a reference to a Twilight Zone episode that shows just how old and doddering I am. In the 1964 episode, “Night Call,” an old lady receives a telephone call from a mysterious, anonymous man. The phone company traces the call to a downed telephone line that rests on the grave of her long-dead fiancé who died when she lost control of the car she was driving a week before they were to be married.

Now that’s what I call cold feet – in more ways than one.

Anyway, many of you have noticed that the “According to Steve” column I wrote for Southern Living for many years has suddenly disappeared. A number of readers think maybe it’s because I’m dead, or worse, that I’ve been given my own reality show on TV. (That’s one show the makers of Ambien wouldn’t pay to sponsor. You’d sleep right through the ad.)

(Colocasia esculenta)
Who’s hungry? If your eyes have glazed over waiting for The Man to drop food in your mouth, then you’ll want to know all about the huge, ugly tuber this cute, little girl is holding. It’s the thing elephant’s ears grow from. Most gardeners grow elephant’s ears for their gigantic, heart-shaped leaves which can easily reach 3 feet long. They like sun or part sun, moist soil (they’ll even grow in standing water), and are hardy planted in the ground down to about 15 degrees. Now’s the time to buy tubers at garden centers. The bigger the tuber you get, the bigger a plant you’ll get this summer.

In many places around the ground, the tuber is used for food. It’s poisonous when eaten raw (pity the dope who discovered this), but not when boiled, steamed, or otherwise thoroughly cooked. In South Korea, they stir-fry it; in Vietnam, they put it in spring rolls; and in Hawaii, they turn the starchy root into a staple food called poi. I tried poi once and it tasted like Elmer’s Glue. I think “poi” is the sound most people make when spitting the stuff out.

Q: What is the best time to trim butterfly bushes back and how far should I trim them? They are so large now and I would like to make the best of this season’s growth without harming the plant.
Jeanna Vinai, Dallas, Georgia

A: Late winter and early spring, like right now, is a great time to prune the vast majority of butterfly bushes (Buddleia sp.), because they bloom on the new season’s growth. You can take them down to within a foot of the ground if you like. They’ll respond this spring with plenty of new vigorous growth, lots of flowers, and will recapture their former size by late summer. Two rather uncommon types you should prune after they finish blooming in summer are fountain butterfly bush (B. alternifolia) and orange butterfly bush (B. globosa). They bloom on the previous year’s growth. Wayside Gardens (www.waysidegardens.com)  is a good mail-order source.

Useless Fact You Won’t Find Anywhere Else
Butterfly bushes, or buddleias, are named for the Reverend Adam Buddle (1660-1715), an English botanist and vicar of Farmbridge in Essex.

Well, a huge old dead oak tree came crashing down in the woods in back of my house during one of Birmingham’s typical F-5 tornadoes. The sound of an old man jingling change in his pocket during church sends my wife into spasms of homicidal rage, yet she’ll sleep right through a funnel cloud churning through the yard. Here’s a question I’ve always wondered about: What did tornadoes sound like before there were locomotives?