Gardens for Victory

“You might wonder where our culinary cornucopia has gone when you enter any town or city strung out along an American interstate highway....
They feature Angus beef from feedlots, factory-raised chicken, frozen cod, confinement-raised pork, hothouse-raised turkey, russet potatoes, genetically modified corn and soy, hybrid wheats and beer barley, iceberg lettuce, hydroponically grown Big Boy tomatoes, industrial-strength coffee, cola nut syrup, and cane sugar.“
from: Renewing America’s Food Traditions:
Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods
Edited by Gary Paul Nabhan

Lots of talk these days about Victory Gardens. How it’s an idea whose time has come – back. Call it reviving a sustainable practice or hiding your head in nostalgia’s sand. Those thrilling days of yesteryear when Mom wore an apron over her shirtwaist dress and pearls, and when chemical bread fortified with 48 nutrients was a good thing.

I’m sure Victory Gardens are a good thing. The problem that Victory Gardens pose to my blog is that this two-word topic is at the nexus of gardening and politics. In particular the politics of war, terror and global fear.

I try to grow what I eat because I like the taste. Because it is my personal stand against America’s corporate agricultural lobbies. Because I don't want poison in my food. Because I’m trying to get away from eating mass-produced, artificially fortified, genetically modified food. I do not cultivate my vegetable garden because of some twisted logic saying it’s the patriotic thing to do and supportthetroops.

If I try to blog on the subject of victory gardens, I fear my personal politics of gardening will be co-opted by my outrage that politics has co-opted gardening. I reject anything that might be yet another feeble flailing attempt to whip up support for the war. My blogging topics may reach critical mass and my politics will triumph over my gardening. I don’t have any magic insights into the politics of international (or intra-national) war and peace. The world needs another political blog almost as much as it needs my tomato bushes.

What I’m supposed to be blogging about is my continuing gardening education. I want to record my attempts to grow in understanding of the mysteries of growing one’s own food. I want to blog about how that wisdom seems to offer a way to my own peace. It’s way more than gardening. Maybe it’s gardenopoly (somebody else has probably copyrighted that word). Candide wasn’t speaking in a metaphor when he said cultivating our garden is the best of all possible worlds. I just want to cultivate MY garden for My reasons.

In all the talk of Victory Gardens, I’ve observed, there is something about a political advertising campaign, something about a certain mass appeal, or about how the campaigns sometimes read like talking points to brainwashed unwashed masses yearning to be proud and victorious against evil enemies. Grow a garden to help support the troops in some manner way too complex to explain to you. So this is why I won't garden for victory, or petition to grow a victory garden on the White House lawn.

The last time Americans cultivated vegetable gardens as a political statements (first “Victory” - and second “Garden") was what my Dad called The War. Some have called it America’s last “good” war.

It is therefore, pure coincidence that at this particular point in time, I decide to take a brief blog-cation. I’m going on vacation for two weeks. I’ll spend one week at a luxury resort with a day spa while Tech Support Guy waters the garden. He’s not politically, horticulturaly, or blog-ily inclined, so kids, get up, go outside, and play.

Upon my return, the Democratic Convention will be over and maybe I’ll be able to hide in the Garden and ignore politics and opinions about Victory Gardens. I may be able to blog and garden until the regional fire season begins, or maybe even until the elections are over.

Meanwhile, and especially when you garden, remember the rallying cry of the Firesign Theater: “Shoes for Industry!”

Habeas Pocus

'Twas he had summon'd to her silent Bed
The Morning Dream that hover'd o'er her Head.
Dante, Paridiso, Canto 1

I saw Habeas Pocus as a headline on Countdown the other night. It got me thinking, and here’s what I dreamed I read in the year 2020. (Disclaimer: this post is not about my garden.)

Habeas Pocus is the legal principal whereby smoke is produced in lieu of direct proof of a defendant’s case. This legal theory was established by the U. S. Supreme Court in People v Mukasey, 2009. At issue in the case was whether blatant high crimes and treason by members of the Executive Branch would be pursued by the Attorney General (Hint: the AG is also a member of the EB). Asserting the Government’s right to protection against self-incrimination, then-Attorney General Mukasey refused to prosecute criminal action by the White House – from the President down to the guy with the floor buffer in the Oval Office when the call came at 3:00 AM. The People, in an unusual class action, sued him. The Supreme Court decided the case in 2009.

Pursuant to People v Mukasey, Habeas Pocus is the right to conclusively prove innocence by submitting spurious lies and smoke. The majority opinion, by Justice Roberts, also denied opposing council the right to submit known and objectively-verifiable evidence as proof of guilt. The majority opinion ended with the now-infamous: “Problem solved!” The equally famous dissent, by Justice Ginsburg consisted of a single acronym: “WTF?”

It remains to be seen how this legal theory will stand the test of time, although certain legal experts think it won’t. American voters, after forgiving the Supremes for electing the Criminal in Chief in the first place, were not so much consternated after hearing the verdict, as they were seriously pissed. History will remember this moment with garden blogger Weeping Sore’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo of the President, Vice President, and Chief Justice, hanging upside down in the foreground, with the Supreme Court in the background.

The picture also includes the spontaneous pyre beneath them. Instead of creating a shrine of plush toys and wilting flowers, melting in candle wax at the site of the Upside-down Trio, Americans created a bonfire of SUVs and burned the logos of Big Oil, Big Pharma and other assorted war criminals. The fire charred the torn robes of the hanging bodies, making the picture look almost black and white, reminiscent of Mussolini hanging out with his gal back in the bad old days.

While times were uncertain for a while after this decision, it turns out most people were better off with this precedent in the long run. The legal theory of Habeas Pocus was seen by many pundits afterwords, as the last straw that broke the back of the capitalist pigs. While initially permitting war criminals to go unpunished by the justice system, this decision was later seen as the first step in making the world safe from corporate greed, self-interest and corrupt politicians.

In my dream, I read this in Wikipedia, so I’m not sure how accurate it will be.

Grow, Cook, Eat, Repeat

“You might wonder where our culinary cornucopia has gone when you enter any town or city strung out along an American interstate highway....
They feature Angus beef from feedlots, factory-raised chicken, frozen cod, confinement-raised pork, hothouse-raised turkey, russet potatoes, genetically modified corn and soy, hybrid wheats and beer barley, iceberg lettuce, hydroponically grown Big Boy tomatoes, industrial-strength coffee, cola nut syrup, and cane sugar.“
- from: Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods, Edited by Gary Paul Nabhan

I took all the tomatoes harvested at the veggie garden yesterday and made a killer cream of tomato soup. I can’t provide a recipe, because I was operating under some divine inspiration at the time. I roasted the tomatoes for almost an hour with garlic, onions and two tiny jalapeno peppers with the seeds removed. I doused them in white truffle olive oil, salt and tossed in some fresh thyme, mint and oregano.

Then I blended the tomatoes, sieved out the peel and seeds, added some sour cream and later some cream and lots of basil. I also added some pomegranate syrup to offset the somewhat sour taste. It was delicious, and the house smelled like tomatoes and garlic – one fragrance air freshener companies are neglecting.

I also made some rye bread. I used the new wicker brotform and it was an abject failure. When the bread filled the basket, I gently turned it over, whereupon it simply deflated and spread out all over the plate like my svelte cat when she lays down on my lap.

But although it looked like crap, the bread tasted great. I had brought a half pound of dark chocolate wheat from the home brew store. I ground it very fine using my coffee burr grinder (which made my morning coffee taste like crap by the way) and added a scant 2 teaspoons to the dough. It made the entire loaf a lovely dark pumpernickel color and I think it added a mysterious rustic note to the bread.

I’ve been reading lately (see above quote) about how monoculture has kicked the ass of diversity in our wheat crop (and potatoes, onions, tomatoes etc), and how most of the grain we eat has been carefully processed to remove all nutritional value, and then fortified with high fructose corn syrup and too much salt. I think the home-brew places are an untapped resource (pun intended) for bakers. The stuff they sell to craft brewers is wheat and barley, ranging from dark browns, to nutty reds, to golden grains. You have to use a good mill to grind it to flour but it’s certainly culinary grade stuff. Once I get proportions figured out, I’ll post a recipe.

One Free Flight Above

The Summer comes, the Summer dies,
Red leaves whirl idly from the tree,
But no more cleaving of the skies,
No southward sunshine waits for me!

You shut me in a gilded cage,
You deck the bars with tropic flowers,
Nor know that freedom’s living rage
Defies you through the listless hours.

What passion fierce, what service true,
Could ever such a wrong requite?
What gift, or clasp, or kiss from you
Where worth an hour of soaring flight?

I beat my wings against the wire,
I pant my trammeled heart away;
The fever of one mad desire
Burns and consumes me all the day.

What care I for your tedious love,
For tender word or fond caress?
I die for one free flight above,
One rapture of the wilderness!

Rose Terry Cook, "Captive"

What price would you pay to rise above adversity? How hot does the fire of thwarted rage tinge the air your parched afternoons? How many flowers, how much gilding does it take before you forget that we are all caged?

Beyond the door, the lilies of my field reap not; nor do they sow. The flowers doze away as summer dies. But before they die, they live in an endless garden. They inhabit a wilderness so vast they escape all responsibilities. While we are caged with tropic flowers, weighed down with responsibility.

I love the way anger connects with freedom in this poem. Bitterness simmers hour after listless hour. There is more than a desire for freedom, there is a consuming rage.

The poet says: you can make me stay by you, but you can’t make me love you. Like the cat when Tech Support Guy captures her and holds her to his chest – she won’t scratch, but she won’t relax. She won’t make eye contact. Her honesty is all that’s left to her, her saving grace.

Walk 2 Write got me to thinking recently, about why some women are complicit in their own slavery. They not only live in cages, they enter them willingly, and often go so far as to insist the cage smooths and comforts them, protecting them from a Bad World. I was, I confess, feeling a bit superior: I would never wear a veil, serve my spouse like a slave, sacrifice my wild independence of spirit.

Well, this poem says: good for you, you hypocrite. My cage is no less real because I deny it as passionately as these other women I accuse. I know they make it work, although it’s beyond me why they would chose to do so. And I know how: they lie very, very well.

I’m as much a captive as they. I too, must negotiate compromises, must tell little lies to my friends, my family, my self. Lies cushion hurt, gentle lies soften the relentless captivity, where I usually pant my trammeled heart away. There are the times however, when the cage shows behind its gilding, when I’d give anything for that one free flight above it all: my own cage, others’ cages, responsibilities, interpersonal relationships. (I overheard an elderly man in a restaurant recently, speaking to his adult children, “Sometimes I can’t think of a polite way to say, it’s none of your business.”) We’re all in cages.

That’s when I escape my captivity by going into the back yard. And fierce feeling of freedom is what I’m looking for in the shadows beneath the bushes. I’m looking for a respite from the oppressive heat that makes my eyes itch and my nostrils desiccate.

I love the recurring images of heat in this poem; such perfect accompaniment to the garden beyond my door. Shriveling to death in the harsh glare, the captive in the poem longs to fly above cool wilderness, rapture, The mad desires fever the brain. What I wouldn’t give for a sip of cool, moist wind, to blow the dust thoughts from the corners of my mind. Some icy water, silver flowing, into the stone of a bone-dry fire pit of my weary heart.

If you’ve never heard it, go google the lyrics to Patti Smith’s Babelogue. It is a fierce narrative of clipped, bright, angry thoughts. It is a controlled spiral, describing a descending helix: from brain, smoothly sliding through the heart, down into the guts and out. The words disintegrate into almost babble, only to end with a soft clear voice of reason: I have not sold myself to God.

A Piece of Rock is Full of Statues

The title quote is from Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Question I get Asked Most Often" from The Wave in the Mind. The rest is from my garden.

An empty pond is full of sky.

An empty pond is full of life.

Heavy air is haunted
By the kiss of Autumn's growing shadow.

The golden sun skulks resentfully west.

Martha's Japanese Beetle Problem

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up..."
Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

Martha and I grew up together in Maryland. We both fondly remember our brother tying threads around the necks of Japanese beetles in the 1950s, letting them fly around him in circles on their leashes. Now living in Michigan, Martha writes the lamentation below on her current (not so fond) experiences with Japanese Beetles. Looks like it's time to kill.

"I thought the JBs had disappeared after that, and chalked it up to DDT. Now, however, I realize that I was just out of the East Coast gardening loop for decades. Maybe they didn't go anywhere except off my radar screen -- and, at 1/4 mile per year, westward. A research proposal from 2005 noted, 'The Japanese beetle has now spread across most of eastern North America from Maine and Georgia west to Minnesota and Louisiana. Isolated infestations have now been found in many states west of the Mississippi River, including Colorado.' So, they're headed your way.

They reached Michigan in large numbers some ten years ago, and my roses in particular 3-4 years ago. I've tried traps, which caught thousands without appreciably thinning the numbers on my roses. I've tried Milky Spore on my lawn for the past two years, to no avail. (That could be for two reasons: I learned Thursday that the commercial products may not contain the actual effective milky spore, according to DNA testing; and my non-irrigated turf is likely not the home for their grubs anyway. My next-door neighbor, whose retirement has become full-time lawn care, has likely created the perfect conditions for them to thrive.) I've flicked them onto the patio or driveway and stomped them (satisfying but not effective on a grand scale). I've squirted them with Rose-RX and Safer Soap solution. They are still winning. My only success has come from planting double knockout roses that are resistant (and not all are!)

Now I am into biological warfare. One corner of Connecticut, scientists discovered many years ago, had a protozoan pathogen (Ovavesicula popilliae) keeping the beetles under control. It both kills close to 60% of the grubs (once established) and causes infected females to produce only half as many eggs. David Smitley of Michigan State University Extension (your tax dollars at work!) has been introducing them to public golf courses here and studying them since at least 1999. (An early layman's report notes that pathogens worked but parasites did not. Smitley has also done a lot of research on natural controls for the emerald ash borer -- too late for Michigan's ash trees, but maybe in time to save the baseball bat as we know it.) He held a Biocontrol Field Day about 15 miles from my home last week, to hand out dead and live beetles collected from his 'infected' sites. The dead ones are planted in the ground, so that grubs can be infected. Since my dry yard is not a great site for that (and my neighbor might shoot me if he saw me digging holes in his fairway), I got a Ziplock of a dozen or so live ones to release in my yard.

I am not the only one who came early so as not to miss out. Half of the 300 bags had been distributed before the official start time, and huge numbers of cars were still arriving when I left. Obviously, SE Michigan is ready to engage the enemy. The Judas beetles have now been spread much farther than they could have flown in a year. Optimally, it will take five years for heavy infection with the protozoan to become established and ten years for significant reduction in plant feeding damage. Perhaps I should start watering my lawn, to encourage egg-laying and the survival of the infected grubs. I'll have to lay off trapping and spraying for a few years, but it wasn't working anyway. I guess I could continue to flick and stomp, if I bury the remains. ;-)

I am attaching a photo of the buggers ravaging my roses ten minutes ago [expletive deleted]."

Learning to Grow: Ten Things About Me and My Gardening Blog

"This is the dandelion with its thousand faculties
Like an old woman taken by the neck
And shaken to pieces.
This is the dust-flower flitting away.
This is the flower of amnesia.
It has opened its head to the wind,
All brave and weakness
As if a wooden man should stroll through fire."
Alice Oswald, Head of a Dandelion
See Spacecraft Voyager I.

1. This is not a blog for me to keep up with my extended family, my support group members, or my Superfriends. But, to be clear – me and Rainbow Bright? – we’re friends. Just friends.

2. Although I’d rather be famous and adored while I’m alive, I’ll settle for posthumous recognition, with one condition: any posthumous account of my life can’t be one of those documentary cautionary tails, dramatizing my early tragic death, at the height of my fame, under creepy circumstances.

3. If this blog needed a disclaimer it would be that I don't endorse or recommend the practices I preach, and that I'm not responsible for inducing any flashbacks to single parenthood, careers as underpaid attorneys, or to once-desperate closet drinkers now sober but troubled sometimes with bitter regret.

4. I believe we need to include “spiritual” conditions to parole. You shouldn’t just have to check in with your PO, and wear an ankle bracelet. You should also have to write a composition about how you were rehabilitated during your incarceration. Just kidding.

5. If this blog was a movie, it would be a cross between a suicide video and an Edwardian comedy of manners, directed by Sinan the Greek, produced by Time-Warner and promising less than it delivered in the way of plot integrity and production values.

6. I have a favorite spoon, and too many aromatherapy products.

7. As for my gardening expertise, I happen to know that cannabis and hops are in the same exclusive botanical family. Which means I know you could grow the very hempen ropes you could then use to train your hop vines, and I bet that never occurred to YOU until I just said it. But talk about companion planting. Am I right?

8. If this blog was a cry for help, a messianic theology, a conspiracy theory, or a mere apology for the stupid crassness of joining a Christian Singles Group, I’d be sure to let you know right about now. ‘Nuff said.

9. If this blog was a clearing house for misused or misspelled grammatical abortions that somehow make cosmic sense, I’d talk about my “esprit décor” in a tone of righteous indigestion. But it’s not, so I won’t.

10. If this blog was a drunk co-ed passed out the morning after beneath the dining room table at the frat house, it would be a rather sad, overweight, desperate, passed-out drunken adolescent, subject to increasing mood swings, and beginning to catalog her regrets.

I Remember

"Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous muscles in which they have trusted."
Juvenal, Satire X

This blog is not so much about my garden, as about things I learn there. Like: the world is round, and I am pear-shaped. Like: how the French expression equivalent to calling a spade a spade is “appeler un chat un chat”. Calling a cat a cat.

My pear shape prevents my thoughts from fitting into tidy squared-off compartments of thought. There are times when I can squeeze through the convoluted corridors of memory and access certain areas inside my own head, the richer veins of contemplation, the quiet peaceful aisles where memories are stored in sweet soft pillows rather than tidy file cabinets. I try to fit in as much as I can as long as I can, then I have to squeeze beneath the overturned cup like the octopus in the laboratory; to wriggle beneath the curvy ropes of my coiled brain, and slip out into the sea, expanding and rocking beneath the moon above and deep currents below.

That’s not say that I have a disorderly mind; that my ideas, inspirations and recollections sprawl inside my head with their limbs entangled; or that they’re like lint clogging the corners of god’s laundry room. Tangled among the tight convolutions of my brain, thoughts that rub up against each other chaotically, randomly, like tossing a deck of cards on the bed and then bouncing on it.

I remember rolling down a short grassy hill, smelling like summer clover and honeysuckle. I remember that my body then was small and quick, unencumbered by pain. I remember it so clearly.

Relying on your own eloquence to escape death, Juvenal says to me, can be just as futile as relying on your strength. So I’ll shut up. I’m off to sit on the porch with un chat, and remember.

Tell Me Your Answer True

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, spoken by Daisy in The Great Gatsby

Did you ever want a Doctor’s Kit set for Xmas and receive a nurse kit instead? In the war between your brains and your looks did you ever lose a battle? The whole war? Did you ever feel suddenly isolated, like the kid in the bubble? Are you losing your ability to hear and be heard through the thick glass walls of your bubble? Has your ability to hear become as compromised your ability to rebound when life hits back, really hard?

Then, this post has come a long way for you, baby.

I love to garden, to get dirt beneath my fingernails, to wipe sweat from my forehead as I rest in the shade, and look up, and see sudden beauty that I made with my own hands. Ok, me and mother nature, but still. Those are times when I can see the here and now, when I really stop racing into the future. A moment of the most wonderful exhalation of tension, frustration, pain. In my garden, I feel like who I am, not who I’m masquerading as the rest of my days.

Here, I live and breathe. And most importantly, that real deep part of me is intact, safe and not threatened. I don’t have to run to try to keep ahead of the anger that breathes down neck and makes me hunch my shoulders in pain. I don’t shoulder the weight of the world out back, just my own lightweight little foolish self.

It’s only here, in the backyard summer afternoon heat, creating beauty that I enjoy and relish in, that I meet my self coming and going. I’ve become Daisy’s happy fool. My garden is, finally, the best place a girl can be in this world.

The Grand Unified Theory of Gardens

"I was flipping through the cable channels the other night, trying to get an abstract sense of the way emergent processes of change and transformation generated by contemporary high-tech society are challenging cultural assumptions regarding diverse aesthetic forms to create a novel state of history… when, all of a sudden, I realized that everything I was looking at was the biggest load of unimaginably horrific crap ever."
Attributed to Richard Rorty, in article entitled, “Post-Modern Condition Upgraded To Pre-Apocalyptic”

The other night, after returning from the Liar’s Club where we enjoyed possibly excessive quantities of excellent local craft beer, we were trying to come up with a catchy name to call these times we live in. It was easier in “the 80s” or “the 90s” to just refer to the numerical decade. But “the 0s” doesn’t sound quite right, even stuck here in America in the waning days of the Bush II presidency. There was modern, but that was 100 years ago. Then, there was Postmodern, or as we took to calling it “PoMo”. But that was 50 years ago. And to call these days Retro is just a sad observation of how we cling to nostalgia when the going gets tough – reminiscing about the good old days when gas was cheap and Americans were respected.

Then, although the signs are everywhere present that serpents lurk in the grass, it came to me in a flash of inspiration so vivid that I could hear choirs of angels humming a wordless three-part harmony in the background, and believe me this is big, because I’m practically deaf.

Gardening is, at its most basic level, playing in the dirt. But that’s not my epiphany. Everybody knows that.

But deep in the dirt is where the roots of all growing things begin, and therefore gardening brings the gardener to the roots of life. But that’s not the epiphany either – every gardener knows that.

But “dirt” has also been defined as real or metaphorical matter in a place it doesn’t belong – hence “dirty feet” or “dirty minds”. So gardeners are not only likely to unearth the roots of wisdom when they garden, they must also deal with potential serpents, and other unimaginably horrific crap – much of which ends up sticking to the soles of their feet and burrowing deep under their fingernails. To illustrate my point, study the picture of the door of this church. Exactly how much redundancy do we need to tell the flock of this storefront church that the noon prayer begins at, say, noon? And if it’s "daily" why only M to F? And what kind of church isn’t open on Sundays?

So, my inspiration, my grand theory hit me like a load of unfinished compost flung from a pitchfork: if you want to become wise, you must get dirty first. How else will you learn to distinguish the horrific crap from the roots of wisdom? Whether or not that leads you to grok the meaning of the universe, or to deconstruct the semiotics of our contemporary state and awaken to realize we’re up to our knees in horrific crap, depends as much on what you had for lunch as it does on whether you believe Richard Rorty’s alleged insight quoted above. Dirt is dirt. Whether or not it’s good for your soul in what I’ll call these “Pre-Apocalyptic” days, depends on whether or not you are a true gardener.

Vanilla Cream Corn

"Tomatoes, corn and peas should be consumed as soon as possible after picking because their sugar content quickly decreases."
Naill Edworthy, The Curious Gardener's Almanac

There’s nothing like having your white corn harvested by intruders to make you long for fresh sweet corn. So I got some at the Farmer’s Market and made this recipe, adapted from one of my favorite vegetable cookbooks, "Homegrown Pure and Simple, great healthy food from garden to table” by Michel Nischan and Mary Goodbody, 2005, Chronicle Books, San Francisco. Because the people I cook for can’t manage corn on the cob, this is a perfect way to enjoy fresh corn.

10-12 ears of corn
¼ cup whole milk (I use Half and Half)
1 fresh vanilla bean, split lengthwise, or ½ t pure vanilla extract
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Using a sharp knife, cut the corn kernels from the corn kernels from the cob. You should have 9 – 10 cups kernels. Discard the cobs.

Juice half the corn kernels in a heavy-duty juicer. Remove the pulp from the juicer and put it in a fine-mesh sieve. Press on the pulp to extract as much juice from it as you can. Combine this juice with the rest of the corn juice for a total of about 2 cups.

In a large saucepan, combine the corn juice, the remaining corn kernels, the milk, and the vanilla bean (if using extract, add later) and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Simmer gently, stirring constantly, for 2 – 3 minutes, or until the mixture begins to thicken. Simmer for about 3 minutes longer or until the corn is cooked through. If using extract, stir it in after the corn is cooked.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately. The dish is so sweet, you could almost use it as a desert. I tend to overcook the corn to suit my family, but if you leave it slightly al dente it has a nice crunch that I prefer. I use 6 ears and slightly less cream, but I use the whole vanilla bean. It makes three generous servings.

My Corn “Harvest”

"How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppres'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request."
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes:

What the hell? The corn in the Veggie Garden was almost ripe on Tuesday, July 8. Working nearby on Saturday, July 12, I stopped by the Veggie Garden and found the corn had all been “harvested” by some pest. Yesterday, on July 15, I took these pictures, and salvaged exactly three ears that had remained untouched. We’re working on a design for a decent fence to keep rabbits and possibly gophers out. But this may have been done by birds. Just how far must we go to enjoy the fruits of our labors and prevent other creatures from stealing it from us?

This is shaping up to be a tough year. The rains never came – a fool’s request. Everything outside is burning up like brimstone in hellfire. It’s taken a few years, but I have learned from the Water Conservation Garden about what constitutes a sustainable garden in my climate, as it continues to revert to the ancient deserts and dry sea-beds that were here before us. From my volunteer work, I learned about how living green is more than trendy, it’s survival. I learned that I can live here in harmony with nature if I just keep simplifying, slowing down, and discarding the vanity that I can’t seem to outgrow no matter how old I get. But my corn, dammit! They took my corn!

Because of the contiguous border towns of Tijuana, Baja California on the Mexican side; and San Diego, California on the US side, each year my city is visited by more people from other countries than any other city in the world. I’m outside the City Limits, but within the County of San Diego. There is enough water available within our region to support a population of 10,000, and about 1.5 million people live here. The ecosystem is changing too. As our failed corn harvest illustrates, the other creatures who live among us are trying to figure out how to live sustainably and adapt to the changing times just like I am.

While we spray our kitchen gardens with poison and wait patiently for the fires to ignite in celebration of autumn, we fill our swimming pools and ponds, we use more water on our yards each year than the amount of annual rainfall in Portland, Oregon. We nod in wise concurrence when told to conserve water, with no hint from the Bold hand of our public officials that water will be rationed within the year. Let no darling conservation schemes oppress us! Let no reason cloud our unsustainably stubborn choices! And let Vengeance leave my corn alone!

Vexation of Spirit, or Go Ask Alice, I think She’ll Know

“I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit…
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly; I perceived that this also is vexation of sprit.
For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
- Holy, Efin, Bible, Ecclesiastes

One of the major buzz kills of knowing everything is that your students frequently are sorry to have to learn from you. By definition, a know-it-all knows everything. Your wisdom causes our grief. The world is composed mostly of fools and madmen who know nothing. And here I am, as Jerry Rafferty said, stuck in the middle with Vexation of Spirit.

I’m in a big close family, with dozens and dozens of immediate and extended families. I’ve known a few “outlaws” in my time, and come to love them. But I’ve never actually been one. Just now, I’m out-gunned by my spouse’s kin here, three to one. Now, I’m the outlaw, an angry bird is staring down at me, claiming the ripening stalk between us. If I cook dinner, Vexation of Spirit has to make an alternative dinner in case she throws up mine.

Just to be safe like G’dma W when we were kids, not trying to make any fuss, and of course managing to make more of a fuss thereby. Wait, what? THAT’s where I’ve felt like this before. Then, I was 10, sharing a bedroom w/sister M1 and G’dma W. One of the first words my mother taught me was “hypochondriac” because I could see one in action so perfectly at the dinner table. As we nestled in our snug beds on Christmas Eve, G’dma would say good night, then, “I hope I live until morning. Please Jesus, just this one more Xmas… I know I won’t be here by next Xmas, and blah, blah…” I learned young the lesson of passive aggression, masquerading as compassion, living so far up the butt of denial that we couldn’t duck the radiation of it’s blast at ground zero. I’d forgotten. “Poor G’dma!” we’d lament in chorus every night when we three went to bed at 8 pm in the pre-adolescent December dark. I hold my neck in muscular sympathetic pain now, for the pain I knew we’d all feel in those moments before we all went off to our own sweet dreams.

I am now about the age G’dma was back on Dallas Avenue. And I’m caught in a time warp of memories from my very happy childhood. So what triggered this post-traumatic stress train wreck of remembrances? Yesterday, my worst dreams were realized. I was the recipient of deep dark family secrets of abuse, betrayal, the ways we hurt the ones we love. It was a strange juxtaposition: loss of trust relayed in untrustworthy ways. I found myself doing the family’s actual dirty laundry as Vexation of Sprit aired the family’s metaphorical dirty laundry. A good example of how increasing knowledge increases sorrow.

No wonder I’m looking outside for a place to hide, even if it’s over 90 and more humid than we expect in July. Muggy days, muggy memories, here at family dysfunction junction. For all my whining, neither MIL nor Tech Support Guy subject me to this crap. Time to cool down by watering the plants now in afternoon shade. The perfect kind of mild sedative I need this week. Blue Cat will guard the gate while I work undisturbed.

Ozymandias’ Garden

"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

- Shelley
1792-1822

I’ve been trying for some time, to come up with a suitable name for my backyard slash garden. At first, I thought it might be too pretentious to name my garden, but I blog about it, and that has to be more pretentious, horticulturally speaking, than a tattoo of a Chinese or Japanese symbol on my lower back. I’m cooler than you mere backyard dabblers, MY garden has a name. But that’s just not me. I’m too cool to have to stand on my tiptoes and summon an audience when I’m clever.

I’ve been reluctant to decide on a name without due deliberation, because I don’t want to be stuck with something hip and/or retro po mo, only to wake up one morning and realize that ship of naming convention has sailed. Nor do I want fairy names, Green Man allusions, or other obscure literary references that come to mind like Eden or Smirkwood. Something so uncreative as Cassandra’s Garden just won’t due, unless of course, my name is actually Helen of Troy.

I toyed with oriental, Ottoman or Ten Thousand and One Nights (sic) names. Calling my lopsided trellis a stately pleasure dome tends to oversell the effect. Calling my backyard Scheherazade’s Garden of Earthly Delights doesn’t quite catch the character, as I’ve admitted my garden looks more like a painted whore, than a face to launch 1,001 narrative ships.

For another reason, I didn’t want to face the possibility of having to re-name my garden periodically if it fails to live up to whatever vision du jour possessed me to name it in the first place. For example, today, I kinda like Swamp of The Valley of Death, but I have a feeling that name won’t age well. Global warming is taking my desert farther from anything wet than I like to admit. Swamp is as inappropriate as Esmerelda’s Garden and Tikki Lounge.

But I think I might be on to something, naming my garden after the great King Ozymandias. First of all, like Ozyman, there’s generally a frown on my visage, a wrinkled lip, and sneer - if not of cold command, then of concentration. Furthermore, I'm like him in that we both have hands that mocked us and hearts that fed. Finally, if my garden guests think of King Ozyman, they may assume that regardless of how forlorn or threadbare my yard looks when they visit, there was a time - back in the day - when it was enough to make a mighty garden designer despair. And today's that day.

Natural Goodness

A spoonful of high fructose corn syrup makes it easier for the medicine to go down. It might actually help you swallow the recent FDA pronouncement that HFCS is as “natural” as the day is long. Just like refined white sugar, and that pink candy corn they sell on the boardwalk.

Check this post:Crimes against “natural”: FDA helps healthwash HFCS

There’s some good links in above post. I especially like the link to a Corn Refiners Association illustrated guide Here that shows just how many steps are necessary to derive HGCS from corn. I’m sure Homer Simpson would be the first to enjoy the show, and the natural goodness of this product that’s given a generation of Americans diabetes. MMmmmm, high fructose….

To Die For

“I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted to the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

“He questioned softly why I failed?
‘For beauty,’ I replied.
‘And I for truth, - the two are one:
We brethren are,’ he said.

“And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”

- Emily Dickinson, #448

Although it’s the beginning of this poem that echoes Keats (“I died for beauty”) the more famous last stanza of Dickinson’s poem evokes a tombstone slowly being engulfed in moss. The eons rush by, passing in a dizzying fast forward, as we watch the moss swallow the stone, creeping up to the surprised lips of the talking friends. At this faster rate, the growth of the moss is freakish, but sublime – a peaceful scene so beautiful it is “to die for”. But at last, the moss will place a gentle finger on the lips, softly murmuring “shhhh”. In the end all is silent – peace reigns.

You win again, nature. Placidly residing in even the most humble garden, I sometimes stumble over Peace, nodding her head on the shoulder of a kindly tree root. Rushing through like I did today, just to take the compost out, turn and water it, I was taken by some new blooms, unrecognized flowers of seed sown months ago and name forgotten. The compost is cooking and liking it, which is more than I can say for the flowers who are also cooking, but not so enthusiastically.

I don’t flatter myself that the garden I build will stand the test of the ages. I know that in the end, my garden will be redesigned by nature and no trace will be left of me. Nature always has the last word, even if it’s “shhhh.” The interesting thing is that my garden is here today. Someday soon, we may look back at this summer as the time we reached the tipping point. We may have already surrendered our once-undisputed claim to running this place. Whether we recognize it yet, we may be past the point of no return. Man is beginning to lose the battle. Nature has started to fight back.

And I’m ok with that because nature has much more experience in running things than man, and it’s almost time for mankind to stop sowing, and start reaping. It might take nature longer to clean up than it took man to make dirty, but the tide will turn. Man might not be at the top of the food chain after the next spin of Natural Selection wheel. It’s ok with me that the next time there’s a garden where I now live, it will be a more sustainable one, in a more generous climate, and with a more generous caretaker. By then, even the moss and stone will be gone, although I’m betting truth and beauty survive. I think it’s not a bad cause to die for.

Ethnography of the Laundromat

"The more I buy the more I’m bought, the more I’m bought, the less I cost."
Joe Pug, Hymn 101:

My washer broke on laundry day: Sunday. It would swish around and wash, but it wouldn’t spin at the rinse cycle so I was left with sopping wet, soapy laundry. We filled five trash bags with the heavy wet stuff because I don’t own a laundry basket, and went to the Laundromat to put them through a rinse cycle and spin, then to dry them. After 2 hours, we left, taking home five trash bags of damp laundry which I was able to dry in 3 loads and put away. It took a big chunk out of my Sunday afternoon and evening, and it put me in contact with people who are, frankly, poor. At least compared to me.

I learned it’s not easy to be poor. A single large load costs $4.55, and it dryer time is now $0.30 for ten minutes. And you no longer put money in each machine. You feed a cash machine which gives you a plastic debit card you then swipe at the washer or dryer to buy wash cycles and dryer time. The debit card increments don’t conform to the Laundromat prices, so you always have to buy a little bit more than you need. It’s confusing to figure this out if you’re new, and that was the first lesson. People help.

Standing in front of the debit card monster, looking obviously confused, I was approached by a man with serious periodontal disease (and accompanying nasty bad breath. I learned to identify advanced gum disease when I worked as a dental assistant in one of my previous incarnations). He was bilingual, since the user can select Spanish or English. He explained the set-up, walked me through it, and told me I could put more clothes in the load using the larger capacity washers that are just inside the door. What would have been three loads at home was two loads in these machines.

Later, a woman whose dental problems had progressed to the point where she had few remaining teeth in her gracious smile, told me not to use the dryer I’d picked because it didn’t get as hot as the next one over. She showed me the trick of swiping the card just long enough to add ten minutes, but not so long the machine loses patience and ignores you.

Now, these are people who I would have little trouble making fun of at a comedy club, but the truth is they were nice, friendly, and helpful. In addition to not having their own washers at home, they obviously don’t have as good a dental plan as I do, so I don’t see how it’s their fault they have goofy smiles and terrible breath. Yet, they stick together and help each other – and strangers - with unselfish camaraderie. It gives me a peculiar feeling of community I’m not accustomed to in my neighborhood where I wouldn’t recognize my neighbors unless they are standing at their mailbox and we wave to each other.

As we waited for the wash, we sat at small plastic tables near a 14” Tv screen. Four pre-adolescent kids watched iCarly on Disney cable. This is a soft-porn show of teenagers who have gorgeous clothes, bright smiles, tinted hair, and lots of disposable income. While watching, they pestered their mom for money to buy junk food from the vending machine. Mom relented, but only on two conditions: you can only pick from the bottom row (mildly healthier) and you have to sit still and watch Linda Ellerbee’s news after the Disney thing.

So, not only does Mom have to go to the Laundromat, and on a Sunday night, but she has to take her kids – leading me to assume there’s nobody at home to watch them. She spent at least $25, counting soap, bleach, washers, dryers, and moderately unhealthy junk food. That is $100 a month, enough to pay for a washer and dryer on credit, if you had any credit. She struggles to let them live a little, and teaches them to pay attention to their world. They relate to the kids on TV about the same way my back yard relates to Huntington Gardens.

It’s expensive to be poor. And I’m so smug in my little world that I was feeling sorry for myself having to return to the Laundromat for one evening in the past 30 years.

Reap What You Sow

"O how abundant is the harvest heaped
In those rich storage-bins of souls who were,
While down on earth, the sowers of good seed!"
- Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXIII, Verse 130

This is the season of the vivid, the lurid, the clashes between colors, and I don’t just mean the seemingly endless presidential campaign as covered by American media.

I mean in my garden, where things are out of control. Clashing colors careen madly together, plants have outgrown their pots and become promiscuously entwined with each other, and planting beds are overrun armies of volunteers. The garden exceeds the gardener’s most inspired visions this month. The garden has taken upon the autonomous power to redesign and propagate itself.

Prosaic gardens may be pretty. My garden is not your uninspired cottage garden, dainty in it’s gently nodding cheerleader pastels. My garden is neither prosaic nor pretty. My garden a dirty girl, grown plump and looking older than her years in the glare of the harsh summer sun. The plants have outgrown their beds, in places looking like a fat girl in a prom dress two sizes too small – sweaty folds of skin spilling voluptuously out of desperately stretched fabric.

Despite being slightly slutty, my garden is sublime in it’s profligate boisterous life, enchanting in it’s effect. The sunflowers are few but noisy. The lab-lab (purple hyacinth bean) clashing next to the garish orange and brown wildflowers (who knows their name, they’ve returned in different places in the yard for years).

My pending harvest will be small – tomatoes are shriveling in the dry heat and eggplants never even bothered to hold onto their flowers, let alone fruit. But so, what if I won’t reap an abundant harvest to fill rich storage bins? The best part about being a gardener in this season (before the heat parks just outside the window and stares me down inside) is having no regrets. Whatever didn’t grow, despite desperate coaxing or profane cursing is barely missed. What is growing is no longer my problem. I’m just sitting back, enjoying it all more than ever this year.

My garden of delights proves there are other, more hopeful, meanings to the caution that we reap what we sow.

Horror Vacui

“‘A hole?’ the rock chewer grunted. ‘No, not a hole,’ said the will-o'-the-wisp despairingly. ‘A hole, after all, is something. This is nothing at all’."
Ende, 1974

Nature abhors a vacuum, says the rocket scientist. Nature abhors a vacuum, says the gardener. A garden is an absence of holes in the ground. Life is planted and thrives as holes are filled. There are no empty holes in the water my koi used to occupy in the pond. Without the distraction of the fish net, you can see the entire universe reflected in the still mirror of its surface.

Silent sentinel,
Pond empty, fish gone, night falls.
Sky reflects still pond.

Mysteries of Time and Space

"Is a merchant entitled to demand a greater payment from one who cannot settle his account immediately than from one who can? No, because in doing so he would be selling time and would be committing usury by selling what does not belong to him.”
- 14th century Franciscan priest.

Today, nobody owns time: instead, we are all slaves of time. The academic school year is traditionally scheduled to permit students to help with planting in the Spring, and harvesting in the autumn, and to attend school in between their farming chores – a rather outdated seasonal tyranny of time considering how many students actually do help to sow and reap down on the family farm. We even use time to worry about time, looping back over hours wasted, and years misspent. From an early age, we’re taught not to become trapped in the concentration camp of idleness, where the devil will influence us to generally behave badly.

