Outsand* (for Outstand*)

With regard to working in the garden, I might not exactly be outstanding in my field. I do sometimes feel, though, as if I'm being outsanded in it. I live near a unique ecosystem known as the Albany Pine Bush, whose habitat is home to the Karner blue butterfly (discovered and named by the Lolita-conceiving lepidopterist, Vladimir Nabokov) and its favorite snack, the attractive pink and purple lupine, a lovely flower often found thriving amid rocks and pebbles along the seashore. Certain plants do better in a clay soil, while others plainly prefer sand. And there's no doubt about it: while getting to my community garden is literally a walk in the park, my actual plot there is like a day at the beach. I have a little booklet at home called Gardening in Sandy Soil by C. L. Fornari. It suggests over eighty different ground covers, herbs, and flowers—including English ivy, heather, thyme, cosmos, baby's breath, morning-glory, black-eyed Susan, creeping zinnia, purple coneflower, globe thistle, evening primrose, daylily, cinquefoil, golden rod, and spiderwort—all of which will allow you to take full advantage of the benefits (there are some) to be found in sandy soil. We dug up one sample of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 40 in WorldCat.

(Albany Pine Bush in Albany, New York, 20 June 2010, by UpstateNYer, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid