In this episode, we explore the fascinating journey of Ciscoe Morris, a certified arborist and beloved gardening expert. From his bold actions to ensure campus safety to his heartwarming tales and rise in media, Ciscoe shares his passion and wisdom with warmth and humor.
Key Takeaways:
- Writing Career: Follow Ciscoe’s transition from Seattle PI to a 17-year stint at the Seattle Times, known for his timely and engaging articles.
- Memorable Moments: Enjoy stories from Ciscoe’s career, including quirky on-air incidents and odd gardening calls.
- Unexpected Promotion: Learn about the unsightly spruce tree that led to an unexpected career boost for Ciscoe.
Guest:
Ciscoe Morris, certified arborist, gardening expert, and media personality.
Resources Mentioned:
- Website: Ciscoe Morris
- Ciscoe’s Books: ”Ask Ciscoe” and “Oh, La La”
- Videos: Ciscoe Morris
Quotes:
-“Proper pruning is essential for the health and beauty of your plants.” – Ciscoe Morris
-“My love for gardening truly blossomed from the time spent with my mom and grandma, learning from their wisdom.” – Ciscoe Morris
Listener Challenge:
This week, try one of Ciscoe’s gardening tips and share your experience with us on social media using #GardeningWithCiscoe and #BEATSWORKINGShow.
Resources Mentioned:
- Contributors Corner July 2024: ”Redefining Success in Work-Life Balance”
- Organization: BEATS WORKING & WORKP2P
- Guests: Bios & LinkedIn
Quotes:
-“Balance isn’t about keeping everything equal; it’s about doing what matters most at the right time.” – Mark Wright
-“Recognizing the effort of each individual creates a culture of respect and productivity.” – Tamar Medford
Listener Challenge:
This week, reflect on your current work-life balance and identify one area where you can set a healthier boundary. Share your progress with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Well, Ciscoe Morris, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. I really been looking forward to our time together.
[00:00:06] Ciscoe Morris: Well, thanks. Me too.
[00:00:08] Mark Wright: Ciscoe, you are known for so many things in the Pacific Northwest. Your love of gardening, you’re just contagious when it comes to talking about gardening on television, on radio shows.
[00:00:19] Mark Wright:, you’re famous for a saying, Ooh la la.
[00:00:26] Mark Wright: that’s your most famous thing. I think we should start with the origin story of where ooh la la. And is it Oh la la or ooh la la.
[00:00:34] Ciscoe Morris: It’s totally different than that. That means something totally different. And when I tell this story, people understand the difference right away.
[00:00:46] Mark Wright: Okay, I want to start there, Ciscoe. Tell us, the history of, you’ve been saying that for a long time. Where did that come from?
[00:00:53] Ciscoe Morris: Well, my wife and I are big travelers and I lead garden tours around the [00:01:00] world. I’ve led 26 international garden tours now. And, uh, but Even if we,, don’t go over and do a garden tour or something, either way, we always do some kind of physical exercise, hike in the mountains.
[00:01:15] Ciscoe Morris: Ride our bikes, do something like Mary and I, for instance, we hiked the entire French Alps, 360 miles, just the two of us. It’s really hard hiking too, but you stay in huts up in the top of the mountains. And whenever you get to the hut, after all that hard work, you always say, I’d like a red wine, please. So good for pain, you know?
[00:01:39] Ciscoe Morris: But, uh, so where this came from, Was, we were on a thousand mile bike ride in France, and we were somewhere down around X. Now, this was,, quite a few years ago. So if anybody watching this, if you’ve been in France in the last 10 years, let’s say, you definitely would have seen these [00:02:00] things, but we had never seen one before.
[00:02:02] Ciscoe Morris: They’re big outdoor bathrooms. They kind of look like a plastic igloo or something, you know, and, uh, so we were riding by, we recognized what it was, so we pulled over on our bikes, and I sat on the bench watching our bikes, and Mary had,, pull out two franks, And put them in to go in,, she’s in there for a bit, she comes out, she’s holding the door and she goes, you’re not going to believe it in there and I go, what?
[00:02:29] Ciscoe Morris: She goes, it’s spotlessly clean and it plays great music. I’m like, oh boy, you know, so I get up and start looking for two francs. She goes, why waste two francs? I got the door open. Just go use it. So I go, yeah, why waste two francs? So I go in and shut the door. We didn’t know one little thing about these French toilets.
[00:02:54] Ciscoe Morris: They’re self cleaning when the door opens. The door shuts, it means the person has left, it’s [00:03:00] time to clean.
[00:03:01] Mark Wright: Oh no.
[00:03:02] Ciscoe Morris: I walk up to the front, BOOSH, I get blasted by this jet right in the chest, I run to the back, WOOSH, from behind, I run to the door, it’s locked, WOOSH, from the side, finally the jets stop, the door opens, I come staggering out, drenched from head to foot, and here’s this little old French guy wearing a beret, holding a baguette, looks to be a ghost.
[00:03:27] Ciscoe Morris: Oh, la la. That’s where that came from. I’ve been saying it ever since. Hey, I will tell you one thing, I was really clean,
[00:03:38] Mark Wright: So Ciscoe in France, I guess that’s just an exclamation, like, oh my goodness, is that the translation?
[00:03:45] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, I think it’d be something like, oh my gosh, oh my goodness. Something like that. Yeah,
[00:03:51] Mark Wright: that is that story and you’re so cats Yeah, you’re so famous for saying that phrase and I love it when i’m watching, [00:04:00] you know, your television segments And and you know, you just let it fly I love Just the history of that and that travel story is just awesome.
[00:04:10] Mark Wright: Did your wife give you any grief after that? Or what was the fallout with Mary?
[00:04:14] Ciscoe Morris: Well, she was, you know, the whole time I’m in the bathroom, she’s watching the bathroom going.
[00:04:23] Ciscoe Morris: So when I came after her look of astonishment, finally calmed down, she started laughing so hard that took her a half hour to stop laughing. I got on our bikes and I froze to death, and I was drenched.
[00:04:38] Mark Wright: So you’ve taken that phrase, and isn’t that the series of books that you’ve written? Isn’t that the title that you have for your books?
[00:04:46] Ciscoe Morris: Well, I’ve, I’ve written two books. I’ve written four books, but two of them, my co authors were Jackson and Perkins. But,, two I wrote. One was called Astroscope. That was my first book. That ended up the number one selling [00:05:00] garden book in the United States for a while. I couldn’t believe it. Funny though, you never get rich writing a book.
[00:05:06] Ciscoe Morris: I just got a royalty check for that first book, 4. 14. I couldn’t believe it. But, uh, so my next book, so the first one was a Q& A book. And, uh, the publishers really liked it because it did so good. So they wanted me to rewrite the same book with new questions, but no way I was going to do that. So I talked them into letting me write, some of my short stories about gardening because I have a million of them.
