Utility vs. Beauty

“The landscape gardener attempts to establish a sort of hierarchy of nature, based on much the same principle as that which distinguishes a gentleman by his incapacity to do any useful work. Directly it is proved that a plant or a tree is good for food, it is expelled from the flower garden without any regard to its intrinsic beauty.”
Reginald Blomfield, The Formal Garden in England, 1892, as quoted in The Royal Horticultural Society treasury of garden writing, Charles Elliott, Ed.

As a genteel retired person of leisure, I prefer to refer to it not as my incapacity to do any useful work; but as my failure to find any use for work. I am not exactly the 99%, having a pension and health insurance; both vanishing privileges of the working class I no longer belong to. I belong in the sane class of gentlemen as the bird in my distant birdbath. These days, I spend more time splashing around and having fun, than I do trying to clean up.

If this were a blog that strives to contribute to the discourse of ideas, I’d be saying WTF, or words to that effect. If this was such a blog however, I’d have to forgo reading Chinese poetry and resume reading The Nation, something I can only read after the caffeine has diluted my blood system sufficiently enough to give me the energy to get mad without stroking out. These days, my coffee lasts barely long enough for me to get some news (by which I mean news) and some politics (by which I mean what passes for news). There are enough people out there, most of them more literate than I (well, in all modesty, maybe not most) who can better express my discouragement with what passes for governing and leadership.

Instead, I think I’ll take issue with Reginald who, back in 1892, was whining about people planting flowers instead of fruit. Let’s assume he was speaking with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek when he proclaimed there is a landscaping “hierarchy of nature” wherein a plant is chosen for it’s beauty which is inversely proportional to its utility. In case he was serious: apple trees flower, Reginald. They are useful and beautiful and would never be expelled from my garden – if I could grow apples, that is. So go suck a fruit I can grow in my yard – a lemon.

Unless of course, you are like me and waiting for your delicate Meyer lemons to ripen. The fruit on Eureka lemon trees are now ripe. Problem is, tough Eureka lemons have a rind as thick and gnarly as a gardener’s elbow, and only marginally more appealing. The hybrids like Meyer lemons will not ripen until early in the new year. Meyers have a dainty rind suitable for marmalades or other candied fates. The fruit on my dwarf Meyer is the size of a golf ball and solid green. They’re so adorable; they look like baby limes.

I would sooner expel my few flowering chrysanthemums from my yard than my lemon tree. My lemon tree is useful as well as beautiful. So thanks, Meyer, for maintaining these two traits that I - as a gentle old person of leisure - no longer bring to my garden in measurable quantities.

This Year's View

Alone on a river tower my thoughts full of sorrow
The moonlight like the water, the water like the sky
Where is the person with whom I shared the moon?
The view isn’t quite the same as last year.

- Chao Ku, Reflections at a River Tower
(From Red Pine, Trans., Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse)

About this time last year, I was embarking on a cross-country road trip with J.

Today, J is in Afghanistan, listening to the Taliban preach and pray over loudspeakers.

So, yeah.

A Lovely Vacation

“This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, “I wish you could talk!”
“We can talk,” said the Tiger-lily: “when there’s anybody worth talking to.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1872

The life of a hermit in a hut with a calligraphy pen and some green tea has its charms. I could live high in the pointy Chinese mountains writing haiku and listening to the soft hiss of falling snow. At least for a while. And at least if I had a good wireless connection. I have recently decided however, that life is simply about finding people worth talking to.

Having spent some time with interesting extended family members recently, I realize that I am just another social animal like the rest of youse (sic) guys. I enjoy talking about what we blandly call politics, because these are interesting times and we were in an interesting place. There are many tasty topics that provide food for thought, and discussion, and disagreement. One of my brothers who didn’t make it to NYC last week, once famously refused to agree to disagree – just for the sake of keeping the conversation going. It’s just as well, because his opinions are stupid. I say that, of course, with all respect due to those who don’t happen to share my enlightened and informed opinions. The best sign I saw from an Occupy Wall Street protester was: The worst thing about censorship is XXXXX.

I proved to my satisfaction that I can’t stay up drinking with the youngsters until 3:00 in the morning. I surrendered to the chocolate on my pillow at 1:30. The next day, some of us strolled through Soho and had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The restroom in this place complied with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) as well as my above brother complied with the rules of civil conversation. And by this I mean that the restroom was about the size of the window on your browser, and that my brother is stupid.

So, now I’m back home looking for botanical conversations with my plants. And considering the alternative, that’s a good thing: because either my plants can talk to me, or I’m hearing voices in my head. Given these choices, I’m going outside to say good morning to my morning glories.

Ten-Four, Eleanor

"SOCRATES (loftily): Mortal, what do you want with me?
STREPSIADES: First, what are you doing up there? Tell me, I beseech you.
SOCRATES (Pompously): I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun."

- Aristophanes, The Clouds

I’m traversing the air to NYC where I might join in the demonstration and get my protest on.

Then, I’m off to Detroit where I will contemplate nothing more complex than a good book and some good coffee, and maybe a political demonstration about local school board politics.

Then, I’ll traverse the air back to California and contemplate sewing with a twin needle. Neither pompous nor lofty. Just fun.

