The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson

 

This is Dickson's second H.M. mystery published in 1934 just two years after Dickson moved to England and started furiously writing, publishing sometimes 5 or even 6 books a year. It goes without saying that this is a locked room mystery--a real head scratcher--but the character development and plotting is a bit rough. Clearly it's an early work. Our friend Inspector Masters is presented as if he's the main character/investigator but (apparently) the public reacted so much more warmly to H.M. (who does not appear qua detective until about halfway through the novel) that H.M. was elevated to the primary detective and Masters demoted to his sidekick in all later H.M. mysteries.  It was the right choice since H.M. is far too eccentric to be anyone's side kick but Masters is a strong enough character that he should have been the star of his own series. There are several features of this book that make it one of the lesser Dickson stories:

(1) The story is told from Jim Bennet's point of view, an American who arrives in London to visit his uncle H.M., whom he's never before met.  Bennet is young and clearly the Dick Powell (of the movie 42nd Street) sort: never the center of action but always "gets the girl".  And the minute we meet this character, we know that (a) he's going to ask the detective a lot of questions to help develop our understanding of what is going on; (b) he's going to be given tasks that require climbing, lifting, hiding, punching and restraining villains; (c) he's going to fall in love at first sight with a hapless female; (d) that female is going to appear as a primary murder suspect but the fact that he fell in love with her means she didn't do it.  And that's pretty much how things played out in this book.  Jim is tolerable but completely predictable.

(2) The mystery doesn't happen until about one third the way through the book and so the first section is Jim relating his work experiences to H.M. (who is sitting in his office avoiding Christmas festivities organized by his long suffering secretary nicknamed "Lollypop".  Since we never see or hear her, I have no idea how she earned that name). So for 70 or so pages we hear how Jim spent his voyage on an ocean liner, surrounded by insufferable American celebrities as well as their entourage and all the backstabbing they do to one another.  I can't even remember why he got that job--what does the guy do for a living?  It's totally unclear.

(3) Once we finally get to the scene of the crime--an outlandishly grand house built in the style of a 15th century royal vacation home designed to allow for maximally secret trysts--the book turns into a strange combination of Citizen Kane, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Sunset Boulevard. The house is too big, too weird, with too many secret hallways and windows through which everyone can see something but not everything going on somewhere else. The house has sneaky servants with strange injuries and is full of various friends and relations whose history and connections are murky.

(4) The first murder victim (there is always more than one in these stories--the minute you are certain "who dunnit" that person ends up at the bottom of a steep staircase with a broken neck) is movie star Marcia Tait who is described as impossibly beautiful. She's always plays the sexpot in movies and so is assumed to be the same in her real life--every man in her orbit is assumed to be a past or present or future lover.  As a result, all women hate her because they think she is going to steal her man and almost all men hate her because they are convinced that she would have sex with them if only there wasn't some other man near her that she (at that moment) favors. In short, she makes everyone around her  unhinged. And she's unhinged herself, with "big star" demands such as having the owner of the house make up the outdoor marble pavillion so that she can sleep there--no small ask.  It is assummed that she wants to meet a lover out there but in fact she wants to meet her manager/agent out there as he has inside information on deals being struck between Hollywood movie companies and London theater companies. She wants out of Hollywood and they aren't going to let go of her easily.  On the other hand, various London theaters want to snap her up because they want to inject a bit of sex appeal to boost their sales.  But if terrible rumors about her are believed (such as "being difficult to work with"--the very words that have killed thousands of women's careers), she may end up with no work at all.  

(5)  Despite being advertised as a "Christmas Mystery" there is nothing "Christmassy" about this book at all: the only reason we know it is winter is because footprints in a light dusting of snow are an important clue. Other than that, there is NOTHING jolly or festive about this gloomy and heavy handed miserable mystery.

I won't go into too many details because, as usual for Carter Dickson/Dickson Carter, there are several solutions generated only to be tossed aside as impossible.  The central facts are these:  Jim has a wild night in London with friends and sets out for Priory House much later than he intended, arriving at 7 or so in the morning instead of before midnight. Just as he pulls up his car into the driveway (and just as the sun is coming up so he can see clearly), he sees a man (movie star has-been John Bohun--that  ridiculous name would NEVER have been allowed in Hollywood in the 30s) with blood all over his hands and a crazed look in his eyes, standing outside a large marble building. There is about 3" of snow on the ground and one set of tracks--his--leading to the building.  John orders Jim to look around, check out things, but stresses that he (John) (a) just arrived, (b) made the only set of tracks going to the pavillion, and (c) there is "something nasty is inside". Nasty indeed: it's Marcia's cold corpe with the top of her head bashed in. This lady will NOT be having an open casket funeral....

Right from this moment Jim assumes his role as everyone's dogsbody: John orders him about and Jim obeys. When Masters shows up, he tells Jim where to go, what to notice, and what to say to whom.  When H.M. shows up, HE takes over as Jim's boss, ordering him about. Here's the rub: according to the local doctor, Marcia was killed around 3:00 last night but John didn't arrive from London until just a few minutes before Jim, around 6:30 in the morning.  There is only one set of tracks leading to (and not from) the pavillion where Marcia's dead body is.  And the snow started around midnight and ended around 2:00, so before Marcia was killed.  Put all that together and you have a woman killed after the snow stopped, but by someone who left no tracks in the snow either going to or leaving the Pavillion. And thus we have a locked room mystery.

As for the people in the house: 

Maurice Bohun: John's brother and owner of the oversized ugly house, who is unbelievably obnoxious and awful.  He's set up to be the perfect murderer as he is a smarty pants know-it-all and no one would be sad if he was sentenced to be hung for murder. 

Katherine: A relative of Marcia's and it is never explained why she's there. She's beautiful--sort of a watered down version of Marcia so therefore not offensively sexy as Marcia was--just attractive enough for one man to handle. The minute Jim falls in love with her--which is on sight--we know she isn't the murderer despite the fact that she has no alibi at all.

Louise: John's daughter who lives with her uncle Maurice. Louise is the crazy young woman who takes huge doses of opioids to "settle her nerves" that cause her to suffer hallucinations, sleepwalk and sleep scream. When she "comes to" in the morning after the murder, she is on the floor near the back door that leads to the pavillion and one of her arms is covered in blood. But whose blood?  

Rainger: a louse and a cad who works with both John and Marcia. He's a movie exec who has glommed onto Marcia because he's trying to manipulate her career for his own profit. He's a lecherous drunk and he propositions every female he meets (no servant or neice of Maurice is safe) by promising a movie career in exchange for sex.  Once he's had the sex, he frees himself of them by telling them they are "too ugly" to ever make it in the movies. Another horrible person set up to be the murderer because we'd all love to see him executed.

Mr. and Mrs. Willard: primary servants in the house who seem to operate on no sleep whatsoever as they both see no end of shenanigans during the night Marcia is killed: people turning lights on and off all over the house, people creeping up and down this hallway and that, people running in and out of the pavillion until midnight, cars arriving, cars leaving, dogs barking, dogs not barking...is it any wonder with all that larking about that someone ends up with their forehead bashed in?

Potter: the local inspector who initially is excited to be involved in such a big case but, once he sees what he is up against, quickly puts in a call to London asking for help, hence the arrival of Masters.  Potter doesn't leave though as once Masters arrives, he's required to run hither and yon, checking fingerprints, blood types, taking photos, checking backgrounds. And why does H.M. show up? Because once Potter calls Masters out and Masters sees what he's up against, Masters calls H.M.--only he's familiar enough with H.M. to know that he can't simply ask for help on a murder case so he tells H.M. that "Jim got himself into a situation" and it's Jim that needs H.M.'s help--a call for help H.M. is willing to answer.

So who dunnit?  Well, in true Agatha Christie fashion, it's the person we are least likely to suspect because it's the person we are led to believe (a) doesn't exist and (b) once we learn of their existence we are told they didn't show up at the house until the day AFTER the murder.  And what's the deal with the footprints--how did the murderer get into the pavillion to kill Marcia? They didn't.  As H.M. says, you solve a locked room mystery by proving that it isn't a locked room....

Wadin' not Swimmin'

Tried to take Frederick for a walk/swim today and found the route that we've used for years washed away.  So we had to get into the lake where it was about thigh deep, with very silty mud at the bottom (along with several razor sharp submerged trees).  And then when we got to the other side, it was an almost vertical climb to the path.  Frederick was decidedly pouty for a while there, but recovered nicely.  Looks nice, though, doesn't it?

Garden Update

I've planted out all the beds with tomotos (that I grew from seeds and while they are alive, they are runty--I really doubt we'll get any tomatos this year..), some sort of squash or legume thing, and tossed in some lettuce seeds to fill in the spaces.  If the weather vacillates between scorching hot sunshine and explosive thunder/lightening rain storms like we had two nights ago, they should live but it does seem like they have a lot of growing to do in just two months.

Expanding on the "try it and see if it works" approach, I decided to hang some pots on the side of our garage.  Strawberries take up too much space on the ground and everyone here spends a lot of time complaining about the damage squirrels do to strawberry plants they can get to (hence the Lettuce Grow being stocked with only strawberry plugs).  So I decided to hang some there hoping that no squirrel can reach them (though I am sure they'll try).  That side of the garage gets blazing hot after about noon until about 7:30 pm each day, so they should like the space.  As to watering needs, they are under an eave so they won't get rain and, being in black pots, they will dry out quickly.  So, I invested in a solar powered watering system.  It won't arrive for another week but in theory, it should be really cool: a solar panel powers a pump that sends water up from a bucket through a tube that is connected to drippers which are placed in each pot. You can install as many drippers as you want and space them any way you want by cutting the tubing into whatever length sections you want. You can also add fertilizer directly into the bucket water so it can do two jobs at once while you do absolutely nothing.  And, if your bucket has a lid with only a tiny hole for the tubing to get through, it shouldn't evaporate or get mosquito larvae in the water.  

And I can report that so far at least, the strawberries are happy as two have grown babies in just one day:

I didn't think I'd need pots in row 2 for weeks, but apparently I was wrong.  Amazing what a plant can do in just 12 hours if it puts its mind to it.  In theory, these can be allowed to die off in Fall and left out all winter and they will spring to life next year.  That seems hard to credit but, again, would total strangers on YouTube lie?  

Film review: More Than A Secretary (1936)

Simon is officially done with both picking out movies and writing up reviews of them so anyone reading this blog is going to have to put up with my choices and my opinions for the forseeable future.

We are subscribed to The Criterion Channel which is a mixed blessing: it is not overly expensive and they have movies we enjoy watching but navigating through the site is extremely frustrating and recently, all the movies run at 1/4 speed--which means that after we select a movie we have to then switch to our Roku account to watch the movie on that site--which is even MORE annoying to navigate.  So while Simon claimed to be working on his book in his office, I was at home trying to find a decent movie to watch. I found a Criterion collection called "working relationships"--a vague description if ever there was one--but I gathered from the few titles I was familiar with that they were screwball comedies that criticize notions of 'modern' love. Adam's Rib and His Gal Friday were in the collection.  But this movie, More Than A Secretary, was new to me and since it stars Jean Arthur I was all in.

The movie was made in 1936 and, aside from comments about "men," it is decidedly unpolitical.  It begins with the camera zooming in through a tall office building window. As we close in we can hear the steady tap tapping of dozens of mechanical typewriters and we can see two rooms filled with young women steadfastly typing away as a teacher in each room dictates various sentences or rhyming words to give them the chance to practice. Here is Ruth Donnelly, who plays one of the teachers Helen Davis, the best friend of the female lead: she's smart, honest, funny, loyal and dearly cares for her silly best friend, Carol Baldwin, who is played by Jean Arthur.  And, according to the Rules of the Side Kick, she's never going to get a man. 

Both Carol and Helen are exasperated with their worst student, Maize, who can't type to save her life and doesn't even care. She doesn't want to be a secretary, she wants to be the wife (or, failing that, the mistress) of a rich businessman. Maize has mastered being the woman the businessman wants and tells her teachers that they are saps for trying to be anything other than an appendage on a rich businessman.  To underscore her point, she's offered a job right in the middle of them telling her she's failed out of their typing program.  Looking smug, Maize sails out of the room with her eye on the prize.   