[00:05:38] Ciscoe Morris: And, so, uh, this book is full of short stories about gardening. They’re supposed to be They’re supposed to teach you about Garnine, but be hilarious. And I can only say that I laughed my head off when I wrote it. And, uh, it’s called Oh La La. And it’s been a huge success. It came out right when the pandemic started.
[00:05:57] Ciscoe Morris: That was the one bad thing. I had 30 [00:06:00] book signings have to cancel. But it’s still doing good. It was a bestseller on Amazon. Doing good. It’s,, people seem to like it, so it makes me happy.
[00:06:10] Mark Wright: Well, Ciscoe, I’m going to cover some gardening questions, because I feel like we’d be doing our listeners a disservice if we didn’t get some gardening wisdom out of you during our interview.
[00:06:20] Mark Wright: I’d like to go back, though. You grew up in Wisconsin, right? And,, your love of gardening really came from,, being around your mom and your grandmother, isn’t that right?
[00:06:28] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, my mom and grandma were great gardeners. And, And so we had, you know, mom was kind of a perennial gardener back before many people did that.
[00:06:38] Ciscoe Morris: She loved peonies. That’s one of the only plants you can even get to grow in Wisconsin. The winter kills everything, you know, but she was a good gardener. And so, and we had a big vegetable garden, pretty good sized veggie garden. And, uh, I, I preferred working in the perennial garden, but they had the half hour rule.
[00:06:58] Ciscoe Morris: Every day I had to work a [00:07:00] half hour in the veggie garden, harvesting and doing all the jobs you have to do, weeding. And if I didn’t do it, I didn’t get to go play baseball on Saturday. I spent the whole day in the veggie garden. So, so I did a lot of veggie gardening, but yeah, they, uh, they were great. It was so fun working with them.
[00:07:19] Ciscoe Morris: And my grandma. Was,, quite an Irish woman, so her name,, was Maude O’Hara. That was her maiden name. And she married Waldo Reichardt, which ended peace in the family, but anyway. And when I gardened with her She had a broom against the shed out there, and if you called her Maude Reichart, she grabbed that broom.
[00:07:44] Ciscoe Morris: You better run for your life. It was the funnest thing. I used to love doing it. she had kind of a hot temper, but she taught me so much about gardening and so many garden tricks. It was really great. So yeah, working with those two was always really good. My [00:08:00] dad, he wasn’t too good a gardener to tell the truth.
[00:08:03] Ciscoe Morris: He liked to kind of try to supervise, you know. That never worked too good., the funniest one ever is he brought home, how he got it, I don’t know, a whole truckload of fresh sheep manure one time. And he told Mom and Grandpa, he said, Ma, Ma, uh, Maude, he said, put that down and work that into the garden.
[00:08:28] Ciscoe Morris: Said, you’ll have the biggest veggies you’ll ever see. He was right. If you could find them under the 12 foot tall weeds that grew out of that stuff, oh, it was the weediest mess. I’m surprised my mom and dad’s marriage lasted through that one.
[00:08:45] Mark Wright: I feel like this would be a good time to learn about manure in gardens.
[00:08:49] Mark Wright: Ciscoe, there’s a term, and we can talk about, our family’s organic vegetable garden up in up in Ferndale, but you can’t put like fresh manure right on gardens [00:09:00] because The nitrogen is in a form that actually will harm the plants Well, what’s actually happening when you have to compost or break down manure so that it turns forms, right?
[00:09:11] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, so if you use it when that when it’s fresh Then, it’s got, for one thing, it’s got animal pee in it, which was really salty. And could just burn your plants to shreds. And it’s got way too much nitrogen. So yeah, you gotta turn that manure over., the farmers, out here, the dairy farmers, they, uh, put all the manure, and then they wash it all down in these holes and let it sit for a really long time before they used to sell it to us.
[00:09:43] Ciscoe Morris: Hardly anybody buys fresh,, manure anymore. But, yeah, so it’s gotta go through. All little microorganisms in there have to break all that nitrogen down and, uh, and it breaks the salts down and all of that stuff. And so [00:10:00] it’s turned into humus, which is as far as,, compost and,, waste products can break down.
[00:10:08] Ciscoe Morris: Once it turns to humus, it adds so much to your soil when you work it in, you know, it adds microorganisms like mad. It,, adds,, moisture holding capacity. Breaks up hard soil. It’s just the best thing you could do.
[00:10:24] Mark Wright: Wow. We get, uh, we get dairy manure solids Delivered to our farm in Ferndale from farmers up in Linden And then we put my brother made an industrial blower So it’s like a maybe a six inch pipe with perforations that is laid down on the ground Connected to an industrial blower and then we pour the manure solids over the top So it’s about maybe four or five feet tall and maybe ten Maybe eight feet wide.
[00:10:49] Mark Wright: Then we cover it with a tarp and then we put a thermometer in there. And as those microorganisms start to break that down, like you said, turning it into humus, it gets very [00:11:00] hot. It gets up to 140, 150 degrees. But after about three months, it,, it settles down and oh my gosh, you just, you put that on your, uh, your beds and the vegetables just jump out of the ground.
[00:11:11] Ciscoe Morris: Oh, yeah. You know, it’s funny because. Cow manure is really great because cows have four stomachs. So they’re passing the food back and forth, they break those seeds down. But be careful, that’s what’s wrong with sheep and horse manure. You only have one stomach, you know. It comes out. Those seeds are still intact and can cause some real trouble, I tell you what.
[00:11:35] Mark Wright: I love it. So, at the age of 10, you decide to apply for a job as a gardener at a church. So, you talk with a priest there who was not very enthusiastic that you would apply. What was the reaction that you first got from the clergy at this church in your hometown? Well, you
[00:11:57] Ciscoe Morris: know. And people ask me [00:12:00] why I’m called Ciscoe, because that’s not my real name.
[00:12:03] Ciscoe Morris: And I’ve been called Ciscoe by my family since I was way before 10 years old, because I love this old TV show called The Ciscoe Kid. Young people in my crowds have no idea who that guy is, but it was a great tv show and Ciscoe and Pancho were my heroes, you know, and I wore a sombrero when I got a lot of time Even had those cool balls and hugged out.
[00:12:28] Ciscoe Morris: It was the best And, so anyway, they uh The church put up some signs they were looking for an assistant gardener. They were not looking for a 10 year old kid. So I told my mom and grandma, I’m going to go down and get that job. They went, oh, that’s so good. Go on, you will get the job. But the sixth time I came in and harassed this poor priest in charge of hiring, it’s the first time I ever heard a priest swear at you.
[00:12:54] Ciscoe Morris: Okay, you little blankety, blank, blank, blank. You got the job. Don’t ever come in this office [00:13:00] again. And then when I came and told the caretaker, he really wasn’t a gardener in particular, he did everything at the church, but I told old Joe, it was his new gardener’s first time I saw a grown man cry, and I was like, oh
[00:13:16] Ciscoe Morris: But old Joe was. He ended up like a second father to me in many ways, and uh, so thanks to him, uh, I learned all kinds of cool garden tricks. Cause some happened to him in World War II, I never knew what it was, but he would not touch a poison.