Cold Morning Skies, Porn Names, and Winter Cover Crops for Vegetable Gardens

Oh, morning fresh and clear as heavenly light,
Like warmth of love within the unwilling breast,
Sad to be so possessed,
Always the delicate shafts, piercing and bright,
Troubling my rest.
…
But airy-light, and fragile, bitter sweet,
A small bell rings and all enchantment's done
In smallest intervals of expanding dawn;
But quiet fills the eyes, lightens the feet,
Dissolves the wonder, all fulfilled, complete.
Marya Zaturenska, Cold Morning Sky

Unlike Zaturenska, I’m not a morning person. I’m not much for late nights either. Not much troubles my rest these lengthening nights. Truth be told, I would call myself a noontime person, but the term “nooner” has some vaguely pornographic overtones. And speaking of porn, I learned something recently from Matt Smith (the best Dr. Who ever). He said everyone has a porn name - the pseudonym you would use if you became a porn star. It never occurred to me that we should all have a personal porn name. Here’s The Doctor’s advice.

Your porn name is made up of the name of your first pet, and the name of the first street you lived on. Imagine: Dusty River, or Lucky Harding, or Buddy High. Of course now days, this formula seems to be breaking down, and after careful consideration I blame two trends for this deterioration in porn naming convention. First of all, people seem to be naming their pets less cleverly. Second, is the sad trend of suburban developers to name streets with pretentions of bygone Olde England. I mean, how would you expect to make the big-time porn-wise if you were billed as Tiny Meadowbrook, or Sweetie Pie Golden Acres, or Angie Sherwood Forest.

Perhaps it’s the cool smell of autumn in the air. Perhaps it’s the more oblique slant of the light as the sun shifts itself southward in its daily path and deepens the shadows. Or perhaps it’s just that I haven’t been outdoors enough lately. Why I find myself thinking and writing about the deteriorating state of porn names, instead of putting my garden to rest is as much a mystery to me as figuring out the perfect seed mix for the winter cover crop for our Veggie Garden.

I want some legumes of course, like hairy vetch to fix nitrogen. But do I want only cold-hardy ones like hairy vetch, or can I select some of the more cold-sensitive species like cow peas since the garden lives in Zone 9? I confess that Sunn Hemp is a legume that calls to me, but maybe that’s just because of its slightly naughty name.

Then, I’ll want some grasses to germinate quickly and generate organic biomass to be tilled back in as green manure. But do I want to stick with boring winter rye or should I risk something more exciting like oats or barley or buckwheat that might self-sow if I don’t till it back in before it produces seed next spring?

And crimson or rose clover sounds pretty, but do I want to stay away from white clover because of the risk that it will produce so many volunteers? And what about our pestilent wildlife? Will the entire cover crop experiment merely provide forage for rabbits, rats and squirrels?

Better I just spend some time with that tempting second cup of coffee and sit outside and fill my eyes with quiet until the wonder dissolves and the answers come to me.

The Star that Comes at Summer's End

“Old Priam first beheld him with his eyes

As, shining like a star, Achilles streaked across the plain,

The star that comes at summer’s end, its clear gleaming

In the milky murk of night displayed among the multitude of stars

 - the star they give the name Orion’s Dog;

most radiant it is, but it makes an evil portent

and brings great feverish heat on pitiful mortal men…”

 - Homer, Iliad, Carolyn Alexander, trans.

 Autumn has found my backyard, and tortures the parched garden with overcast skies, cooler days, longer nights, but still no rain.  The night sky however, even in light polluted suburbia, is beginning to take on the clarity I associate with cold winter nights. I’ve been reading Carolyn Alexander’s book, The War that Killed Achilles, and find it engrossing and more than a little disturbingly apt in the tenth year of America’s foreign war in Afghanistan.

What we know as the Dog Star (in the constellation Canis Major) is the brightest star in our night sky here in the northern hemisphere. The Greeks called this star Sirius, a word which means searing or scorching.  What we see as as the dog star is actually two stars. (Now, you say: “Seriously?”, and I say, “Sirius-ly!” because it’s true.) Canis Major, and it’s companion constellation Canis Minor represent the two hunting dogs of Orion, and familiar Orion, with his pointy sword and bow, is one of the constellations most people recognize.

According to this guy Sirus was “famed from times long past, the first glimpse of Sirius in dawn announced the rising of the Nile in ancient Egypt. (It no longer does because of precession, the 26,000-year wobble of the Earth's axis.)” 

Sirus and Orion are harbingers of winter. As days shorten, they begin their nocturnal hunt later - after the sun sets. In summer, Orion and his dogs cross the sky while the sun is above the horizon, and thus we can't see them in the sky until winter. 

In the Iliad, scenes with Achilles are often filled with metaphors about light, from dimly glowing to brightly searing. But unlike allusions to light that modern readers might  associate with good cheer or sunny dispositions, descriptions  involving light associated with Achilles are often heavily weighted with ill omens and dark portents. Here’s my favorite example of that - a digression in the description of Achilles donning his armor before he joins the battle in which he will slay Hecktor:

“He…caught up the great shield, huge and heavy

next, and from it the light glimmered far, as from the moon.

And as when from across water a light shines to mariners

From a blazing fire, when the fire is burning high in the mountains

In a desolate steading, as the mariners are carried unwilling

By storm winds over the fish-swarming sea, far away from their loved ones;

So the light from the fair elaborate shield of Achilles

Shot into the high air…”

I love the way this passage (Alexander quotes from Lattimore's translation) relentlessly focuses on increasingly fearful detail. While at first the light reflected from his shield seems to hint at good, but then we zoom into focus an image of storm-tossed sailors on a restless sea spotting a faraway signal fire evokes the sort of grimness. The light, intended as a beacon of hope and safety, becomes their final glimpse of unreachable safety upon a dry and distant mountain. The metaphor forces you to imagine that then the sea swallows them whole. This, to me, foreshadows the eventual fate of these soldiers. 

While the star that comes at summer's end may refer to an evil omen when described by Homer, for me it will continue to signal the season of harvest and feasting. Unlike those sailors who were unable to avoid their cruel fate, my garden today seems to look forward to it's destiny and to a long cool rest. My backgard will begin to thrive again when the skies change to signal that Spring is coming. 

Growing Old Disgracefully

"Sun smudge on

the smoky water."

Archibald MacLeish, Autumn

Autumn is in the air, finally. Because the air is shifting more onshore, blowing the eastern metropolitan San Diego smog up against the mountains, I can see the smog trapped across the valley that is the eastern border of the El Cajon valley. My front window faces north, looking down from halfway up the old mountains on the western side of the El Cajon valley. The valley slope of the northern side of the valley forms a cup, now half filed with brown fuzzy smog below. Above the skyline of these low mountains, is the clear blue sky highlighted with brightly lit cumulus clouds that tantalize us with their promise of cooling rain on parched summer ground. I heard thunder rumble as I was making my morning coffee.

My small town orbits like a satellite a typical American city in SoCal. El Cajon is a former frontier town, one that ruthlessly vanquished the “primitive” natives barely three generations ago. As the culture of our big city oozes out to us, we become another cookie cutter suburb. This is the place where Tom Petty said there’s a freeway running through our yard.  Our public landscapes are designed mostly by gringos now.

Everywhere, the crepe myrtle blossom effortlessly. I remember only the almost salmon red ones from my east coast childhood. Here and now, they seem mostly the softer and cleaner pink, delicate lace-white, and my favorite lavender ice.

Here and now, crepe myrtles come in two basic styles. First, are the rustic unpruned tall bushes with multiple graceful trunks tall open shrubs you see in peoples’ yards.  

The second landscape style could be called Early Twenty-first Century Urban Street Island Low Bid. This version features slightly embarrassed and pretentious plantings grown into standards – single-trunked bushes striving to be tiny trees. They are all more-or-less pruned into bloated baloons and lowish lollipops that would offer scant shade to a goat.  

 Either way, their lovely trunks thrive in our auto-centric urban environment, bathed in smog and auto pollution. Crepe mytrle bark sloughs off in smooth strips leaving behind hundreds of shades of brown and grey in a changing mosaic pattern. The bark would make lovely paper.

These small standards are often alternated with bright pastel varieties of oleander - that go-to barrier strip bush that seemingly evolved to stop a crashing car going 65. Another companion planting are Natal Plum bushes, with stars of fragrant flowers winking whitely amid the shiny dark foliage. These rigorously clipped hedges surround strip malls, seeming to try with their thorny limbs to contain the despair leaking out from the vacant storefronts.

Typically, within blocks of freeway exits, my neighborhood is still mostly suburban roadside and choked drainage ditches beneath dry and crumbling banks and hillsides covered with flammable dead undergrowth. Here often grow ubiquitous naked lady flowers who have, unfortunately, lost their virginal pink glow. They are growing old, and seriously, who wants to see their anorexic beauty that has withered them into naked old ladies.

Despite these borderline relentless flowers, every small garden bush, summer annual, and most of the background landscape seems to me to be accepting that it isn’t growing gracefully like grandma did. This isn’t where my grandmas lived and died.

The world has changed around me. In the half-life of my time here in Zone 9, a mere 30 years, it has become hotter and drier.  Even the allegedly low-water plants like Sonoran Desert natives and similar Mediterranean Climate plants (natives of west-facing coastal climates in earth's plump midsection, like South Africa, South America and Western Australia) - all are fatigued having spent their summer energy. But all are still here. All of us seem to be entering late middle age and seem, in this dry autumn season before our rains begin, to be growing old disgracefully. 

What Are Years

By: Maianne Moore (1940)


What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,——
dumbly calling, deafly listening——that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs





the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.




So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

Too Hot to Garden

There once was a guy from Peru
Who had some growin’ up to do.
He’d ring my doorbell,
Then run like hell,
‘Til I nailed him with my old .22.
- Anonymous

Ever walk out to work in your garden, take one look around, and turn around and go back inside? That’s me and that’s today. It’s been hot and dry and I need to hand water. It’s too hot and sunny to water now though. The parched plants can’t believe their eyes when I ignore their silent withering looks and their wilted imploring leaves. Clutching my heart and dramatically promising I’ll be back later when it cools down, I calmly explain the sun will just fry them if I get their leaves wet now. I plead medical reasons. Their glaring silence reproaches me. Ok, then I plead laziness. You’re not the boss of me.

So, last week, after bringing the cardiologist my list of prescriptions and herbal supplements and having it be completely ignored, he proceeded to lecture me on taking my rat poison, excuse me, my warfarin. Two months in, I am still failing my INR lab tests that measure how fast my blood clots. Funny story. Turns out that the package inserts, legitimate medical websites and crazy conspiracy wack job bloggers are unanimous: Vitamin K and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage promote good blood clotting. Too good, as it turns out for somebody who is at risk of becoming bedridden broccoli if a blood clot lodges in my brain. Such supplements and vitamins completely offset the blood thinning efforts of the rat poison. Which, it turns out, one of my supplements has 1000 IU of Vitamin K and another has vegetable extracts of broccoli and cabbage. After pointing this out on my medicines spreadsheet, he said: stop taking those supplements. Good to know.

So, if I knew this before he said so, why did I continue to take them despite the failure of every medical professional to tell me so? Because every medical professional told me not to significantly change my dietary and nutritional intake since my body had habituated to whatever I was taking, which they didn’t bother to determine when the information was literally handed to them on a single page with yellow highlighter. It's almost like I expected them to give me informed and correct medical advice or something.