For most of us, there is no place we can hide from time – it keeps ticking, often the loudest during those moments of stolen time when we’re alone. This is more so for me. I have a benign circulatory condition called a bruit in my carotid artery that makes my heartbeat audible inside my head. I often think I hear the relentless beat of techno-rock, a phantom thumping in the background. Is that a car driving up the hill outside, with it’s windows down and its radio blaring, and because of my poor hearing all that comes through is the underlying beat of the music? Usually not.

J wrote that David Harvey said many Western thinkers, “typically privilege time over space in their formulations. They broadly assume either the existence of some pre-existing spatial order within which temporal processes operate, or that spatial barriers have been so reduced as to render space a contingent rather than fundamental aspect to human action.“ In other words, time is more important to us than space.

Except, that is, in gardens. In Gardens, while we may pay careful attention to passages of time (the seasons, the daily journey of the sun and the moon overhead, the changing shadows), we tend to compartmentalize our thinking not (as much) in increments of time, but (more so) in parcels of space.

When I garden, I deal with the spaces in my back yard, and time is simply what happens when I’m there. Today I have to turn the compost, and rake the dog poop out of the compost area. I also have to work in afternoon shade and move the water plants out of the pond in preparation for it’s impending acid wash and re-sealing. I also want to move some potted plants from the front yard to the back. Thus, time spent in the garden frees me from the very tyranny time seems to impose on the rest of my days. When I garden, I’m not just slowing down the clock to a more gentle pace marked by the passage of the seasons, or the sun’s journey across the sky. I’m freeing my other senses from the perpetual schedules and marking of time, thereby enabling me to hear, see, smell and touch and taste and to enjoy the timeless spaces.

Turns out, I can escape from the devil’s workshop of idleness into the garden, there to enjoy the space in peace, without worrying about wasting time. The beat of my heart even slows down enough in the garden that often, I don’t even notice the thumping of my heart, counting down the remaining days and hours of my life.

The Koi Pond Murders, Part 2

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
- George Bernard Shaw

(In our last episode, The Gardener was overtaken by grief, swooning into the arms of her faithful Tech Support Guy upon discovering senior members of her koi pond family had been brutally murdered.)

Narrator’s Voiceover in a deep, slow Sam Elliott drawl:
Recovering fully from her swoon of surprise and grief, The Gardener set about making final preparations for the memorial ceremony while Tech Support Guy led the body recovery operation using a net and a plastic bucket.

The Gardener’s voiceover, beginning with a fake cheerful nervous laugh, quickly choked off by a tidal wave of melancholy resignation:
What caused the Monday Night Massacre? Villains? Evil Magicians, carnival freaks, raccoons, possums, egrets, or a possibly desperate coyote? Skunks and the otherwise tattooed? Australian tree rats, gophers, ground squirrels, demons and devils, two Mormons clones riding bikes, Tupperware Sales-Moms, or badly dressed Amway reps? Some of the dead have been with us for more than twenty years.

Narrator Voiceover, in a - “Hi, I’m Chad McClure. You may know me from the educational films “The Woman In Peril is Saved By Hero In the Nick of Time” and “The Lonely Death of the Woman in Peril Who Solved her Own Problems But Died an Old Maid” - type of voice:
One of the dead was beloved Rickey - purchased before The Gardener married the Tech Support Guy of her dreams over 20 years ago, when he (Rickey) was a little fish three inches long. Rickey came to us with Lucy, the way we always bought fish in the future – in pairs named for dead celebrities. Lucy left us in her prime years ago – she was white – an easily visible target for aerial hunters, as we learned from her untimely death. But Ricky, shown at far right in this awful lineup, survived. At the time of his death, he was blind in one eye, covered with scars from past escapes, missing a few scales and generally looking pretty raggedy. But he knew his name, and came when called to kiss my fingertips when I fed him fish pellets. All the other fish let Rickey eat first, either out of respect, or because he was one big old mean bully of a fish

The other gold fish (at left) was either Phil or Lil – so named because they were virtually identical twins – born as offspring of Ricky and some of the larger gold fish we’d purchased as feeder fish simply to populate the pond when it was first completed. (Ok, wait, I know I said we named our koi after dead celebrities, but I think consistency and truth are overrated, so yes, also named for cartoon characters, but always adopted as arbitrarily chosen boy-girl pairs.)

Tech Support Guy (seen pictured as a shadow above the fourth victim):
I know what you’re thinking, Yes, The Gardener acknowledged that the koi intermarried with the carp, an abomination to a real koi fancier. To make matters worse, Rick was a butterfly koi – the ones with the long graceful fins. Real koi breeders eschew the fancy tail fins because they aren’t genuine koi, and besides, the huge tail fins really increase drag, thus decreasing gas mileage. Apart from that, there’s serious incest happening, and eating of the excess hatchlings by their kin in order to control overpopulation. Pretty depraved pets, eh? But they were like family.”

The other fish (center in top photo) – the silver and black one – was an actual genuine koi, purchased when he was tiny and named Bekko because of his desirable coloration. Bekko was actually probably one of the more “valuable” fish in our habitat, but The Gardener liked him because he could blend into the background of the pond and then suddenly, by changing directions, he could send watchers a bright glint of silver as the sun caught his fins in action.

There were dozens of other victims, unnamed smaller koi who were nowhere to be found. Now, that kind of terrorist attack in the pond hood tends to spook survivors, who are sometimes in hiding for days afterward, a sort of collective fish PTSD.

Narrator:
A fourth fish was found gutted and drying in the sunshine behind the pond. His body was too mutilated to permit identification. The corpse, dragged about 4 steps away from the side of the pond and disfigured violently, confirmed that it was invaders, not poison, that killed the fishies. Based on our experience egrets completely consume their catch, leaving only bones and an empty skull. This last find confirmed for us that this was not an egret, but something that entered the pond, captured and removed fish and tried to carry them away. Some glutton who, not satisfied with Nature’s bounty, simply killed all in his path, not stopping to consider his innocent civilian casualties.

(Camera pans out from the solemn, sweaty face of The Gardener, to slowly reveal her arms holding a long shovel, then her entire silhouette a gardener poised in profile, bending over a shovel, beneath the shade of the California pepper, and backed by a sun-drenched canyon of glinting golden dry tinder.)

The Gardener:
We buried the bodies in what will one day be my White Garden, overlooking the back canyon. Ricky is at far left, on the left side of the night-blooming jasmine, and Phil or Lil beneath the right side of jasmine, and Bekko beneath the Alfonse Karr Bambusa further down the hill at the far right of the picture.
By late Tuesday, we observed at least two survivors, both medium small – about 6 inches long, but they may be gone now too. The food we left for them lies untouched at the bottom of the pond, and no one comes when you wiggle your fingertips beneath the water and call them to dinner. For now, while we’re grieving, we don’t want to buy any more koi. We’ll get the “skeeter-eater” fish the County provides to prevent disease-bearing mosquitoes. They remain too small and unappetizing to attract predators.

