The Sense of Smell

"At four in the morning, in summertime,

Love's drowsiness still lasts...

The bushes blow away the odor

Of the night's feast."
Rimbaud, Alchemy of the Word

They say blind people can hear better than sighted people, or if not better, they can focus and understand what they’re hearing better. So, when I started to lose my hearing, I figured I was going to be compensated by a gradual ramping up of my sight: perhaps into galactically hallucinatory levels. Instead, I can’t see to thread a needle any more.

I was compensated however by developing hyper smell. It’s like a radioactive anteater bit me. (I say anteater because they have this long snout, so it’s like they must be able to smell ants at 100 anteater paces.) Unlike my mediocre gardening skills, my mad sense of smell could beat up my mother’s sense of smell.

During those lately fleeting moments of consciousness, it never starts to amaze me when information is conveyed to my brain by my senses of smell: like having a conversation without words.

My unasked for superpower is a mixed blessing, which I guess is pretty typical of superpowers. My flights of olfactory abandon take me to the fathomless deep space of the atom, with electrons spinning around it to make the logo of the old Disneyland’s old Tomorrowland. (Kind of funny how Walt got that wrong. Instead of flying around in our jetpacks or sliding along a motorized walkway, we’re texting our Swiss bankers for account updates via the cloud.)

So instead of offsetting my superpower like I would have in my younger days - by buying stuff I don’t need to comfort me – I am trying to use my super powers only for good, by planting a garden for smelling. You can buy stuff to please your eye. You can work with the Internet to find music that only you can appreciate deep within your genome. (You know, like how some song lyrics seem to be a confidential message addressed to you alone in the world. If that were so, the soundtrack to today would be the lyrics to the song Mahna, Mahna, Mahna, but that’s for another post.) But you can’t easily surround yourself with good smells. I don’t count the entire aisle of the supermarket that is filled with multitudes of “air fresheners” that purport to bathe your rooms in aromas of mountain glens, freshly cleaned laundry, or cinnabuns.

This morning I took a walk through the backyard still fresh from a day of soft overnight rain, and I smelled the flowers. I mean I really smelled the flowers.

There was the white rose, moments away from burning out in a solar flare of blown rose: full, filled with dew. It exuded a scent of melting mountain snow and with faint finish of charcoal fire, and the damp whiff of high thread count cotton.

To me, there is a world of difference between the honest essential oil fragrance of say, lavender, and the oily chemical lavender with an undertone of burnt toast. All floral and herbal smells are like that to me. Only the genuine essential oil smell pleases my nose; never the synthetic poser fragrances that always leave an olfactory aftertaste of petroleum products and wet cardboard.

The blue flower spikes on the white sage, smell somehow like green tea, with a tincture of sweet sage and a pinch of the honey from of adjacent sweet white alyssum. The heavy dew doesn’t just wake up these smells, it kicks them out of bed and onto the floor, tangled up in a pile of sheets.

The flowering ornamental quince flowers don’t seem to have a fragrance so much as they seem to wear an olfactory trench coat that permits only a faint trace of scent to escape - like something you can remember so clearly you can almost smell it - a lingering smell that combines night-blooming jasmine and spicy lemon verbena, combined with an earthy smell something like ripe blue cheese.

I don’t generally garden with flowers, preferring the scented herbs and other fragrant plants. I have a lemon area that includes lemongrass and a lemony vetiver grass, lemon verbena, lemon thyme and, of course, a dwarf Meyer lemon variety that might actually produce lemons this year. A trip through my yard before the morning dew evaporates is an olfactory delight.

Happy Memorial Day

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, PA, November 19, 1863

Possible Evidence of Insanity/Eggnog Recipe

"I felt despair. Though it seems to me now there's two kinds of it: the sort that causes a person to surrender and then the sort I had which made me take risks and make plans."
Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse's Tale

For some time now, I’ve been thinking of re-naming this blog: “Notes to Self” and with a subtitle: Looking for a foolproof plan and an airtight alibi. My idea is to post tips that I come across for committing the perfect crime. There are several problems with this.

The first and more obvious problem is that in the event I ever stumbled on the details of a perfect crime, some clever detective might track down the blog and it would be submitted as evidence of premeditation. So you see my dilemma.

The second problem is that I have not come up with very many ideas. Accordingly, I have graciously decided to share the few tips I have unearthed with the entire internets. By disclosing these ideas I have implicitly decided never to use them. Well, now, explicitly.

1. Arsenic poising wasn’t testable until the Marsh test in 1836. Thus, it is now too late to use this colorless, tasteless poison and remain undetected these days. If you have a time machine, you might want to consider transporting you and your intended victim back before 1836. On the other hand, you might simply go back and dispose of this Marsh fellow before he comes up with the test.

2. Don’t just wipe the pistol clean of fingerprints: remember to wipe prints off the bullets.

3. The lethal dose of nutmeg is 5 grams. Disclaimer: I’m not sure if this is true, not to mention whether subsequent tests would indicate nutmeg poisoning. I can’t remember whether I got this info from the google or whether it came to me in a dream. If I were going to use nutmeg (which, of course, I’m not) I’d offer it to my intended victim(s) as Killer Eggnog, and put in enough Southern Comfort to mask the nutmeg, i.e. a lot.

BTW, always use Southern Comfort instead of rum to make your eggnog. See, even if you don’t contemplate criminal activity, you now know my Daddy’s secret to good eggnog.

You can thank me later.

Journal of a Disappointed Gardener

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill...:
W. N. P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man

...Nor yet is the last Cheeto found beneath the cushions; neither yet is a humane and peaceful death to those whose stupidity should have led to their timely death years ago; nor yet is wisdom to those who actually think before speaking; neither yet is experience required to be a suicide bomber; nor yet irony to those most in need of irony's balm; nor yet is ottava rima simply a poem in eight 11-syllable lines, rhymed: abababcc.

Nor finally, is the race to the swift. It's actually a crap shoot, and it goes to whoever remains upright and staggers across the finish line.

Short Vacation to Northern California

Well, I've seen all there is to see
And I've heard all they have to say
I've done everything I wanted to do . . .
I've done that too
And it ain't that pretty at all
Ain't that pretty at all
So I'm going to hurl myself against the wall
'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all

You know, I just had a short vacation, Roy
Spent it getting a root canal
"Oh, how'd you like it?"
Well, it ain't that pretty at all
So I'm going to hurl myself against the wall
'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all
- Warren Zevon, It Ain't Pretty At All

Actually, it was pretty. Much better than a root canal. We ate some world class food, and we drank as we generally do, also world class. Stayed in Berkeley, but spent a day or two across the bay in San Francisco.

We did the usual stuff. Drove past Fisherman's Wharf (you don't want to stop there.) You can see our car reflected in the window of the store selling fake crap, priced like the real thing.

We drove up and down hills. Between us, I worried about an earthquake and all the live electrical wires falling on me. One of the reasons for the world class drinking was to assuage my fears.

We drive by the Alcoa Building, which hasn't been called the Alcoa Building since before the end of the last century, but it's hard enough to remember old stuff without having to re-learn it.

We went to Magnolia brewpub, despite the dramatic foreshadowing of the politics we'd encounter there.

The place is pretty shabby and tarnished. I got some awesome socks that look like a shark, complete with a tiny fin. So when you wear them, it looks like your feet have been swallowed by a shark, albeit one with a very orthopedic shape.

Why anyone would want to live in such close proximity to so many other people escapes me. Sure, there's a great food and drink scene and lots of pretty places to see, but the earthquake, people!

And does your laundry really smell fresh when you dry it outdoors this way? Maybe it's hip to smell like car and bus exhaust, and I'm just showing how out of touch I am. Still.

After driving up the inland route, we decided to take the coast (more or less) home. At first it was pretty foggy and only the seagulls knew which way the ocean was.

After driving north through the inland valley of California, breathing delightful dust from freshly fertilized fields and passing cattle feed lots, the ocean was a lovely sight, even in fog.Our return trip coincided with Earth Day, and we had good reason to enjoy the earth.
The further south we got, the more sun peeked through. We were travelling east as much as we were travelling south because of the way CA curves. Or maybe like a shark sock on a foot.


We drove past fields of artichokes ready to harvest and through Castro CA, the "artichoke capital of the world". One of the few remaining sights along a road blighted by rich piles of McMansions and vanity vineyards was the giant artichoke. Or should I say, the GIANT ARTICHOKE. A bit anticlimac after the signs, but still.

Stopped at twilight for dinner in Santa Barbara, unoficially at the southern border of NorCal. Next stop, SoCal and the not-so-scenic megalopolis of Los Angeles. By then, we hopped on the 405 to the Five and home by 10:30 in time for a nightcap and glorious return to our own bed.

With apologies to Warren Zevon, no need to hurl ourselves against a wall this trip. We had a wonderful vacation and visit, and most of all we had lots to celebrate. Thanks to our hosts, the Doctors K for a great time.

Glasses Half Occupied

"In the hinterlands of Pommerania, there is a mountain made of the hardest diamond. It's one hour deep into the earth, one hour up toward the sky, one hour long and one hour wide. To this mountain comes a little bird, once every hundred years, to sharpen its beak. And when this bird has worn away the whole mountain, the first second of eternity has passed."
Article Source

I shall now recount the tale of my adventures, beginning with my abounding optimism that when my wisteria bloom, all is right with the world.

In my younger days, this season might have found me in a coffee shop with free wifi, attempting to defeat the forces of an obsolete version of MS Windows and write my novel. Younger still, I might have been in the recreation room of Mom and Dad’s split level, watching an after school special about how being reunited with one's lost puppy is a metaphor for finding meaning and purpose amid the chaos spawned by evil forces inhabiting the shadows beneath one’s bed.

The next time my wisteria blooms, I might be outside gardening downwind of the fragrant blooms of my white counter-clockwise twining Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria Sinensis) and appreciating life. The purple wisteria pictured here is in the front yard, and is the clockwise twining Japanese Wisteria (wisteria floribunda). Or, I might be meeting with my psychiatrist to unpack the formless fears engendered by a bad case of Alien Abduction Syndrome compounded with looming tendrils of senility.

What these glimpses of remembered past and imagined futures have in common – besides Lent and wisteria – are that they probably manifest some underlying dysfunction in the way I see the world and/or in which the world sees me. Last night, Tech Support Guy told me that atrial fibrillation has been associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s and so have cold sores. This depresses me almost as much as if I experienced dramatically foreshadowing visions of, say, rafters dripping with blood.

Then it occurs to me that there is a positive side to losing one’s mind. One reason I am not visited by gloomy forebodings these days, is that with age comes acceptance. Also, thanks to my hearing impairment, the moaning of ghosts in the shadows outside my window no longer disturbs my rest.

The prospect of a fathomless future spent in a skilled nursing facility with a semi-deaf roommate who believes in heaven and hell, and swears that Lawrence Welk is alive and ageless scares the crap out of me. But like Grandma once said, the good thing about dementia is that the victim doesn’t know it. She might as well have said I may have Alzheimer’s but at least I don’t have Alzheimer’s.

So remember when you visit: my glassy-eyed unfocused stare and the perpetual dribble of drool at the corners of my mouth may frighten you, but inside my own head, I’m actually imagining that I am in an episode of Pigs in Space where Link Heartthrob proposes marriage and I accept. Which may not be such a bad place to spend eternity waiting for the wisteria to bloom, or for a sharp-beaked bird to wear down a mountain.

Wake Up!

"Waken! my people, to the boughs green

With ripening fruit within you!

Waken to the myriad cinquefoil

In the waving grass of your minds!

Waken to the silent phoebe nest

Under the eaves of your spirit!"
William Carlos Williams, The Wanderer (1914)

While winter snow blankets New England and tornados rage through Florida, Spring has arrived in my backyard. I’m ready to hit the garden to plant my seeds and prune the frost-killed branches. The bees are waking up, the irises are blooming, and even the calls of the mourning doves seem happy. I see birds – hawks, doves, thrushes and humming birds – cavorting in the sky two by two. The overwintering migratory tourist birds have gone and the local birds have begun ignoring feeders and noticing bugs and the flowers. Wild mustard covers the hills in swaths of pale yellow, and my seedlings are stretching their roots through the paper pots and leaning into the sun. Birds have to hunt, but plants make their own food.

My quilt of winter root vegetables is done. I had more success indoors than out this year with root crops. My onions and shallots outdoors have yet to flower and ripen.

The stone path winding through my quilt has been hand-embroidered “Garden with attitude” an intentionally ambiguous statement that may be advice or may be the name of the quilted garden of winter root vegetables. The fact that they're "mental" pleases me because I so frequently exhibit such attitudes as "beet it" beet and redlight radish.