So, today for the first time in two months, my INR has moved from .9 to 1.1, due entirely I am sure to the fact that I stopped the vitamin K and cruciferous vegetable extract supplements 4 days before yesterday's test. But when Coumadin Clinic Cindy called with yesterday’s INR results, and I started to say “Yay, that must be because…” She fucking interrupted me to say that score isn’t good and I should take a double dose tomorrow and test again next week. Shut up you idiot. I know more than you have bothered to glance at before lecturing me like I was 10! I don’t need this shit.

But then again, the garden didn’t offer much of a prospect for peaceful repose. So I’m inside thinking of other supplements that I should research. My medical care fails me now while I’m competent to notice and educate myself and learn what experts would do if they were paying attention. Heaven help me when I get dementia and I’m left to the mercy of these health care experts who don’t have the attention span to read more than the top line on a patient’s chart and ask you to repeat your name back to them like a secret password before they’ll say more than hello. That's what they consider taking a patient medical history.

Then again, it occurs to me that my generation of greedy rich Americans will have only ourselves to blame when we’re warehoused in Medicare nursing homes and eventually killed by medical neglect or mistreatment. We’re sending the next generation of doctors who will replace Coumadin Clinic Cindy to elementary school without lunches and dropping them out of high school for unemployment.

So, perhaps it’s another early happy hour in the air conditioning. I promise I’ll spend time outside once it cools off. Meanwhile, my kitty will have to sit on my lap for a half hour. That’s better than any Big Pharma and/or controlled substance for correcting my blood pressure after talking to Coumadin Clinic Cindy. Idiots.

BTW, I don't have a gun and can't throw a knife, but if you ring my doorbell and run away, I'll shake my fist and yell at you louder than Grandpa Simpson.

My My, Hey Hey

“My my, hey hey. Rock and roll is here to stay... It's better to burn out than to rust.”
Neil Young, My My, Hey Hey Hey

If you’ve ever considered murder – or as I prefer to call it, third party assisted suicide – you have probably considered the antifreeze appletini. The color is genuine, the taste is divine, and the result is (one must assume) gratifying. Disclaimer: I wouldn’t know. As anybody knows who has ever watched any episode of CSI, the active ingredient in antifreeze is propylene glycol, and enough of it will kill you. (I can’t google specific doses/outcomes or it will leave an Internet history trail on my home computer that I’d prefer not to create.) According to the Internet, this organic compound is used in degreasers, wallpaper strippers, antifreeze, and strangely also in baby powder, shampoo and skin cream. Go figure.

So, on a seemingly unrelated topic, I’ve been trying to get Tech Support Guy to hydrate more. He’s not a fan of appletinis just so you know. He’s apparently also allergic to water. He used to drink diet soda by the liter, until his doctors explained that this leaches calcium out of your bones, and by middle age he had the bones of a ninety-year-old female anorexic meth addict. So, he pretty much sticks to cheap wine and coffee, both of which I have explained using small words, are diuretics. Which means they pretty much do the opposite of hydrate you.

Well then, he’s recently seen this amazing new product advertised on the TV. They’ve patented something I discovered years ago. You can add a tiny bit of fruit juice or red wine to a glass of cold water and you get a pretty and mildly flavored beverage that will in fact hydrate you without rotting your teeth or making you drunk. So TCG gets some of this new stuff. It colors and flavors water like my invention only with a lovely (not!) diet sweetener finish that makes my teeth itch.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the ingredients. WTF? Have I discovered a replacement for the antifreeze appletini? I suppose the advantage to this stuff is that your guts won't rust.

From Wisdom to Madness Via Woe

"Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Trying to educate myself about my new irregular heartbeat and deadening drug side-effects has been like giving myself up to fire. I’ve had irregular heartbeats intermittently (no, that’s not redundant) for a few weeks. When I finally got to the doctor last week, he blew off my list of side effects from the rat poison and the antiarrhythmic saying I’d had a life-changing experience, so some disruption in mood was to be expected. Which did nothing to make me wiser and a lot to make me madder.

My side effects include menopausal hot flashes that leave me drenched in sweat, itching skin that seems to move around my arms and legs like ants when I try to sleep, mood swings that make menopause look like a slightly cloudy afternoon (no that’s not redundant either), unprovoked crying, feeling totally overwhelmed at the least little problem, and headaches. He increased one of my prescriptions because my blood pressure is also elevated. All doctors do these days is practice medicine with prescription pads - meaning he paid attention to the one symptom a prescription pad purports to cure (without consideration of what new side-effects it might cause). When I drop something on the floor, instead of cleaning it up, I just say fuck this and walk away. I’ve pretty much lost interest in everything except my favorite kitty. So I suppose that’s a good sign – the kitty part, not the other stuff.

The backyard has defeated me. I now consider myself a lapsed gardener. The neglected table-top miniature pots with moss in them have now succumbed to high heat and a shut-off sprinkler. They were to give me something cool and calm to meditate on. I plan to go outside to see what stage of slow and gruesome death by lack of hydration they are in as soon as I finish my caffeine-free coffee that tastes like worn-out socks. I’ve also vitrually stopped drinking alcohol too, which hasn’t exactly contributed positively to my outlook.

Despite its failure to operate as a quilting machine, my new sewing machine works quite well as a sewing machine, so that’s a ray of frickin’ sunshine in my currently dismal life. To restore the balance to the universe, I made pillow cases for TCG’s two tiny pillows and embroidered the following rhyme on one: Goodnight my dear,/ And sweet repose./ Lie on your back/ So you don’t squish your nose.

I did a lot of medical research on line, being careful to distinguish between batshit crazy wacko sites and, say, Mayo Clinic and NIH.gov, a process which involves a minimum of a third grade education and the application of judgment which, surprisingly, doctors seem to think those without a postgraduate degree in some biological science are incapable of exercising. Turns out the cute ER doc who mentioned that cannabis use is linked to tachycardia might have been right. I say might, because he fact that the relevant research was conducted on healthy 20-something men and involved only smoking (rather than oral ingestion of) marijuana may not be significant, and wasn't terribly specific about dosing. Now because I lack a medical-related degree I might just be blowing smoke here, metaphorically speaking, of course. I’m refraining from my go-to herbal cure for depression at least until I finish adapting to the rat poison and apparently non-functioning shit that’s supposed to regulate my heart. I may or may not bother to see the cardiologist. At this point in my research, I’m leaning to getting some blood tests for cardiac blood markers like C-reactive protein and other inflammatory cytokines like Tumor Necrosis Factors that are better indications of stroke risk, but what do I know.

WRT the non-functioning antiarrhythmia med, called Amioderone, I found a study (could only access the abstract) that said: “The management of AF (atrial fibrillation – what I had) can vary among individuals depending on factors such as underlying heart condition, age, stroke risk, and the severity of symptoms associated with AF. The Atrial Fibrillation Follow-up Investigation of Rhythm Management (AFFIRM) trial randomized AF patients into 2 treatment strategies: heart rate control without attempting to maintain normal rhythm versus heart-rhythm control that attempted to maintain normal rhythm through the use of medications. Both groups received warfarin (aka, rat poison). The study showed that there was no advantage of one approach over the other in terms of survival. Patients treated with heart rhythm medications were hospitalized more often for their treatment and were exposed to possible side effects of antiarrhythmic medications. Therefore, the selection of treatment strategy is often guided by symptoms. Anticoagulation should be considered for all patients at increased risk for stroke” (Chung MK. Vitamins, supplements, herbal medicines, and arrhythmias. Cardiol Rev. 2004 Mar;12(2):73–8).

Now, as an uneducated drug-addled old broad, I read that as saying the Amioderone was more trouble than it was worth. My doc read that part of the 9-page research paper I compiled in doing my research, and shook his head patronizingly and said “You should ask your cardiologist about that”. So, should I survive the questionable care of these distracted mechanics, I might do that. Funny story about the side effects of Amioderone: “Though this medication often gives great benefits to people with irregular heartbeat, it may infrequently worsen an irregular heartbeat or cause serious (sometimes fatal) side effects.” I’m pretty sure death is a “fatal side effect” but I’ll have to ask my cardiologist to be sure.

So Much For Docile Earth

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!"
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

So, I haven’t been to my own Tahiti in the backyard for a while - or to this blog - because I encountered my own white whale in the middle of July. Following a day working outside, I began to feel the horrors of the half known life: the now-familiar racing heartbeat I recognize as atrial fibrillation.

I had spent the third day in a row outside, cleaning up the backyard after the guys put down dg rock where nothing will grow. I moved flower pots, chairs etc and generally rearranged the furniture. I had everything swept and tidy and spent the last hour watering and generally appreciating how lovely everything looks. I take great satisfaction, and Ireceive great peace when my work in the yard is complete. The best part of the day is hand watering and then sitting still to enjoy the fruits of what I considered healthy exercise and hard work. So much for that little theory. I had experienced irregular cardiac symptoms over the past few days and chose to ignore them: when I felt funny heartbeats, I'd stop and sit still for a while until things settled down. Apparently, you shouldn’t do that, despite the fact that I felt ok at the time.

I had some left over dinner while talking to my sister on the phone for a good half hour. I then hit the shower, which is where the unannounced and uncontrollable heart racing began. My pulse went up to 155 over the next hour, and included what the doc calls "palpitations". That word conjures an image of an old lady wearing a flower-print dress with a lace collar, sitting in an overstuffed chair fanning herself with a hankie and complaining of having the vapors. The actual medical term is premature ventricle contractions. To me, it was the kind of pounding and thumping that you can feel in your chest after running too fast too long, but it was irregular and jumpy. I took a few atenelols and tried to get some cat purring therapy, but Lily wasn't particularly interested in rocking quietly on my shoulder, the ungrateful little bitch. At least, I didn't hyperventilate and/or panic like I did when this happened on my birthday a few months ago. So, Tech Support Guy and I decided it was time to avail myself of the health care system’s benefits. Being concerned about hurting delicate feelings, not to mention incurring legal liability, let’s just say my health care system’s name rhymes with Geyser Vermin and Tea, or GVT for short, and the names below have been changed.

So, we drove to the ER, taking it easy on surface streets. TSG had discovered a flat tire on trying to go to the grocery earlier in the day. At least AAA had already been out to change the tire, but we were using the little toy spare tire and didn't want to take the freeway. This time, we didn't snark at each other out of misplaced panic like we did on the ER run a couple of months ago, and by now, the palpitations had stopped. My heart was still racing, but it seemed to be smoother, and we took that as a good sign.

I got right in at the ER by sitting down and calmly explaining I was in a-fib and presenting a list of blood pressure and heart rates and times and meds taken in the prior hour. So far, this was pretty much like before. The difference began when they gave me the first IV med and it didn't stop the a-fib in its tracks. Watching this on a hospital monitor is very instructive. I am convinced I should be able to do some biofeedback and make it smooth out, but no such luck. The pulse rate actually went down to the 100-120 range thanx to the meds, but the distances between the tall upward pointy spikes in the heartbeat continued to be unevenly spaced, and that's what is called atrial fibrillation. By now, it's about 20:00 and we are not amused.