[00:13:34] Ciscoe Morris: So I learned all kinds of really cool ways to work with nature instead of against it,, to, do sustainable gardening. It was great.
[00:13:44] Mark Wright: So yeah, so he had a real aversion to anything toxic. What were some of the little tips and tricks that old Joe taught you in terms of like,, home methods of controlling weeds and pests and stuff like that?
[00:13:56] Ciscoe Morris: Well, weeds was really fun. He loved tea. You have this [00:14:00] big teapot. And so, uh, he’d heat that baby up, or when it started whistling, he’d pour the tea water into his tea. Then I put on this big mitt, grabbed the teapot, ran outside, and poured it on the weeds and the cracks of the sidewalk. And I’ll tell you, do you remember in the Wicked Witch of the West, when she got, uh, water squirted on her, she’s like, I’m melting.
[00:14:29] Ciscoe Morris: That’s what the weeds yell when you do that. It cooks them. It kills them dead. It works so good. Wow.
[00:14:36] Mark Wright: And not toxic at all. And you could just feel good about dumping that water right on there.
[00:14:40] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, and it smelled like steamed veggies out there, too. And then another really good one. There is a beetle. It’s called a flea beetle.
[00:14:52] Ciscoe Morris: And it’s about an eighth inch. It’s black. And they get on things like your cucumbers and [00:15:00] squash and potatoes. They really attack potatoes. And they’re really difficult to deal with. They build up in really high numbers. And when you walk up, they just go, they, could jump as high as a fleet and they just go when they’re gone, you know?
[00:15:17] Ciscoe Morris: So, uh, all Joe, I have this trick. And,, now you could use something called bird tangle for a sticky substance, but in those days he’d take a board, pretty good sized board, and he would paint gear oil on it. So he’d paint gear oil. It was really sticky stuff and it didn’t run off much. And then he’d give me the board and every morning when I got to work, I had to stick Go out to the veggie garden and sneak up on the vegetables that had a beetle that go, WAH!
[00:15:51] Ciscoe Morris: And the beetle would go, WAH! I loved the looks on their beady little eyes when I got them, you know? So they
[00:15:58] Mark Wright: would jump on the board [00:16:00] and get stuck?
[00:16:00] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, they tried to, they were trying to escape, but I knew how to do the board just right. They’d get stuck on the, Well, we even recycled them. Oh
[00:16:11] Mark Wright: my gosh.
[00:16:12] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, that was really good that That took care of the problem so fast,, it was kind of depressing for me when they were all gone because it was so fun to do, you know?
[00:16:23] Mark Wright: Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. I bet that, what a great, fun thing for a kid to do.
[00:16:27] Ciscoe Morris: Oh, yeah. That was a great job.
[00:16:30] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about your military service. You were in the Navy Reserve, right, starting in 1968 for a couple of years, right during Vietnam.
[00:16:38] Ciscoe Morris: I never went to Vietnam, but I did go overseas to Asia. And,, so I had a top secret clearance and I was basically listening to the Viet Cong most of the time or had, you know, jobs similar to that, so.
[00:16:56] Mark Wright: Oh, wow. So when you got back into the States in, you know, your [00:17:00] 1970, you had a couple of interesting work experiences, but then ended up in Seattle, right? How did you make your way, up to Seattle?
[00:17:09] Ciscoe Morris: Well, a lot of my buddies who are in the service with me. Lived in Seattle.
[00:17:15] Ciscoe Morris: So they, so especially one of my best friends that he said, get out in Seattle and just check it out and see if you like it. And then, you know, so I got out of the service. You can get out anywhere you want. So I got out of the service in Seattle. It was at,, Magnuson park was still a Naval base set. And, uh, so I got out there and, uh, but I.
[00:17:38] Ciscoe Morris: You know, hung around Seattle for a week or two and really thought, wow, this place is cool,, and then I flew back to Wisconsin, but I didn’t feel like either I have changed or some of my friends, I didn’t feel like I fit in and I missed my old buddies. So I basically hitchhiked across the country.
[00:17:58] Ciscoe Morris: I had no money, and [00:18:00] I worked for a, there was this thing called manpower and if you know, you could go and check it in the morning, if they had a job, you could go Mm-Hmm. and get paid. And so I hitched my, hitchhiked my way across the country, work at Jobs for Manpower to. Sometimes those were really crazy like,, well, one in Nebraska was over 100 degrees and I was, had to carry out 125 pounds of marble, big marble out of this big semi truck.
[00:18:33] Ciscoe Morris: It was so hot in there. The most fun one was,, in a mattress store, and the two guys that owned the mattress store were having a kind of a argument. So every time one of them would leave, they’d have us move the mattresses to the other side of the store, and the other guy would come back and really badly move back and forth.
[00:18:53] Ciscoe Morris: It was the craziest day of my life, but I made some money, so. But, uh, so it was an [00:19:00] interesting experience, and I hitchhiked all the way back to Washington, and,, I think one of the most interesting stories was I was hiking in Big Sur along the coast, and you know, that road goes right along the, cliffs, and a bus, with writing all over it, you know, hippie sayings and peace, love, all that, pulls over and picks me up.
[00:19:27] Ciscoe Morris: There’s about 12 people, I think, in this bus. And I’m, I get in the bus and I notice everybody’s,, acting really strange. Then I find out they’re all on LSD. Then I find out the driver’s on LSD. I’m like, I think I’ll get out now. Oh my
[00:19:46] Mark Wright: gosh. But Ciscoe, you, you, if we looked at old pictures of Ciscoe Morris, you kind of became a hippie at this point in your life, right?
[00:19:58] Ciscoe Morris: Oh yeah, I had been [00:20:00] quite a hippie before I went in the service. And then, uh, When I got out,, and you know, I have a really famous story of, something that happened to me in the service. I tried to grow my hair really long. This was when I first got in and I was at a top secret,, school. To learn code and all this stuff.
[00:20:21] Ciscoe Morris: And,, but I knew I was going home on leave before I was going to Asia. And I was going to have two weeks back and was cheese skin, you know, to see my hippie buddies. So I thought I’ll see if I can grow my hair long. Now at this school, you are not allowed to grow your hair long at all. Everything had to be perfect.
[00:20:39] Ciscoe Morris: Your mustache couldn’t touch your lip, nothing. And, uh, So all my buddies and I got in on trying to see how long I could grow my hair, and I was putting dippity doo in it all the time. And I had to shove my hair under everybody. All my buddies were helping me. If my hair was getting longer and [00:21:00] longer, everything was great.
[00:21:01] Ciscoe Morris: And, so if I, the final inspection, I just had to pass that and I’d be going home with pretty long hair, you know, and you have that white sailor cap. I was in my dress whites and we’re about to go down for the final inspection. And I’m shoving here and there and people are helping me, but I’m running late now,, cause I’ve been messing around.
