“Casetino’s Nursery” is about a real flood at a real nursery as much as it is about a feeling.

Track: “Casetino’s Nursery”
Album: Unreleased

“Casetino’s Nursery” stems from a news story that John Darnielle saw where a man was interviewed about heavy rains and the impact on his nursery. The first verse mentions Malibu and there is still a nursery in Malibu by a slightly different spelling of Cosentino’s Nursery. I think it’s a safe assumption they’re the same place. Their website says they’ve been around for 40 years and faced fires and floods and aren’t going anywhere. Darnielle says he saw Cosentino, who it must have been, and that he said “if a leak was in the attic” then, no, they couldn’t save the nursery. Clearly they did, in some capacity, but it must have been a heck of a flood.

The song transitions into the blues staple “Hellhound on My Trail,” which Darnielle also covered on an album. The comparison, then, seems to be about these unstoppable pursuits and these forces we have no control over. You cannot hold back the rains any more than you can get away from whatever is chasing you. Beyond all that, though, I marvel at John Darnielle playing this once (or maybe more, history does not recall) when he wrote it and then dusting it off one more time two decades later. A similarly fragile thing, that is.