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MOUNTAIN VIEWS: TIME SPENT IN GARDEN RELIEVES FRUSTRATIONS

OLEAN -- OK, here's how this column is going to work. First, there will be a series of paragraphs listing recent outrages and what I think about them.

But there will only be about half a dozen. If I write more than that, I'll get the spleen working, and rattle on and on and on, and never get to the original topic I intended -- which, it being the height of summer, is gardening.

That's right. By the middle of this thing, I'll need something to cool me off with pleasant thoughts, and so much about the current national and global situation is so downright rotten, it's time for a relaxing subject, one that promotes the good of the order instead of reflecting humanity's baser characteristics.

Outrages

• Medicare Drug Prescriptions
  As I write this, selfish and shortsighted members of Congress from both major parties are still deadlocked over legislation to help old folks with high drug bills and low income. Most of the dickering between Democrats and Republicans stems from maneuvering for the fall elections. It has little to do with curing a situation that shamefully is driving seniors to Canada and Mexico to seek reasonably priced medicine. It has everything to do with political contributions from the huge multi-national drug companies.

• Taxpayer Funded Idiocy
  I simply couldn't believe, moving back to Western New York after a quarter-century living elsewhere, that Niagara County taxpayers, in a region that is economically flat on its butt due to decades of imbecilic political leadership, have been forced to cough up over $1.2 million in just the last three years for facelifts, nose jobs, breast implants, tummy tucks, hair plugs, skin peels, even penile implants, for about a third of county employees who are granted cosmetic surgery not medically necessary under the county's self-funded health plan. This, in a period when property taxes are going up 20 percent a year, and the county is forced to siphon $1.6 million from needed programs just to keep its moronically generous health plan in the black. And it's getting worse. Last year alone, county workers treated themselves to $524,000 worth of cosmetic procedures not medically necessary, an increase of 45 percent over the year before. I have a cosmetic suggestion for Niagara County legislators: Get a brain implant.

• Corporate Corruption Law
  Sorry, but President Bush's big TV production of signing the Corporate Fraud Accountability Act last week was more smoke and mirrors than true reform. The pinstripe crooks still managed to dodge any provision for government seizure of individual assets, even if convicted. Big companies can still reward fraudulent hustlers with grossly huge stock options and get away with not even listing them as expenses. Those phony-baloney stock analysts who turned out to be making millions from the same faltering firms they were touting as great investments (the industry term is "putting lipstick on the pig") can keep right on doing it without much to worry about. Sure, sentences for fraud were increased, but when corporate crooks can still use the money they stole to hire the very best lawyers, few will go to jail.

• Offshore Tax Havens
  Greedy, unpatriotic corporations are fleeing to offshore tax shelters at record rates, moving jobs and manufacturing from American cities and states just when they are needed most. What's worse, you and I are being forced to pay them for it. When my friend Bill Welch at USA Today totaled up federal contracts awarded to ten big firms that have recently relocated offshore to dodge taxes, or plan to soon, he found they were given $1.1 billion in federal contracts in the last fiscal year alone. And $763 million of that was from the Pentagon or for Homeland Security anti-terror projects. Bermuda was a favorite destination. Here's a plan. Ignore all these phony globalization excuses. Boycott the sumbitches until they come back. Don't buy Fruit of the Loom apparel. Don't buy Stanley Tools. Don't buy Cooper Industries electrical equipment. Don't buy Tyco products. Don't buy heavy equipment or security services from Ingersoll-Rand. Make them squeal.

• Celebrity Advice
  Spare me, O deities, from the lunacy of dipwad editors. Many of them are hiring those winsome women you see on TV almost hourly to write about serious subjects. One of them, Amy Fisher, will write a column every other week for something called the New Island Ear. She is, you will recall, the former teen lover of middle-aged Long Island mechanic Joey Buttafucco, whose wife she shot in the face at her own front door when hubby wouldn't bail out of the marriage. Sure, she did her time, but rewarding crime is never a good idea. We wouldn't have a clue as to who she is if she hadn't plugged the wife. An early sample of Amy's fare has her bragging about assuming fake personalities in Internet chat rooms as a good way to elicit dating information. Just what our crumbling culture needs.

• J. Edgar Strikes Again
  So this Internet entrepreneur finds an Al-Qaeda Web site registered in Malaysia and cleverly hijacks it, all legally, gaining complete control of its contents. He offered the whole shebang to the FBI for data collection purposes, disinformation or even a possible sting. Jon Messner, the World Wide Web expert, said he'd even help them do it. The FBI shunned him, then screwed around for about a week futilely trying to find an agent with enough computer knowledge and Arabic language skills to set up a global terrorist sting. Messner was not impressed with the "new" FBI's efficiency standards. It was, he reflected to the Associated Press, like "dealing with the motor vehicle administration." Harsh comparison, indeed. The feebs never did get it going, and after a week, other Arabic Web sites caught on and began warning computer users about Messner's fake Al-Qaeda Web site. Nice try.