[00:21:23] Ciscoe Morris: So I asked this buddy that owns a GTO,, car to drive me to the parade grounds. Cause I knew he was driving there. I put the Dippity Doo on the dashboard, opened it up to just put a little more on. He hit the gas pedal full speed. The Dippity Doo went. Off the dashboard landed right in my lap and it was like this sea of green and pink and yellow just kept expanding on my dress lights and I’m like, Oh my God, I’m done [00:22:00] for.
[00:22:00] Ciscoe Morris: I get there and I’m walking into the parade ground and all my buddies are seeing me. They’re dying. They can’t believe they’re seeing this. They can’t, they just can’t hold it together. And on these inspections, this one’s going to be by the big captain and a base and everything. You can’t even crack a smile.
[00:22:21] Ciscoe Morris: So, I’m in line, seeing my life going before my eyes, you know, and I hear the captain going, Get that smile off your face, sailor! Are you laughing, sailor? I hear all this stuff and I’m like, Oh my God, he gets to me. He totally lost it. He couldn’t even talk. He’s like, Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sailor, what is that?
[00:22:43] Ciscoe Morris: I said, The whole playground went into pandemonium. People were falling on the ground. Even the officers behind the captain were laughing so hard they couldn’t stop. I [00:23:00] almost got court martialed for that and I went home with the shortest haircut anybody’s ever seen in their life. It was worth a try.
[00:23:10] Mark Wright: Oh my gosh.
[00:23:10] Mark Wright: So you end up, ended up in Seattle. You worked as a, on a salmon boat for a while one summer, and then you got a job at Seattle City Light up at New Halem,, kind of up in the Cascades., and this was sort of a gardening type job, wasn’t it? Tell me about that, Ciscoe.
[00:23:25] Ciscoe Morris: Yeah, they sent, I kind of applied through the state and, uh, So I, six other people or five other people and I got sent up there and uh, So they had, it’s where the dams are, New Halem, and it’s owned by City Light.
[00:23:45] Ciscoe Morris: And so people come up to see the dams, do tours of the dams, but we had spectacular gardens here. So, Carl was the head gardener, really a neat guy, and right away he saw that I had [00:24:00] aptitude for gardening, knew something about it. So he and I ended up working all summer together. And, uh, and we’d grow plants from seed, do everything.
[00:24:10] Ciscoe Morris: It was really cool. So at the end of summer,, they were going to hire one person permanent up there. So I walked in, Carl was the one they had to hire. And uh, he looks at me and goes, you think I’m hiring you for this position, don’t you? And I said, I know you’re going to, he said, no, I’m not. He said, there’s nothing to do up here all winter.
[00:24:33] Ciscoe Morris: All you’ll do is drive a snow plow, you know, and sit around. He said, you’ve got, you could, you can go somewhere with gardening, so go back and get more education. And, uh, I guarantee you’ll do a lot better than staying up here. So it broke my heart, you know, cause I loved my job up there and everything. But I went back and I went to a two year horticulture [00:25:00] school, also became a master gardener where you learn a ton when you do that.
[00:25:04] Ciscoe Morris: And, the combination seemed to have helped me because my life took off after that. So I, to this day. I just,, anytime I think of Carl, I feel nothing but appreciation for him, you know, that was the best thing he could have done for me.
[00:25:21] Mark Wright: Yeah. I think you’re best known, Ciscoe, at least from your early days as, working for Seattle University, and you worked there for a long time.
[00:25:29] Mark Wright: I’d love to know how you got that job in the first place, and then we’ll get into some, pretty good stories about, about tree cutting.
[00:25:38] Ciscoe Morris: Well, you know,, so I worked in, uh, From horticulture school, I got hired, they wanted a really elite gardening company, wanted a professional pruner. And that’s kind of, that’s a more elitist kind of gardening in some ways, and uh, so I got picked out of a [00:26:00] class of 70 people, that was pretty cool.
[00:26:03] Ciscoe Morris: And, uh, so I worked that job and then I started my own company, did a lot of pruning, but also started designing, doing every kind of gardening there is, you know, and loved it. And, uh, so at one point, I don’t know why, but I was working for this one guy that owned the company. And he told me, he said, Seattle, you was looking for a gardener over there.
[00:26:26] Ciscoe Morris: Uh, and I said,, so you should go apply for it and then get our company in there. And I didn’t tell him this, but I went and applied, but I knew I wasn’t going to get his company in there. You know, it was an all right company, but it wasn’t that great. And, uh, so. It’s kind of interesting because The, uh, personnel person told me you’ve got the job, you’ve got everything we need.
[00:26:53] Ciscoe Morris: You know, you took this little test and did really good. And, uh, you’ve got the licenses, [00:27:00] we want everything. So she said, we’re going to hire you. So, I gave my notice,, she said in two weeks, so a week went by and I told the guy, Hey, I’m going to go work at Seattle, you and I’m sorry, but I’m not going to, you know, invite you in.
[00:27:15] Ciscoe Morris: I want to work there. And so,, she doesn’t call or anything. And I give him my notice, had a big goodbye party for me and everything. And then, the day before I’m supposed to start, I call up Seattle U, and I go, uh, could I speak to Anna? You know, I There’s something wrong. I was supposed to be starting to work there and they said she’s in the hospital.
[00:27:39] Ciscoe Morris: She got pneumonia. She’s been in the hospital for well over a week. And I said, Oh, well, what happened to that job? She said, they, somebody else is doing that job. They hired someone else like, Oh, no, you know? And, uh, so I get home really late at night, one night. And,, there’s a note for me, no matter [00:28:00] what time you get home, call this number.
[00:28:02] Ciscoe Morris: So I call and it’s Anna. She goes, I am so sorry. I got ill, everything got messed up, the person that got hired didn’t, didn’t work out. We want you in here tomorrow. So I had to come in and it’s really fun because I met the priest who was in charge of the department at that time. And you only asked me one question, if I talked to plants.
[00:28:28] Ciscoe Morris: It threw me off. I was like, uh, well, sometimes. So
[00:28:33] Mark Wright: it’s like a psychological testing that you had already done in the military.
[00:28:39] Ciscoe Morris: So I started working there, but it was kind of a shambles. They had, so I was, four person. There was another four person. There was one gardener and one person that picked up paper.
[00:28:54] Ciscoe Morris: And the priest who ran the department. He was the nicest guy you’ve ever met in your [00:29:00] life, and it was at Jesuit College, you know, and, but I’d only see him once a month, and he’d ask me, how are things going? And,, so I, uh, put an ad in the school paper, and I said, if you have work study, a government program that pays people, you know, and you want to learn me.
[00:29:22] Ciscoe Morris: And six,, students applied, and I hired every one of them. They were all really wanted to learn gardening. And,, we went out there and tore those weeds out and,, did so much work on the campus. It was unbelievable. So it was,, they were just great. And not long after that, the other fourth person quit because he just worked on his car all the time,, and then the priest wanted to quit and I ended up, running the department under Lee Baldwin.
[00:29:54] Ciscoe Morris: That’s how life works.
[00:29:56] Mark Wright: That’s awesome. You got a reputation though Ciscoe for [00:30:00] unauthorized,, cutting of trees on campus. How did that, uh, take place?
