The Manic Gardener

Here’s to The Garden Monkey, who alone converted me to the blogosphere, a hitherto unknown and threatening world, by giving me a sense that it could actually be fun, and maybe I could be myself there.  His ongoing installments –hijacked interviews of garden personalities, internet moments of the week, not to mention the coveted Fork ‘n’ Monkey awards—add much to our lives, gardening and otherwise. Put it all together, and it’s practically a reason to live.

Moby Dick opens with Ishmael’s explaining that whenever “it takes a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” he goes to sea. “With a philosophical flourish,” he says, “Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”

Me, I think, Really, I mustn’t off myself today, because I’d miss the Garden Monkey’s next installment about British gardening personalities creeping about in each other’s gardens and scheming to steal each other’s garden gnomes, and if I missed that, life really wouldn’t be worth living, now would it. Which makes as much sense as most reasons for living.

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That's a humpback whale at the top of the post, one we saw while on O'Brien's Boat Tours in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland. We also saw a finback and a minke, but you can tell this is a humpback because the fins, even underwater, are white. One of the boat men sang shanties, too.