The metal detector appeared under the tree one Christmas morning when I was about eleven.  My brother got one as well, and we spent hours prowling the playgrounds and schoolyards around town, digging up a lot of bottle caps, pop-tops from soda cans, nails, and bits of aluminum foil.  We found a fair amount of coins: probably several dollars’ worth over the course of three or four years, (meaning that a career as a professional treasure hunter would be even more lucrative than that of a garden writer.)

The best treasure hunts were the ones our father took us on.  Having grown up some three decades earlier, in the 1940s and 50s, not too long after dinosaurs roamed the earth, he knew where all the old places were.  He knew that the flat-roofed storage building next to the Builders’ Supply had once housed The Lantern, a 1950s nightspot with a wooden deck in back where the jukebox sat, and he predicted that any coins which might have fallen between the boards probably still lay underneath the gravel parking lot, and indeed, my brother found a silver Mercury dime there.  He took us to a patch of muddy ground behind the newspaper office, a building which used to be his father’s drugstore, where I dug up a huge Coca-Cola bottle cap, about the size of a half-dollar, which my dad identified as having come from the big bottles of Coke they used to use for the soda fountain.  These discoveries were like uncovering actual moments of time that had been frozen for decades—someone ambling over to the jukebox to play a song by Elvis, maybe, or Chubby Checker; my grandfather, who died before I was old enough to remember him, taking out the trash at the end of the day and not noticing the bottle cap falling at his foot.

I especially remember one fall day at the beach when he drove us to a vacant lot just behind the sand dunes.  There was nothing remarkable about this lot: no crumbling ruins or earthworks or anything, just a rectangle of sand and scrubby growth between two midcentury beach cottages.   We got out of his truck, retrieved our detectors from the back, and tied our canvas nail aprons (which held our trowels and any treasure we might find) around our waists.  We had hardly made the first sweep over the sandy ground before both detectors began beeping.  I knelt on the ground to dig; the sand yielded easily to the trowel blade which turned up a copper bullet, about three inches long and shaped like a tiny torpedo.  A few feet away, my brother unearthed an identical bullet, and then another.  Our father smiled.  “I thought this was the right place,” he said.

Forty years ago, he explained, during World War II, the beach was practically uninhabited, and the Army Air Corps erected these large structures on the dunes to serve as targets for the aircraft gunners.  As a boy after the war, he saw the remains of the targets still standing for several years and had kept the knowledge of their whereabouts in his memory. 

That day, every few steps brought an electronic signal from one or both metal detectors, and after an hour or so, our nail aprons were sagging heavily under several pounds of copper.  If you have ever been an eleven-year-old boy, I do not need to explain the street value of a trove of genuine World War II bullets. 

Many of the places he took us, we didn’t find anything nearly as grand as silver dimes or machine gun bullets, but I realize now that we came home from every trip richer than we had left.  The treasure wasn’t in the ground after all.

I promised myself that I would get back to blogging once stuff started blooming. That happened this week, with the aforementioned hellebores, whose first blooms opened on the 16th.

Creeping Phlox

Veronica "Georgia Blue"

Winter Jasmine

And the 19th, the white phlox in Andy’s Garden and the first daffodil.

I read that with the same sense of foreboding I get when a sportswriter says that Carolina won’t have any trouble with, say, Georgia Tech, seeing as how the latter is below .500 with a couple of really bad losses. The Tar Heels lost to the Yellow Jackets by 20, and by Christmas, we had seen 3 snowstorms.

I gave the NWS meteorologists a break, however, since their forecast was for winter, and on Christmas Day, winter was technically less than a week old. Maybe we were just having a really cold fall.

It’s still winter. We’ve experienced a fourth snowstorm, and it looks like a fifth is on the way for next week. I don’t mind snow so much, but I hate being cold. And it has been cold. The other day I calculated that for 55% of the days since December 3, the temperature has not made it above 40. I feel like Jimmy Buffet in “Boat Drinks:”

This morning, I shot six holes in my freezer;
I think I’ve got cabin fever…

What’s happening in my garden? Your guess is as good as mine because it’s too cold to go see. My neighbor’s tree limb fell into my yard during one of the December snowstorms, and it’s still there. because I’m not going out and get frostbite to haul it to the street.

I did see a bluebird checking out the bird house last Sunday, so they, at least, hold out hope that winter will end.

And on my way in from the car the other day I brushed the dead leaves from the base of one of the hellebores and saw that it was getting ready to bloom.

A flicker showed up at my feeder during the last snow, and has been hanging around ever since.

At least I have plenty to do inside these days…

That Christmas was the coldest ever in South Carolina. Pipes froze, ponds and creeks iced over, and when my father and I arrived at the grocery store on Christmas morning, bundled up in layers, the thermometer at the bank read eight degrees. It was the first time I or anyone else in town had seen it displaying less than two digits.