Meanwhile, another businessman, Fred Gilbert played by George Brent, who is the managing editor of Body and Brain magazine, has hired (and fired) many secretaries from this school and calls to complain to Carol to tell her that the secretaries feckless and stupid and he demands a secretary who can actually do the job. Carol is of two minds--given what she has seen with Maize, she knows only too well that most of her students are useless but she's also determined to find out what exactly he wants. She arrives to a bewildering scene: an entire office of employees who alternate from working demonically on a magazine and doing calesthenics for 10 minutes every hour. Their mandated lunches, bran muffins and butter milk, are provided free. Here is Mr. Gilbert's right hand man and exercise guru, Ernest played by Lionel Stander, shouting out stretch moves.  

Carol is both astonished and quickly finds herself (a) forced to exercise and (b) strong armed into becoming Mr. Gilbert's new personal secretary.

But she is also genuinely attracted to Mr. Gilbert: he is completely serious about running the office like a well designed machine.  To Helen's amazement (and mine, too), Carol takes the job which requires longer hours, less control over her career, and less pay.  Why?  Because she's smitten.  Why?  I'm not sure.  George Brent the actor is good looking enough, but the character of Mr. Gilbert is really hard to take: he's prudish (won't tolerate any "cheesecake" images of women in his magazine depite Carol telling him that "sex and celebrity sells"), he forces other people to eat intolerable food (vegetarian meat substitutes that are badly done), and he demands perfect compliance with his unending exercise regimes at work. He is also overly interested in The Liver, the subject of every editorial article he writes.

That is, until he catches a cold (which he feels he must lie about because sickness is weakness in his mind), and stays home so Carol has to put out the next Body and Brain issue.  She decides to make a "few changes" and adds plenty of sex appeal and it works: the new issue sells out in minutes and rather than be grateful, Mr. Gilbert is furious and fires her. Annoyingly, Carol is devastated. Then, in true "will they, won't they" comedy/romance style, he gives her a groveling apology, she goes back to the magazine, he promotes her to associate editor and he then hires....MAIZE to replace Carol as his personal secretary.  (Why is Maize unemployed?  Because the guy who hired her at the start of the movie has a wife who is "coming back from Europe" and she knows what he's really up to when he's "working.")  

Well, Maize hasn't changed but Mr. Gilbert sure has: if he was softening under the influence of Carol, he melts into jelly in the hands of Maize and they go off on wild benders until 4 in the morning every night for weeks.  Needless to say the magazine suffers, Carol gets angry, quits, and she and Helen buy a car, a camper/trailer and head out to Yosemite with the plan of never coming back. (At this point Simon asked if this was a Lavender Romance movie?  I don't think so but what do I know....)

Just seconds later Mr. Gilbert comes to his senses and fires Maize only to find Carol is long gone.  So what's Mr. Gilbert going to do to get her back?  The only thing he can do: put out the next issue of Body and Brain with editorials and ads that are thinly veiled messages to Carol, each one telling her how much he (thinks he) loves her. Will they work?  Well, it is a comedy romance...

Despite Jean Arthur doing her best, this movie doesn't really fire on all cylinders--which is a shame because the side characters are really funny, particularly exercise guru Ernest, who is happy to stretch anyone into ridiculous contortions even when they scream in pain. "It'll hurt a lot more tomorrow!", he tells them. But the relationship between Carol and Mr. Gilbert (I don't think she ever calls him by his first name) just isn't sexy, or cute, or remotely plausible.  I sure wouldn't give up teaching at a school I owned to be with a guy who thinks only about liver health and I can't believe anyone would. (Though having said that, I do know someone who really does believe that the solution to most health problems is liver health so, maybe there really are people who would fall head over heels for such a guy.)  

Second Swim

 

Big Seven Lake today.  Water crystal clear.  A bit weed-choked, though.

First swim of 2026

Yesterday all sorts of alarms and sirens went off all over Flint because supposedly a Tornado was about to form.  We were told to head to the basement, put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye.  Well, the basement part, anyway.  But it never happened, which meant that the sickly, oppressive sultriness never went away.  This persuaded me to risk a swim today.  And actually, once you were in the water, it was perfect.

This is Frederick after emerging from the dip, nary a shiver to be seen.

Sky High by Michael Gilbert

I'd not heard of Michael Gilbert before reading this book and since I generally do not enjoy turning to face the strange, I had put off reading this despite the sunny cover design.  But I am determined to plow through the backlog of these British mystery books I have piled up next to my side of the bed. I am still a member of that "club" that sends me a new book of a heretofore out of print book every month and it doesn't take long to get snowed under. PLUS, once I discover a new (good) author I feel compelled to check out other works of theirs which just adds to the stack(s).

Michael Gilbert squeezed a lot of living out of the time he was alive: born in 1912 in Lincolnshire, he went off to study law at London University, but dropped out because of money troubles. He then became a schoolmaster, saved up funds, finished law school and got his degree.  He also published his first book during this time which was extremely popular (Close Quarters). Then WWII started and he joined the military and rose to the rank of major.  He was captured in northern Italy in 1943. He, along with a few other British officers escaped and trudged over 500 miles to the south to cross Allied lines. Once the war was over he joined a law firm and practiced law there from the time he was 36 years old until he retired at age 71. He was married for almost 60 years, had five children, and wrote all his books while riding on trains to and from work every day.  He wrote twenty-nine mystery books, fourteen collections of short stories and non-fiction books about law and (in)famous court cases. He was widely regarded by other mystery writers as top drawer. So why haven't I heard of him?  Many of his books are now out of print, which is a shame because if they are as good as Sky High, they're worth reading.

Sky High was published in 1955 and is set in that time.  The protagonist is Tim, a broody 30-something year old who uses his widowed mother's house (which is in the fictional village of Bimberley) as a base while he does secret work that takes him all over England, over to Europe and beyond.  Is he a spy or an international criminal?  He won't say. Tim never knew he father who was a Lt Colonel tasked with preventing the embezzlement of government property in Germany after the war ended, including weapons, when he died in a mysterious (and suspicious) explosion in Köln. Tim was also in the military but was sent to Palestine where he was quickly moved into "special forces" where he operated alone, learned how to hunt and kill particularly nasty people and specialized in planting and defusing explosives with highly complicated triggers. Apparently England's Palestine is not too unlike the U.S.'s Vietnam experience as Tim is frequently accused of having killed Palestinians ignobly. It isn't surprising that he keeps to himself.  But he does have a soft spot for Sue who expresses her affection for him by cutting him cold and flirting with other people. He thinks that means she hates him and they have many unproductive conversations throughout the book--until the very last few pages when things finally go his way and words are not needed to express their mutual affection for one another.

Liz, Tim's mother, is a choir master who is very self-reliant and hates the vicar whom she believes is nasty and mean (in the British sense). Apparently people in small villages really go in for choir practice because everyone involved in this mystery is part of the choir, even two meddlesome teen boys who hang around dangerous places and spy on dangerous people. If only they would tell the GROWN UPS what they see...Another significant character is Major MacMorris who likes to flirt with Sue to piss Tim off.  After the two hurl insults at one another, Tim is persuaded by his mother to apologize--the village is too small to tolerate stupid grudges, she tells him. So off Tim goes (not because he likes MacMorris--nobody does, not even Sue--but because he wants Sue to find  out that he took the moral high ground. Not only does MacMorris accept the apology, he asks Tim for help, wanting to hire him as a sort of body guard. Apparently MacMorris has been getting threatening letters (he shows one to Tim), which tell him to "clear off if you know what's good for you". Tim doesn't think it means all that much (and suspects MacMorris wrote the letter himself to get attention), particularly since MacMorris claims to have no idea who it could possibly be from or what he did to piss someone off that much.  Tim recommends taking the letter to the police and not worrying about it after that point. The whole time he is talking with MacMorris, Tim's hindbrain is on high alert, noticing the people in photos (all military sorts but different units, different wars...all very odd), the noises the house is making (the water cistern in the attic is clinking as it fills back up with water), and an oddly familiar acrid smell coming down the stairs into the living room. Oh well, best to forget all these weird things and go home--only to hear an astonishing explosion come from MacMorris's house as the top half of the house (including MacMorris's bedroom in which MacMorris was reading a book) is blown to smithereens. Well, it seems MacMorris really did have an enemy.

