In honor of the Astros, plant a Candy Corn victory garden
Want to plant a garden in honor of our World Series champion Astros?
You’ll want to include the cheerful Candy Corn plant, which evokes the team’s rainbow jersey.
Dozens of tubular flowers bloom along each of its long stems. The flowers start out bright yellow and mature to orange-red.
Add some Astros blue to your garden with ‘Indigo Spires’ salvia, mealy blue sage and ‘Baby Bingo’ pansies. Or stick with an orange-yellow theme, planting celosia, cestrum, esperanza or orange “Mari-mum” marigolds.
Candy Corn adds color and texture to the landscape, and it’s a treat for pollinators like hummingbirds and butterflies. It has a lot to offer to the backyard wildlife habitat. Also known as Mexican giant cigar plant, Candy Corn’s botanical name is Cuphea micropetala. It’s native to Mexico and, with good winter drainage, offers cold hardiness; many Southern gardeners find it to be a returning perennial. It starts blooming in early September, offering a beautiful fall display that peaks at the height of butterfly season. When planting, select a site in full sun and make sure the soil is in a welldrained spot. Candy Corn can reach 3 feet tall and wide, so space plants 18 to 24 inches apart, planting at the same depth they are growing in the container. Apply a good layer
Willard John Davis — a fixture at the Tellepsen YMCA downtown — he’s the guy that deserves this. John — I’ve long called him AstroJohn — is not a native Houstonian either, but during the 100 loss seasons he urged people at the Y to “keep the faith” and to “get on the Astros train; it’s never too late.”
John whoops and hollers in the locker room to the bemusement of some, the irritation of others. Years ago, he was in a horrific car accident that should’ve killed him. It left him with a traumatic brain injury. He told me, “Following this team is just my way of dealing with it.” So I’m happy for John.
And I’m happy for another friend John and his rally raccoon. Also my pal Sis and her mother Nona, whose fandom overlaps in a manner to where they claim 99 years of Astros affinity. That’s a lot of losing.
That’s a difference between the two teams that engaged in this wonderful, horrible World Series. Dodgers fans talk about a drought of 28 years since their last World Series title.
It’s not a drought if you’ve never won — it’s a state of being. Despite existing in a swamp, Astros fans have lived in the desert.
A few of these Astros players hung around and lost 400-plus games over four seasons. That’s a ghastly thing to endure. Does the baseball season seem to run on forever to you? Imagine playing inside that sphere and losing two-thirds of the time. That, friends, is a long season.
During the rebuild years, those teams were not good. But the players went out to win, even when they lost. And they did so to precious little enthusiasm from the fan base.
I can’t speak for Jose Altuve, but I suspect he remembers those years well. And they’ve in some way influenced what he does today.
One of the reasons this Astros team has burrowed into my cell structure is because some of those players know what it’s like to lose so thoroughly. Ideally, it doesn’t quash hope.
That said, a Houston native and a writer whose work I’ve admired for years found it sweet that I — a fairly new Houstonian — was so anxious after Game 6. “I can see you haven’t been beaten to death yet,” she wrote. “That’s adorable. But you’re on the right track. Low expectations. Low expectations.”
Low expectations were my defense mechanism. Expect the worst, so anything but the worst is a gift. Even one of the Dodgers seemed to buy into this. Their talented young first baseman Cody Bellinger — I saw his dad play ball — said as much.
“I always pretend the ball’s going to be in the dirt,” he said after a great dig in Game 6. “So that way I’m not surprised.”
That, to me, was the nature of Astros fandom. Always pretend the ball’s going to be in the dirt. No surprises. But for more than half a century, the team also managed to not dig one of those errant throws out of the dirt.
I realize the 2005 World Series was by many measures a good run. But it was a World Series such that the tired old competition metaphors don’t really apply. The White Sox sweep of the ’Stros in four games was less like gladiators slicing and hacking and more like watching a dog get hit by a car. There wasn’t even time to identify a villain on that White Sox team, and it had the universally loathed A.J. Pierzynski.
So I already wonder, what next? What does the dog do when it catches the bus? I need to talk to AstroJohn for some guidance. Maybe he’ll know.
I’m already trying to fend off the impending sadness at the inevitable departures from this team. The Astros’ youth is thrilling, but it took more than youth to win 112 games. Carlos Beltran once patrolled center field at Minute Maid Park, but his glove was all but retired when he rejoined the Astros. I loved watching Evan Gattis, the sad-eyed slugger. Charlie Morton should be around another year with his surgically repaired hips. But his name will always draw my thoughts to 2017.
Baseball is an ecosystem where shiny things and broken or forgotten toys come together and make things happen. And I love it for that.
But I can worry about those concerns next year. For now, there’s a joy that came after a long slog. Several long slogs, really. I think baseball fans view the game as the longest of seasons. In actuality, it’s longer than the NFL’s but shorter than the NBA and NHL. MLS appears to only get holidays off.
But the funnel from spring training to today is a fascinating one that twists people into personae they don’t recognize. Or at least, it did me. This series ground me into a shouting, snarling monster. But what else could happen when two games tipped from control into chaos, with hitters snapping pitches into the seats as if ordering home runs off a menu. Games 2 and 5 felt like watching “Carrie” — unthinkable actions followed by more unthinkable reactions. Baseball’s version of a prom bloodbath. Like Stephen King’s story, it was difficult to watch and also thrilling.
Those were times the chaos seemed to consume the control. That happens in baseball, because all sorts of stuff can occur when a spring within a tightly coiled mechanism goes pop. That pop, that release played well for this long patient city’s baseball fans. And I’m thrilled for them — as well as the newer ones.
I arrived during the Astros’ years of being clad in dull, boring brick-colored uniforms. I’m thrilled this resurrected team wears orange, a vibrant color that complements spring — when the wildflowers bloom.