It took about 6 hours and several variations on type of med and type of delivery before my heartbeat settled back into what they call normal sinus rhythm. By now, they were insisting I had to be admitted - something we were both determined to avoid. This isn't out of some misplaced idea that I'm a superhero. It's because the ER is a very loud and stressful place, and the last time I spent the night in the hospital I brought home some bad bug and mother ended up in a rehab facility, and I just wanted to go home to sleep in my own bed. It took until 3:00 am before the very busy ER admitting doc got to us. He not only looked at me instead of the monitor when he spoke, he assumed I had a functioning brain. He also said I should stick around and he could get me a quiet room. So TCG drove home slowly and texted me on his safe arrival (on the toy tire) and said he got to bed at 4 and later said that he got to sleep at 5. I finally got to a room at 5:30 but this talkative nurse kept me up until 6:30 doing her on-line questionnaire (Do you feel safe at home? Do you want to see a Chaplin? I know, but we have to ask this etc.). I finally told her I was exhausted and to leave me alone and fell asleep promptly until awoken exactly one hour later for more shit like getting my temp taken and my IV untangled and making sure I turned over so I wouldn't get bedsores ("I know, but we have to do this" - apparently even if the patient dies from sleep deprivation). As I once again realized, I'm not at my best when cranky and nap-deprived.

By 10:30 the next morning I was off the IV and my heartbeat was regular. I was seen by two shifts of nurses, including 2 more shift supervisors, a dietician wanting to know what I wanted for dinner, an attending doc, a cardiologist, a pharmacist and at least 4 other people who went over several variations of my prescription drugs (though curiously, all reading presumably the same online version of my file) and I think either Zombie Mother Teresa or a homeless bag lady with a hospital ID she stole from a nurse who must have caught her going through the hazardous waste trash looking for syringes and who she had to shank. Pretty sure that's what happened. I had breakfast (that sat there for 2 hours while I tried to nap in between visits from people who didn't realize I wasn't wearing my hearing aids and that I was faking understanding them just to get them to leave me alone). I had lunch. I finally got to pee all by myself. BTW, did you know that when you get several gallons of saline intravenously with a tiny bit of drugs, it goes directly to your bladder? Someday, you'll thank me for this important information. It's apparently something completely unknown to professional medical people.

I finally got discharged at 3:00 just when Nurse Betty promised me she'd let me out. We stopped to pick up my new drugs, and listen to the bored pharmacist read from the pile of papers in front of me and tell me not to be worried by all the DIRE WARNINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS sprinkled through the quarter-ream of package inserts. The ER Admitting doc mentioned that one of my new prescriptions (Coumadin/warfarin) actually includes an anticoagulant ingredient used in rat poison. Ahh, the miracles of modern chemistry never start to cease to amaze me.

The scariest part of this particular episode was about midnight when nothing would make the a-fib stop and some idiot who took a chest x-ray explained that he was a medic in Iraq and my ER nurse, Heather, (who was about 16 and very competent and nice) was new and he knew this because she didn't want to let people die who were going to die anyway but tried to save them when she should move on to other patients who might actually not die. Upon completion of the x-ray he said: I hope I didn't scare you. The douche.

Real and Imagined Official State Stuff

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
T. S. Eliot

Like most states, California has a state flag, and a state animal (California grizzly bear, aka Ursus californicus) and a state flower (Eschsholtzia california, or California poppy). Here’s a fun fact not know to many people outside The Inland Empire: April 6 is California Poppy Day, which Californians celebrate by eating lemon poppy seed muffins instead of our usual granola bar.

But wait, there’s more. Because we weren’t satisfied to have merely a flower, in 2004, we selected a state grass. Now, you might think that would be Cannabis sativa, but you’d be wrong. It’s Nassella pulchra or purple needlegrass. Once established, Purple needlegrass is tolerant of summer drought and heat, and a single plant can live more than 150 years, which I’m sure was the deciding factor in picking purple needlegrass over common spurge which, in my yard at least, is as immortal as the legendary phoenix. And of course we have a state motto: Eureka! I’m not positive, but I think we’re the only state who’s motto includes an exclamation point!

California legislators, when not engaged in budget talks or passing substantive legislation, find the time to designate stuff as our official state things. For example, we've had a state fossil (Smilodon californicus, aka, saber-toothed cat), since 1973, by which time I’m pretty sure they were extinct so we could safely designate them as state fossils instead of, say, state park mascots. Not only that, we have a state prehistoric artifact. It happens to be a small chipped stone bear, discovered at an archaeological dig site in San Diego County in 1985, a fact that, since we learned of this in 2011, has made San Diegans very proud.

Some of California’s things aren’t very dignified. Our state insect is the California dogface butterfly or dog head (Zerene eurydice). And while I bet other states’ insects can kick our insect’s butt, but keep in mind our state animal could probably kill and eat yours for brunch (which happens to be our official state meal between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM).

Other official California stuff is just as lame. We have a state soil. Seriously. “The San Joaquin Soil was designated as the official state soil in 1997. The designation commemorates the completion of the state's most comprehensive soil inventory and acknowledges the importance of soil.” Also, being more like compacted clay, a handful of our official state soil will not include fear. All this official stuff I didn’t make up can be found Here.

California is also the first state to have an official state recipe (organic hash brownies, of course), bedroom slipper, (Grandpa Simpson’s footwear), addictive prescription drug, overused cliché, and Starbucks coffee drink. Don’t be surprised if you can’t find these official things on the website. Some of our stuff is password protected and can only be revealed to people who know our official state secret handshake.

But what are we waiting for? Recently some states like Arizona (the Kentucky of the Southwest) have designated official state guns. I wish I was kidding. So, starting today, I'm accepting nominations to a Special Commission that will identify an official California recreational substance, double murder, embroidery stitch, existensial quandry, profane insult, yoga position, processed meat product, outpatient medical procedure, preferred homeless residence, parody motto, excuse for being late, most bitter regret, and favorite method of suicide. The sooner the better, since at this very moment, Arizona is working on an official public official fall from grace, wet t-shirt contest, misuse of a common kitchen utensil (but, being Arizona, they have yet to designate an official common kitchen utensil), auto GPS voice (Elmer Fudd is on the short list) laundry sorting method, texting shorthand, and victimless crime.

All in War with Time

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet XV

We finally put netting over the stonefruit tree in the Veggie Garden, but by the time we got to it, all the fruits pictured were pecked to death. While we can't exactly engraft the fruit new, we at least managed to protect a handful of fuzzy peaches.

This tree is a healthy rootstock with three different fruits grafted on top. We've seen peaches every few years, particularly when harvest is preceeded by a hard winter frost (rare). We once saw nectarines. But the third branch, possibly an apricot, has never borne fruit. The lesson here seems to be if you want three kinds of stonefruit, plant three trees. The strongest seems to starve out the weaker grafts. The birds, or squirrels or whoever is taking the peaches the minute they ripen, bothers only to taste a bite and wastes the rest of the hard unripe fruit. Nature can be kind of a dick sometimes.

Kute Korrespondences

"The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from Earth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here - kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and trying to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken... plastic saxophone reed sounds of unnatural timbre, shampoo bottle ego-image, Cracker Jack prize one-shot amusement, home appliance casing fairing for winds of cognition, baby bottles tranquilization, meat packages disguise of slaughter, dry-cleaning bags infant strangulation, garden hoses feeding endlessly the desert... but to bring them together, in their slick persistence and our preterition... to make sense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replication, so much waste..."
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Lately, I think I’m suffering from early stage Michele Bachmann – having difficulty distinguishing the neurological sparks of exploding tiny cerebral embolisms from coded messages from god.

A mild-mannered gardener by day, at night I dress up like a colorblind ladybug and fight crime, or - depending on the TV Guide and the police scanner - I watch 70s sitcom reruns on basic cable. I also meticulously alter my daily routines so that I don’t fall into patterns that my enemies might study in order to defeat me. I never shower at the same time twice, say, or eat a liverwurst sandwich for lunch two days in a row.

And speaking of sandwiches, I’m as American as a grilled cheese sandwich made out of Wonder Bred (sic) and those suspiciously orange slices individually wrapped in plastic (but with the plastic removed before grilling). If we simply toast our bread and then slap some cheese in the middle, the terrorists have already won and destroyed our American lifestyle options. Next stop: Sharia law that denies women access to healthcare and stones the gays.

But back to my mental status. Lately, I’ve been saying “bollocks” instead of bullshit when the evening news is on the tv. As we all know, bullshit (or as they say on the other side of the pond, bollocks) describes the content of what you say when you don’t know or care whether what you say is true or not. To lie assumes you know what the real truth is. To bullshit is to not care one way or the other. Most of the talking heads on evening news seem increasingly to have dispensed with mere lies and drifted into pure bullshit.

I conclude from my increasing dependence on bloody British expressions of displeasure, that one of three things has happened. One, god is trying to tell me something. B) I’m listening to too much BBC America. Third, of course, I’m batshit crazy after all.

If it’s god, then I conclude he’s is telling me to expand my cursing horizons and embrace a more international lexicon of profanity; to mix up my speech patterns the same way I mix up my daily routine to foil evil villains.
If it’s not god, then the Beeb could be sending me subliminal auditory messages that somehow American censors don’t get and thus don’t bleep. The Beeb is agreeing that the evening television news is rubbish. See? There I go again.

And if I’m simply crazy, well then, at least I have the imagination to enjoy it by making cool Brit profanity my own and not boring myself by shouting the same old cute bullshit back at my television, while continuing to sift through the waste for the meanest sharp sliver of truth.

To Quilt or Not to Quilt

God in His infinite wisdom 

Did not make me very wise- 

So when my actions are stupid 

They hardly take God by surprise
Langston Hughes, Acceptance

I’ve been trying to quilt a lovely quilt using my lovely pre-owned sewing/embroidery machine. It’s king-sized, so it’s humungous and thus heavy. I’m trying to use a pre-programmed quilting pattern of lovely swirls and circles. I am experience a performance level somewhere between that of beginning second-grader and a coma patient. I’m about ready to tie the quilt to a sledge, lug it up to the top of the highest mountain I can see, (not counting the mountains to the south which are actually in Mexico - because my quilt doesn’t have a passport), tie the quilt to an altar and burn the fucking thing as an offer to the quilting gods whom I have apparently, unintentionally, and thoroughly offended.

To be fair, I’m using 2-ply embroidery thread to do this instead of heavier 3-ply quilting thread made for the express purpose of sewing quilting blocks. Also, I’m not attempting to quilt tiny blocks which I would then assemble into a big quilt. Instead, I’ve sewn the blocks into a single quilt and pinned the lining and back into a largish quilt sandwich. This means I’m trying to place the quilt into an embroidery frame, hook the frame to the embroidery arm, and then lift and move the gobs of awkward quilt sandwich in sync with the moving frame so that the motor won’t overheat trying to move frame in tiny circles and swirls as it follows the quilting pattern.