[00:30:06] Ciscoe Morris: Well, so that Seattle U campus was, it was a combined effort between the priest that everybody called Father Greengrass. Now, I never met this guy. He died five years before I got there, but he was quite an avid priest.
[00:30:22] Ciscoe Morris: And He was all, a lot of widows really liked him a lot. So they, they’d give a lot of money to the university so he could do just about anything he wanted. And he hired Fujitaro Kubota, the Kubota Gardens very famous guy, to help put in the landscape at CLU. So they had this, really cool kind of pseudo Asian landscape with really wonderful trees and everything.
[00:30:51] Ciscoe Morris: And, but the problem was nobody had been caring for it for 10 years, really, because Father Greengrass got sick and slowly had to [00:31:00] not do much. And so there were wheat trees growing right up through the middle of Japanese maples that We’re like over a hundred years old, spectacular, you know, and, all over these weed trees had taken over the campus because nobody knew they were weeds.
[00:31:17] Ciscoe Morris: You know, there’s a tree called an Aleanthus tree. It’s called the tree of heaven, but it should be called the tree of hell. They have a bad odor and they spread really fast. They’re coming up all over, you know. So, I went out with those students and in the morning I cut the tree down, you know, I started cutting them down.
[00:31:42] Ciscoe Morris: Well,, the vice president of the university, Father Hayes, found out that I was doing this. He called me and he goes,, I’ve heard that you’re cutting down trees all over campus. And I tried to explain these are wheat trees. And he goes, how do I know you know what you’re doing? I don’t know [00:32:00] who you are.
[00:32:00] Ciscoe Morris: You know, you’re someone hired you as the gardener here, but, uh, you know, how do I know you’re cutting down the right trees? He said, we’ve got a, uh, landscape architect that we work with sometimes. Before you cut down any more trees, he has to give you permission. So I’m like, oh geez. So, I called the guy up because there were two trees, they were big old catalpas that had been topped improperly.
[00:32:28] Ciscoe Morris: And I was a certified arborist by this time. And, so I knew they had bad decay. Big branches right over the entrance to the campus, and they’re pretty big trees, so I, I caught the landscape, I think, he comes up, he looks at it, you know, I could tell he didn’t even know what kind of trees they were, and, he goes, I think, with good pruning, you can bring these trees back, you know, and I’m like, oh my gosh, these are so dangerous.
[00:32:57] Ciscoe Morris: So. The next morning, [00:33:00] I had my student crew come in about five in the morning. I cut them both down! And we quick bucked them up, got all the wood out of there, covered the stumps with compost and mulch. And about a week later, I had to meet that same landscape architect in the same area of the campus.
[00:33:20] Ciscoe Morris: He didn’t even remember they had been there. He didn’t even know, so that was a close call. So I kept doing it every morning. We, you know, get out there and cut down another tree. I’d say by the end of summer, I cut down 50 trees. But I had a really close call because,, We had, there was a spruce tree, Colorado blue spruce trees don’t do well in western Washington.
[00:33:46] Ciscoe Morris: To keep them healthy, you got to spray them half to death and even then they look terrible when they get old. So there’s one in the middle of campus, it was driving me nuts, so ugly. So he said, that’s gotta go. So we got [00:34:00] out there. Five or six in the morning, I cut that sucker down, I had just finished bucking it up in the truck and just driven away with all of these big chunks of wood and we just had covered the stump and Father Hayes walks around the corner.
[00:34:17] Ciscoe Morris: He sees sawdust all over, sees the chainsaw sit there, goes up to the students and goes, Did he? Was there a tree there yesterday that’s not there now? Did he just cut down a tree? And they go, no, father. I thought, I’m going to hell for sure. There’s no two ways about it. Oh, la la. But, uh, he didn’t know. He didn’t find the stump.
[00:34:45] Ciscoe Morris: So at the end of the summer, I, I get a call that I have to go see Father Hayes, the vice president. So I go up there and I’m thinking, I’m getting fired. He found out that I’ve cut down all these trees and everything, you know. [00:35:00] I go into the office and he goes, it blew my mind. He goes, this campus has never looked this good.
[00:35:08] Ciscoe Morris: In all the years I’ve been here, so I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing a great job. Father B wants to quit as the ground supervisor. We want to give you the job director for grounds care. And I’m like, wow, cool. I can’t believe my good fortune. And he goes, but there’s one condition. I go, yeah.
[00:35:30] Ciscoe Morris: He goes, you got to cut your hair. I have pretty long hair. I’ve always been a hippie. And I said, Nope, I’m not doing it. And he said, All right, you’re in charge, but you don’t get a raise. I’ve been running the department all summer anyway, so I figure what’s the difference. But about a month later, I opened my paycheck and there’s a big fat raise on there, so I went and got a haircut
[00:35:58] Ciscoe Morris: So I was the ground super [00:36:00] director for ground care at CLU for about 20, well, I was there 24 years, but 23 of I directed the ground care. It
[00:36:10] Mark Wright: just sounds like you really took a lot of care and just loved that campus and it really showed. The other thing, Ciscoe, that you told me is that during that time, you took advantage of continuing education.
[00:36:21] Mark Wright: You got your master’s in public administration from there. And a side benefit. from that is that you really learned how to become a good writer. That saved me., and that led to a job, which, which newspaper in Seattle did you start writing for first?
[00:36:36] Ciscoe Morris: So, uh, so it all happened because in graduate school, I had a writing teacher.
[00:36:42] Ciscoe Morris: And, uh, so I had to write a big, almost a thesis, and I wrote it and she looked at it. She said, this stinks . She was like, you’re trying to be some fancy guy using all these $8 words and everything. She said, that’s not you. You gotta just stay who you [00:37:00] are. So I rewrote it. She wasn’t satisfied. I had to do the whole thing again.
[00:37:06] Ciscoe Morris: It just about killed me. But,, thanks to her, I really learned to write well. And then, so, the day I quit at SU, I got home and there was a message on my phone machine from the Seattle PI, and, but what they wanted me to do, they didn’t know if I knew how to write or anything, so what they wanted me to do was just write,, bullets, so if it’s March 1st, time to prune your roses, and that’s all, and then just fertilize this, do this, that’s all they wanted.
[00:37:39] Ciscoe Morris: I couldn’t do it. So I, I wrote Time to Fertilize Your Rose, then I wrote,, Fruity Rose, then I wrote the whole big story on how to do it, you know, and then the next bullet, I wrote a big story in the next one. And, uh, so I got called into the PI really fast, but they loved it. And they said, [00:38:00] Okay, we want to give you, your own article.
[00:38:03] Ciscoe Morris: And,, there were seven of us in the stable of writers at the P. I. They had the best cartoon writers. And I’m still best friends with almost everybody that was a writer in those days. And then, So I wrote for many years for them, and then I was, I got off an airplane from India. My wife and I are always going somewhere and,, this guy in the airport sees me and goes, you are out of a job buddy.
