the massively resurgent deer population of the late twentieth century.^17 One
mourns Odum now, perhaps not least for the passing of his garden, a model
for us all, constructed on knowledge ancient and modern.
One might also turn to the work of two other southern men: Edmund
N. O’Rourke Jr. and Leon C. Standifer. Natives, respectively, of Louisiana
and Mississippi and now in their seventies, both are retired professors of
horticulture at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Their university
permitted them to keep their offices, equipment, laboratories, and out-
door research plots, however, so O’Rourke and Standifer might complete
their joint valedictory, a big, chatty, detailed, and illustrated book,Garden-
ing in the Humid South(). The authors suggest that their readership
might be confined to the Gulf states, but their necessary preoccupations—
abundant rainfall, excessive pests, and sandy, acidic soils—apply well up
the Atlantic coast, wherezone extends, narrowing as it proceeds
northward, all the way to Hampton Roads. I myself, who gardened with my
father just south of the James where it enters the Chesapeake, recall too
well most of the challenges and pleasures that O’Rourke and Standifer ad-
dress. Drainage is decisive, so ‘‘beds,’’ or rows, must be raised. Acidity must
be addressed, nitrogen fixed, and so on. At one point late in the volume,
the authors respectfully but briefly address the philosophy of organic gar-
dening, its instrumental vagueness (even as the federal government was
beginning a certification program), and their preference for applying yard
and garden wastes to gardens rather than hauling them to landfills. Mostly
they are engaged with many details, many of them presented in amusing,
mock-cantankerous exchanges with each other. One author believes a gar-
dener should buy the best watering hose available; the other recommends
the cheapest, since one is just as likely to run a lawn mower over an expen-
sive hose. They jointly describe an underground watering system, but it is
not composed of simple jugs. The book’s great virtue (aside from the au-
thors’ wit) is its application of the very broad field of academic horticulture
to home gardening. O’Rourke and Standifer know, for instance, pests of
every sort, and while they admonish gardeners to use pesticides sparingly,
there is much of chemicals with many applications.^18
Then there was A. L. Tommie Bass, born in the hills of northern Alabama
early in the twentieth century, a poor man only basically lettered. After
working for another family for many years, Bass lived alone, never married,
and might have passed from the earth with no more than a fleeting local
remembrance. But because the historian Allan Tullos happened upon Bass
near Centre, Alabama, during the s and referred a Duke University his-