Home & Garden

I believe in curses.

Now I'm not talking about the kind inflicted on the Nazis from Indiana Jones who got their faces melted off or any dude dumb enough to marry a chick, no matter how hot she may be, with a nickname like The Black Widow.

Those people get what they deserve.

Rather the kind of curses that hold my attention are those that are the perfect amalgamation of bad luck, timing and sheer stupidity, like the Chicago Cubs with their 80-plus years of ineptitude. People need someone or something to blame. Might as well finger a die-hard dork of a baseball fan that simply wanted a fly-ball for a souvenir and instead had his life ruined.

Steve Bartman's my homeboy.

Personally, I've always thought of places being cursed, particularly buildings. Every town's got that one building where nothing can survive.

Things will be going great, business is good, customers are happy, and cash registers are ringing. Then all the sudden … poof. It's gone — nothing but empty booths and dead silence. Pretty soon, a "For Sale" sign's stuck in the parking lot and all the windows are boarded up.

I've seen it happen.

There's this place in my hometown, Albany, Ga., that's been reincarnated more times than Shirley MacLaine.

It started out as a Po Folks — a restaurant that has always had a certain sentimental attachment for me because it's where I became practiced in the art of gluttony.

For all the buttery biscuits they served, Po Folks went belly up, thus creating a butterfly effect of failed restaurants that continues to this day. It's been everything from a Stuckey's to a Long John Silvers.

But it's not the business that's cursed. It's the spot where the business stands — the actual earth is sick with the demons of destruction.

I'm a gardener. I know dirt. And such plagues are not visited solely upon restaurants and chain stores. It's an evil that poisons yards as well.

To paraphrase Stephen King, some holes, like houses, are just born bad. Soon as you stick something in 'em, no matter how hardy, no matter how healthy, no matter how long you love and labor, it's destined to die.

These holes won't hold anything but dirt.

Take for example this seemingly sweet spot in a back corner of my back yard. No less than four plants have been plopped in this one hole. First there was an acuba — dead. Then a miniature blue cypress — dead.

All around it everything thrived. The pineapple guava grew big and tall, tea olives bloomed, bottlebrush branched out and the Japanese quince flourished. But this one spot … pure pestilence.

I changed out the dirt for garden soil, fertilized, mulched and watered yet end result was always the same. So in a last ditch effort, I went with the hardiest shrub in all the world – a Wal-Mart azalea, one that had been left, unwanted and unwatered, baking in a forgotten corner of the parking lot.

This plant would've made Chuck Norris look like a wuss.

Nope … dead.

But hope, like my lack of common sense, springs eternal. Maybe I could find another use for that patch of prime real estate. I sure do miss that Po Folks … buttermilk biscuits anyone?