Harry does it: Other side of the mic
John Chamberlin and Rachael Rennebeck interview yours truly.
Selfie with some of Joe Hamm's daffodils
Here's a nice photo of Joe Hamm's daffodials, taken in 2018.
Joe Hamm speaks during the podcast interview.
John Chamberlin stops to smell a flower offered by Rachael Rennebeck.
Doug Oster observes Joe Hamm's podcast interview.
From left, Rachael Rennebeck, Tracy Kosylo and Doug Oster check out Joe Hamm's Daffodil Hortus.
John Chamberlin and Rachael Rennebeck do their YaJagoff!™ Podcast thing.
Live from Joe Hamm's Daffodil Horus
Two weeks after his second COVID-19 vaccination, my friend Mike celebrated by flying to Las Vegas.
And boy, were his arms tired.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
But Mike did fly, in a way. He told us about his experience on the Super-Hero Zoom – yes, there’s a different kind of Zoom – riding a zip line one-third of a mile above Vegas’ Fremont Street, Clark-Kent-alter-ego style.
Now, there’s an adventure.
My first post-vaccination foray beyond the South Hills took me all the way to Hopewell Township, Washington County, and Joe Hamm’s Daffodil Hortus.
I know what you’re thinking. Wow, Harry. You sure are walking on the wild side.
Well, I did learn a lot about daffodils during my visit, including the fact that there are about 28,999 more varieties than the standard yellow one that looks kind of like a trumpet. And anyone who wants the flowers for, say, a Mother’s Day bouquet had better do so before their season ends in early May.
But what brought me to Joe’s enclosed garden, as “hortus” means in its Biblical context, was a request to do something I hadn’t done since college:
Be interviewed.
Since joining the journalistic profession in 1985, I’ve asked questions of thousands of folks while scribbling in a notebook or more recently – I really can’t read my handwriting anymore – letting my digital recorder do the work.
So when Rachael Rennebeck and John Chamberlin invited me as a guest on their YaJagoff!™ Podcast, I figured, that sounds like fun.
And it was.
John and Rachael co-founded a marketing company called YaJagoff Media LLC, ingeniously integrating a healthy dose of Pittsburghese into their promotional endeavors, one of which is an interview show recorded at various locations around the region.
Acting on the recommendation of Pittsburgh gardening personality Doug Oster, the YaJagoff crew ventured out to the country to learn more about Joe and his, uh, perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes.
While they were at it, Rachael and John also interviewed Doug, who emphasizes organic gardening as a healthy approach for everyone involved. Then it was my turn to take the microphone.
It certainly wasn’t to talk about gardening. Whatever is the opposite of green, that’s the kind of thumb I have.
Rachael, as it turns out, is a self-professed “journalism junkie” who worked in the Fourth Estate prior to going into YaJagoffing. I had gotten to know her and John through the intersection of our jobs, and they suggested me joining them on their podcast someday.
So here I was, the camera – well, smartphone – on me, hoping I didn’t clam up like Ralph Kramden on the “Chef of the Future” commercial.
Just kidding. If you know me, you know I like to talk. And having the opportunity to answer questions about myself, instead of the other way around, turned out to be quite the revelatory experience.
For example, there’s my “origin story,” of sorts:
“I liked to write when I was a kid. Then I had a journalism teacher in high school who was really good-looking, Mrs. Hull.”
What I mostly talked about with John and Rachael involved the changes I’ve seen in the past three-and-a-half decades, some for the best, some not so wonderful. And I did get to chat a bit about my nonprofessional self, including my fondness for music, with me managing to put in a plug for the Grateful Dead.
The interview wrapped up with me finishing the prompt, “April showers bring …”
I already had heard Joe and Doug give gardening-related replies, so I had time to work on mine:
“The Pirates losing in the rain!”
Yeah, I know what all you diehard Pittsburgh baseball fans would like to call me:
“Ya jagoff!”
Visit www.yajagoff.com to hear the podcast and get a taste of a whole lotta Pittsburgh.
As a Pittsburgh native, Joe Hamm knows all about Western Pennsylvania’s topography.
“This terrain around here is good for goats, but it’s not good for gardening,” he observes.
So it turned out to be a bit of a challenge for him to find a decent location for his pursuing his avocation in retirement, cultivating daffodils.
“I looked at properties that were, oh, just cliffs,” he recalls. “A friend of mine happened to spot this, driving by, and she thought it was reasonable.”
“This spot” is 16.5 acres at 99 Maple Road in Hopewell Township, Washington County, a short distance from Route 331.
He calls it Joe Hamm’s Daffodil Hortus, with the distinctive designation derived from the Latin hortus conclusus, meaning “enclosed garden,” and referenced in the Vulgate Bible’s Canticle of Canticles.
What’s important is the daffodils, and from late March through early May, Joe invites folks to check out his collection while the flowers are in bloom.
“I always grew daffodils, from age 13 on, I guess,” he says. “But I never paid much attention to them. They were just yellow flowers.”
That changed in 1990, when he met a group of women at a horticulture event.
“They were sitting in this tent, polishing bulbs with towels,” Joe remembers. “Why would you do something like that?”
The answer was they were cleaning the bulbs to help the daffodils grow optimally.
“It intrigued me, and then when I discovered how many different kinds there were” – about 29,000 varieties – “it really fascinated me. And I thought, oh, I’m going to start collecting daffodils.”
He began with varieties that were registered in 1938, the year he was born, and then expanded to pre-1900 varieties. Today, he has a collection of about 2,000 cultivars, plants that have been produced by selective breeding, and more than 30,000 blooms.
One aspect he always has liked about the perennials is their resistance to vegetation eaters, particularly deer.
“Nobody bothers daffodils,” he says. “They’re poisonous.”