Drawing in My Feet

"Faced with that truth which seems a lie, a man
should always close his lips as long as he can –
to tell it shames him, even though he’s blameless;
But here I can’t be still; and by the lines
of this my Comedy, reader, I swear –
and may my verse find favor for long years –
that through the dense and darkened air I saw
a figure swimming, rising up, enough
to bring amazement to the firmest heart,
like one returning from the waves where he
went down to loose an anchor snagged upon
a reef or something else hid in the sea,
who stretches upward and draws in his feet."
Dante, The Divine Comedy (Inf. XVI, 124-136)

I’m intrigued by “a truth which seems a lie”. It’s true that Spring is here, but it feels outside my door like late summer - when the moisture is so wrung out of the air that you get thirsty just smelling flowers. But I think Dante had something more mundane in mind. He was talking about deceitful people, con artists, defrauders, liars.

Having avoiding looking at the balance in my tax-sheltered annuities these past few months, I have no idea what the greed of others has cost me in terms of money. I’m pretty comfortable with my material goods inventory, so I don’t worry about losing my home, my health, or my life’s work. But others do, and that sucks.

Dante says he can’t be silent in the face of such lies. He then promptly swears on the very poem we’re reading that he saw what he saw. Sounds a bit like my financial adviser telling me late last autumn to look at the market as a long term investment, and not worry about short-term losses and gains. I’m now feeling like I’m stuck on a reef in a stormy sea, stretching up and drawing in my feet to avoid being lost in the deluge. Greedy sons of bitches, those financial people. And like Dante, it shames me that I believed them. Not only was I naive, I was greedy in wanting something for nothing.

The Return of the Swallows

“I keep my fingernails long
so they click when I play the piano
And I’m going to keep them that way
Until the swallows come back to Capistrano”
Joe Ely, Fingernails

Today is the feast of Saint Joseph, which swallows celebrate by returning to the Mission San Juan Capistrano, about 1.5 hours north of my house.

The swallows make nests of mud with the entrance at the bottom that look like tiny wasps nests. Wherever they’re permitted to stay, they tend to return annually, making yet more mud nests. The result can be a nuisance (as pictured above by this guy) so the legend is a bit more romantic than the reality.

One man’s romantic myth is another man’s filthy nuisance. I think Joe Ely’s poetry is like the swallow nests. Either you see it as a transcendental image that will stick in your head forever, or a lame nonsense rhyme that insults the very word poetry.

Palo Verde Tree

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. "
-- Francis Bacon

People who live in the North American southwest in sprawling Sonoran Desert know the yellow flowers of the Palo Verde (Fabaceae, Parkinsonia florida, (Cercidium floridum)) tree as harbinger of Spring in our region. We celebrate these yellow flowers the way the yellow forsythia flowers are welcomed as Spring heralds in the east. The trunks and branches of Palo Verde (green stick) trees are indeed green, although the trunk tends to mellow to a soft gray with age. Because the pinnate leaves of these species are so tiny, the green branches aid in photosynthesis. Palo Verde trees are drought deciduous, and can even drop smaller branches to survive. Their yellow flowers show off from March through May, attracting pollinators like beetles, flies and bees, thus inviting birds to forage and nest in its branches.

And it's not just useful to the critters. According to The Living Desert: “The Cahuilla Indians were known to harvest the seeds during the months of July to August. The seeds were dried and ground in mortars to produce a flour which could be used to make a mush or to make cakes. Palo Verde seeds were also a known food source for the Pima and Papago Indians of Arizona.“

Pictured here are the two Palo Verde (either Blue Palo Verde or Mexican Palo Verde (Parkinsonia aculeata) trees in the Water Conservation Garden last spring. The flowers are a uniform yellow.

As you can see from close-up blooms of the ‘Desert Museum’ hybrid at The Garden (pictured below), have some orange, making the overall color richer. The best thing about the Desert Museum however, is that unlike its cousins, it is thornless.

So, where did the thornless hybrid come from? It’s name tells us. According to Arid Zone Trees:
“In the late 1970's Mark Dimmitt with the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) began noticing Blue Palo Verdes that exhibited characteristics suggesting they were hybrids of other Palo Verde species. He collected and planted seeds from the assorted trees he had observed and began evaluating them. By 1981 he had identified a thornless seedling as clearly superior to the others collected. Careful evaluation of the genetic composition of this hybrid, named 'Desert Museum', revealed it to be a complex hybrid having genetic characteristics from Mexican, Blue and Foothill Palo Verde.”