Also, I’ve refused to attend any of the instructional classes offered by local fabric and/or sewing machine vendors because the people who attend them wear clothing covered in cat hair and loose threads, and talk about their grandchildren and what they are going to eat next, and I have not quite sunk to that level. So the learning curve on my actual use of the machine to sew quilt patterns is steeper than the broad side of a barn. M’kay?

Still, why should my ability to quilt be based on such objective facts as my ignorance and use of the wrong thread? My quilting ability should not be subject to such banal reality, any more than it should be subject to the vagaries of fortune, the whims of fate, or the ply of my thread. Based on my extremely high degree of natural beauty, my expectation of exceptional levels of accomplishment consistent with my desires and presumed intelligence, my natural entitlement to the best the universe has to offer, my subtle but innovative sense of personal style, and my compliance with most of the provisions of the Patriot Act, I should possess mad quilting skilz by now.

Instead, I find the present state of affairs quiltingwise to be unacceptable. This too should hardly take the quilting gods by surprise.

Swing and A Miss

“It can’t be OK if you have 30 marijuana cigarettes and bad if you have 50 marijuana cigarettes. It's either bad or it's not bad."
Themis Klarides, Republican Connecticut Congresswoman, Connecticut To Decriminalize Marijuana

Dear Congresswoman Klarides:

Another way of saying what you said above is to put it into an if/then conditional statement. You said if a lot is bad, then a little is bad. If X, then Y. Two problems here.

First, the proposed provision of the law about the illegality of marijuana depending upon the quantity is not an if/then conditional statement in the first place. Nobody said it is true that if a lot is bad/illegal, then a little is bad/illegal (If Y then X). So the truth of your attempted converse (If X then Y) is irrelevant.

The proposed law is a single proposition (a little is not bad/illegal) followed by a qualifying “however” proposition (a lot is bad/illegal). What you did was attempt to rebut a non-existent proposition.

Second, even if we skip the straw man argument your sound bite cleverly blows to smithereens, and for the sake of argument, we assume the law is in fact stating the nonsense proposition that if a little marijuana is bad/legal, then a lot is not bad/illegal, there is still a problem with your logic.

Sometimes, the converse of a true proposition is true. Some things are bad regardless of quantity. For example, we probably both agree on the proposition that that if a single murder is bad, then so is a mass murder. If X, then Y. The converse of this proposition is also true: if a lot of killings are bad, then so is one (if Y, then X).

Sometimes however, the converse of an if/then statement isn’t true. For example, let’s agree that moderate cleanliness is next to godliness. It does not follow that a lot of cleanliness is more divine. Obsessively and compulsively washing one’s hands is not godlike; it’s a recognized mental disorder. Another example: eating one gummy bear might be good, but putting an entire handful into your mouth at once and masticating them into an oral mass grave is not so good.

A final example might make this point with clarity that even you can grasp: If you use marijuana, then you will die. Since we will all die, this is true. However, the converse is probably not so true: everyone who dies used marijuana. That’s as stupid as proposing that since everyone who said prayers in school will die, then school prayer will kill you. Stupid, right?

With all due respect Congresswoman Klrides, your statement is stupid.

Exploded Dreams

When younger," said he, "I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound; but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors…. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense… My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred it did not endure the violence of the change without tone such as you cannot even imagine.
- Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

Langston Hughes once pondered what happened to dreams when they were “deferred”. That’s a nice way of saying when they don’t come true. Rather than the artful raisin in the sun, I like the last line of his poem when he posits that such deferred dreams might just explode.

One fortunate consequence of losing one’s mind with age is that the dreams of youth fade too. So, it’s not like I mourn all the childish dreams that shriveled and dried up. It’s more like I don’t remember them, and thus they don’t sting.

It's more like there’s this empty shelf in the increasingly dusty and disordered cupboard of my mind where the dreams must have once resided. There’s a button, a dessicated and now colorless flower, a mysterious key to some forgotten lock, a pretty rock, a small picture of Dopey, and some blue lint. Luckily, I am educated enough that I still recognize the astonishing breadth of my ignorance; and more fortunate still that I no longer have sufficient imagination to be frightened by the unknown.

The dreams of my youth didn’t so much explode as fizzle. I don't think I was destined for illustrious achievements. I didn’t discover some unknown land, or write a book or stop a war. I didn't posess a sentiment of the worth of nature to support me in tough times. Then again, my sensitive little heart didn't get unimaginably wrenched by misery.

I did forgive instead of holding hate. I learned how to cook. I learned that I like cats. I read of few books and understood fewer.

I loved my family, and knew love in return. I made a garden. I am satisfied.

Retirement = Good

"I'll tell thee everything I can;
 There's little to relate.

I saw an aged aged man,

A-sitting on a gate.

"Who are you, aged man?' I said.

"and how is it you live?"

And his answer trickled through my head

Like water through a sieve.

He said "I look for butterflies

That sleep among the wheat:

I make them into mutton-pies,

And sell them in the street.

I sell them unto men,' he said,

"Who sail on stormy seas;

And that's the way I get my bread --

A trifle, if you pleae."

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Now, maybe if my job description were the second verse above, I’d aspire to love my work.

Butterflies? Check

Sleeping? Check.

Yummy pie-making? Check.

Ability to let thoughts trickle through the head like water through a sieve? O hell yes, check.

A trifle, if you please.

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.