I'm thinking of writing a gardening book titled, "The Indifferent Gardener - Successful Gardening Through Ignorance and Neglect." The cover would be a glossy, sun-drenched photo of me, resplendent in plaid and denim, carefully ignoring a riotous profusion of vegetation in my "gardens." I'd give hints on preventing insipient interest by cultivating hobbies with zero exposure to dirt, sweat and labor. There would be chapters on placement and storage of garden tools for artistic effect since none would ever touch soil. Through careful study of my methods, intensive yard neglect would yield readers a profitable bounty of previously unheard-of, perfectly legal cash crops.

The idea came to me in a moment of panic during the height of the Great Hops Shortage of 2008. Fearing a serious kink in the beer pipeline, I began to consider growing my own hops with an eye toward brewing my own beer or, if that seemed too much like work, selling them to real brewers to make beer for me. To avoid the futility of inadvertently buying and planting some rare, experimental strain of tropical hops, I fired up the Internet for a little research which revealed some interesting information. Turns out that the right variety of hops, once rooted, will grow like an invasive weed, precisely the type of plant I've already shown great talent for nurturing. I also was alarmed to discover hops can have a detrimental effect on, ahem, male virility. That sparked a suddenly important memory of Gruit, a medieval type of beer using little, if any, hops.

Though it sounds exactly like the noise my dog made after sneaking off to eat about 8 pounds of putrescent roadkill, Gruit or Grut is actually the herb and spice flavoring/bittering ingredients used before the ascent of hops. (Visit Gruitale.com for explanations of the social and political upheaval that consigned Gruit to the dark basement of history and thrust hops to prominence.) The recipes were famously variable and, in addition to more exotic spices, used such common flora as yarrow, wild rosemary, sage, juniper, even stinging nettles. That last one caught my eye because they pop up here and there on our property. Why plant more invasive weeds when I already have a nice crop resisting all efforts at eradication? The discomfort of harvest - anyone who's ever brushed bare skin to nettles knows what I mean - dampened my enthusiasm enough to consider tasting a Gruit beer before getting carried away.

I found just one dusty example, a 13th Century Grut Bier, a product of German brewer Brauerei Weihenstephan, at John's Grocery in Iowa City. The label said it was brewed with bay leaves, ginger, caraway,