My Summer in a Garden: Panic Sets In

Around the third week of May, panic sets in. Lettuce leaves are almost large enough for salads, beets are up but disappointingly sparse, carrots are up in one row but inexplicably not in the next row, potatoes are here and there but not everywhere, onions are going strong, beans are up but stripped of their leaves by varmints, cucumbers are spotty, squash are up in some hills but not in others, flowers are few and far between—and weeds are thick! I worry that I will not succeed in keeping the weeds down. I put on gloves, seize a trowel, and start on the lettuce rows, painstakingly pulling the larger weeds and scraping the smaller ones. I make my way slowly up and down the rows. I wonder why so many seeds failed to sprout and why so many promising chunks of potatoes rotted without forming new plants. I wonder whether my beans have fallen victim to rabbits or groundhogs.

Plants Coming Up on May 19th

I need to sharpen a hoe so that I can clear the spaces in between the rows. Last year, I happened to be listening to the radio in my car when a gardening expert suggested the use of a sharp hoe to clip weeds about a quarter of an inch beneath the surface of the soil. I had always pulled weeds by hand, but the expert said that doing so merely encourages many new weeds to sprout. Even though the gardening season was well advanced, I followed the expert’s advice with great success. This year, I intend to cut the weeds that have arisen in the walkways between the rows, but I still need to grind my hoe to a sharp edge. In his first soliloquy, Hamlet says, “ … ‘tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely.” Hamlet is speaking metaphorically, but, when I look upon my garden, I see no metaphor. I see only weeds, rank and gross weeds, that are about to possess my carefully planted rows! The world in front of me is literally “an unweeded garden”!

I vow to purchase a few packets of flower seeds to try to fill in my border. (Ultimately, I do not fulfill my vow.) I decide that the gaps in my beets are too short for reseeding, and, besides, it’s too late to be planting beets. I must learn to live with imperfection. I profoundly hope the beans will live long enough to set on more leaves, but wild animals have stripped many of them down to stalks that are only three inches tall! I reassure myself that the cucumbers and squash that I have will spread to cover the area in such a way that my fears of a waste land are unfounded.

Vegetables Emerging on May 19th

Unnerved all the same, I stand helpless, mourning the loss of fun, now replaced by work. Can I work hard enough to salvage a garden here? Can I rescue the little I have?

Rows Weeded and Watered by May 24th

And, suddenly, I remember. It is this way every summer! In my experience with gardening, nothing ever works out the way I planned. Nature is unpredictable. The fun lies in witnessing what happens after all. Through weeding, I can exercise a little control, but the immensely complicated combinations of rain, sun, wind, temperature, humidity, fauna, and cell division are far beyond me! Acknowledging how small a part I play in this venture called “a garden,” I echo Abraham and say, “God will provide.”

       

My Sacred Places: Poe Sites in Baltimore

This is how it all began. When I was in secondary school, one of my favorite authors was Edgar A. Poe. Like so many young people, I was drawn to his larger-than-life plots. In graduate school, I studied Poe’s works. In the last year of my PhD work at IU, a friend in theater asked me if, for her graduate course in makeup, she could use prosthetics and grease paint to transform me into Walt Whitman, the subject of my dissertation. I consented. I had only to stand center stage in the auditorium while a judging panel evaluated the makeup under lights. The committee said that I looked so much like Whitman that I should consider performing a play about the poet. After completing my PhD in early American literature and taking a position at Northern Kentucky University, I began to research and write a script for a one-person play depicting Whitman and his works. I performed the two-act drama many times, but requests for the show were relatively sporadic. It was a chore to keep two hours of material memorized in between shows that were spaced a month or more apart. As I thoroughly enjoyed performing the part of an author, I decided that, to perform more often, I would choose a writer more popular than Whitman. I then composed a script for a play depicting the master of horror, Edgar A. Poe.

One of My Publicity Photos

Depicting Me in the Rôle of Edgar A. Poe

My play had no intermission. The enactment demanded prodigious energy. My purpose was to put before theatergoers an authentic Poe, not the Poe of popular culture. My Poe was neither a drug addict nor a drunk. My Poe was a writer’s writer. My Poe loved satire, had a towering sense of humor, screamed boo, winked, and smirked. My Poe changed costumes onstage to become the quirky narrators in “To Helen,” “Berenice,” and “The Raven.” My Poe quoted from his letters, essays, and reviews so as to give a nuanced depiction of the author. To change me into Poe meant a makeup process requiring between four and six hours. The style of makeup varied depending on whether the audience was close to me or far away, but the time it took to prepare Poe’s face remained the same.

My Sketch of Poe’s Raven

 

In the past forty years, eighteen actors have played the rôle of Poe on stage, according to writer Michael McGlasson. I offered a fully memorized and fully staged performance with an elaborate set. I gave over two hundred performances of my play A Dream Within a Dream during a dozen years. Thousands witnessed my drama. I last performed my play on Poe in 1994. Mine was not a costumed reading from a lectern—the form to which many Poe enactors resorted; rather, my performance was a ninety-minute, fully scripted show with a set and with a light and-sound technician.

“The Hour Glass of the Kings”

Illustration by Robert W. Satterfield

Page 1 of The Kentucky Post for Friday, December 10, 1915

For a Poe enactor, Baltimore is arguably the most important city in which to stand before the footlights. After all, Baltimore has Poe: his corpse, that is. Poe died in Baltimore on October 7^th in 1849 at the age of 40. Jeff Jerome of the Baltimore Poe Society named my play the authorized stage version of Poe’s life, and he brought my drama to Baltimore for performances on Poe’s birthday in 1988 and 1990. Both shows took place before standing-room only crowds in the deconsecrated church beside Poe’s grave. I was the performer in 1990 when Life Magazine secured an infrared photograph of the man who left cognac and roses on Poe’s grave. The photographer that Life hired took many pictures of my play, but none of them wound up in the magazine. After the performances, I led theater-goers in a toast to Poe beside his grave marker. What a thrilling experience that was! Anyone wishing to know more about Poe should visit the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and anyone wanting to read a complete account of my play can see “In Poe’s Skin” at Rhode’s Books from the HeartLand.