[00:38:29] Ciscoe Morris: And I go, what do you mean? He said, the PI went out of business and I didn’t know they were going out of business. Oh. So it happened while I was in India. And, the next day, Mary and I drove down to Oregon. To the beach and driving back, she goes, what do you think about not writing for the PI anymore?
[00:38:49] Ciscoe Morris: I said, Oh God, I’m happy. I said, I’ve been writing every week. I have a deadline. It gets to be so hard. You know, I walk in the house. [00:39:00] The light’s blinking on the message machine. I push the button, it’s the Seattle Times. I didn’t even get a week off. But I, I enjoyed it. I wrote for them for 17 years. Every week.
[00:39:15] Ciscoe Morris: I never missed a deadline. It was hard sometimes.
[00:39:18] Mark Wright: So Ciscoe, you got pretty well known then in, through your newspaper column. How did that turn into radio work and then eventually TV work?
[00:39:28] Ciscoe Morris: Well, that is interesting. So, the first time I ever was on the radio was really funny because, Seattle, you had a vice president in charge of publicity at that time.
[00:39:39] Ciscoe Morris: Really neat guy. So, uh, he went to a little garden talk I did just for the students on houseplants. But he really liked it. And so he calls me up and goes,, if I could get you on radio, would you want to do that? And I said, I’ve never done anything like radio, you know? And he goes, well, this would just be, was a winner.
[00:39:59] Ciscoe Morris: He said, I’ll just [00:40:00] be talking about gift plants for Christmas. So I’m going to enter, I’m going to call some of that. Local stations up. See if they’re willing to do this with you. And I said, I’d love to. You just want publicity for university. Well, I got on there. I was a nervous wreck. The guy, the radio announcer I was on, used me as a straight man, said these terrible jokes.
[00:40:23] Ciscoe Morris: And when I got home, I asked my wife, Mary, how I did, she said, You stunk. Find another medium. You’re never going to be a radio guy. So, but I, that little taste of it, I like that, you know. So, What happened was there was an extension agent, George Pinew, really great friend of mine over the years. He had his own radio show.
[00:40:47] Ciscoe Morris: And I was a master gardener then and started getting to know George. And,, so George invited me to be on his radio show. And, uh, George was really a tough guy. If you [00:41:00] answered a question wrong, He’d embarrass you half to death right on the radio. He’d go, what kind of answer is that? So, but I loved it. It was really challenging and terrifying to say sometimes, but, uh, so I did pretty good.
[00:41:16] Ciscoe Morris:, but he also had a TV show. And he was on the weekly, once a week, on Channel 7 News. They had an hour long show. So, I’m working at Seattle U back in the days of pagers, you know. And my pager goes off, and I go in somebody’s office and call the office manager. And she goes, Cairo Radio wants you down there.
[00:41:41] Ciscoe Morris: And, uh, cut, on the radio right now,, so I said, you’re kidding me go no George pin you heard his back, and he couldn’t come down, and, You’re due to go on in like 15 minutes. So I opted a work truck, whipped down there, no idea what I was gonna do. I had [00:42:00] to say, I don’t know, there were so many hard questions that I didn’t know the answer to, that it became a comedy routine.
[00:42:07] Ciscoe Morris: And,, I was on there with Jim French, famous guy from Old Town Radio. And then I had to do a two hour show. Just with an announcer with me, but answering all the call ins. And I did a lot better than I was starting to get in my groove. And it was a real fun show, a lot of laughter and fun. And then, uh, the next week George got some big awards.
[00:42:31] Ciscoe Morris: So I took his shows again. And then I got called into Cairo and they go, we want to give you a radio show. And I was like, holy cats, you know? So I had a weekend show. George had one during the week. I had a weekend show. Then,, Cairo decided to dump all the local,, people during the week and go to syndicated shows.
[00:42:55] Ciscoe Morris: So I told George, take my weekend show, you know. So He said, no, no, I don’t [00:43:00] like work on weekends. It’s yours. So I stayed on. I was on Kyra Radio for over 30 years doing a call in show. And then, George,, something happened. He got hurt his back again or something. Couldn’t do, Cairo TV, so,, he told them Ciscoe’s gonna come in and do it for me.
[00:43:20] Ciscoe Morris: I’ll never forget. Talk about being a nervous wreck. I’d never been on TV in my life. It’s live! So, I go in there. No one says hi to me. Nothing. I’m just sitting there shaking like a leaf. I went in and went on with the anchor woman. My Bugs Escaped, it ended up the funniest darn show you’ve ever seen in your life.
[00:43:43] Ciscoe Morris: Broke the ice. And I was on that show for quite a number of years till they went to a half hour news and they had to dump the fluff as they called it. So yeah, that’s how my whole TV, but then there was the even more interesting story. And [00:44:00] that is that, so there was this new TV show that was going to be a half hour long, gardening and house repair show, and uh, I got a letter asking me to try out, but everybody else’s name was typed in.
[00:44:14] Ciscoe Morris: Somebody hand wrote me in, so I thought, wow, just somebody thought of me at the last second. So I had to be at the Red Lion in Bellevue at one o’clock or something, so I started the day at Seattle U. And, I think it was a water main broker, something that got me all involved in this big problem we had.
[00:44:38] Ciscoe Morris: So now I’m running a little late to go for my big trial, but I’m also a certified arborist and I had to stop at this development because there was a big argument between the developer and somebody else over whether this tree should stay. And they had been running over the tree’s roots with bulldozers.
[00:44:59] Ciscoe Morris: It had to [00:45:00] go, but the developer didn’t want to lose the tree because it added value to his property. But I finally won the argument, but now I’m running a little late. I’m just going to make it, get my car, start heading on 405. All four lanes of traffic come to a dead stop. There’s a wreck. Oh, no, I show up for my big tryout 45 minutes late.
[00:45:25] Ciscoe Morris: I’m like Nervous wreck sweat like a dog and I had to memorize lines when I got there, and you have to get up and see them. I can’t memorize my own name. I can only improvise, you know. So I’m trying to. They hand me this packet. I’m trying to memorize these things. And the And it’s, they’re almost done.
[00:45:48] Ciscoe Morris: The guy next to me gets up and does a perfect job of saying all the memorized lines. I’m about to get up and the producer, who I didn’t meet, he goes, I’m sorry, but [00:46:00] we only had this room till this time. We have to leave right now. And so, we all get up to leave. I didn’t even get to try out. I’m so bummed. I can’t believe I practically cried on the way home.
[00:46:14] Ciscoe Morris: I get home and I’m telling Mary I didn’t get to try. Blah, blah, blah. Phone rings. I pick it up. It’s this assistant producer I never met. Asking me to be on the first show. I’m like, what? I could hardly talk, I’m like,, okay, where is it, you know? So as she told me what to be prepared to do, I go there, I see the big producer who I never really met walking around, sound men, camera people, it’s a pretty big production, and nobody’s paying any attention to me.
