When I think of the hours of toil and frustration that I have spent so far in the creation of my Gardening database, I have, from time to time, questioned my motives. What really is the point of this complexity? Who in their right mind would go to this trouble if they weren’t being paid? As far as I can figure, it was born purely of my own necessity. The garden would obviously flourish or perish regardless of a database. Much of it boiled down to my lovely wife, to whose standards I felt compelled to rise.
You see my wife is British by birth, and still retains her accent. Months and months before we had even met face-to-face, having only spoken by phone, she had lured me in with her lovely accent and her obvious intelligence. While the accent alone is lovely, when spoken with Gardener’s Latin, the combination can be intimidating. Thus it seemed to me there was a necessity to rise to her level. I couldn’t do anything about the accent, but I could certainly expand my lexicon to encompass some Latin taxonomy. With the database, the correct botanical names for our garden specimens are right at my fingertips.
My wife also has a better memory than me, or at least sets the standard to which my memory is to be measured! With a database, we can agree on the facts, they can be meticulously recorded and yet retrieved in an instant. In the years before the database I would struggle and be frustrated trying to remember from year to year where a particular specimen was planted. For even with our modest beginnings, we had five different planting sights.
A final necessity, for which my wife can claim no credit, is satisfy my meticulous nature. I do love the minutia of collecting the details and presenting them in a consistent and professional format. Digging through some old gardening materials, I recently came across some lists and journals that I had made as a teenager back in the early 80’s. I’ve always been this way, now it just looks more sophisticated.
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| These were plans, notes and journal entries from my parents garden in Montreal in the 80's |
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| This is the homepage of the database that I have created now. A place to house all sorts of garden related data. |
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| A sample Specimen record from the garden database. |
Thank you David for a lovely blogpost.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly confirm that there were many cold winter evenings when the reply to the question: "What are you doing" was "working on my database"
I admit, I too am very impressed when I meet someone who correctly uses the Latin name for plants. However, I never thought that I too could be counted amongst these mavens of erudition.
Thanks David, and I will look forward to your next blogpost!