Behind the posts, articles, conferences and social media, there’s a backstory. Have you kept up with the digital correspondence between Ranters Scott Beuerlein and Marianne Willburn? You can start here, or go back and find the entire correspondence at Dear Gardener.
Lovettsville, VA
October 13, 2024
Dear Scott,
It’s early Sunday morning the week before we head down to The Southern Garden Symposium to speak and I thought I’d squeeze in a quick letter before the sun comes up and the week gets too crazy.
I owe you one anyway. I think my last thoughts were sent from Michigan where I milked a cow, drove a John Deere, and snatched an award out from under your nose. But your last letter brought up a few things that I wanted to answer before more time floats away.
First though, our letters. Not yours, not mine, but this correspondence as a whole. Between colleagues? Between friends? I’ve been going over four years’ worth in preparation for our combined talk about them on Saturday — as I’m fairly sure have you. If the stars align with our schedules, perhaps we could actually have a phone call before Thursday’s flight just to make sure that you haven’t completely thrown me under the bus in the excerpts you’ve chosen to read aloud while I stand there, innocent and pure.
Remember as you pick and choose – what goes around, comes around. I’ll have a mic and a podium too.
In all seriousness, I wonder if you had some of the same realizations and grinned the same grins in the process of sifting through what amounts to a significant amount of backstory since we first met at the Men’s Garden Club of Youngstown, Ohio in 2018?
I know you remember the venue, as that was the first time you threw me under the bus, having only had dinner with me and our delightful hosts the night before.
It was ballsy, I must say, to sarcastically flash my photo up on screen three or four times during your presentation as the ‘expert’ on whatever it was you were droning on about. I laughed along with everyone else – despite my mortification – which I think is your greatest strength as a speaker. People don’t expect to laugh – they may not even WANT to laugh – but they do.
Actions have consequences however, and yours alerted me to the face that you were possessed of a fine sense of humor, and a self-deprecating spirit, and when the moment to avenge myself presented itself because of that ridiculous column you wrote in Horticulture Magazine, I jumped on it.
It was the first time I’d ever used ‘ass’ in an essay, so I suppose that, even this late in your life, you can subvert the innocent. Now I pepper prose with terms like ‘ballsy’ and hope my mother isn’t reading. Congratulations.
However the hell this bizarre correspondence happened [there I go again], it’s been tremendous and I thank you for the fun of it. It’s allowed me to figuratively let down my hair and share a part of my life, travel, and work – and the angst that often surrounds all – with someone who shares that juggle-struggle.
And I think that in doing so here on GardenRant, there is more than one reader of what bizarrely still seems like a private correspondence, who feels similarly and is glad that others can be honest about navigating the same struggles with the same amount of spectacular chaos ensuing.
(Spectacular chaos is a terrific and all-purpose term I stole from a dear friend many years ago.)
Above all else, I am comforted and confronted in these letters (and I hope you are too) by the peaceful resolution and lessening of so many issues that felt so overwhelming at the time.
The loss of a parent, a crippling injury, an upcoming event, a devastating flood, a global pandemic and shutdown – hell, even a weekend with houseguests and a big writing deadline during a drought and a power outage…it seems that time takes the sharpness of the sting out of all. Our letters – as silly and irreverent as they can occasionally be – have gently reminded me of this.
Nil desperandum et illegitimi non carborundum, as my father often said with a wry smile. Never despair, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
I have those words framed in my kitchen. Well, the mock-Latin version – less rude that way. The retail powers that be should sell that wisdom at the trendy home stores instead of the usual insipid “Our story starts here” wall fodder. Think how many marriages, careers, and minds could be saved with some gritty realism from the beginning.
All this, very fittingly, is making it easier to deal with the fact that you and I are flying to Baton Rouge on Thursday, my office is torn apart with construction, I’ve got way too many tender houseplants to finish migrating before then, and quite frankly I haven’t got a clue what’s going on in my garden as I’ve had a houseguest for 10 days, and believe it or not I’m currently typing this on a card table in a tiny hotel in Delaware.
Oh and Bill Gates is forcing me to switch to Windows 11 before Tuesday.
I think actually, that I will leave this letter there. There is time for more later. Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday and deflecting your clever affability with a subtly delivered eye-roll or two.
Please wear a clean shirt.
Your friend (for we are, despite all of it),
Marianne
P.S. Did you see the news on Instagram? Leslie Harris and I are officially teaming up on her Into The Garden With Leslie podcast – now The Garden Mixer. (Well, soon to be anyway.) If you’re not too cruel at the symposium, you can be the inaugural guest.
P.P.S. You do realize that if we’d chosen political writing instead of horticulture we wouldn’t have to figure out how to take care of a garden as well as everything else? We could just spend our days frothing at the mouth on our laptops and stroke the monstera next to the desk when we needed a little nature.
I like to think that makes us morally superior to those making a hell of a lot more money with the circus going on right now. At least we have our dignity.
Correspondence, Connection & Commiseration : A Letter To The Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on October 13, 2024.
The post Correspondence, Connection & Commiseration : A Letter To The Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.