• Attica Prison Riot
  It happened 31 years ago next month. It still won't die. Now we find out Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's insurance department in those days persuaded vulnerable, grieving, and impoverished widows of guards taken hostage during the rebellion and later killed to sign papers that did two things: made them eligible for a pittance in workers' compensation, and legally removed their rights to sue the state for its actions in the uprising. (All but one of the dead guards were killed with state bullets during the re-taking of the prison yard.) A veteran insurance department employee said the state goal was to swoop down on the confused women before they could hire legal help or find out their rights. The goal was to avoid huge settlements and court embarrassment for the Rockefeller administration, said the aging whistle-blower, who testified before a state panel looking into the despicable official behavior. Ten prison guards and 33 inmates died in the riot.

Gardening

OK, now I'm sufficiently cheesed off. Let's examine my favorite plant -- the noble caladium. Some of you who know me never suspected I'm a garden freak, right?

Well, it's great exercise (all that lifting and stretching). It wonderfully concentrates the mind. It spawns truly constructive thinking. It makes your home worth more. It keeps you out of trouble. And it results in pleasure to the eye.

I'm all for growing vegetables, and do it myself, but to me, the most pleasing of all garden sights is the resplendent and eclectic foliage of the caladium plant.

You may recognize these by thinking of hotel lobbies, where most of them are plastic. The real thing is a native of Central and South America (Costa Rica south) that is celebrated for its foliage, not its single wimpy flower. Properly handled, the bulb planted in the spring will produce leaf after brilliant leaf of astounding color and variegated pattern.

Caladiums are on my mind because of my recent move. Over the years, by digging them up and protecting them over the winter, I've collected about $900 worth of caladium bulbs from gardens cultivated in the various states (mostly southern) in which I've lived in recent decades.

This spring, I carefully labeled each box containing a particular type of caladium (called cultivars) so I'd know what color pattern to plant when I moved to Western New York. Before I could pack them in crates that would give them oxygen (they rot if they don't have air), the diligent movers swept through my storage room and had them on the truck in unlabeled containers. In my mind, I wrote off the whole enterprise. But in my gardening heart, I grieved.

Two months later, in mid-July, my wife unpacked a container marked bedsheets or something, and there they were, my beloved caladiums. And alive and sprouting! A miracle of the mulch. God is good and great.

There was the flashy Scarlet Pimpernel hybrid, with its dark red center and lime green border; there were my stalwart June Brides, their white centers and green margins great for borders; there were the stately White Queens, with beautiful red and green veins; my Miss Muffett dwarfs, with maroon specks on lime green background; my saucy Gingerlands, with those red-on-green blotches with a white background, showed up.

I slapped those suckers in the ground and in some big pots as quickly as possible. They're coming up now, in all their show and glory. I'm a happy digger.

These things are easy to grow. You have only to remember a few things:

• They hate cold and dry soil.
• Don't plant them until the ground is really warm. Keep them watered.
• They love potash and phosphorus. Drop a spoonful of bone meal into each hole when you plant the bulbs.

You'll enjoy them enough that you'll want to preserve them. If you leave them in, in these climes, they will rot by Thanksgiving.

Dig them up after the leaves wilt and before the first big frost. Separate by variety so you'll know what you have next spring. Clip off the tops about a quarter-inch above the sprouting spot. Store the tubers in a dry place, and in some room where the temperature doesn't go below 60 degrees. Cold will rot them, too.

Advice varies, but I have better results when I do two things in the fall after digging up the tubers. I clean them completely with a fine hose spray, washing off every speck of dirt. Allow them to dry completely. I also clip off the little roots and "feelers" the bulb has sent out during growing season. I think this latter tells the tuber it's time to sleep for the winter.

When you pack them away, you have to remember the necessity of air. I find those white plastic "peanuts" that breakable stuff comes in are gnarly enough to create little air pockets that do the trick. You can also stack them in onion bags or other mesh material. I successfully stole some pantyhose one fall, put the tubers in each leg, and it worked, but remember this will anger the wife.

Or, you can leave these things in the ground to expire and treat them as annuals. But there's a warning. Once you start growing caladiums, it becomes addictive.

Northern nursery stores treat these as specialty items and sometimes charge up to $4 a bulb.

There are several reasonable suppliers in the south, some now with Internet sites, that will send you maybe 50 bulbs for about $20 to get you started. I deal with a reliable one: Caladium World (863-385-7661) in Sebring, Fla.

Niagara Falls Reporter

www.niagarafallsreporter.com

August 6 2002