Leeky, has been embellished with ribbon stalks and root tassels to emphasize that I clearly know Nature less the more I try to grow vegetables with attitude. The vegetables are fabric available from AnthroPoMorphCo.etsy.com. The back of my quilt includes the url as well as the peintws name of this pattern: "Make your own Friend! ...stuffed vegetable edition". I stuffed one set and made the quilt from another set.

For a while I’ve been too tired to blog. Now, suddenly, I have energy, and I’m too busy to blog. My winter activities of making cozy quilts, fermenting sauerkraut, and canning lemon lavender marmalade no longer entice me. The sunshine and the millions of shades of green are reaching beneath the eaves of my spirit and reminding me that I need Vitamin D and dirty fingernails.

I need the slow stretching exercise of garden work to relieve my winter-cramped muscles. The air is soft and it smells green. It’s time to sow my seeds and refresh my mind and body by working in the garden.

Nearer My Toilet to Thee

"It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean."
Mae West

So, it's been well established that having a frightening cardiac event is not fun. We also learned that in instances of atrial fibrillation, don't take a nitro pill, let alone two. We learned that reporting to the ER intake person that you're having heart problems bumps you to the head of the line, though admittedly not one including bleeders.

Nor, to my great surprise, is it fun to surrender one's eyeglasses to the optometrist to have an old prescription replaced, and trying to wear a dizzying older prescription for another week. (Full disclosure: it is however, enjoyable to bitch like a little girl.)

Nor class, is the mother of all flu/intestinal cleanse/tummy aches much fun, particularly since I just wanted my mommy, and my mother has rested in peace for over 16 years, may she rest in peace. Spending a few days running between the bedroom and the bathroom is not fun. Trying to drink plenty of fluids to replace what seems to come out as soon as you put it in is no fun either. Yesterday was the first time since returning from the hospital - where I caught the nasty intestinal flu - that I have dared walk outside in the sunshine. That was fun.

Making a one-pot killer soup out of dried white beans and smoked pork hock. That's better. Watching my baby veggie starts discover impending Spring. Also better. Hearing FG nail her job interview was music to my hearing aids. Things are looking up all over.

Checking the unfortunately named expecting barn owls that overlook the veggie garden where I volunteer is fun too. You can visit the happy family here, or copy/paste this url: http://www.thegarden.org/owlcam.html

La Plus Sa Change...

"'Who,' she asked, 'allowed the actress harlots 
to approach this sick person?
 These sorrows not only have not encouraged any cures,
 but they actually nourish them further with sweet drugs.'"
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

Look, no offense, but what’s the point of trying to hide in the garden? When he gave his non-resignation-resignation speech the other night, it took US media about an hour to figure out why the CIA got it wrong (again) and why the people in the square were pissed.

My Favorite Unemployed Anthropoligist and Mideast Fortune Teller predicted it about an hour before it happened. Well, actually, she predicted that nothing new would be in the speech - that nothing would change.

She explained that Arab boys like martyrdom for the same reasons that Amerikan boyz like to play soldier. Explained that contrary to attempts to call this the Revolution of the Young Men this is about poor rising up and rich once again stomping them down. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

This does more than harsh my mellow. It makes me fear my own government who has persistently guessed wrong, bet on the wrong horse, propped up the wrong figurehead, and wasted our blood and treasure on bread and circuses. And plus they called this wrong every time, only to be caught again without a chair when the music stops, or so much as a plan, or even a wish for a mockery of a sham of a plan. Crazies here are fomenting revolution too. They incite the poor, disaffected, while stacking the deck for the rich capitalists to win again.

As for the abdication of Egypt’s latest despot, trying to dress up the military coup as a bloodless revolution by the idealistic youth is like putting pancake makeup on an aging harlot. She might look good across a candle-lit room, but once the sun comes up the hangover begins. To see this as anything other than class war is as myopic as seeing the smiling old whore as a beckoning young courtesan.

IMHO, all that "roadmap to democratic elections" stuff is journalistic fill, while reporters wait for the real outcome to emerge. I find it interesting that when one talking head tried to say that on Chris Matthews last night, he called her a pessimist and said he preferred to see the wonderful flowering of a new democratic order emerge. To a certain extent I agree - the people on the street should be given at least 24 hours to celebrate before its back to business as usual. I can't imagine even those in the square who had hoped for this day haven’t had a restless thought about what happens next.

The Dow Jones went up yesterday on news of HN's departure. So, that says to me that the capitalists were ready for the protests to end, and the military took the hint. I keep thinking of all the rich cronies who benefitted from HN's rule. These days when even Swiss banks appear to have a conscience about blood money (they froze HNs accounts) it must be tough for rich people to figure out where to stash their riches.

Meanwhile, here at home, Pat Boone is wearing a gold jacket on TV and hawking the benefits of buying gold to the rich generation that thought he was a heartthrob back when we were all young. When our turn comes for a bloodless revolution, I'm not sure how much bread he'll be able to buy with his gold. I picture him being received with disfavor by hungry beggars when he shows up at the 7-11 to buy some pastry and a cup of hazelnut coffee with a gold bar. Listening to the lyrics of Lennon’s Imagine this morning is like drinking yesterday’s old coffee from a cold plastic cup.

A wise man once said: I just want you to know we’re counting on you. Good luck.

Dreams Kill

Dream tonight of peacock tails,
Diamond fields and spouter whales.
Ills are many, blessings few,
But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Let the vampire's creaking wing
Hide the stars while banshees sing;
Let the ghouls gorge all night long;
Dreams will keep you safe and strong.

Skeletons with poison teeth,
Risen from the world beneath,
Ogre, troll, and loup-garou,
Bloody wraith who looks like you,

Shadow on the window shade,
Harpies in a midnight raid,
Goblins seeking tender prey,
Dreams will chase them all away.

Dreams are like a magic cloak
Woven by the fairy folk,
Covering from top to toe,
Keeping you from winds and woe.

And should the Angel come this night
To fetch your soul away from light,
Cross yourself, and face the wall:
Dreams will help you not at all.

— Thomas Pynchon, Dreams

Another cat posting

I cannot do an existential rant nearly as well as Weeping Sore, but this photo is worth a thousand words. My grand-kitty in Chicago peers out at his balcony, the place where catnip grows in happier times. Will he ever feel joy again?

Episodes of Delirium

"There are stories, like maps that agree... too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking.... It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything."
— Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)

The black cat gets it. He remembers everything. His stare goes through me and I realize how much I’ve forgotten. I used to joke about how I was so competent in my profession that I’d forgotten more than most people knew about it. Now, I am astounded that I ever found humor in that tragic thought.

So what do I remember? I remember that I have been here before. The landscape changes and so do my own eyes. I know that guy in the painting in The Regal bar. I just can’t recall how I know him.

There was a clown drawn in sand at curb between two parking spaces. His story is the same as The Regal guy, and their story is the same as the cat’s and mine. And yours. We’re all here for a short while and then we’re gone so long, our existence seems ephemeral. But the story will go on, much more substantial than wishful thoughts, and it’s enough to remember that.

Guest Post from Michigan: Ford Thanks You

Ford Motor Company and those of us supported by it are pleased to announce that it is doing really well. It earned $8.3 billion in 2010 — a profit of some $6.6B after debt payments. Both sales and market share are rebounding, partly because of the pay-off from years of restructuring and partly due to buyers wanting to go with the home-grown company that did not take a bail-out.

What many outside of this area and industry may not know is why it didn't need a bail-out. CEO Alan Mulally came here from Boeing in 2006 and almost immediately hocked everything in sight (including rights to the Blue Oval) as collateral on a $23.5B loan to pay for restructuring the company. He got that in just before the crash made such borrowing impossible. From 2006 through 2008, the company lost $30B. But the downsizing and the investment in great new products are finally paying off. After a huge payment last November, the remaining debt of $21B is now less than the cash on hand. Whew.

Keep in mind, though, that GM and Chrysler were able to cancel most of their debt through bankruptcy, so please feel free to continue rewarding Ford with your business.

I know the auto industry bail-out was not wildly popular outside this area, but please have some empathy. Given our over-dependence on a single industry, Michigan entered a persistent, one-state recession in 2000 and led the nation in unemployment for years before the rest of you joined us. We're a good, hard-working people, but this prolonged torture has been killing us. We are the only state that actually lost population since the 2000 census, as our folks leave in search of work. My own adult children left and will never move back. Our birth rate hasn't been this low since the 1870s.

