My grandfather used to have a pretty big garden. He actually had a whole farm in what used to be rural Middle Tennessee but is now suburban Nashville. It was very rural when he and my grandmother paid $5,000 for all 64 acres and the house on December 6, 1941. I don’t think they ever got out of the Victory garden habit. Grandpappy always used leaves, chicken manure, and ashes from our fireplace in his garden. Once when I was a kid, I told him that I liked the fact that he did not use a bunch of chemicals. He just laughed and said he did not use them because he did not know how. Being the SysAdmin for one of the world’s largest apparel manufacturers before such a thing as SysAdmins existed, he probably could have figured out how to use nitrogen based fertilizers and Roundup if he wanted to.
Not that he was a major environmentalist. We lived about a mile away and helped with Grandpappy’s erosion control project by throwing our garbage in his gullies. So much for that groundwater. This was one of many of his ongoing projects around the place. Since our house backed up to their property, and since Mama was forever telling us to “GET OUT,” I spent a fair amount of time in the woods and fields of my grandparents. I took for granted the ability to distinguish between a Maple and a Poplar, a Cedar and a Hemlock. I also knew that as God was my witness, I would never pick beans in August again.
As I have grown older, those hazy August days have melted into a more romantic picture of mid-century homesteading. My everything-but-the-brown-hat knowledge of the forest seems to have departed as well. For a person who is as big a fan of Thomas Jefferson as of Bruce Springsteen, not having a solid knowledge of flora is a shameful secret for me to walk around holding. Like food and music, nature is something I appreciate more as my knowledge of it grows.
Which is why, in addition to winning the iPod, I was excited to also win a copy of Botany Buddy. It’s true that I like to play with a gadget under many circumstances, but this app is like my first dictionary or Google Maps in that I will go to look at one thing and, “hey! look at that. Oh, and this is interesting too. Wait, that reminds me that I wanted to check out this other thing. ” I’m sure there is some sort of term for this kind of exploration, but I don’t know what it is called. What I do know is that I really like this kind of wandering around in information and getting to explore without having to figure something out. Because Botany Buddy is easy to use, and because the entries are written in a way that makes me believe the developers enjoy it too, the app is fun and engaging.
The fact that the whole library is contained on my iPod is nice, since I don’t always have a wi-fi connection. Of course, this necessitates limiting the library to trees and shrubs (hence the name “Botany Buddy Tree and Shrub Finder.”) My sources tell me that the web app (which I think will be accessible to iphone app purchasers for at least one year gratis) contains not just trees and shrubs, but the whole vegetable kingdom. I am looking forward to that as I consider what to do with my square foot garden this coming spring.
I also look forward to making better use of the social network function in Botany Buddy. Gardeners are like most runners. We know our limits and respect the efforts of others. We want our passions to grow (sorry) and are happy to share what we know with others. I’ve got a lot to learn in the garden, but I am looking forward to digging around (not sorry.) Only, I’ll be like Grandpappy and not learn anything about those chemicals.