My father owned the store, and it was his habit every night at closing to check the frozen food cases to make sure they were cold. The night before, while making his rounds, he noticed that the frozen vegetables felt a little warm to the touch. The thermometers confirmed that the temperature was inching up toward the freezing mark. He called the refrigeration repairman, Henry Britt, to ask his advice.

“I’ll be there first thing in the morning,” Henry said.

***

A modern American boy doesn’t have many real responsibilities. His labor is not required to bring in the harvest on the family farm, and he doesn’t learn the blacksmith’s art or the cobbler’s trade by his father’s side like previous generations did. His life is a lot easier and more comfortable, but the downside of this comfort is that it robs him of the chance to develop real capabilities, to gain confidence from doing authentic work that matters. Of course, at fourteen, I wasn’t thinking in those terms when my father asked me to help him, but maybe that’s why I sat up a little straighter in the truck that Christmas morning as we rolled along the somnolent streets of my hometown. Everyone else my age was inside, still wearing pajamas and opening presents. I, however, had a job to do. My dad needed my help. I felt important and grown up.

We met Henry at the store. He determined that the frigid air was affecting the motors that ran the cooling units. The solution, he announced, was to drape sheets of plastic down from the roof so that they covered the enormous vents on the back wall, keeping the motors warm enough to operate.

We propped an aluminum extension ladder against the cinder-block wall and began the ascent, each of us clutching a plastic tarp that Henry had produced from who-knows-where. A bitter northwest wind whipped around the corner of the building, turning a routine climb into an adventure on the order of scaling a glacier while carrying a sail.
I had never been so cold in my life. The wind pushed us around like we were made of cardboard; several times it nearly yanked the tarps out of our hands. We had to remove our gloves to anchor them to the roof, but our hands stiffened and grew numb and raw. My nose wouldn’t stop dripping, my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, and I could not stop shivering.

Somehow, we secured the tarps to the roof, then to the bottom of the wall. Henry disappeared through the back door of the store. A few moments later, the great motor roared to life.

***

After half an hour of monitoring the machinery, Henry pronounced our work a success. We shook hands, three men who had been through an ordeal together. My dad thanked Henry for coming out on Christmas morning, and then he and I got back in the truck. “Still want to go to church this morning?” He asked. “It’s only eleven o’clock.”

He cranked the old blue Ford and pulled out of the parking lot. The heat blew full blast from the dashboard vents, and I vowed never to take warmth for granted again. “You did a good job today,” he said. I don’t know many fourteen year-olds who could have handled that.” As warm as that heat was, my father’s praise warmed me more, and I would have gladly climbed right back on that roof if he needed me to.

We drew a few stares at church, coming in late as we did, dressed in flannel shirts, grubby jeans, and work boots (people still dressed up for church then, especially on Christmas.) When one of my friends pressed me for an explanation, I tried to sound nonchalant. “Been on a roof all morning,” I replied, as though it were part of the usual routine for a capable, reliable man like myself. “Had to help my dad fix something at the store.”

Maybe years and years later, when he’s an old man and I am long gone, his tree would still be there outside his old bedroom window, and he could show his grandchildren the tree that his father planted the year that he was born.

The spot that I picked out is a small, narrow area outside his bedroom window, a place for a small tree. So I called Stu at Guilford Garden Center to see what he had in the way of small trees. I considered a Kousa Dogwood and a Trident Maple, but after much deliberation decided on a Star Magnolia. It really is a tiny space, and I think the other trees would eventually be too big. Star Magnolias bloom early–and because I planted it on the sunny south side of the house, it will probably be blooming even earlier, where the flowers will no doubt be killed by the frost, but such is life.

Here’s Patrick and his mother beside his tree–in our first snow of the season.

We won’t even go into what my garden looks like, except to say that the Interior Department is thinking of designating it as a protected wilderness area. Sometimes when I step out the door I think I hear banjos…

Having a baby and a full-time job doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for a garden or a garden blog, so I’ve been thinking of letting one of those four items go.

My son makes me smile and laugh more than I ever did before, so I think I’ll keep him.

My garden I’ll keep because it’s there more than anywhere else that I can sort of hear the voice of God. Plus it has lots of cool snakes and many excellent bugs.

My blog gives me an excuse to write about my mental illness, neighbors who throw dead squirrels into my yard, Bobby Earl (my redneck alter ego), and to confess to the larceny of leaves from my neighbors’ trash piles. So the blog is too much fun to give up.

I have this job, though, which I started about a year ago. It’s fine in most all respects, except for the fact that I am expected to be in a chair, in an office, early in the morning when the dewdrops are glistening in the sunlight and the birds are chanting their morning carols.

I am expected to remain there throughout the morning, when my mind is the most creative. That would be all right because I have a desk and computer, but there are so many other duties to attend to that I have not had time to compose a single blog post at work the entire time I have been there. (I complained to my boss about this but have yet to see a reduction in my workload.)

I do get a break for lunch, when I often go to a picnic table in the woods beside a small stream, but…and you are not going to believe this…I am expected to go BACK to my office after lunch and continue to work. Meanwhile, the sun is getting lower and lower in the sky and weeds are not getting pulled, daylilies are not getting divided, and mulch is not getting spread.

