Alphabetical list of things I don’t care for

"The love which me so cruelly tormenteth
So pleasing is in my extremest pain:
That all the more my sorrow it augmenteth,
The more I love and do embrace my bane.
Ne do I wish (for wishing were but vain)
To be acquit from my continual smart..."
Edmund Spenser, Sonnett XLII

Amazing Grace on bagpipes
Bra straps showing beneath sleeveless shirts
Crack whores unwilling to admit they need help
Dreadful sorry, Clementine
Ear hair
Financial statements from my investment company
German cooking equating mush with meat
Heartless bastards
Insolent cashiers
Jury duty with my so-called peers
Kindness of strangers in lieu of compassion from loved-ones
Laugher, when I don’t get the joke
Milk that’s almost, but not quite, sour
Nothing so much as having my vegetables harvested by vermin
Outrageous fortune, the slings and arrows of
Questionable taste in music, played too loud in the adjacent car at a long red light

Regrets keeping me awake in the dark hours of the night
Sticky silverware in restaurants
Tater Tots: an abomination of potato injustice
Unimaginative paint colors like Navaho White, never imagined by actual Navahos
Voters who think their civic duty does not require them to pay attention BEFORE voting
Women in the line at the coffee shop who overuse quoty hands gestures while waiting
Xtreme sports: spell it right, idiots
Yellow Jello, don’t ask
Zero tolerance from bigoted homophobes, especially those who are closet queers

What is the source of your continual smart?

Remembering Mom and Dad

"A pistol shot, at five o’clock, the bells of heaven ring,
Tell me what you done it for. No I won't tell you a thing.
Yesterday I begged you before I hit the ground,
All I leave behind me is only what I found…
Take up your china doll, take up your china doll,
Its only fractured and just a little nervous from the fall.”
- Grateful Dead, China Doll
I was captured today, by the old black and white photo of my parents, taken together back before they were married. In the picture, they are young and their joyful gazes were so innocently happy.

Their smiling eyes seem to have that universally blank expression on graduates’ faces in a million high school yearbook pictures. They thought then that they would be brave enough to meet the future together with joy. They were practically children then, not yet tempered by the challenges of marriage and parenthood. They were in love then, and they both died on this day, in their mid-seventies, older, wiser, sicker, but still in love. Their youthful confidence in love and in life was justified.

Feeling my old self of today, I recognize I’m no longer getting better, just older. I’m sinking slowly back from parent role, and more into helpless child. I wonder at their bravery in the face of the unknown – those two young people who became my Mom and Dad. They promised they would face it together – whatever came. They did, separated in death by exactly one year.

Mom went first, “defeated” as they say, in her brave battle with colon cancer. Dad was sentenced to one year of solitary confinement, finding himself alone after a lifetime together. He died on the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death, dropping like a stone as he got ready to go to mass. He died of loneliness and a broken heart, like a shattered china doll.

As old as I am today, as young as their picture was then, they’re still Mom and Dad. Sometimes, I’m afraid, because I’m older than the kids in their picture, and I don’t know what to do, and they can’t teach me.

Other times, looking into their eyes in that picture, I find that I’m doing okay after all. Increasingly, I feel like the brittle china doll, I see that picture and pick myself up, “only fractured and just a little nervous” from falling through youth into my own old age. I’m still alive – and I’m still standing after all. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Imaginary Conversations

“I am sufficiently instructed in the principal duty of a preface, if my genius were capable of arriving at it. Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise.”
Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub
Remember in high school when they were teaching different writing techniques and we had to read Johnathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” about eating children to prevent starvation during the great potato famine? The classic example of satire. Still. The guy had a heck of an imagination, and he could write.

While I often resort to satire (my preferred method of laughing keep from crying) this season often finds me at a loss for inspirational humor. Instead, I find myself frequently engaging in the dubious practice of conversing with my feline, whose virtual absence of spoken response at such times in no way hinders the progress of our discussions. Instead, her silence bespeaks her solemn wisdom. Her participation in such talks is generally limited to a purr so low and deep inside her, that, due to my moderate deafness, I can hear only by holding the entire cat up to my ear like a telephone receiver.

