Botany Buddy

The other day is doing my morning Twitter rounds, making sure that the world hadn’t imploded between 2:00 and 8:00 AM, when I came across a tweet about Botany Buddy from someone I didn’t know.  Now, my personal tweetographic region isn’t full of people that I often know on a personal (as in “in person”) level.  Those who tweet in my actual town are more prone to know me as a home-brewer than a horticulturist.  However, in my brief stint in the nest I have definitely come to “know” some of you in the most cyber of senses, and I think we have developed some true bonds.  But other than a few locals here in the mountains I think most of the getting to know that people do at this stage of my Twitter existence is still a matter of “Checking Me Out”.   This tweeter was definitely checking me out.  It went something like this…

“Watching a demo of @botanybuddy’s Tree and Shrub Finder. Not quite ready to get rid of my copies of Dirr and Hosie et al.”

Of course I replied…

“I still have mine and just bought the new one, but they don’t fit in my pocket and don’t have a search engine so I use both ”

For those who don’t know Dirr wrote the Bible of trees and shrubs and all subsequent versions.

Lets face it, I love books and always will, but I needed something I could use in different was.  My father was a college professor and every house we lived in had at least one room that was wallpapered from ceiling to floor with books on Philosophy, Political Science, and History.  As for my own, I replace the history with Gardening, Design, and Architecture.  I live for the day I can wallpaper with them and I love nothing more than to retreat into the stacks and dig out the most precious nugget of theory or fact, but almost immediately take what I find and somehow put it on my computer.  A little known fact is that after decades I have reunited with my high school debate partner to create Botany Buddy.  As I wrote our original database surrounded by stacks of books and references till all hours of the morning for months on end, I couldn’t help but hearken back to endless nights in the local college library writing our note cards and scouring the stacks, microfiche and card catalogs.

This process has also brought me back to much of the music of my past, as the headphones have been vital to my ability to focus and get my work done.  The scouring of data and compiling of collections has also coincided with the rediscovery of my music collection which is as vast and old as my collection of garden references.  Burning all of my old Cd’s and converting to iTunes from Napster made me even more aware of what we were about to do with all of these plants and the people in print and in my life who had brought me too them.  As I entered the plants and wrote the descriptions I relived my first reads and all of the people who I had planted them for.  I was also reliving the memories of  all the people and moments associated with the music I was listening to at the same time.  In the greatest of all coincidences, the final submittal of the final version of the app also coincided with the long awaited release of the remastered collection of The Beatles.

Almost as much as I looked forward to the release of the app, I was also looking forward to the re-release from The Beatles.  How great it was going to be to click one button and download every song they had ever written in chronological order and grouped by album.  Having bought them all at some point in vinyl, put them into or bought them on tape (even some on real to real), and eventually bought them one more time on CD to honor their survival to the digital age, the chance to buy them one more time was going to be an honor.  I was feeling the same about buying my own app.  To have all the things I love digitally recorded and stored where I could save and use them for eternity without every having to hunt them down because I had lost or worn them out again was going to be a dream come true.

I may sound a little obsessive compulsive and I am.  I even have every printed version of the Joy of Cooking and use them all.  It seemed almost spiritual as I was going to get the Beatles on MP3 at as the same time as would launch my own creation.  There was only one thing wrong…In the end (regardless of Amazon’s advertising) there were no MP3’s.  Once again I would have to replace the Cd’s that I had worn out, and that was alright, because they are worth it.  I also just bought the new version of Dirr.  There are no full color pictures, there is no search engine, and I can’t freely share the contents with my Buddies.  But I bought it again anyway even though it cost $70 to my $10 app.  Why, because through his writing he has become a part of me, still has much to offer, and as in industry we owe where we are and where we are going to those who have brought us to this point.

To go full circle, as this new venture continually makes me do with my life, we are not trying to replace the Michael Dirr’s of the world, we are trying to honor their work.  When I first heard the Beatles were being “remastered” I thought it was insulting to even use the term with their name.  However, the thought of having them available in my pocket, with a search engine, and where I could share them with my wife in daughter excited me to all end.  When I got married, A Little Help From My Friends and When I’m 64 were our wedding songs, it happens to be in my ears right now.  When I bought the newly released collection, I didn’t buy the remastered version, I bought the originals and converted them to MP3.   The Beatles, my friends, and the Michael Dirr’s of the world are what have gotten me to where I am today.  I would never try to replace them, but I would love to have them all on MP3.

“There are places I remember all my life though some have changed, some forever not for better.  Some have gone, and some remain.  All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall.  Some are dead and some are living, in my life I’ve loved them all.” – The Beatles.

We all have those places, people and moments that will be with us forever.  The memories keep coming back like the chorus in our favorite songs or the the threads interwoven in our favorite fabric.  The same is true in nature and our favorite landscapes and places.  There is something in their presence that keeps coming back no matter how much they change or even if they are gone to remind us of the pure innocence yet wildness that takes us away in their midst.  When it comes to the plants and animals in those places I have loved them all, but there is one tree that all my life has emerged, returned and in some cases is gone, yet in my life I’ve loved it more.

The Beech is a magical tree for me.  As a small child growing up in a small college town, I lived next to one of the greatest gardeners the town had ever known.  I was about six years old and he was in his sixties, and in his yard was the only Beech in town.  He had planted that tree from a small mail order twig some forty years earlier.  It’s branches were rarely touched with a pair of pruners and draped all the way to the ground.  When he first took me inside of the canopy to show me the glory of the bark, it was like entering some hallowed Cathedral and once inside that seemingly old man turned into every bit of the six year old I was.  Like so many other people and places they are both gone from my life now, forever if not for better.  Yet I am sure that tree still remains, continues to provide magic to someone and sparks fires in the hearts of gardeners.

Like so many people that have come and gone from our lives, Beeches keep coming into mine.  When I first started learning the basics of design and a vast knowledge of plants under the tutilage of my first mentor (now the director of the Kauffman Memorial Gardens), one of our favorite journeys was to a giant Purple Beech.  It resided in the garden of an old science library with some of Cupernicus’ original handwritten journals and the toys he created to prove his theories.  That Beech’s bark still brought out the six year old in me.  When I first had my calling and knew for the first time I had to go into design, I was sitting under an American Beech originally planted by George Kessler as I was overcome by one his greatest designs.  From the comfort and protection of that Beech I was able to see how he had physically and emotionally moved me through the landscape and how I could someday do the same for others.  When I came to Asheville to buy a new home to settle, as we entered the Smokies from Tennessee, the golden leaves of juvenile trees in winter lit up the under story of the mountains.  They led the way like gold coins sparkling in the forest all the way through the gorge.

Now as I sit on the side of my mountain, many of those places and Beeches are gone forever, if not for better.  But for having known them I am a better person, and I have loved them all.  Just as is true for having known the people who introduced them to me along the way.  Now I am surrounded by Beeches, and the people and places I love are the fabric of my life.  Sometimes I take them for granted and need The Beatles to remind me they won’t be there forever.  As I built Botany Buddy this summer, when I needed to get away I would retreat through the grove of Beeches outside my back door to journey to the creek and escape.  Yet somehow, I managed to forget to include them in the original library.  For that I apologize to everyone, but especially to the Beeches.  Sometimes we just need our favorite songs to remind us of the love that surrounds us here and now because it might not be there forever.

“But of all these friends and lovers there is no one compares with you, and these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new.  Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before.  I know I’ll often stop and think about them.  In my life, I love you more.” - In My Life – The Beatles