(fin)

The Koi Pond Murders, Part 1

“And the Guide said to me: ‘He wakes no more
This side the sound of the angelic trumpet;
When shall approach the hostile Potentate,

Each one shall find again his dismal tomb,
Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure,
Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes’."

Dante, Divine Comedy, Inferno: Canto VI
Source:

Narrative Voiceover:
Our mystery begins early one recent sweet morning, when Spring was holding her brightest smile still for the camera. The peace of the morning is suddenly shattered by a sudden cry! Startled birds spread the alarum! With a shriek rivaling a vintage 1940-something stunningly beautiful woman in peril, The Gardener does a (ladylike) spit-take of her morning iced coffee, fragrent with cardamom. Strolling through the outdoor patio to say good morning to the fishies, The Gardener is stunned to see a floater: a dead fish bloated and lounging sideways at the surface of the pond. There! Among the water lily leaves, algae blooms and torn netting. Not one. Not two. Three! Their blind eyes staring up into the deep blue morning of their Judgment Day.

“Tech Support Guy,” wails The Gardener, flinging aside her vintage collectible Dopey™ coffee mug, “There’s been a fish disaster!”

(Camera focuses on animated picture of Homo Simpsonien, falling to his knees, throwing his arms outstretched, beseeching the sky in an eternal reverberation. “NOOOOOoooooooo…” and continues to pan out from a crane shot, morphing through mapquest, to google, to google earth, to the universe, past Planet Express Ship, and vanishing into the infinite.)

The Tech Support Guy, in a deep voice, dripping with wisdom and speaking slowly with resignation and zen-like acceptance: Hell is the place where we remain on the earth that we created while we lived – only for eternity. The cries of those from within the inferno may echo eternally, but the lament of the living, when sending off the spirits of the dead, don't last all that long.

Narrator, in a country preacher chant of a voice: Our fallen heroes wake no more this side of the angelic trumpet. Who perpetrated this act of terror?

(Cut from animated universe to real picture of TH, swooning in TSG’s arms. Pan gently to a slowly waving American flag at half mast, reflected in the silent pond. Fade to black.)

(fin)

Junteenth

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States all slaves are free... They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts, and they will not be supported in idleness, either there or elsewhere.”
Major General Gordon Granger, June 19, 1865

According to the FBMS (Federal Bureau of Made-up Statistics) more than 82% of bloggers are illiterate, uninspired, filled with rage and undirected longing, and/or simply stupid. The FBMS report goes on to say that 83% of the remaining 18% are narcissistically focused on their own small patch of reality, which is, let’s face it, often of interest to fewer than 8 readers. This means that the chances of finding an interesting blog, written in a literate and engaging style, presenting a new and creative idea, or a new and creative take on an old idea, are vanishingly small.

So, if you’re reading this, it’s almost certainly not worth the effort. Your dogged persistence in reading says more about your stubborn nature than about my creative writing. Since you’re still here, I submit that you are probably like me, turning off your conscious mind and blindly surfing garden blogs for flashes of brilliance, insights so crisp and fresh they taste tart on your tongue, and combinations of words that make your eyes sparkle. Such a quest is very much like visiting my garden this time of year. There’s a lot to see, but viewed with a critical horticultural eye, much remains unkempt, uninspired, terribly neglected, or simply stupid. Not much sparkling, although the strawberries are sweet and tart.

Most gardeners can’t keep up this time of year. There are not enough hours in the days, even as the summer solstice approaches, to do all that the garden wants us to do. So, I stayed in the cool indoors this afternoon, surfing the web - supported in idleness just what General Granger warned us against. And that explains how I learned about June 19th.

According to the link above, “President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It seems hard to believe that it took two-and-a-half years for the news to reach Texas”. So take a day off from your garden NOW. This is Emancipation Day, and it’s probably too hot outside anyway. Make yourself some iced tea or pour yourself a cool beer. If you don’t have indentured servants to stand at your side and cool you by languidly wafting fat palm fans, sit yourself in front of an old fan, or on a rocking chair in the shade. It’s almost summer time, and the gardener’s living is almost easy. Happy Junteenth.

Blessed Be the Gardeners

“Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused”.
Anon
It’s been hot – high 90s F – too hot to work outside. I manage to get outside about 7 pm when the patio is in shadow and it’s cool enough to water the thirsty shade plants. My potted fuchsias are putting on a show. I don’t recall the name of the pink and white cultivar, but the pink and purple one is, appropriately for the subject of this post, “Voodoo”.

Magic is in the air. Possibly the effect of watching too many Harry Potter movies. From the depths of his Lazyman recliner, my Tech Support Guy pointed the TV remote at me last night and shouted, “STUPIFY”. Unable to think of a suitably witty riposte, I clocked him with a pillow from my massage chair. To which, of course, he replied: Ahh, my spell worked, Stupid Old Woman! (That’s his pet name for me). We may be going to hell, but we’ll probably have fun down there.

Which got me to wondering what I might have thought of such behavior back when I was a kid in seminary school. As you may recall from your Baltimore Catechism there are about 8 Beatitudes, more or less. Generally, they are all about the miserable: hungry, clinically depressed, lacking in imagination (aka, poor in spirit) and other kinds of meek little parasites that seem to cling to most family trees.

Yeah, sure there are the merciful, the peace-makers and clean of heart, but generally speaking my Mom once told me, such sanctimonious suck-up behavior gets rewarded well in this life by being appreciated by other self-righteous types. But “clean of heart”? As my Sister M would say (I have four sisters whose names begin with M) “WTF,O?” Which gets me to Q/A 716 of the Baltimore Catechism #3: “Why are the clean of heart promised so great a reward?”

“The clean of heart, that is, the truly virtuous, whose thoughts, desires, words and works are pure and modest, are promised so great a reward because the chaste and sinless have always been the most intimate friends of God.” Which is a positive spin on nuns telling us at age 8 that Jesus won’t be your friend if you’re an immodest little WHORE. Which reminds me of a line from Family Guy when Peter, as a young boy, asks his mother why some great evil occurred. “Because you touch yourself” is Mom’s matter-of-fact reply. Years of therapy ensue….

So, since it's too late for me to take the pure-of-heart route to "friending" Jesus, I’m giving some thought to inventing a few new beatitudes for blessings from the faithful who cultivate gardens. Beatitudes are supposed to be the “highest Christian virtues” that we should practice in order to obtain “sanctifying grace in this life and eternal glory in the next” (Q/A#711). It’s time we updated them for gardeners.

Blessed are those who cultivate gardens, for they shall return to Eden as it was before the fall.

Blessed are those who compost, for they shall not suffer in the heat our overheating globe.

Blessed are those who teach their children to sustain the earth, for they shall enjoy some kick-ass reunion picnics together.

And finally, one for me: blessed are the irreverent whose garden designs veer dangerously toward kitsch, for the harvest of their imagination shall be richer than any earthly paradise.