I grew up in Maryland and have lived in Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Utah, and I can tell you that we are all more alike than we are different. So please don't vilify us for being on the ropes, any more than you would Illinois and California for their debt problems or Arizona and Nevada for their real estate crashes. We've all been hurting, and we all glory in the merest hints of recovery (at last!) that cheer us in this winter of jet-stream-hammered discontent.

Roadtrip 2010

I'm still processing some of the great lessons I learned on this cross-country drive. I was about to declare moral bankruptcy, and the change of scenery and great company really cleaned the cobwebs from my head. I do sometimes have flashbacks about the perils of driving into winter in the badlands.

Then, there's the perils of driving through Ceour D'Alene Idaho and the white supremecist capital of this great nation. Some scary sights were seen.

Fight Nice, as Mom Used to Say

"Sir, I cannot but lament, that a Gentleman of your acute Wit, rectified Understanding, and sublimated Imagination, should misapply those Talents to raise ill Humours in the Constitution of the Body Politick, of which your self are a Member, and upon the Health whereof your Preservation depends. Give me leave to say, such Principles as yours would again reduce us to the fatal Necessity of the Phlebotomy of War, or the Causticks of Persecution."

Esdras Barnivelt, aka, Alexander Pope, A Key to the Lock, 1715

Out of Order

My mojo is not working today.

Perhaps tomorrow?

Superstition and Embroidery

"Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?"
— Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)

Pictured above is a Melaleuca quinquenervia, Cajeput Tree, native of Australia. Pynchon seems to be describing Seasonal Affective Disorder – that winter depressing that descends as the days grow dark and short. At least I understand the workings of the seasons and the changing length of the days. Maybe not magic, but something very like it makes me and my ego weary with cabin fever. The end of the week used to mean something important. The Friday workday began with a supervisor staff meeting that could take a couple of hours. It was possible to disappear into my own head while appearing to be eating bagels, drinking coffee, and giving a shit. Since I retired, it simply means two more days until washday – a tedious exercise in sorting dirty clothes and folding clean ones. But it beats the hell out of working for a living. Or embroidery for that matter.

Saturday is farmers’ market day if I don’t sleep until 10:30 like the lazy slug I have become, I go early and get the best stuff. If we go late, all the good produce is gone. I’ve seen fresher beets reading their poetry at the City Lights bookstore. The shriveled summer squash and old cucumbers look embarrassed to be seen outside of a Wal*Mart reduced for quick sale produce bin. Too many people bring their adorable dogs to these things, enabling one to risk life and/or limb to cross from one row of tables to the next. At least people pushing those over-laden baby strollers outfitted with enough gear to supply an Arctic exhibition are more predictable in their movements than over-stimulated pets in a crowded outdoor market.

One thing I don’t have to go far for is fresh citrus. My baby kefir lime and blood orange won’t produce fruit for a few more years. But meanwhile, if I didn’t have access to the lemon and oranges and limes in The Garden, all I’d have to do is take a walk around any block, and pick fruit overhanging neighboring fences.

So, it’s back inside to finish the quilt. As with most things I’ve sown in my life, by the time I’m finished, I am thoroughly tired of it. I feel like there must be more creative energy dimly flickering in the brainstem of a mushroom than I have at the moment, slowed down my usual winter sluggishness and more-than-usual holiday overeating. Fortunately, I have enough useless hobbies and half-finished projects to keep me busy until the blood in my veins wakes up and tells me it’s time to plant tomatoes.

At least the days are getting a tiny bit longer. Even if the metaphorical tower is indeed wherever I go, the returning sun is better than a knight in shining armor to rescue me from the winter blahs. Not to mention, marrying a disk jockey.

Back to the Rough Ground

“We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!“
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

I’m wondering again if I have already failed the test of time. Not a great way to begin the long slow slide through a new year. Winter is a difficult time to have a garden, as I spend most of the time indoors.

When I do stroll through the yard on a mild sunny morning, I walk the rain-drenched, and wind-whipped paths seeming to notice only what has been lost: the deadheaded mums, the bloomed out resting rose bushes, and other evidence of death and dying. The gardens are a sorry mess, with small plants smashed by wind and rain and yet to recover. They seem to be sleeping in heaps on the ground like so many small neglected graves. Pretty rough ground.