Far from conveying a sinister undertone in response to my confessions, my cat’s conversational contribution – the low hum I interpret to mean her understanding and compassion – simply confirms my trust in her advice: mmmmmmm……

Rarely, in the course of such heart-to-ear discussions, I catch a spark of inspirational advice. More often, I find I cannot quite carry such thoughts through the doors of understanding, leaving them instead in the tub of sand outside the doors, where complicated realizations, cigarette butts, and wads of chewing gum are discarded by other seekers preparing to enter into self-realization.

In this season, forcing my imagination to take the tour of my invention, I too, am likely to return empty handed.

There was that one time though, when I thought I heard my cat actually speak. I think she might have actually said, “Of course you’re crazy, Weeping. Cats can’t speak.” Then again, I can’t hear. So, like the complementary diets of Mr. and Mrs. Sprat, the bad kitty and I make a perfect conversational pair.

Passive Voice, Passive Season

"Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897

Passive voice is something I really like, provided it’s not aggressive, like Checkhov, ranting about how man is more of a destroyer than a creator. Using passive voice can be a way to cleanse a story of it’s angst. It wraps sad memories in a soothing blanket of distance, softening painful recollections of bad times.

It helps us to express difficult things without attaching blame: My friends, harsh words were spoken in anger. Mistakes were made. Toenails were trimmed. Hair was set on fire. Feelings were bruised, and so were soft tissues. Threats were made; carried out impulsively; and then regretted tearfully. Toast was burned. Promises were broken, and so were fingers. The Boze was dropped into the bath water. Ledges were jumped off from. Or were they pushed off of?

Gardening this time of year is like speaking in passive voice. Sweet pea seeds were sown yesterday in silent hope for a fragrant Spring. Tools were sharpened and tucked lovingly away. Frequent breaks were taken, the coming season was smelled in the breeze. My back was not burned by the sun. Tasks performed were more like puttering than active gardening.

At the end of the day, the first of my mail order seeds were sorted and put in the cool, dark, dry wooden tool box where seeds are stored. Mail order bulbs were delivered and stored in the bottom drawer of my fridge, cooling for 8-10 weeks before being planted. The smell of root beer, and my grandmother’s basement was detectible in the boxes of bulbs.

Today, it’s more like summer outside, and there will be more such days before the rains come and the leaves are done falling. But for now, I feel like I have begun to learn – as I do again each year – to wait passively until the seasons turn and I can play outside in the yard again on a regular basis. Meanwhile, bread will be baked. Doll house construction will be resumed. Seed catalogs will be perused by the fireside. And miracles will be worked silently, underground, by Mother Nature.

Delirium

"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The word delirium is taken from the Latin root “delirare” which literally means to leave the furrow while plowing. So if one is able to break out of the figurative rut their life is following, it would be linguistically correct to say that person was going crazy, cracking up. Which I think might be a good thing, or at least not so much of a bad thing. Going crazy, I mean. Why?

Because delirium can be joyful too. I went to a wedding recently, and it was clear to me that the bride and groom were floating on a cloud of delirious love, buoyed up by the good wishes of the many friends and family in attendance.

(Funny story: when we saw the brother of the groom on the Monday afternoon after the wedding, he said he’d just returned from an afternoon of golf with his newly married brother. Some honeymoon! I’m not sure if the groom jumped out of the rut of his life on his wedding day, or jumped thankfully back into it 2 days later on the golf course with his brother.)

In order to recover some sort of normalcy following a delirium, say, that of working in the garden for the last time until Spring, you need to relax back into some semblance of normalcy. It’s raining today: make a vanilla vodka vicodin double tall latte smoothie, sit down, put your feet up, and watch the rain.

Watching the rain in the garden, I carefully consider my options. I can continue down the deeply furrowed rut of my life indefinitely. Or, once in a while, I can leap deliriously out of the ditch and scramble wildly across the field. Which is a crack up of an “accurate mind”, and which is merely joyful and therapeutic delirium?

And who cares?

