some Newman’s Own salad dressing smeared all over those leafy greens.

My yard also supplies me with fresh apples, blueberries and pears.

While we wait for our leaders to do their jobs, I will be out in the garden tending to my flock of fantastic plants, but the bilious politicians, who can’t reach a compromise or stop berating each over the Internet, won’t be on the receiving end of fresh vegetables from me.

Sweet birds of youth

Mourning doves have no fear. 

They are handsome pigeons that hum their laments mornings and evenings. When they are startled, they fly away with a distinct whistling sound.

They waddle underneath my bird feeder picking up scraps. They often travel in pairs and are not intimidated by human beings, especially this 6-foot-3, 300-pound man who marvels at creatures great and small.

They just give me a glance and keep on pecking at the ground.

I needed some air and stepped out in the front yard to seat myself at an outdoor table on a muggy July night. I looked down for a moment and there were two young mourning doves not startled in the least. They came within two feet of me and just sat there looking at me. I closed my eyes, nodded off in my lawn chair and they just rested with me.

Amazing.

We have a variety of birds that visit the front yard. A row of thick hedges gives them cover. 

I sat there for 40 minutes as the pair of birds and I stared at each other.

Some people say mourning doves represent death. I say that is a bunch of crap from superstitious people who should know better.

They are cute, cuddly, and I enjoy their sweet, sad song. They are always welcomed in my yard.

Anyway, happy birthday, America. As an optimist, I know we will weather poor leadership and reaffirm our resilience on this holiday.

Heading to the garden to seek refuge from the White House's nonsense

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul." 

 — Alfred Austin—

AUBURN — As I watch an administration implode in Washington, D.C., as well as spread its drivel via Twitter, I retreat to my backyard, where well-tended gardens serve as my sanctuary from an embattled White House that revels in the spectacle of self-inflicted mayhem — which also brings joy to nations trying to undermine America.

I am hoping my garden and our constitution will withstand the forces of nature and a presidency clearly in disarray.

This administration conjures up never-ending diatribes from a leadership that feeds on its own hostility. This virus of indifference that comes from top has infected the country. Our leaders are acting like bar-room brawlers and our citizens’ intolerance to newcomers sometimes ends in violence.

I believe my vegetable garden and that living document we hold so dear to us will weather anything nature or misguided politicians can throw at us this summer.

According to numerous articles, a backyard loaded with trees, flowers and vegetables can reduce stress immediately. A long hike in the woods also has the same effect on the human body.

Tell me something I don't know!

The bonus here is you can tune out American politics that features hollering, boasting and narcissism. Read any controversial story online and observe vicious trolls rise up like an angry mob and spew their hatred in a long scroll of abhorrence.

Talk about garden therapy is not nonsense or FAKE news. Flowers and fresh vegetables are like aspirins to relieve pain. Nature’s splendid colors whittle away the day’s stress.

Trust me on this one.

According to the American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA.com): 

“Horticultural therapy is a time-proven practice. The therapeutic benefits of garden environments have been documented since ancient times. In the 19th century, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and recognized as the "Father of American Psychiatry," was first to document the positive effect working in the garden had on individuals with mental illness.

“Horticultural therapy techniques are employed to assist participants to learn new skills or regain those that are lost. Horticultural therapy helps improve memory, cognitive abilities, task initiation, language skills, and socialization. In physical rehabilitation, horticultural therapy can help strengthen muscles and improve coordination, balance, and endurance. In vocational horticultural therapy settings, people learn to work independently, problem solve, and follow directions.”

Planting vegetable and flower gardens keeps me balanced, inspires me and provides an excellent workout in the warm June sun.

I view my gardens and yard like naturalist John Muir, who believed forests and other wild places on earth nurture the soul. 

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul,” Muir said. “Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

Perhaps, the current administration should listen to Muir’s prudent words.

Muir, a spiritual man, believed the forest was his cathedral   — a place to contemplate and pray.

