Profiles in Victory: Amanda Thomsen (aka Kiss My Aster)

This post is part of RW&G's Profiles in Victory series.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing you (or re-introducing you) to Amanda Thomsen, known far and wide as Kiss My Aster. The tagline for her blog is: "Where Absolutely Fabulous meets the Victory Garden." And that's about the most accurate tagline I've ever encountered. Recovering from her Star Wars-themed garden craft week at Horticulture Magazine, li'l Miss Aster spared a few minutes to give us the skinny on her, well, fabulousness

RW&G: As your blog title suggests, you bring a terrific light-heartedness to the whole "victory garden" idea. And it works brilliantly! Where'd that clever approach come from?

KMA: I think you may be giving me too much credit! I haven’t really premeditated any of this. Although I do really believe that gardening is something everyone should be doing and we, as gardeners, aren’t doing anyone any justice by making it out to be some serious, esoteric act. As for the name? I was working in a fabulous garden center and stocking the asters in 100 degree heat… the rest is history.

RW&G: How long have you been a gardener? A blogger?

KMA: My parents learned to garden in the 70’s from Crockett’s Victory Garden and absolutely got my sister and me in on the fun. I didn’t realize for a very long time than not everyone grew up like that. I would have taken horticulture classes in high school but only stoner kids took those classes, if you know what I mean.

I got back into gardening after I burned out of a management position with Starbucks in the 90s. Seriously, I just quit my job, moved back home with my mom and took a $6 hour job at a garden center and learned from the Jedis. Best thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve been blogging since 2005, which is starting to sound like a long time to me.

RW&G: Your blog "moved" recently from a private site to Horticulture Magazine's site thanks to a contest. Congratulations! What's that transition been like?

KMA: Truthfully? It’s been harder than I thought it would be. With the original Kiss My Aster [some mature content] I didn’t even care if anyone read it, I just wrote it to please myself. If anyone did read it, it was just a bonus. Hence the swearing, politcal ramblings and frequent mentions of unmentionables. It’s difficult to go from zero filter to what I think of as ”The Big Time”. Thankfully, the peeps over at Horticulture are so friggin’ amazing I can hardly believe my luck. I’m such an amateur, I’m just embracing it. I’m like, the Gomer Pyle of garden writing and they have really been great to me. Well, gollllly!

The hardest part? I started on January 1st and I have to post three times a week.. That’s TOUGH in winter, if I was still blogging for myself, I would have taken some time off or wandered off topic. I have to say that if I’ve made it this far, the rest of the year will be like falling off a log. I have a lot of ideas, some really cool crafts and a lot to say. I’m warmed up and ready to rock!

RW&G: You play a vital role in spreading the idea of the Victory Garden again. What obstacles/opportunities do you see for us proponents as we nudge the idea further into the public arena?

KMA: It has to be tailored to fit people’s lives, I’m afraid we intimidate others with our all-knowing (but sexy!) fierceness. We have to coach people we meet every day and make sure we don’t come off as garden cult-y. We can turn people off if we aren’t careful.

I think people see growing their own in a very tradition way, they think have to have the rectangle bed out there with rows of crops with Peter Rabbit bouncing through, it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m allergic to rectangles AND rows and I grow lots of my own food. I mix my crops in with my ornamentals, it doesn’t get easier, or prettier honestly.

I’ve found everyone I talk to is open to the idea of growing their own food with a little coaching, and I’m willing to do the coaching, for anyone who asks! Maybe they will catch the fever. At least I’m hoping.

RW&G: What's your long-term vision for Kiss My Aster? Total world domination? Veg bed bellydancing contests?

KMA: Dancing with the Garden Bloggers champion!

I was going to write a book but I’ve scrapped that for now. I really want to apply myself to making gardening the new knitting. Where was knitting for 20 years? Now it’s a total industry, with hip TV shows and… there’s actually a cute little knitting café in the the downtown area of my teensy little town. Where’s the cool garden shop? Yeah. Doesn’t exist and I’m in an actual center of agriculture, allegedly.