Autumn: the Year, in its Prime Season

“… too soon
Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and
spendthrift breeze.
…
What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles! Can it assuage
One lover's breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More god-like in its period?

Oscar Wilde. The Garden of Eros, 1890

In her prime, Jean Brodie wasn’t sentimental about chrysanthemums. Specifically, she said, “Ah, chrysanthemums. Such serviceable flowers.” I’ve always loved them, probably since I observed the care my mother lavished on her mums. Where I grew up, they were often annuals, and not necessarily hardy. Had she ever cared what others thought of her, Mom would have prided herself on her ability to coax them to life after their long winter’s sleep, covered lovingly with oak tree leaf mulch this time every year. But she didn’t give a crap what other people thought, so instead, she stole the few moments of time she could spare her large and needy family to do minimal gardening. She might not have ever noticed that I paid attention to those things she loved, and that she passed along to me her love of gardening together with her secret about the mental health benefits reaped by the gardener every season.

So, maybe that’s why, of all my maternal horticultural heritage, I like mums the best. For many years, I ordered a dozen 1” starts every spring from King’s Mums. I’ve skipped the past two years, but I’m due to try some others, maybe when their annual catalog arrives in the next month or two. The mums in these pics are the survivors, their names long-since lost history, the impermanence of labels, and my lame ass garden journal note skills. There were many victims who failed to survive the scourges of time, the drought, et. al. I’ve had more time to devote to my garden than Mom dreamed of. She had to make every minute count, where I can mess around, tweaking little changes here and there and documenting them in pictures.

Like Miss Brodie, Mom in her prime would have recognized Jean's unsentimental compliment, and agreed that mums are serviceable flowers. That never stopped her (or me) from loving them.

Maybe that’s why, the melancholy second week of November, I remember Mom with the sharpest mental clarity and love. This is the time of year she departed, and the time of year I remember her in her prime.

Foot Care And Gypsies Made By the Blue Yak

That Blue Yak: A Video About Foot Care And Gypsies Made By Me

That Blue Yak

Legend of The Oak Leaf

“The tenacity of oak leaves gave rise to a folktale that explains why oak leaves are shaped the way they are. Legend has it that the devil once made a pact with a farmer. The devil stipulated that he could snatch the poor man’s soul that fall, as soon as the oak had lost all its leaves, which were then rounded with a smooth edge. The devil was beginning to look forward to October. However, November came and went, and by December, all the trees were bare except for the oak. Its leaves, withered and brown, held fast to their stalks. Spring arrived and, one after another, the withered leaves dropped off the tree. When the last of the leaves had fallen, the devil thought the farmer’s time had finally come. But when the devil appeared to collect his due, the farmer guided him very close to the tree and showed him that the tips of new leaves had long since started to appear. Upon seeing this, the devil flew into a terrible rage, venting his anger on the oak tree it with his claws. The leaves of the oak have had strangely lobed edges ever since.”
- From The Curious Gardener, by Jurgen Dahl, “Some Things About Oaks”

This theory, while not scientifically accurate (the devil has claws?) or botanically correct (if old leaves are torn, new ones will grow back torn?), carries within it a lesson about hope and faith and all sorts of dreams deferred, which is doubtless why I favor this theory over some dull tale about the life cycle of the oak tree, and also why I find it instructive when it comes to formulating a theory about why, say, tornadoes always strike trailer parks, or carnival clowns seem so closely related to serial murderers, or even why scary movies always come out at Halloween.

Constancy is rewarded over fiendish cleverness. Even after we all pack up the garden following the final garden party, decorated by Mother Nature in those bright and garish fall colors, even if we all doze fitfully through those lengthening winter nights, and we all stagger dimly through those short cold winter days: nature abides, seasons unwind, and leaves return.

Escape to the Meadow

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
- Ambrose Bierce

This Victorian print, as interpreted by me, an amateur critic with an attitude problem, tells a sad story. The scene pictured is – to me – an allegory, each object representing a particular characteristic and fraught with dark symbolism. Consider this picture from the point of view of a person immersed in the scene.