My yard and the Maine’s numerous hiking trails give me natural a lift without taking pills to confront life. Gardening is also my antidote to my stress. When I tend to my yard, I put the radio on and listen to the Red Sox or Mozart in the summer sun. In the woods, I have my camera with me as I huff and puff up a gravel trail where nature’s senses sooth me.

Whether I am toiling in the yard or briskly climbing up Mt. Apatite in Auburn, I enjoy the exertion, the chance to sink my hands into the rich, black earth of my garden and mingle with nature on its own breathtaking terms.

I will continue to seek out nature’s salubrious benefits in my yard as the insanity, spitefulness and shabbines in the nation’s capitol peeks.

Garden good to go and going on parade

"I am definitely not the guy who drives to Vegas and stands in the middle of the street drunk with beads around his neck. I'm the guy that's with his family in the backyard holding sparklers."

 James Marsden 

The yard is in full bloom thanks to Mother Nature.

AUBURN, Maine — Thanks to Mother Nature, a sturdy shovel and a neighbor’s industrial tiller, my garden no longer looks like the contents inside a huge pipe that carries sewerage from 43 Massachusetts communities to be treated at Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant in Boston.

All that organic table waste, fresh-cut grass and wood ash that I dumped in the garden all fall and winter has now been ground to a pulp by a tiller that handles like a bucking bronco.

The crops are in and I have installed a flower bed that should be featured in “Home and Garden.”

We have already experienced summer-like weather and a chance of a frost has passed in Maine

I have planted tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, cucumbers, spinach and carrots. 

The soil looks good and all systems are go for a good garden — depending on the weather and frigging varmints, of course.

All gardeners and farmers are always at the whim of the weather, but people who like getting their hands dirty also understand weather is our friend no matter how fickle it is.

So now we wait and water our land, hoping the dirt yields vegetables not tainted with pesticides.

The flower garden is teaming with color as Mother Nature to struts her stuff.

I recently read a great piece in National Geographic about how nature and your backyard can relieve up to 30 percent of stress the moment you step foot into a green paradise.

My well-kept yard is a refuge and a quiet spot to read or write.

If I am feeling worn out, a hike or my yard is great way to revive my tired bones and give me piece of mind — and vegetables.

Going on parade

OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine — An hour-trip to the coast and stroll along the beach in a refreshing sea breeze does a body good.

Breathing in that salt air and looking out over the water in this seaside community made my Memorial weekend.

A slice of pizza and a dish full of golden fries in the sun, which finally made an appearance around noon, brightened our day.

But we got word that a Memorial Day parade was heading our way and it would be passing through town.

I hadn’t been to a Memorial Day parade in years. I appreciate Americans who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. Parades are just one way to tip our hats to men and women who have defended our nation.

The folks in Old Orchard Beach paid a wonderful tribute to the men and women who served with distinction with a spectacular parade.

The parade also featured a submarine float to honor all those who served in the silent service.

Kudos to Old Orchard Beach for paying tribute to American servicemen and women.

Watching people take time out of the busy schedules to line the streets and salute veterans made me proud.

Heading down the garden path

"My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society." 

— Andrew Weil

AUBURN — It is spring and my beloved garden looks like the town dump.

But my 20-by-40 foot garden has been a dumping ground for organic matter that will enhance the soil at the end of May when planting season arrives in Maine.

For the past six months, I have tossed in coffee grinds, ash from the wood stove, buckets of peels, seashells, dozens of fallen apples and mulched grass and leaves.

All this organic waste has been decomposing in my garden throughout the winter. It is a disgusting, soupy mix that helps my vegetables grow into healthy producers without the aid of pesticides and dubious fertilizers. 

So I begin the Herculean task of turning the dirt over to stir in this organic mush, where my grateful worms will take their cue and break down all of it into rich soil. I love my worms, who work for free, by the way.