[00:46:47] Ciscoe Morris: So I go up to the producer and I go, uh, Hey,, I’m here to do the show. He goes, who are you? I said, I’m Ciscoe. He goes, you’re not Ciscoe. Then other guys, Ciscoe. I said, [00:47:00] well, I’m Ciscoe. He turns to the camera crew, goes, we got to do it with this Yahoo. Now I did it. I must’ve done it really well. Cause I was on that.
[00:47:10] Ciscoe Morris: Show almost every week for the whole seven years it ran to this day I wonder who that poor guy was that they thought was Ciscoe So they
[00:47:20] Mark Wright: they gave the job to the wrong guy
[00:47:22] Ciscoe Morris: They gave the job to the wrong guy They somehow got confused who Ciscoe was probably was the guy right before me because he did those lines so good But whatever went wrong they transformed somebody’s name and I got the job.
[00:47:37] Ciscoe Morris: So It was great.
[00:47:39] Mark Wright: And then for many years on,, Northwest Cable News and, King and Kong, you, uh, did a show with Megan Black and was so successful. And I just love those episodes that you guys did together.
[00:47:50] Ciscoe Morris: Well, Megan is the best. We’re going to, we’re meeting for breakfast in a couple of days.
[00:47:55] Ciscoe Morris: She’s the spokesperson for the rent police department. Now she’s got all these radios [00:48:00] and everything we do together. But, uh, yeah, we had so much fun working together and she’s just a really terrific person. And, uh, so I love that show. It was so fun. And,, it’s funny because we never rehearsed anything.
[00:48:15] Ciscoe Morris: We, so usually I kind of take the lead and, she’d ask the questions. And so I’ll never forget one. We planted this heuchera, coral bill, and heuchera, what they do after you’ve had them for three or four years, they get a bare stem that sticks way up in the air and they look like a little palm tree, they’re ugly.
[00:48:36] Ciscoe Morris: And so I didn’t know what to do, so I experimented and cut one down. And fertilized it, and it came back great, so I thought, this will be great to do on TV. And this was for those little news segments we did. So, uh, we get together, and she goes, uh, what are we doing to this eukaryote? And I said, we’re cutting it right to the ground.
[00:48:56] Ciscoe Morris: And, uh, she goes, oh, okay. And we cut it to the ground, and they [00:49:00] moved the camera, and she goes, you sure you know what you’re doing? I was like, me again? Then! She came back three weeks later, because we’d rotate whose house we’d shoot at. She came back three weeks later, went and looked at the Heuchera. It looked great.
[00:49:14] Ciscoe Morris: She went, you bought a new one. Oh la la! But we always have so much fun. We gave each other so much heat. And, we’d always have a crowd watching us laughing their heads off. So it was so fun. And then the other show I had was Gardening with Ciscoe Live on Northwest Cable News. Oh, that show was so great ’cause I got to do absolutely anything I wanted,, I worked, I had great producers.
[00:49:39] Ciscoe Morris: We both, we’d all think of new ideas to make this show more fun. It was just great. And I, I’ll never forget the very first call, call the first show. Uh, it was,, in those days I was with an anchor. At the end I was by myself. Was with an acre and they would,, go to [00:50:00] that, that weather person. And they do the weather and then come back to me and it was the first show for me and they go to the weather guy and there he is standing there smoking a cigarette up in the garden up there.
[00:50:13] Ciscoe Morris: And he kind of looks startled and it comes back to me and the anchor and I are like, looking totally startled goes back to him and he goes, Well, how the hell did I know they were going to shoot? Oh, no, it was quite a start. The second week, the guy that called wanted to know, what was wrong with his marijuana.
[00:50:34] Ciscoe Morris: I told him, this is a family show. It was before marijuana was even legalized. It’s a family show. I can’t answer that. The next week, same town in Alaska, because it showed in six states, same town in Alaska, same voice, different name, he goes, I’m growing tomatoes under lights down in my base. You got spider webs, spider bites, [00:51:00] raise the humidity, go away.
[00:51:02] Mark Wright: So Ciscoe, I’d love to ask you to reflect on I mean this podcast is dedicated to redeeming work and that is to show that Work can be a really honorable thing and can be good for everyone if we show up, right? And it just seems like what you’ve done well one thing that really has struck me is that You not only knew a lot about gardening, but you put in the time to be educated about gardening.
[00:51:27] Mark Wright: You became a master gardener Certified arborist you put in the time to be trained In a way that said, yeah, I’m really serious about that. How important is education when it comes to becoming, you know, all that you can be in the workplace?
[00:51:42] Ciscoe Morris: I think it’s absolutely critical. You know, when I,, so when I went back to school, I worked hard in school.
[00:51:49] Ciscoe Morris: I wanted to learn all I could. When I became a Master Gardener, I just ate that up. There was so much information. And, once I became a WSU Master [00:52:00] Gardener, then,, that opened up all kinds of,, opportunities to go to talks from extension agents and people. I was at every one. And that’s how I got to know George Pino.
[00:52:12] Ciscoe Morris: He said, you come to every talk with him, you know. And, uh, so it really helped me because, I think in anything in life, you can’t fake it. You gotta really know what you’re doing. If you try and fake it, you’re out there on thin ice and it’s scary, you know. And so I really tried to learn, and I was never afraid to say, I don’t know, I know all my shows and everything too, you know, and, and even, you know, going, getting my, uh, degree,, at SU, you know,, I just kept taking courses because I liked that kind of thing, but then a priest said, why don’t you, Get a degree, you know, and I saw what degree, I mean, I’ve taken a lot of biology courses, you don’t have a master’s in that, and he said, we’ll get a public administration [00:53:00] degree.
[00:53:00] Ciscoe Morris: He said, if you have letters after your name at a university, you get more pay. So, but I did it, but I did it really to learn and that helped me learn to write so much better. The only problem. Was I got in trouble a lot because all these guys in suits would be passing notes to me all the time in class.
[00:53:19] Ciscoe Morris: When do I prune my Japanese maple? She’d be like, no more notes.
[00:53:25] Mark Wright: That’s awesome.
[00:53:26] Ciscoe Morris: But I think, you know, I think education is really key. I’ve always really, you know, and I. I gotta admit, when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play baseball, and I didn’t really study hard enough, and that’s why I needed those writing classes at SU, but it made all the difference, you know, and so I appreciate all the education I’ve ever gotten.
[00:53:49] Ciscoe Morris: I still do. Love to go to talks and, you know, hear different perspectives and,, still read a lot, just to make sure I know what I’m talking about, you know, cause [00:54:00] things change, you know.
[00:54:02] Mark Wright: Ciscoe, what’s the best gardening advice we can give people for this time of year? Spring heading into summer.
[00:54:08] Mark Wright: What’s the biggest mistake we make in our gardens?
[00:54:11] Ciscoe Morris: Well, I, I think one big mistake we make in our garden is not pruning enough. So, I have, you know, I’ve met so many people, I used to consult a lot. And, uh, I’d meet people, and if these, Beautiful laced leaf weeping Japanese maples right in front of their pitcher window.