The local police are useless (or are they pretending to be useless to stave off panic and interfering?) and claim that MacMorris likely stored vast quantities of explosives in his attic, forgot about them, they decayed, and then they "went off." Yeah, that makes sense. (Explosives play a really big role in the lives of the people in this novel.) Tim and Liz don't believe it and set about to find out what is really going on. And in the course of their amateur sleuthing, they discover that Major MacMorris was no "Major",  and that "MacMorris isn't his name: he was never in the army but was actually a two-bit actor that got insignificant non-speaking roles in small theaters (one role being a major), and supplemented his income by "fencing goods" for a really scary individual that special investigators within Scotland Yard have been trying to nab for years. As if that isn't enough, Liz and Tim uncover a notorious cat burglar who lives in their village who has been relieving wealthy old ladies of their heavy diamond necklaces for decades. Very quickly Tim and Liz make a lot of dangerous enemies and three times narrowly escape very creative and improbable attempts on their lives. But what the hell do either of those matters have to do with "MacMorris"?

But, as with all cozy mysteries, all the messy threads eventually weave together into a very delicate tapestry in which the bad are punished and the good are rewarded: all those odd casual remarks we read at the start of the book turn out to be important clues which tell us exactly what happened; all the  crates of explosives found tucked into secret sheds and attics successfully clear out all the bad eggs thereby allowing us to sidestep the plodding police and the problematic criminal justice system. And, as I wrote above, Tim gets less broody and Sue who gets less prickly and both figure out how to be with each other without arguing.

Garden Update

Note, first, that all five barrels are covered in yellow enamel ("rust fighting") paint.  Yes, it's the same paint I complained energetically about in an earlier blog entry.  But, in the end, the thought of buying new paint and going through all that palaver was too much so I just suffered through the original plan.  I still think it's too garish but it'll soon be hidden behind plants (one hopes) so it won't matter.  And maybe in Winter when there is nothing alive in the backyard it will look cheerful. Yesterday I reattached the spigots on the bottom of each barrel.  When it isn't ungodly hot out I will reset each of the barrels so that each is .5" lower than the barrel to its left so as each one fills up the surplus water moves on to the next barrel.  Then I can finally attach the hoses and wait for rain--which is predicted to arrive next Wednesday.  Given that we actually haven't had a drought in Flint in the past 20 years (nothing like when we first moved here), I'm not sure anymore why I even bothered creating such a set up.  But it seemed important at the time.

See the blueberries planted in their own private raised bed right in front of the barrels.  So for none have lost either flowers or baby berries from the trauma of being knocked loose from the buckets they have been in for going on 10 years at least. I loaded the soil up with cedar chips and will just have to hope that that makes the soil acidic enough.  

Note, too, the potato bags are filling up.  Each time the plant grows a few inches taller I pile more dirt in. YouTube experts claim that that forces the plant to put more energy into tubers rather than leaves. Believe that if you want. I'm only 4" from the top at this point and once we get to that point the leaves will be left to do their thing while the roots and tubers do theirs out of sight but not out of mind. At the right edge of the photo in the middle you can see the raised beds with arches have been planted out.  I'll take a better photo when they've grown a bit.  I bought an eclectic mix of pumpkins, watermelon, beans and zucchini since everyone claims they are all extremely easy to grow in Michigan and result in dramatically large vines with loads of food.  I actually do not like zucchini and I don't believe anyone does, but everyone grows it here because otherwise it's just too horrible to have a garden be an utter failure.

Most importantly note the Lettuce Grow hydroponics set up.  It is one of two (the other is still in our dining room) and I grow lettuce in it in the winter.  It worked fantastically when I first got it but slowly it's produced less and less fantastic results (leaves drying up, Romaine lettuce tasting bitter).  I wondered if I had just become annoyed with it and was aiming those feelings at the lettuce but decided to give one of the towers one last burst of love.  I took it apart, cleaned all the pieces which is not fun as each section is larger than it looks and JUST BIG ENOUGH to not fit in our kitchen sink. Mud and water sprayed everywhere, but Simon wasn't home so no one is the wiser of how badly it went.  The worst part was schlepping the bottom (shaped like a chemist's beaker) out to the backyard so I could dump out all the brackish water that was sloshing around.  Once I could see all the rotten root pieces and old, funky water that was inside, it became pretty obvious why nothing was growing well or tasted right. The directions clearly state it must be completely cleaned once a year (between winter and spring cycles is recommended).  But I never have as it is, as I just wrote, a really big pain in the ass and bigger pain in the lower back.  Since I went through all the work of cleaning it, moving it, setting it back up, filling it with clean water (which is WAY easier when you have a garden hose to do it rather than using a one gallon pitcher of water filled at the kitchen sink) and fertilizer, I put strawberry plant plugs in each of the plant ports.  Unlike greens, strawberries need to be fertilized and so, since the thing is outside, I decided to take advantage of the willing pollinators in our backyard and grow something that can't grow in our dining room.

