When I read Carol Michel’s book of gardening essays, Potted and Pruned: Living a
Gardening Life, I was relieved. I finally had a name for an affliction I’ve had since the age of
seven when I met and fell in love with a coleus.
It was the 1970s and there were houseplants everywhere—so it was in a drug store that I
spied the velvety, burgundy beauty. I bought it with my allowance and brought it home
where I taught myself to propagate. Many coleuses later, I branched out to oodles of other
houseplants.
By now you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to get back to GADS, which as far as I
can tell, just about every indoor gardener has. As a matter of fact, my reminiscing right now
and wandering away from the topic at hand is a symptom of this disorder.
This clever term coined by Michel stands for Garden Attention Distraction Syndrome
(GADS). As Michel says at the beginning of her chapter on GADS, “Perhaps you’ve just
cleaned up your houseplants, and like a good gardener, you tossed all the trimmings and
the potting soil from that long-dead plant you finally decided will not revive itself into a
plastic tub to haul out to your growing compost pile. As soon as you step outside, you see a
giant weed and wonder why you never pulled it….”
If you only garden indoors, GADS will have you jumping from houseplant to houseplant.
One moment you may be repotting a pothos, but a trip to get pruning shears has you
sidetracked by a plant that looks like it might have mealybugs. And then there’s the
dracaena that’s leaning and the pink polka dot plant that needs pinching, and—you get the
picture.
Michel’s book was inspired by the popularity of her long-standing gardening blog, May
Dreams Gardens. She found that readers enjoyed her humorous approach to gardening and
tongue-in-cheek revelations about the gardening life and the gardeners lucky enough to live
the green life.
The cover of the book is fashioned after early 20 th century books that had few pictures but
were full of useful information. “The title of the book, Potted and Pruned, refers to how I
gathered some of my best blog posts, potted them up and published them into a book,”
says Michel.

Each of the 36 chapters in Michel’s book are chock full of garden humor. In Chapter 6,
“Frass,” Michel talks about how delighted she was when she discovered the meaning of this
word.
“… I’ve been like a five-year-old who just learned a new word, a new cuss word. Frass is the
fancy word for insect poop. Once you know that word, the uses for it just boggle the
mind…frass is a gardener’s secret cuss word and has many uses. For example, imagine you
walk out to the garden and find that rabbits have eaten all the green bean seedlings again.
You can yell out, ‘Frass!” and no one will know you’ve just cussed.”
Then there’s Chapter 7, “My Phases of Houseplant Care,” which will have you grinning and
giggling. Although you’ll most likely have a jolt of GADS as you read and struggle to recall if
you watered the philodendron in the living room—at which point you’ll go to check, but
end up admiring an African violet that’s budding up….Oh, GADS, here we go again!