I want to bring more people in to the fold and I can’t do it if I’m always at my desk prattling on about funny stories. Although they are very funny stories. Young hip chicks and dudes could be out there making it happen. And until it starts happening, I’m going to be out there evangelizing. Knocking on doors if I have to…

RW&G: Now for your favorite web sites...and not necessarily garden related...

KMA: I'm going to go with Etsy.com, Cake Wrecks and Blogging from Black Pitts Garden.

All About Thyme: Peter Rabbit Garden

Am a sucker for Beatrix Potter. Animals, gardens, tea...what's not to love? Not that I have loads of her stuff in my house...just an old tea tin from my first trip to Europe and a board book for Tater Tot featuring Peter Rabbit (to get him into it, I had to read it with a British accent). Back when I was a child myself, my mother gave me a puzzle set that I also used as a cereal box in my play kitchen. Once a foodie, always a foodie.

So, today (Beatrix Potter's birthday!) I was thrilled to read this bit about a Peter Rabbit Garden in author Susan Albert's marvelous weekly newsletter, All About Thyme. I dashed off a quick email to her requesting permission to run the following copyrighted text, and the ever-gracious Susan obliged. Enjoy!

Peter Rabbit Garden

"My news is all gardening at present, and supplies. I went to see an old lady at Windermere and impudently took a large basket and trowel with me. She had the most untidy garden I ever saw. I got nice things in handfuls without any shame, amongst others a bundle of lavender slips...and another bunch of violet suckers."

—Beatrix Potter, letter to Millie Warne, October 12, 1907 

A Peter Rabbit Garden would be a lovely project for you and your children (or grandchildren) to share—or just for you, if you're a fan of Miss Potter's work. The garden could be a container on the deck or a corner of your garden, or a larger area with a piece of garden art in the middle: Peter himself, perhaps, or a wheelbarrow with his coat on it? You might want to put a little wooden fence around it (like the fence around Mr. MacGregor's garden), or perhaps a low stone wall, such as the one that Tom, Moppet, and Mittens sat on in The Tale of Tom Kitten. And certainly you'll want to read Miss Potter's "little books" (as she liked to call them) and pick out the flowers you see growing in the pictures she painted with such care—some of them in her very own garden at Hill Top Farm.

Peter's Plants
These plants are all mentioned in the Little Books. These would all be appropriate for Peter's garden.

Lemon Balm
Mint
Chamomile
Tansy
Lavender
Sage
Thyme
Rosemary
Parsley Strawberry
Lettuce
Beets
Radish
Rhubarb
Onions
Roses
Pinks
Pansies

Miss Potter's Garden
Miss Potter's garden at Hill Top Farm included a great many herbs and flowers, many of them passalong plants. "I have been planting hard all day—thanks to a very well meant but slightly ill-timed present of saxifrage from Mrs. Taylor at the corner cottage." In the hedgerows, she found violets, daffodils, primroses, wild strawberries, and wood anemones, and wall-rue fern from an old bridge. She completely redesigned the garden, making it what it is today: a beautiful cottage garden brimming with color and foliage.

Read more about the estimable Miss Potter:

• The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, by Susan Wittig Albert
  
• Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by Linda Lear
  
• Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales

"Timmy Willie tells Johnny Town Mouse about his garden: When it rains, I sit in my little sandy burrow and shell corn and seeds from my Autumn store. I peep out at the throstles and blackbirds on the lawn, and my friend Cock Robin. And when the sun comes out again, you should see my garden and the flowers—roses and pinks and pansies—no noise except the birds and bees, and the lambs in the meadows."

—Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Johnny-Town Mouse 

Thanks again, Susan! Just got a warm fuzzy making the connection between Potter's stories and the rosemary that Tater Tot insists upon plucking from our yard to give to all departing visitors. Am trying to teach him to say, "Rosemary...for remembrance"...but that's a lot of R's for a toddler. I think he gets the gist, though.

Note that readers can pre-order Susan's new Potter-inspired book on Amazon. And I personally and highly recommend China Bayles' Book of Days, which I gave to my mom last Christmas.