Gardening article by Tom Toles for Washington Post

Space Odyssey
Cartoonist Tom Toles puts a ton of garden into a tiny back yard

By Tom Toles

Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page W28

Preparing to garden in Buffalo always put me in mind of Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire."

You remember it:


This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong . . . Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.

There. I thought I'd get that out of the way first. When I moved to D.C. in 2002, whenever I would tell anyone here that I had a garden in Buffalo, I knew by the odd pause from the listener that this is what they were picturing. In fact, if I looked closely enough, I could see in their eyes a tiny image of me in overalls and ushanka (earflaps down), lurching forward into a snowdrift, sometimes even being set upon by the wooly tusked tundra bison. This is how Washingtonians always expect a gardening-in-Buffalo story to begin. Which is why I started here.


More

then to DC! Nice!