How we see our gardens – and our lives - depends very much on our sense of time and the passage of time. When we consider it at all, we generally tend think of time as rectilinear – a nice straight line from the past behind us to the future ahead. Our present seems only a brief point on the timeline. Time is a flowing river. Because I recently did more than flip a page on a calendar - I began a whole new calendar - I can’t help but think of January as marking some kind of new beginning. The new calendar shouts “January!” like an announcement that I can have a fresh start; a second chance to do things right; the perpetual gardener’s seasonal do-over.

Wittgenstein was saying our language shapes our thoughts, and how we manipulate language puts us on rough ground where we can at least get some friction to turn our wheels. To describe what we see in our gardens we must use language that shapes and colors our perceptions. Like the Greeks who saw time as cyclical, gardeners often tend to think in terms of seasons that turn, and re-turn, like a wheel.

However we see the passage of time – including our own stories bounded by our own beginnings, middles and endings - gardeners tend to think of our stories in terms of seasons. January is the month I begin to observe signs of life and renewal. I see Iris, amaryllis and snowdrops, poking their sharp green swords tentatively above ground. I see unpruned wisteria branches fattening their buds and waiting for their moment. I look forward to getting back outside to the rough ground.

Enjoying Transitory Seasonal Splendors

"Vain transitory splendours! Could not all

Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart

An hour's importance to the poor man's heart."
- Oliver Goldsmith, Ill Fares the Land

Pictured at left is a glowing white mansion of a spiderweb, now long erased by the rain. This is the contemplative time of year.

Even the birds – mostly pale pink-hued house finches - gather around the big bird feeder for their morning meeting are going about their business quietly. The wind gusts restlessly and the rain beats softly on the roof. The garden was washed clean in last week’s rain, and today's rain is just enough to waken the fresh smells. The air is perfumed by the ubiquitous eucalyptus trees, and carries just the faintest lighter note of the narcissus flowers.

The narcissus bulbs – potted, brought indoors, and forced - rewarded the gardener’s faith and bloomed for solstice. They were banished to the patio when they beame tired and began to nod their heads. Today, ragged and way past their prime, they sit reprivingly just outside the door, smugly drinking the fresh rain and reminding me that they'll be back. As I stand on the covered patio, I catch heir fragrance - just right and not as overpowering as it was its full glory indoors - where they imparted an imposing and melancholy fragrance reminiscent of an old overly ornate, overheated funeral home.

Even the dying flowers seem to be reproving me smugly. They are far from dead. Instead of mourning the lost mansions of their prime, they are considering their accomplishments this year with satisfaction. They turn their backs on the gardener; they carry away stores of energy into their unknown future.

Meanwhile back inside, the season of mail order catalog abundance is over. The seed catalog season is now well underway. Gardening catalogs tantalize the gardener daily with their colorful pictures promising impossible fruits and flowers. And succulent vegetables bursting with tastes.

Outside my window rain falls promising nourishment to my garden and enabling drought-stressed inhabitants to stretch and recover strength. Inside, paging through these seed catalogs cozy and dry, my gardening ambitions are stoked; and it’s easy to forget I live in a desert where vines of sweet, fat pumpkins and heirloom tomatoes have to struggle to survive. Indoors and out, we all remember in our own ways this the price we pay for living in paradise.

As this picture shows, I learned much on Roadtrip 2010, even from bathroom graffiti. This puts me in the perfect mood for the perfect day at the rainy end of a good year. A meditation about how even the most glorious gardens provide only transitory splendors, eventually no longer experienced, only remembered; inevitably forgotten. Like the gardens we cultivate, we all end up as stories, remembered for a while and then fading like the narcissus. This year’s story has been hard, but it has been a very good one.

Bad Signs of the Times

Roads go on
While we forget, and are
Forgotten like a star
That shoots and is gone.

On this earth ‘tis sure
We men have not made
Anything that doth fade
So soon, so long endure.

- Edward Thomas, “Roads”, The Ickneid Way

We did see some monumentally disturbing signs of the times on our recent roadtrip. Here's a taste:

What about dinosaurs? BOLO: Dinosaurs!

"It is a common and just Observation, that when the Meaning of any thing is dubious, one can no way better judge of the true Intent of it, than by considering who is the Author, what is his Character in general, and his Disposition in particular."
Alexander Pope

We may have discovered an unknown species of dinosaur on the roadtrip.