THE TIME HAS COME, THE WALRUS SAID...TO SPEAK OF MANY THINGS

In the narrative poem by Lewis Carroll,  oblique references to walruses, cabbages, kings, oysters and flying pigs are made within the context of a walk that Tweedledum and Tweedledee take along a beach. Those of you familiar with the poem will recall that the two rather innocent Tweedle guys take a seemingly companionable walk, picking up a few denizens of an oyster bed on the way, and surprisingly enough, end up devouring a few of the poor unsuspecting mollusks. Go figure, right?

Not that I think any of us are comparable to the two Tweedles - we are not the consumers, but rather the consumed. I expect that most of you have experienced the phenomenon of being swallowed whole by your obsession, just when you least expect it. Come on....admit it....you know exactly what I am talking about. In the Northern Hemisphere, the consumption's earliest beginnings are usually around early February or March, when the most ardent and driven competitors among us carefully plant those seeds or tubers, nestling them gently in perfect dahlia media, and situating them in light trays, greenhouses or spare rooms with ideal humidity and an atmosphere over which we exercise complete control. We pamper them, we check them several times a day, we make adjustments as necessary, and we wait - and imagine decimeters of growth - and our impatience grows as our heartbeats race in anticipation and the frustration that is the grain of sand in our oyster to see a little shoot of green through that beautiful black dirt...

However, it is only November.... We have months to go before we can get away with sneaking something out of storage early.....Today is Thanksgiving, and most of us, by this time of day, have been stuffed and sated at a level that leaves some of us feeling a little guilty and a lot bloated. I hope you all had a good day spent with people you love who, or at the very least, bring a smile to your face. I know I did....and it felt good.

You may be wondering how I plan to connect my musings about Carroll's poem to the wonderful world of dahlias.....Well, it's this way - my long absence from this page has been the result of my having been eaten (like an unspecting oyster!) by the Tweedledum-Dee's of dahlia-dom, leaving me in a state of paralysis and depletion....In other words, I think I ran out of energy. Trying to sort out all the paraphernalia from the summer and fall has taken me a little time......growing and competing as a dahlia grower is definitely "not for sissies", as I've heard people say about growing old.....I'm happy to announce that I'm back.....I finally got all the reports done, the articles written, the treasurer's report done, the DVD made, the office sorted out, the ADS conference calls attended, the website coordinator shadowed, the garden dug, the tubers divided and stored, the club garden amended, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.....It goes on and on, as you all know....because you too, have been swallowed by one of the Tweedles.....whether it is prefixed Cascade, Lakeview, Clearview, Kenora, Taratahi, NTAC, Jacs, Alpen, Vista, Aitara, Bloomquist, Hollyhill, Narrows, Wyn's, AC, Tahoma, Chimacum, Verrone's, Mingus, Valley, Camano, Snoho, or any other of the multitude of beautiful cultivars that "have their way with us...." And we smile as it all goes down......