Just off our deck, on a south facing slope that gets sun from 9ish to 1 - 3 PM depending on location, we have a three-tiered raised bed. The top bed has four hostas. This is the easternmost one - which means it gets a lot of sun.
Mister Watson is a sport from King Tut. That makes it a Tokudma... a cupped gold, with a dark green margin and excellent character to the leaves. It should be a slow grower. The Tokudamas are notoriously slow. King Tut is slow. But Mister Watson has been a pretty good grower for me - moderate growth rate, I'd say.
Pretty plant!
Last edited by jgh on Jun 09, 2010 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Beautiful! When I saw the title I was expecting something like Hanks pic of the day, only re-titled as the Top Shelf, which as you know if the finest liquor in the bar Pour me another one
Very nice, Jim - I've never paid much attention to Mister Watson until now.
I may need to rethink that though. I don't ever seem to do too well with the
Tokudamas, but I sure like them.
Ginger - I have a feeling that there's a tour just starting.
Back a while I did a series called "Not Pic Of The Day" when Hank was not doing the official POTD. Unfortunately, being a man of many words, I couldn't maintain the hour or two of writing required each day. It seemed the name or nature of the hosta in question always seemed to send me off on tangents.
I suspect Mister Watson could do the same.
For example, some might speculate there is some connection between a Watson and the opening of King Tut's tomb and the infamous ensuing curse. No such luck. Googling that only shows that when you download King Tut's Tomb in Las Vegas you also get the screensaver of Emma Watson's bikini lingerie.
One might jump to the Sherlock Holmes connection... and why, pray tell, is there no series of hosta names dedicated to the master sleuth? There are so many names there... SH, of course, but also Hound of the Baskervilles, Study in Scarlet, Sign of Four, Baker Street, Baker Street Irregulars... oh so many names...
but, of course, no one ever referred to the esteemed Doctor John Hamish Watson as "Mister." As a retired veteran, they could rightfully have used his army rank and called him Surgeon Watson... he certainly earned the military notation, being almost killed in action in Afghanistan and returning to England injured, physically debilitated, and probably suffering from PTSD - indicated by his memory lapses and marriage difficulties.
Some years ago Dr. Bob Olson gave me his namesake hosta through a mutual friend. It was labeled "Dr. Bob." When I emailed him about the name, and my inability to find the plant in any listing, he told me that he wanted the hosta named "Dr. Bob" but that titles, like Dr., were not allowed by the naming conventions. It's registerd name is H. 'Bob Olson.' I wonder if that still holds true... and whether it would apply to a famous fictional character like "Dr. Watson."
But no - Mister Watson can most certainly not be derived from the esteemed physician and author. Perhaps another hosta will honor Holmes' Boswell.
One would naturally look to the most famous "Mr. Watson" - Thomas A. Watson.
He is famous not so much for his deeds but for those of his employer. Alexander Graham Bell had been working for several years on a device he called "the multiple telegraph" that would allow the sending of more than one telegraph message on the same line at the same time. The work took a sharp turn when he discovered that sound - in fact, the sound of a twanging clock spring - could be transmitted over an electrical wire. The multiple telegraph was scrapped in favor of perfecting a machine to carry the sound of the human voice over a wire.
Bell's journal for March 10, 1876 indicates his first success was communicating with his assistant, Watson, in the next room, uttering the famous words "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."
So we could imagine a hosta named for that famous Mr. Watson... but why the assistant? Why not A.G.B. or some reference to Bell's beloved home in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, or his beloved wife Mabel Hubbard Bell, whose deafness - Bell tutored deaf students in several different schools and it was as a tutor that he met Mabel - influenced much of his work with the telephone and microphones. Why Mr. Watson?
And what's more, the name of the hosta is not H. 'Mr. Watson' but H. 'Mister Watson.' The use of "Mister" with the word spelled out implies some formality, perhaps even a reference to status.
I'd like to think the hosta is named for Edgar Artemas Watson... aka Edgar Jack Watson, aka Edgar J. Watson. Award-winning author Peter Matthiessen wrote a fictionalized oral history entitled Killing Mister Watson that draws on the plethora of stories about this Everglades pioneer.
As a successful plantation owner in the late 1800s in Florida, he would most certainly have been referred to most often as "Mister Watson." His name would likely have faded into obscurity had he not had the deadly combination of good looks, magnetic personality, and lethal temper that eventually resulted in a reputation for multiple murders. Though he was never convicted of killing anyone, he was reputed to have killed many - perhaps dozens. In particular, he is usually named as the killer of Belle Star, the famous female outlaw.
Perhaps the long arm of the law would have landed on Mister Watson's shoulder, but the legal process was cut short by a fusilade of gunfire. A group of Chokoloskee, Florida residents - perhaps as many as 20 - apparently decided to short-circuit the legal process by applying lead to the problem. As Mister Watson stepped from a ferry, he was met with a greeting reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah's Bonnie and Clyde.
Now that's a name worthy of a fine hosta!
[and that is why I can't let myself start the tour. I have 800 labeled out there... it is almost noon and I'm still in my jammies... Sheila is wondering if I'm planning to work today, or if the sound of rattling keys is all she can expect from me today...]
Ok, Ok I give I know it is hard on you, wears you plumb out, but your "wordiness" is always an enjoyable thing And, being from an academic background, you are supposed to wonder "why???"
I received Mister Watson as a bonus from Hallson's a few years ago and really like it. In fact I now like it more than the hosta I purchased at the time! Mine is quite a bit smaller than yours, but the leaves have developed that nice character this year. Mine is in quite a lot of shade.
Jim, I do not have Mister Watson in my garden, but now I am wondering why I don't. Certainly a gross oversight on my part, and I do regret all the opportunities for conjecture I've missed with this one.
Oddly enough, King Tut was a rather fast grower for me, in relation to the glacial rate at which most tokudamas proceed in my garden.
Linda P
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten.....
Algernon Charles Swinburne
As I was about a third of the way thru this wonderful tale, I was thinking of the poison scene in The Princess Bride where Vizzini [Wallace Shawn] is going thru all of the possibilities of who The Dread Pirate Roberts really is.
Jim has a wonderful way of running thru all the possibilites as well. Without ever reaching a conclusion. But it sure is fun gettin there - sorta. At least he didn't keel over dead from mistakenly drinking the poison like Vizzini...
I'm new to this forum, so I just found this post. I enjoyed this story so much! Thank you for taking the time to write it; I'm fascinated by the "stories" behind the names. To be honest, lots of times it's the name that draws me to a plant, then I see a picture of it and decide whether I want it or not.
I learned a lot from your post--I never knew that titles (like "Dr.") aren't allowed in the name.
Thanks again, and now I'm going to read "Top Shelf #2"--and I hope there are more to come (time permitting)!
Jim -- I like the Sherlock Holmes story names even better than the opera ones! I am a Holmes aficionado (or would it be aficionada, since I'm female?), and can think of dozens of names derived from those stories. (How about H. "Persian Slipper", after the repository of Holmes' tobacco?) Re: Dr. Watson's war injuries -- the author never seems to have decided what, or where, they were, since Watson refers to injuries in both his shoulder and his leg, but not both at the same time. Apparently it was one injury, but it seems to have been peripatetic, and to have traveled around considerably! Your musings are always a great read -- do keep them coming! Phyllis
I love Persian Slipper... how about Speckled Band - great story and a great name for just the right hosta...
I'm in the camp that says Watson was a lot brighter than he is often made out to be... certainly not the mumbling, bumbling sidekick Nigel Bruce played to Basil Rathbone's Holmes.
First of all - he was an excellent writer. His narrations indicate a lot of intelligence and skill.
Secondly, he always understood Holmes' explanations. We have the same facts Watson does - and we have all the time in the world to set down the book and think about them - yet when Holmes explains his reasoning in solving the problem, Watson is right there with him while we often have to follow along in amazement.
About the injury... one has to assume there was more to it than just the initial war wound. He subsequently suffered enteric fever (typhoid) and returned to England "thin as a lath and brown as a nut." Typhoid is miserable - high fever, diarrhea - but it also can have long-term chronic effects on the skeleton and bones... so the results of his wounds and his typhoid could easily have affected his shoulder AND his leg... and any good soldier and field surgeon would desrcribe infirmities as "war wounds" rather than the less edifying "results of typhoid I contracted while in the hospital."