You can see a smallish (5" across) circular port hole in the lower half in front. That's a small window you use to top up more water and fertilizer.  Also, that cord coming out is the electric cord that has a timer on it (about 10' from the tower) and plugs into the outlet on the outside of our garage just next to the left most water barrel.  I've tried explaining this before but apparently I didn't do a good job so I'll try again: in the bottom of the tower is a small water pump, the sort you see in fish tanks.  That has a water intake on the side and an output on the top.  Stuck into the pump output hole is a 1" diameter pvc pipe that runs from the top of the pump, up inside the tower, to the very top of the tower--so about 5' up.  At the top of the pipe--INSIDE THE TOWER (and that fact is key)--is a tiny plastic "hat" that stops the water from spouting upward and instead forces the water to spray out, 360 degrees, to the side.  That water then hits the top inside of the tower (the widest part) and then drips down, wiggling down the curvy sides, until it gets back to the bottom of the tower. WHILE it is trailing down the curvy sides, the water runs THROUGH the bundles of plant roots, which grow inside the tower, behind the little port holes--the plant leaves outside the tower getting sunshine and the roots all tucked inside the tower getting water and fertilizer.  Why does the water stick to the curvy sides and not just fall straight down, missing the roots?  I have no idea, but it really does stick to the sides.  With the pump only running for 10 mins every 6 hours in every 24 hour period, why don't the roots dry out and the plants die? Because the plants are growing in a tiny dirt "plug" that fills up the porthole so very little air gets inside the tower--but some air gets in, and that is good because otherwise the plant roots would get soggy and rot, and the plants would be oxygen deprived and die.  Amazing, isn't it?  If only it wasn't so damned annoying to clean. Or, if only it wouldn't freeze solid in winter so that we could leave it outside all year and clean it quickly and easily using a garden hose.  Well, if wishes were horses....

Here is a fig tree I bought for pennies on the dollar at the end of last summer when it was dramatically marked down for clearance. I have no idea what possessed me to do that as figs cannot survive outside in Michigan.  Last winter it was tiny (about 1' tall and 1' wide) and lived in a tiny pot. I brought it inside in October and all the leaves fell off within a few hours. I was certain it was dead and sort of forgot about it.  But then it sprung to life in January, when we have extremely cold but extremely sunny days and the fig branches felt the sunshine, thought it was summer and went to work, growing and leafing out very early--way too early to be put outside. Once I did move it outside I had no idea what to do with it. Finally, yesterday, I resigned myself to the fact that it needed a larger (therefore heavier and harder to move in October) pot.  Figs don't like the kind of soil we have here--too wet and heavy--so it also needed a special mix of cedar mulch, coconut hair (the latest thing which works like peat but is environmentally beneficial because hairy coconut shells populate the Earth in fantastic numbers) and potting soil. Sheesh. In THEORY, the plan is that I let it do its thing all summer and then cut it off at its knees in November, stick it in a dark corner of the basement until April, then put it in the sunroom to warm up in May, and then move it outside in June.  And in THEORY it will get bigger and bigger faster and faster every year until it grows 20' tall and is covered with figs every summer. Seems hard to credit, but that's what other people in Michigan claim.  And I believe them because they have YouTube channels. [The little yellow thing in the middle of the bottom of the picture is a glass shaped mushroom that glows at night because it is wired to a teeny weeny solar panel. It actually looks kind of cool and Simon noted that, not long after I got several of them, the neighbor lady behind us suddenly had her own set of glow in the dark shapes in her backyard.]