I intended to plant my tree in my mostly sunny front yard, where the steep terrain would provide good drainage and allow the roots to spread out and find their own water. We recently chopped down the old dead tangerine tree, and knowing there’s a sprinkler head in the planter area, I figured this would be a good home for my Desert Museum specimen. Boy, was I wrong. The railroad ties apparently collect all the heavy clay, making the spot a muddy pit that would almost certainly drown the poor roots.

One site I found researching the matter, said they shouldn’t be too near a water source as they prefer to seek out their own supplies. So, I’ll obey nature and find another home for it.

Tripping Down the Old Psychopath

“Contemptible likewise is the woman who is constantly laughing out; for, as it was said by an author, 'If you see a woman who is always laughing, fond of gaming and jesting, always ruling to her neighbours, meddling with matters that are no concern of hers, plaguing her husband with constant complaints, leaguing herself with other women against him, playing the grand lady, accepting gifts from everybody, know that that woman is a whore without shame'.” The Perfumed Garden of the Shaykh Nefwazi, Translated by Sir Richard Burton [1886]CHAPTER 4, About Women Who Are To Be Held in Contempt

Now I’m as big a fan of miscegenation as the next liberated chick, but this bugs the crap out of me. I may sometimes play the grand lady, and may often be found laughing besides, but I’m no shameless whore. Ok sure, many is the time I’ve been ashamed, but I think my days of charging a dinner and a movie for a quick grope are behind me, something I’m sure we’re all relieved about.”

First, a minor digression from the path:

This Guy says Psyche “was the goddess of the soul, wife of Eros the god of love…Aphrodite commanded Eros to make Psyche fall in love with the most hideous of men, but the god himself fell in love with her and carried her away to his secret palace.”

Bitch Aphrodite – great looks sure, but low self-esteem. Threatened by the beauty of Psyche, she (Aphrodite) took out a hit on her (Psyche); sent Eros to rub her out. Psyche, she’s so hot. How hot is she? Well, let’s just say Eros fell in love at first sight, so she’s so hot she melted Love’wax wings so He fell her bigtime. Aphrodite, she bad.

You just have to check out this site “She contemplated suicide by drowning, but even the waves refused to take her. The only way to salvation was by passing APHRODITE's cruel and unusual tests. Forget sorting poppy seeds from lentils before daybreak or grabbing a cup of water from a mountain monster — the ultimate challenge was this: Go down to the Underworld and steal PERSEPHONE's beauty cream. “

Sorting poppy seeds from lentils is cause enough to despair. What's worse is trying to drown yourself (talking to you, all you wannabe Ophilias) and the freaking ocean rejects you Loser. Which in this case, was enough, I postulate, to make Psyche psycho. Being held in contempt like that would be enough to drive any woman nuts.

So, back to my story, it’s men’s attitudes like this that send me trudging off down that old psychopath. What really bugs me about this quote is that the dude – you know it’s written by a dude – lumps fun and games together with meddling and “plaguing” and “constant complaints”. Do these people have no sense of humor? Does not any husband sometimes want his old lady to cheer him up, even if it’s just with stories about trying to rule their neighbors to take their empty trash cans back up to their yards after trash day?

Enough of this gaming and jesting. It may be time for me depart from Shaykh Nefwazi Perfumed Garden and sit down to write My Book, working title: “Men Who Are To Be Held in (if not Contempt, then At Least with Haughty) Disdain". I like the idea of beginning with a list of contemptible traits of guys. Where do I start?

Aaaaarrrrghh!

“I like seasons.”
A tourist from Idaho visiting The Garden in March

I volunteer in a local public garden, spending one morning a week engaging the squirrels and rabbits in battles over doomed vegetables. When I greet visitors on such occasions, as a docent and representative of the Garden, I am polite, informative and a generally all-around nice person.

So, after complimenting me personally on the lovely warm sunny morning I’d arranged for her visit (ha ha), the recent visitor said she’s only in town for a few days visiting family, and then she and her spouse return to Idaho because, and I quote: I like seasons. In my capacity as a docent, I gritted my teeth and laughed at her original little joke as if I’d never heard it before, refrained from whacking her with my pitchfork, and returned to turning the compost pile - perhaps with a bit more vigor than before our brief conversation.

