Do You Garden?

One of the things a dental hygienist must do in order to establish a good rapport with her patients is to be able to relate to them and engage them in conversation that conveys that they aren't just a mouth. They are a real person that you care about in a professional way, but also are interested in as a human being.

I've had the pleasure over the past 30 years of getting to know many, many patients and their families and I love it that I am now treating the children of patients that were children themselves when I first started working in the office where I am currently employed. It doesn't even make me feel old saying that!

There are a few standard questions I ask when getting to know someone for the first time and on occasion in the last few years, one of them has been "Do you garden?" There are actually a few ways to ask this question and depending on which one you choose, you might get different answers. Whether you live in the city or the country might determine how the question gets answered, too.

If I asked, "Do you garden?" I might hear back, "Just vegetables," or "Just flowers." The same response might be gotten by asking, "Are you a gardener?" Around here, people are more likely to assume that gardening means growing vegetables, and if you ask, "Do you put out a garden?" it definitely means vegetables.

While I'm sensitive to these nuances in meaning, if you asked me if I'm a gardener, I would answer, "Oh yes," and then be sure to tell you that I grow both vegetables and flowers. This doesn't mean that someone who does one or the other but not both is any less of a gardener, it's just an indication that we should never assume what the answer to our question really means.

And since this question begs further exploration and conversation once it's asked, one other thing I have learned over the years is to only ask it when the appointment is finished and my patient is free to answer properly. Although I really can understand "gauze talk."

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gauze talk - noun. The language spoken by dental patients when they have the dentist's, assistant's, or hygienist's hands in their mouth and they are unable to speak clearly. So named for the garbled speech a patient has while biting on gauze after a tooth extraction.

It's Spring Somewhere

If it doesn't feel like spring where you are, maybe this will be a note of encouragement. While we sit here in northwest Ohio under yet another winter storm warning and listen to the freezing rain hit the windows, the Monarchs are on the move.

Our Little Acre is a certified Monarch Waystation and as such, receives periodic news from Monarch Watch. They tell us that the Monarchs began mating in Mexico at their overwintering sites in mid-February. The first weary and ragged travelers will begin showing up later this week in Texas. It will be the offspring of those that will make their way to our garden here.


Sometimes it's easy to get wrapped up in what's going on right around us that we sometimes forget that we're just a small speck in the grand scheme of things.

I've Got Mail! You Want Some?

Last week, Elizabeth Licata - member of the infamous bunch over at GardenRant - posted about a book that sounded really interesting to me - Native Plants of the Northeast by Donald Leopold. Her review of it made me want to add it to my ever-growing list of books in my gardening library.

With this area being the last in Ohio to be cleared and settled due to The Great Black Swamp, it's rich in all kinds of native plants in those areas that remain. Because the major occupation here is farming, the wooded areas are small and scattered, but they're largely untouched. We walk the woods here on a regular basis and we're always on the lookout for new natives we haven't seen before.

As I continued to read down through Elizabeth's post, to my delight she made a contest of things by offering her duplicate copy of the book to the first person who could identify three native plants that she described. I knew what two of them were right away, because we grow them here at Our Little Acre. I had to do some searching to figure out the third one. I made my guess and what do you know - I won the book!

I received it a couple of days ago and I want to express a huge "Thank you!" to Elizabeth for sharing this jewel! Be assured it will be well-read and used as we begin another year of exploring our native woodlands and river banks.

Because so many people have been so generous with me throughout the blogosphere, I want to pay it forward by giving away a book myself. I too have a duplicate copy of a gardening book and I'll send to one of my readers.


In Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden, author Diane Ackerman shares her observations of her garden in an engaging way. These essays will have you looking at your own garden in a new way and appreciating things about gardening that you may previously have taken for granted. The copy I have to share is the hardcover version of the above pictured paperback.

Now - how to qualify? Leave a comment on this post telling me which of my posts since I started blogging on January 1, 2007, is your favorite and why. I'll draw a winner on Monday, March 10th, using the random number chooser program.

Good luck!