Rancho Obsesso is installing ourselves on the north fork of Long Island again this year. We're 6 buddies who've been together as a travelling summer house for 12 years. Actually now we're 7, because Max and Amy got married and last year produced Eve. The "travelling" part was not our idea, but landlords keep selling houses out from under us. We used to rent up the Hudson and then two years ago we found this north fork place. I'm not a swimmer but everyone else loves the ocean, and as you might imagine it's hard to find a house (or by now 2 houses, because M&A&E have their own place up the block) to suit 6 obsessive-compulsive freelancers and a cheerful 1-year-old. So we're back for the third year, and when my pals all go swimming, I work in my foster garden. I love to garden and this is the first real chance I've had, and the landlady is delighted because renters seldom care, and I really do.

So last year and the year before, my hollyhocks got all chewed up. Their leaves looked like swiss cheese and so they had a hard time photosynthesizing and so their flowers were pretty pitiful. No one out there was able to tell me what the problem was. I was blaming Japanese beetles, for want of another culprit, but it didn't escape my notice that the hollyhocks up by the road were radiantly healthy, and the whole town has Japanese beetles. Then a few days ago I was leafing, as it were, through an organic gardening catalog and I came across a 30-page insert on Disgusting Fungus, Bacterial and Insect Diseases Your Plants Can Have -- for all of which, of course, these guys sell a cure. And lo and behold, there are my hollyhocks in all their tattered glory! Okay, not mine, but they might as well be mine. They're apparently suffering from a fungus called Angular Leaf Spot, which overwinters in the topsoil and grabs onto them again as they come up in the spring.

I can't tell you how excited I am to know this. I ordered the cure. And we're going out soon, just to spend a spring weekend in the country, and I'm going to spray the soil and any little shoots with this magic stuff, and I'm going to spray every weekend all summer, and restore my hollyhocks to health. Boy, it's easy to make me happy. And my landlady will be so pleased!