From the Lawnchair to the Armchair

With his lifelong friend and colleague, Ed O’Rourke, Jr., Leon Standifer has contributed Country Roads’ Lawnchair Gardeners column for more than a decade. The column grew out of Ed and Leon’s popular book Gardening in the Humid South, (LSU Press, 2002)—a book that applied sixty-something years’ experience teaching plant physiology at LSU to the challenges of trying to grow things on purpose in our climate. “Essentially the book and the columns were derived from our arguments over plant physiology,” explained Leon. “We were not trying to tell readers how to garden. We were talking to gardeners about interesting things.” For ten years, Ed and Leon have kept us interested with a concoction of natural history, folklore, peculiar horticultural ephemera, and good-natured disagreement that has proved a fertile medium in which to nurture gardeners. This month’s column will be Leon’s last. So I set out to write a brief appreciation. But as usual, Leon beat me to it, and said it better anyway:

“There is an old vaudeville axiom: ‘Always leave them laughing.’ A little over ten years ago Country Roads asked Ed O’Rourke and me to begin writing a series of gardening articles with the agreement that it would continue until they got tired of our articles or we got tired of writing them. Amazingly, neither of those situations happened. As the old song goes: Country Roads took us home to a place where we belonged. We enjoyed having those chances to talk about gardening.

“Last year Ed was eighty-nine, going on ninety, years old. His mind was still sharp, but his body was slowing. Ed had always called pneumonia “the old man’s friend.” Well, that old friend came to see Ed and carried him off one year ago. Country Roads wanted me to continue writing and they gave me a new format, working with Anne and Michael Craven on their gardening problems. I have enjoyed it—but I am now eighty-eight, going on eighty-nine. My mind is still working and my health is good, with the exception of a few aches and pains. The Craven garden is doing well and the Craven family is well on the way to becoming excellent gardeners.

“Back in 2004 Julie Andrews celebrated her sixty-ninth birthday by singing a revision of the
classic song: “My Favorite Things.” Parts of it went something like this:

Back pains, confused brains and no need for sinnin’
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin'
Then I remember the great life I’ve had
And then I don’t feel so bad.

“Ed and I had a great time with these articles and deeply appreciate the support of you, our readers. Country Roads has agreed to let this be my last monthly gardening article so that “all y’all” will remember the Lawn Chair Gardeners as funny and mostly accurate in our writing. —Leon Standifer, November, 2013

“Poinsettias Bid Farewell to the Year,” the last in Leon’s Real Growth series of columns, can be found here. Leon promises that he’ll continue contributing articles on a variety of topics into the new year.