This is going to be the easiest decision I’ve ever made.

“Are you Graham?” he asks.
“Yes sir.”
“What are you doing on the sidelines? You came here to play ball, didn’t you?”
“Yes SIR,” replies Archie Graham, with a grin.

This happened to me last Saturday. No lie.

I was driving home from the farmer’s market when I saw what appeared to be a 19th century baseball game being played in the field at Latham Park. The players were wearing old style uniforms: knickers, shield-front jerseys, and short bill caps; a chalkboard behind home plate served as a scoreboard, and a sign beside the road read “Vintage Baseball Game Today.”

I had to see this. I turned beside the park, parked my truck, and walked over to the field. A tall ballplayer dressed in what I would later learn was the uniform of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings came over to me and asked, “Did you come to play?”

I’m not making this up.

“We’ve got a full roster,” he said, indicating his team, the white-clad Red Stockings, who had indeed come all the way from Ohio. “But I think the Greensboro team might have a slot or two open. Let me introduce you to their captain.”

I looked around, half expecting to see James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner leaning against a tree, or Shoeless Joe himself coming out of the weeds growing along the banks of nearby Buffalo Creek.

A handshake later, and I became a draft pick of the 1860 Greensboro Patriots. I called my wife on the cell phone.

“Hey Teresa, do you remember that scene in Field of Dreams where Archie Graham shows up at the baseball field and the players invite him to join the game?”

“Ummm, yes…”

“Well, that just happened to me.”

She was silent for a minute, and I knew she was wondering what crazy, impulsive, lunatic scheme I had come up with at the farmer’s market that had to do with a baseball movie. She sounded markedly relieved when she realized that all it meant was that I’d be a few hours late getting home.

I was vaguely aware of the phenomenon of Vintage Baseball (or Base Ball) as it was written in the 19th century.) It’s sort of like the re-enactors of historic battles, in that the players wear old uniforms, play by the old rules (which include no gloves, no overrunning first base, and a ball caught on the first bounce is an out.)
They use old baseball terminology, like “striker” instead of “batter,” and even speak in archaic colloquialisms like, “Well struck, sir!” when a player gets a solid hit. Vintage Baseball is a gentleman’s game. On one play, the umpire (one of the Red Stocking players) called one of his teammates out at second. The Greensboro second baseman, who had caught the ball but whose foot had come off the bag, alerted the umpire:

“Sir? Runner was safe, sir. My foot was off the bag.”

Okay, so whether 19th century ballplayers were really that honest or not, I don’t know, but witnessing that was a nice corrective to the typical spoiled millionaire crybabies whining about a call that doesn’t go their way. It’s the kind of thing you want your kids to learn.

Unlike battlefield re-enactments, the outcome of a Vintage Base Ball game is not a foregone conclusion. It’s a real game. And, I would discover, a hell of a lot of fun.

As it turned out, the Patriots had enough players, with a couple to spare, but the captain, a gentleman named Red, graciously allowed me to play catcher for a while, and put me in the batting lineup even though I wouldn’t be in the field for the entire game. As I took my place behind the plate (which was an actual round metal plate) I reflected that, if you had asked me that morning what unexpected thing was going to happen to me, I would never have guessed in a million years that I’d be catching for a 19th century baseball team.

In 1860, baseball pitching was underhanded and slow, which made my job as catcher fairly easy. The only tough play was a foul ball (on which runners may advance at their own risk). I ran down the ball and tried to throw the runner out at third, but there was a tent between me and the playing field, and my throw hit the pole. I couldn’t do that again in a hundred tries.

I was nervous about batting. I played baseball in high school, but the only thing I know about hitting is that I’m not very good at it. My first at-bat was a disappointing pop-up to third, but I reckoned it better than striking out.

My next time up, I had time to search among the collection of wooden bats for a lightweight one, which would allow me to get around on the ball faster. That time, I got solid wood on the ball and legged out an infield hit to keep the inning alive. I moved to second when the next batter got a base hit, but was stranded there when my teammate popped up for the third out. In my final at bat, down 6-2, I drove home a run on a ground-out to second, pulling the Patriots to within 3, but we ended up losing the game 6-4.

At the end of the game, both teams lined up facing the spectators. The captains of each team stepped forward and gave a short speech congratulating the opposing team on a well-played game, timely hitting, crisp fielding, and good sportsmanship, then led his team in three cheers for their worthy opponents. We shook hands, congratulated each other, and walked off the field, crossing the baseline, but perhaps not quite fully into the 21st century.

As I climbed into my truck, I looked back across the empty field and thought I saw…no, it couldn’t have been…

The most obvious benefits are:

1) You can actually see the cotoneasters (Coral Beauty) and they have room to grow.

2) You can see the collection of coral bells that the Hellebore Queen gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago.

I was closely supervised throughout the entire project by my new boss: