Hard Times

 "It's certain that fine women eat  

A crazy salad with their meat."   

Yeats, A Prayer for my Daughter

In an effort to shake off the lethargy caused by unseasonable heat exacerbating the mild depression resulting from my inability to procure the prescription meds in Tecate, Mexico that my doctor declines to renew on the flimsy pretext that they can cause undesirable interactions with other medications, I have decided to confront my sense of entitlement as a metaphorical slap to the side of my head and to remind myself that I actually have life pretty good. Let's see how that works out. 

But first, a brief catalog of my trials and tribulations. A while back, the icemaker on my refrigerator underwent a long and painful death. For almost two weeks - while I was grieving for this loss - I had to go without ice in my martinis. Although I survived this hardship, it was not without cost to my fragile psyche and my mental health.

Last week, another kitchen appliance tragedy befell me. My 25 year old Barista espresso machine passed away after, literally, giving its last gasp to make a lovely steamed latte for me and the kid. The next morning, no heating element, ergo, no latte.  Now, you might think that because there is a Starbucks within several blocks in several directions, I could take this in stride. 

But since the ice maker tragedy, I have grown older, and weaker, and less able to weather the culinary storms that interfere with my routine. And plus, it seems that morning coffee is more vital to my overall wellbeing than evening martinis. I mean one can always have bourbon at room temperature, can’t one?

As I sit here drinking my tepid green tea, I try to remind myself of recent discussions I’ve had with a cultural anthropologist recently returned from studying a primitive stone age culture and still suffering the shock of finding Starbucks in every third block and a Wal*Mart in every mall.  I try to imagine living in a crude stone hut with a dirt floor and no running water, not to mention no icemaker or espresso machine. Predictably, I fail.

Perhaps, when my new expresso machine arrives, and the weather cools down enough to permit me to spend more time in the recently renovated backyard, my attitude will improve. Meanwhile, I think I’ve taken a big step to recognize that I have the strength of character, and the survival skills to muddle through these difficult latte-less times. We’ll work on that sense of entitlement later.

Crazy Salad

"It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone."

William Butler Yeats, A Prayer for my Daughter

At the most primal level, a garden is a refuge from the world. It’s the place where Man meets Nature, and where all the first and endlessly variable and complex relations between the two begin. The Garden of Eden however, was not such a place. In Eden, everything was perfect and unchanging. Since the fall, in earthly gardens, man contends with the endless cycles of birth, death and rebirth. Perfection, if it’s ever reached, lasts mere moments in a garden. A flower at the moment of it’s most lovely bloom, is lovely precisely because we recognize that like all that lives, it will die.

Anyway, I’m not so sure I like the idea of a heaven in the hereafter being a perfect and unchanging garden. Immortal gardens would, I think, lose something vital if they didn’t embody the energy of what we call the Cycle of Frickin’ Life. Winter rain is as much-appreciated part of this cycle. We actually had some hail during a particularly hard rain the other day. - you can see it on the ground in the top picture. In the second picture, Lily is checking out this view from the safety and warmth of the love seat in the living room.

In front of the stone lantern, are the two thin stalks of the red-trunked, green-leaf Japanese maple. In the background, to the right of the old olive tree, you can see the bare branches of the red-leaved Japanese maple, silhouetted in the wet driveway beyond. These trees, including a third out of the picture, were moved from the tsukubai garden in the back yard where the two older trees had staggered through harsh dry summers for about ten years, and were on the point of giving up. Japanese maples are one of the inappropriate plants I insist on keeping alive in my yard against all odds. I’ve given up on lilacs, lilies of the valley and most violets. But I insist that these trees occupy a position of respect in the crazy salad of my garden.


The horn of plenty Yeats is talking about is the myth of the cornucopia, that overflowed with whatever the holder wanted. For example, imagine if you will, an endless abundance of cheesy-poofs as you sat by the fire watching old movies on TV. Then, if you wished for linoleum in a green and white pattern, the cornucopia would presumably provide enough to replace the stained living room carpet, including extra to allow for measuring and cutting mistakes. Is Yeats saying that wishing for such a crazy salad would cause the horn to malfunction? Would it perhaps spit out some malformed green and white cheesey poofs, or cheese-flavored floor tiles? Is he saying women in particular are inclined to prefer such a crazy salad in their lives? Is he saying it’s ok for me to try to cultivate Japanese maples in the harsh Zone 9 climate?

Even if he thinks this would be crazy, he refers to such ladies as “fine women” and that is how I chose to interpret his letter to his daughter. He’s saying, be sure to eat your meat, but also to enjoy your own personal crazy salad, and accept the imperfection and mortality of your garden. Good advice.

We Are What We Eat

“There’s many a strong farmer
Whose heart would break in two,
If he could see the townland
That we are riding to;
Boughs have their fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.”
- William Butler Yeats, The Happy Townland

My lovely red cabbages are covered with white flies. I’ve salvaged lettuce, and the root crops (a few beets and last year’s potatoes) may survive long enough to eat. There will be more lettuce, even though I harvest a small salad daily. But, it’s back to the farmer’s market for the rest of my winter vegetable crops, and for any other produce I desire. Yesterday I finally gave in and bought some grapes from Chile. I can buy any vegetable or fruit at all times of the year without having to consider what might be “in season” locally.

Something has gone badly wrong with the state of agriculture in America – the disease, drugs, animal torture. Corporate dairy farms put us in danger of becoming mad cows unless we eat exactly what they tell us to eat. Panicked consumers are held hostage by terrorists in big pharmaceutical companies who sell us the drugs they make us need. Farmers must pay licenses to re-plant Genetically Modified Organisms growing from Monsanto’s hybrid seeds. These same farmers created the parent plants of Monsanto’s licensed mutant progeny.

Cloned cows and licensed lettuce, mutants modified by Monsanto. This has become our food.

Our vegetables and fruits and grains are mostly grown in fields doused with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics. Our harvests are tainted by chemical fertilizers, laced with pollutants, and possibly carcinogens. Our children eat produce grown for its looks rather than its nutritional value. Our food is selected by laboratory chemists whose mathematical formulas include how far the product will be shipped, and how long it can be stored without sacrificing its youthful good looks. What we buy to eat is often wrapped in stiff cellophane and vacuum sealed with an inert gas to retard spoilage.

Monsanto sues small farmers whom they accuse of using their proprietary hybrid seed without buying a license to plant it. Monsanto warns the FDA that dairies who dare to label their milk products as “hormone-free” or “not grown with antibiotics or GM organisms” are endangering the eating consumer by confusing them with misleading labels. The FDA does not require that Monsanto’s dairy products grown with their chemicals and GMOs must be so labeled.

I don’t know why I’m ranting about Monsanto when it was white flies that got to my cabbage. I should have sprayed the entire yard with pesticide. Then at least, I’d have cabbage to enjoy…