It is back-breaking work, but when fresh tomatoes and broccoli arrive in July and August, I will be munching on veggies that are superior to store-bought produce.

Gardens are a lot of work, but when you shun television or endless hours trolling through Facebook, there is time to raise your own vegetables.

Your colon will thank you in the end.

You see, I will eat anything that comes out of the ground. Vegetables are key to avoiding stomach cancer and keep things moving in and out of your system.

You get the picture!

When there is an overabundant amount of vegetables, it gives me a chance to show my neighbors appreciation with a small bag of fresh-grown greens.

What better way to say thank you to neighbors who snowplow your driveway in the dead of winter without my asking for help.

I also re-did the flower bed for my wife who enjoys nature’s living works of art. I like flowers, but I enjoy vegetables more because you can’t eat flowers.

So I will toil in the dark, rich earth, fight off varmints with my cunning and guile, and those destructive bugs, to produce the perfect tomato, cucumber, or summer squash.

Like an artist, a garden is my work of art that I present to public each spring.

Cleaning house!

"If you can't use it, lose it."

— Tony Blasi

AUBURN — I have always led a Spartan life and have lived by my own motto: "If you can't use it, lose it."

And I tend to lose it every spring when I go on a tear and clean out closets full of crap that ends up in a recycling bin or handed off to Goodwill, hoping my trash becomes somebody's treasure. 

If there is any way I can avoid sending my spring-cleaning relics to the dump, I will give it away or leave it on Goodwill's doorstep. Right now, we are down to one bag of trash a week, and the rest our waste ends up in a recycling bins or in my vegetable garden. I used to hold a yard sale, but it was too labor intensive and a damn hassle.

Becoming a pack rat and cluttering my home with stuff that eventually becomes an obstacle course has never entered my mind. Getting rid of useless things that usually occupy valuable living space in my modest, three-bedroom home gives me a sense of accomplishment and offers me some breathing room.

If I suddenly found myself joining the richest four percent even though I have no such aspirations, I would live the same frugal life. I would travel more, but owning a large home or an expensive vehicle seems absurd to me. Who would I want to impress and why would I give a damn about impressing anyone with my sudden wealth.

If a fat wallet impresses people, then the cost is too high to maintain a relationship with human beings who practice Gordon Gekko's creed: "Greed is good."

I can do without people who eventually become another kind of clutter in my life.

Sometimes, spring cleaning is a journey of self-discovery. Going through a closest packed with junk will sometimes yield a treasure trove of fond memories.

Last week, we emptied out a closest full of stuffed animals. Being sentimental, we kept a handful of toy creatures that meant so much to us, but the rest we shipped off to Goodwill. It was impossible to part with the stuffed animals that I won at carnivals for my son.

Going through the closest also gave me a chance to rediscover some of my mother's prized possessions — old Life magazines and a Revere Journal supplement celebrating Revere Beach's 100-year anniversary. It was published in 1996.  The beach was her second home and I can see why she saved a copy of Revere Beach's anniversary.

I read the entire supplement and couldn't help think about my mother (she died four years ago) who valued the written word and always found newspapers enlightening and worth the 50 cents to read them.

I started reading old Christmas and birthday cards that have piled up in a cloth bag. I refused to put them in a recycling bin. They are from people who passed on, but my memories of them remain strong, and I'll am not eager to cut my ties with the past, so the cards will stay in the closet.

I will throw anything away that no longer serves a purpose in my brief life, but letters, articles and books from my past will forever occupy space in my home.

That's the law at 53 Valley Street.

The letters are like a recorded history of my childhood, the marriage to my wife, Terri, the miraculous birth of my son, Anthony and the death of countless people who I loved. The old magazines are also like another timeline of my life.

So the letters, articles and cards stay, and everything else goes. After all, in the end when I become old and frail, all I will have are wonderful memories, and that new TV won't mean a damn thing to me as my life comes to a close.