[00:54:32] Ciscoe Morris: Had they started pruning when it was young, they could have kept it a size that would have been nicer. But instead, they never pruned the thing. Now it’s 12 or 13 feet tall, and to try and prune it down to a reasonable size where you’d be able to see out your window and everything, it’s not going to happen.
[00:54:50] Ciscoe Morris: So. There’s really a lot of plants that you don’t prune the tweedle out of them and you don’t sherbet the balls, you know. But just by pruning them [00:55:00] in a natural shape, you can keep them a size. That’ll work in your garden, you know, that’s another thing. People buy plants that are going to get too big.
[00:55:09] Ciscoe Morris: So my next door neighbor, he was so sweet, he planted his living Christmas tree with his kids out there. And I’m whispering to him, you’re going to regret that. That thing’s going to get so big. The people that moved in after he moved out years and years later paid a lot of money to take that tree down because it took over the whole yard.
[00:55:31] Ciscoe Morris: So, so. You know, don’t plant things that are getting enormous, keep them pruned and,, I think, you know, Enjoy gardening because I think, you know, when I, I walk my dogs all the time, big walker, and I see gardens that just, you could tell the people don’t like it, it’s full of weeds, it’s got horrible plants, but you could see just where, when I consulted a lot, if people really weren’t into gardening and wanted some advice, I told them, [00:56:00] start with a small garden, maybe by the front door.
[00:56:03] Ciscoe Morris: And put in some cool plants. You’ll get what people start complimenting you on what you’ve done. Next thing you know, the whole garden is going to be this spectacular perennial garden. So. So I go out there and enjoy gardening. You lose weight, you get good exercise, you talk to your neighbors. It’s the best thing there ever was.
[00:56:23] Mark Wright: . Ciscoe, as a 10 year old kid, you fell in love with gardening. Did you ever have any idea that you would be able to make a living and do it in such a rich way as you have over decades and decades in your career? People absolutely love you.
[00:56:39] Ciscoe Morris: Well, I do consider myself the luckiest person on earth. I really do.
[00:56:44] Ciscoe Morris: And I don’t think when I was 10 I ever knew, that my love for gardening would lead to this. But I think the fact that I loved what I was doing made all the difference. I think you can’t fail in a job if you truly love what you’re [00:57:00] doing. And I had the wonderful good fortune of absolutely not only loving gardening, which I just love the tweet a lot of, you know, I just love being out there doing it.
[00:57:12] Ciscoe Morris: But also I, I love, Um, do a TV and radio because, oh gosh, it’s that fun. I love talking to people. I love giving garden talks. So, so just by pure luck, I loved everything I did, and I remember, they, they dumped my radio show at Cairo at one point many, many years ago. But, uh, they said, uh, we’re going to bring you back.
[00:57:38] Ciscoe Morris: And because your show, people really think it’s a lot of fun. So. And so I, I told, but then they didn’t bring me back for six months. And I told Mary, I said, I don’t think they’re going to ever bring me back. Like the next day the call came. So, I really do believe if you absolutely love what you’re doing, [00:58:00] you’ll be successful and it’ll go wherever it goes.
[00:58:04] Mark Wright: and it shows that so many times in your career, just when you thought something was over, there’s a message on the answering machine or there’s a phone call, or it just seemed like the timing took care of itself.
[00:58:15] Ciscoe Morris: Well, and the most amazing one is, so after, you know, my show with Megan ended, and my show on North, Northwest Cable News, that whole station, because nobody streamed, you know, everybody’s streaming now, so I told Miranda, that’s it, my career is over now.
[00:58:34] Ciscoe Morris: I got a call from one of my producers that worked with the King, and she said, we’re doing evening, this pandemic, we can’t go anywhere. We can’t go there. Pubs, dance halls, anything fun. So we’d really love having you come back and do something. I’m like, Oh, right. It was so great. I was so happy. And, and new day, I just managed to stay on that [00:59:00] since it started.
[00:59:00] Ciscoe Morris: So. So I’ve been so fortunate that way. I mean, the pandemic was definitely not a good thing, but it, but, uh, I don’t know, you got to make the best of whatever you’re dealt, I guess, you know.
[00:59:14] Mark Wright: Ciscoe, this has been so much fun talking with you.
[00:59:16] Mark Wright: I saw you recently give a garden talk at the Arboretum and I had never seen you speak live in that, in that setting. And you were fan tastic, laughing our heads off. If people want to, you know, have you speak to a group, what’s the best way to get ahold of you?
[00:59:31] Ciscoe Morris: Uh, through my website, Ciscoe. com,, and my wife and I work together, so she organizes all my talks and everything for me, but,, that would be nice.
[00:59:43] Ciscoe Morris: By the way, I should let people know I have a radio show right now. It’s on, it’s on KSQM.
[00:59:53] Ciscoe Morris: And the only way you can get it is to stream it on your computer, but, uh, it’s got a pretty good, [01:00:00] it’s a nonprofit radio station. And, uh, so we, everybody that listens to it, most of them,, stream it on their computer. So we get calls from all over the place. It’s such a little station, we can’t take live calls.
[01:00:17] Ciscoe Morris: But,, I work with this fun woman named Sassy Susan. She reads the questions that I answer, but it’s a lot of fun. So, it’s nine o’clock on Saturday morning. So, you just did non profit radio and squim, it would come right up. You know, but most people, I get a lot of email questions on my, computer, on my website.
[01:00:41] Ciscoe Morris: So, And I answer them, and then I use them for radio. So, I’m starting to get so many, I don’t know if I’ve got the energy to keep up with them all, but,, I’m doing my best. Sooner or later, I may say, If you want the answer, you’ve got to listen to the radio show, you know, but,, But, uh, yeah, so I get tons and tons of [01:01:00] emails through my website and, I get a lot of requests for talks.
[01:01:04] Ciscoe Morris: One year I almost gave a hundred garden talks. Oh my goodness. That was the
[01:01:08] Mark Wright: record. That’s fantastic. Well, Ciscoe, I know that I speak for a lot of people when I say we, we love you, we love you. What you’re doing. And I just think, you know, the way that you have approached work in your life, that you’ve taken education seriously,, you absolutely love the work you’ve worked extremely hard, even when other people around you didn’t, and it paid off in a way that has just made the world a better place.
[01:01:33] Ciscoe Morris: Well, it sure made it better for me. I know that I’ve really enjoyed it. I want people to know I love it when they walk up to me and say, are you Ciscoe? Because they always say something so nice. I walk around with the biggest head of anybody I know. So I love it. So nobody, don’t ever be shy saying hi to me.
[01:01:56] Mark Wright: Well, I guess I only have one, one phrase to end the show. Ciscoe and that [01:02:00] is oh la
[01:02:01] Ciscoe Morris: la
[01:02:05] Mark Wright: This has been so much fun, thank you Ciscoe keep in touch
[01:02:08] Ciscoe Morris: mark I love that tweedle out of being on here. Good to see you. Keep in touch as well.