The pink flower in the middle foreground is a passion vine, and contrary to what I thought, the name wasn’t chosen to invoke passionate emotions. It refers instead, to the euphemism used to describe the crucifixion of Christ. The name derives from one of the many scary visions of St. Francis of Assisi (1182 – 1226). He saw this vine growing upon the cross, hence the name Passion flower. Named by missionaries to South America “Flor de las cinco llagas” (Flower of the Five Wounds), the parts of the vine are said to represent the five wounds of Christ on the cross. The 16th century Jesuits who named the flower thought the ten petals represented the ten faithful apostles (two didn’t make it to the last passion of Christ). The corona symbolizes the crown of thorns, the five stamens the five wounds etc. Pretty gory, but those Jesuits spent a lot of their free time converting heathens using “extraordinary means” (a more contemporary euphemism for “torture”), so pretty flowers heavy with meaning probably helped them sleep at night.

In this picture, I think pink passion flower vine beckoning anxiously overhead represents something, or someone, clinging and trying to hold the person back. Unseen, but growing louder behind this person, I imagine the snarling hounds of hell, breathing loudly and coming closer. The vine symbolize a need that cannot persuade, and seeks instead to impose control.

The person is stuck in the swamp, perhaps on their hands and knees. The swamp in the lower foreground represents worldly responsibilities weighing the person down, and the other inescapable demands of the world, assaulting the person’s feet of clay. He is mired in the muck of the everyday.

Then, the person gazes into the distant meadow - seen in the background. He struggles, stands up. No longer mired in the swamp or held back by the anxious vines, the person breaks free suddenly, and runs across the grass. There he is, tiny, wearing a purple shirt, softly playing a small flute, his back turned to the clinging vines and the sucking swamps.

When one is mired in a swamp and literally choked by overbearing vines, what more peaceful place to visualize than a miniature model of a quiet pasture, amid placid sheep?

Blessed Pomegranate Fruits

"It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."
- William Shakespeare, "Romeo & Juliet"

The Chinese revere the "three blessed fruits," (Fu-Shou-San-Tuo) as representative of The Three Greatest Blessings. The three fruits are the Hand-of-Buddha (Citris medica) which symbolizes happiness; the Peach (Amygdalus persica), symbolizing longevity; and the Pomegranate (Punica granatum) which symbolizes fecundity and a hopeful future.

I found this beautiful miniature pomegranate tree this weekend at the nursery I visited to buy sweet pea seeds. It's probably the dwarf "Nana", and it is destined to become bonsai in a dish garden.

The pomegranate is not native to China however. It is believed that it was brought there from Afghanistan during the Han dynasty (circa 126 BC). A ripe pomegranate, half-open and showing the ruby jeweled seeds became the Chinese symbol of numerous male (!) offspring rising to fame and glory and generally possessed of great filial virtue.

Shakespeare used the nightingale singing at night to prefigure that the lovers would remain together, but possibly only in death. I prefer to reflect on the Chinese symbolism of filial piety. I could say that this little pomegranate tree means I'm all set for being cared for in my dotage - at least a little bit.

And Now - for Something Completely Different

“But if, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven’t yet become… will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears?”
Muriel Barbery, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”

Seasonal change is in the air, and something about autumn makes me think of life changes. Sitting on the porch with my morning coffee, my eyes keep drifting from my book to the yard, momentarily empty of birds. Our regular summer residents have left, presumably to move farther south. The inhabitants from the north who winter here have yet to arrive. It feels like my imagination and I have the garden to ourselves.

Breathing in crisp morning air, I imagine that I have been kissed by a radioactive frog, and to my surprise, instead of turning him into a prince, the kiss confers certain super powers upon me. At this moment, I have the power to become the person I haven’t yet become…

Suppose I had the power to cure everyone of all intolerance - including even lactose intolerance? Suppose I could make even terrible porn movies have interesting and engaging plots? What if I could free the world from the chains of male pattern baldness, say, or eliminate luminescent golf pants and make horrible plaids work together? What if my superpowers include the ability to raise the minimum wage in a single bound, repair potholes with a cute wrinkle of my nose, or assure that every opera ever sung will include a fat lady singing the final aria?

My reverie is disturbed by the vocal whining of my darling cat, who has discovered the injustice of me sitting outside in the sun while she languishes behind the screen – abandoned and alone. What kind of superhero would I be if, despite all my special new powers, I neglected the spoiled brat on the other side of the screen?

And sure enough, after correcting this injustice, with me on one chair and the cat settled on to the other in the sunshine, the world seems to spin smoother on its axis. I make a solemn pledge to use my superpowers only for good – whatever my powers may turn out to be, and whatever the hell “good” is. While I fully intend to maintain my secret identity as a mild mannered housewife with a gardening blog, I recognize that with great power comes great responsibility. Whatever I have become, I resolve to turn my life - and my garden - into something completely different.

Gorilla (sic) Warfare

“A youth in apparel that glittered
Went to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin
Attired all in garb of old days;
He, scowling through the thickets,
And dagger poised quivering,
Rushed upon the youth.
"Sir," said this latter,
"I am enchanted, believe me,
To die, thus,
In this medieval fashion,
According to the best legends;
Ah, what joy!"
Then took he the wound, smiling,
And died, content.”
Stephen Crane

It’s been hot. Too hot to work outdoors. I’ve got bulbs to transplant dammit! Instead, I’ve been trapped inside, engaged in a life and death struggle with Yahoo, trying to figure out how to import an address book from another e-mail application. Combine me, non-intuitive technology, and hot dry weather, and my lack of patience becomes more conspicuous.

Age cannot wither, nor custom stale, my infinite impatience with technology. And yet. The sad truth is that, as rusty as my computer skills are, I am a geek genius compared to the other people in our volunteer group who may want to use this technology. Yesterday, I forced myself to slog through the jungle of unhelpful help screens, the dead ends, and unfamiliar jargon, and returned to base camp empty-handed and cranky.

If I complain too much about how Yahoo managed to turn my grumpy mood into blind rage, I worry that this post might be entered as evidence of my insanity at the coroner’s inquest – where they will try to figure out whether I jumped or was pushed. So, I’ll stop here and make another cup of coffee. Then, I’ll don my glittering apparel and return to the jungle to fight the Yahoo mail gorilla.

I Made Cheese!

There's a change in the weather
There's a change in the sea...
...So from now on there'll be a change in me.
My walk will be different, my talk and my name
Nothing about me is going to be the same.
I'm going to change my way of living
If that ain't enough
Then I'll change the way that I strut my stuff."
Billie Holiday, "There'll Be Some Changes Made"

The weather is changing, and I won't be able to work outside every day. This is the time of year when I try to find things to do inside, to change my way of living in the backyard.

I've been making my morning coffee iced coffee all summer. Today is the first day I made hot coffee. I also had to wear slippers or my feet would be cold: another change from my summer bare feet. So, in recognizing these signs of seasonal change, it's time for me to change myself from gardener to homemaker.

So, one of the things I've wanted to do is make cheese. I experimented with a simple recipe using buttermilk and raw milk. I added fresh chives to mask the sometimes rather bitter taste of raw milk.

It turned out ok, but clearly I need to work on it. I'm getting some rennet and citric acid, and I'll "strut my stuff" by experimenting with other kinds of cheese.

But for a first try, I was pretty proud of it. It was supposed to be mozzerella, but it turned out more like feta in texture.

It was good on last night's dinner salad. Maybe, if I can learn to make reliably good cheese, somebody WILL love me when I'm old and gray.

A Good Day

“The Garden exemplifies the massive, but often unrecognized dependence of human creative activity upon the co-operation of the natural world… (The garden also exemplifies) the degree to which, more subtly, experience of the natural environment depends upon human creative activity. When combined, these two themes deliver the idea of the garden as embodying a unity between human beings and the natural world, an intimate co-dependence.”
David E. Cooper, A Philosophy of Gardens.

Got my new planted bed situated and planted some nasturtiums, sweet peas and purple hyacinth bean yesterday. I also planted garlic and onions at perimeter areas just on the off-chance the ground squirrels or rats, or whoever, will be deterred from entering the veggie garden proper. The garlic are both organic, from SSE: ‘German Extra Hardy,’ and Shveliski ‘Chesnock Red’.

I also got my first planting of lettuce going for the Veggie garden. I did a six-pack each of the following (mostly heirloom) lettuce seed from Seed Savers Exchange:
‘Amish Deer Tongue,’ ‘Bronze Arrowhead,’ ‘Forellenschuss,’ ‘Red Velvet,’ ‘Susan’s Red Bib,’ ‘Yugoslavian Red’. I also started a six-pack each of the following cabbages: ‘Mammoth Red Rock’ and ‘Winningstadt.’ Broccoli” ‘De Cicco.’ ‘Purple Cape.’

I also got fresh, local, grass-fed chicken eggs from Angus Acres, a small homestead chicken farm in a suburb less than ten miles from my house. The names of the chickens are on the bottom line of the egg carton label.

A perfect fall day, with sweet air, warm sun, dirty fingernails, and much accomplished. This was one of those days in my backyard where I felt the unity and intimate co-dependence between my garden and my heart. A really good day.

Remember Me, but ah!

"When I am laid, am laid in earth,
May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate."
- Henry Purcell, “Dido’s Lament”, from “Dido and Aeneas”

Yeah, yeah, I know. The season of autumn has descended on the Northern Hemisphere. Stuff is dying all around me and change is in the air. So, I could post some melancholy seasonal whine about how gardens are just reminders that everything is temporary, and that everything ends. Some totally awesome seasonal buzz kill after the parched wild summer. But I won’t.

Instead, I meditate on the parable of seasonal change as Summer jilting Autumn, the way Aeneas jilted Queen Dido. She died alone, like Mother Nature in Autumn. But More particularly, I try to avoid her fate and enjoy what's now. And now, it's Autumn. I'm darn sure not going lament about Autumn's pathetic, lonely fate once Summer blows town.

So heed Dido's warning and remember Summer fondly, not mourn her passing. Meditate about spending less time observing the solemn passing of the seasons, and more enjoying the present. Winter may be moving in on Autumn, but I'm I'm paying attention. I am memorizing Autumn.

I’m more interested in the good stuff; in the golden hour of the day; in one final blaze; one red moment. This is the time of year to enjoy how Mother Nature ages gracefully. Done this way, growing old isn’t so bad. Nature has cloaked herself in the fiery splendor of autumn – even here in my sweltering desert, Summer bows out gracefully to Autumn.

Likewise, I meditate on the garden. Summer's youthful garden is cloaked in a million shades of green. Now, is is old and red and brown. Summer's departure eventually leaves the aging Gardener cloaked in the fiery colors of autumn. I'm trying to avoid Dido’s mistake, but not her lament. Don’t just forget my fate, but also remember me. The fortunate learn to enjoy getting old before they die.

Forgiveness

"Then weltering seas of filth
And ever-rippling dung: and plunged therein,
Whoso has wronged the stranger here on earth,
Or robbed his boylove of the promised pay,
Or swinged his mother, or profanely smitten
His father's cheek, or sworn an oath forsworn…"
Aristophanes, “The Frogs”

It’s come to my attention recently, that forgiveness isn’t a bad way to go, even if the above isn’t guaranteed, or even possible. I don’t have to practice turning the other cheek very often, because I’m generally such a sweet, upbeat and simply charming person. I’d prefer to make myself into a joke, rather than to face conflict and open hostility. It’s my way of avoiding uncomfortable mojo. It’s what makes me such a sucker for passive aggression – I’m easily wounded by the invisible bad vibe.

So, even though I preach forgiveness, I have promised myself to stop making excuses for the bad behavior of others. It’s all I can manage these days to forgive myself. One thing I know is there’s no way out of here alive. If the show ends when the curtain falls on my last performance, why not go out doing something that feels good to me. If I can be anything I want to be, why not be kind, tender, and forgiving? Then again, why not have some fun and be rude, disagreeable and generally unlikable?

My answer is that perhaps there is some great wheel turning at the heart of the universe, and we’ll all be back again and again, or at least until we get it right. Perhaps there’s some cosmic dice game and the odds are on the House. Maybe karma works.I'll always pay my boylove just in case.

I’m ducking an important issue here: whether there is such a thing as unforgivable behavior. Of course evil exists. We should speak out when our silence gives power to those who hurt us. And like any good parent correcting any misbehaving child, all grown ups should call other grownups on unacceptable behavior.

Good exists too.I say I’d rather generate a forgiving vibe than an angry one, and it seems to be my life’s work to live up to that.

I’ll be in the garden if anybody needs me.

Yes You Can

"Settling, white dew
does not discriminate,
each drop its home."
- Soin (1604 - 16820

I’m at the age where I can spout sturdy clichés like they were pearls of wisdom. Example: you can’t go home again.

A couple of weeks ago when I was back east. I drove through the neighborhoods where I grew up, and where my child was born. For so long, these neighborhoods were home to me. And yet I frequently got lost driving down so many memory lanes, either because I’ve changed or the places have changed. I couldn’t find home.

A few days later, back in California, I was sitting outside reading a book while my cat sprawled on the cool patio. I looked up and found – home. It was only in returning to the town (where I’ve now lived most of my life) that I found what I’d been looking for in those old neighborhoods where I grew up. I found that I had returned home.

Another cliché is the one aunts and uncles used to say when we were kids they only saw every few years: my how you’ve grown. There on the patio with my cat and my book, I found myself thinking that I’d grown a bit more since the last time I was home.

What I Did on My Vacation

Went to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Took the ski lift to the top of the mountain and checked out the view. Gnats were deadly, and I sweated so much my hearing aids shorted out. The good news was that, unlike ski season when the lift never slows down to load and unload, they stopped the chair so old fogies could sit down and get up without fear of being dragged to their untimely death.

Went to a pottery studio near the Shenandoah. Blue Ridge Pottery is just down the hill from Skyline Drive, on Goose Pond. More deadly gnats at the pottery studio, but I loved the pottery tree stump amid an unkempt garden.

The old Civil War Inn adjacent to the studio is undergoing yet another renovation to make it into yet another bed and breakfast where rich white people can visit between "antiquing" ventures. If I lived in that climate, this is what my yard would look like. We did a lot of eating and drinking and talking of politics, with predictable results: nobody changed anybody else's mind about anything.

Despite the gnats and other wildlife, we enjoyed seeing deer in the woods near our luxury condo. My brother tried to run them down, being a resident of Virginia where deer have overrun the suburbs, including his yard. Despite looking like Bambi and his doomed Mom - quite exotic to my Californian eye - deer apparently have no natural enemies in Virginia except serious gardeners.

Although I didn't make the day trip, the progeny went to Monticello and brought back a picture of Thomas Jefferson's garden. Not terribly impressive this time of year. Back home, I'm already late starting my lettuce and other cool season seeds. Planting an entirely new vegetable garden twice each year has become such a habit to me, it's hard to imagine living in a climate like Tom, where you can only plant once each year.

Kicked back and enjoyed nature. I liked the fauna, and the flora...

...and I should mention, I liked the beer. We toured a brewery, ate at several brew pubs and soaked up a great deal of the atmosphere along with the beer.

We went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I loved the tropical rain forest because it wasn't quite hot and humid enough walking along the harbor in the drizzle in Baltimore to make me homesick for the dry air of California. The dank furry thing amid the tree branches looked to me like a piece of old torn shag carpet that had been left out in the rain, although a docent insisted it was a sloth who had just become a father. She insisted that the mom and the new baby sloth were hiding somewhere nearby. More old carpet most likely.

The best part of my vacation? I sat on the porch one rainy morning and read a book.

Gardens for Victory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Habeas Pocus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grow, Cook, Eat, Repeat

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Free Flight Above

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

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

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

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

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

Rose Terry Cook, "Captive"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Piece of Rock is Full of Statues

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

An empty pond is full of sky.

An empty pond is full of life.

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

The golden sun skulks resentfully west.

Martha's Japanese Beetle Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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