Plants and names

by Pat Laster

PLANTS: The houseplants are outside on the east-facing porch. Both ferns and the Chinese evergreen have been blown off their moorings at least once. My mother would be aghast; she wouldn’t put hers out until the wind quit blowing. Not me.
The Drunkard’s Dream has yellow blooms, as does the Yellow Rose of Texas, though its blossom is a “rose” shape rather than a tiny trumpet. The “lilac in the dooryard” also blooms and last weekend, I noticed woods violets in the grass. Inside, two red trumpets bloom from two young epesias.
Last week, I actually followed an online suggestion on how to care for the mandevilla that daughter Jennifer gave me last summer. Her mandevilla, she said, “passed away” during the Christmas season when she didn’t take time to care for it.
At Home Depot, I bought some new potting soil and a 50-pound bag of sand. I searched for the 10-20-10 plant food, to no avail. But an older gentleman employee noticed how long I’d stood poring over them, and came to my aid.
He found one with different mixture numbers, but the phosphorus count was the highest. I thanked him and carried it away to the checker. Plus some rooting material, 50-pounds of marbled rocks, three more pots of thrift and a metal trash can—to use as a burn receptacle. Oh, and three broken stepping stones at fifty cents each.
After a day’s work in the yard, this poem surfaced: “too much yard work/ on this mild but windy day/ now, the heating pad”
NAMES: How would you like to have the name David O. Dobbs? I wonder how often he was kidded about it. Or William Bryan Jennings? How about Duff Luffman? That one’s fictional.
Now and then, I notice places that would make good given names. Like Cazenovia and Baraboo (Wisconsin). Speaking of place names, L. Frank Baum noticed one of his filing cabinet drawers marked A–G, a second tagged H–N, and a third labeled O–Z. Hence, the place, Oz.
According to the 1990 census, the most common female names from one to ten were: Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Maria, Susan, Margaret and Dorothy.
From the 2010 census they are: Emily, Madison, Emma, Olivia, Hannah, Abigail, Isabella, Samantha, Elizabeth and Ashley. Only one has made both lists.
French businessman Marcel Bich was ready to take his successful, disposable ballpoint pen to the international market. He named the product after himself, but realizing that Americans would incorrectly pronounce the name, he smartly dropped the H and called his pen Bic.
Movie director Wes Craven named Freddy Krueger after a kid who bullied him in school.
When the name Alan Smithee is credited as a film’s director, it means that the real director has disavowed the project and does not want his/her real name used.
When former chicken-plucker-turned-singer Ernest Evans decided to change his name, he chose Chubby Checker to honor his idol, Fats Domino.
I have a hefty collection of given names against a possible book of such information: over 4500 of them gathered from my readings, excluding fiction. Maybe someday, they’ll see the black of print.

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press