But here’s what I was thinking.

Here’s the thing, you yokel. As a gardener, I actually do notice seasonal change in my climate. Your moronic observation is not only wrong, it assumes we’re all Philistines who take the easy way out and enjoy our perfect Eden in our perfect and unchanging climate, while you and your hardy brethren build character and muscles “enjoying” your fancy-schmancy real seasons up there in Idaho.

We have seasons, sister. The thing is, our seasons might be a bit too subtle for you. Our winter doesn’t reach through the storm windows and shake you by the neck this time of year. We don’t carry umbrellas nine months a year; we don’t shovel snow or rake leaves; or undertake other endless seasonal chores to magically improve our bodies and minds struggling through changing seasons.

People like you who expect the seasons to smack them in the face with a different collection of sights, sounds, smells every few months might not notice our seasons. Our autumn doesn’t announce itself by causing the entire landscape to turn gaudy shades of red and yellow before curling up, turning brown, and falling off the trees and bushes. Our spring doesn’t knock us over with a riot of color as everything awakens from hibernation and blooms in the same ten minutes, making sales of benedril spike. Our summer isn’t damp and moldy with 95% humidity, when your sweat makes you stick to your sheets as you toss and turn through the night, swatting mosquitoes you hope don’t infect you with exotic diseases. And yes, we don’t shovel snow or slide into each other like bumper cars on ice every winter.

In winter here, many of the Southern Hemisphere Mediterranean climate natives - like grevallia (pictured here) and gum trees - bloom at the same time their relatives are blooming in the Australian summer. As a tourist from Idaho, you probably didn’t notice that spring is coming. It’s not here yet, but the orange blossoms on the orange tree in my front yard will knock you out if you approach closer than about ten steps. The air is warmer, not as dry as later in the summer, and filled with mysterious promise and new scents as winter departs and spring approaches. In autumn, the summer population of birds departs and we hear the flocks of wild parrots yammering overhead as they move farther south.

In winter we have to wear sweaters some mornings, and we greet the rain with joy and abandon. Unlike the summer rain of my childhood in a “real” climate, when we put on our bathing suits and cavorted in the street, rain here is cold and discourages fun. When my daughter was young, we’d put on our boots and raincoats in the first rain, and walk to the top of a nearby street and make little rafts out of eucalyptus leaves and twigs and sail them down the gutter. Then we’d come home and drink hot chocolate – celebrating the seasonal change that you might have missed because you were too busy disparaging our climate simply because it’s a bit different from yours.

There. That feels better.

In Defense of OCD

“And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath,
And juniper and thistle, sprinkled o'er,
Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour
A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life…”
- William Wordsworth, from Left Upon a Seat in a Yew Tree...

There is a fine line between passion and obsession – like the difference between a lover and a stalker. So when does a passion for gardening cross over into an obsession? For me, it crosses the line when I feel this overpowering compulsion to use a chain saw.

It was warm the other day, high 70s with the clear bright moist breeze of winter. I intended to cut down this small failed Allepo pine in the front yard. Six hours later, unable to start the chainsaw, I’d trimmed some old junipers adjacent to the driveway. The junipers were being engulfed in slow motion by that noxious red apple ground cover, serving as an emblem of my own unfruitful life, slowly being engulfed by the uninspiring quotidian, and the entropic forces of age.

I was using a Felco with a missing spring, and the honking yard-long green heavy-duty clippers that must weigh in at about 200 lbs. I stopped often, sat often, brushed off sleeping spiders most often of all. But here’s the fun part. Tech Support Guy has installed an infrared sensing system across the driveway that beeps the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth in both our living room and Mother’s room. It’s a good way to notice the postman or meter-reader, or unannounced guest.

Funny story. Turns out the junipers being cleaned up surround the beeping sensor. You can see the short green post at the foot of the juniper. Turns out the metal clippers I lugged back and forth and around and around set off the sensor and was beeping the crap out of the system to the collective annoyance of Tech Support Guy, Mother, Sandy-the-Good-Boy, and miscellaneous paranoid and/or fearless cats. What’s worse, is that this isn’t the first time I’ve managed to trigger numerous alarums (!) which, unconsciously (!) remind my roommates that while they’re sittin’ on their collective sedentary backsides that somebody else is up and about.

My ocd led me to a task different from that which I’d first planned. That dead pine tree is still leaning there at the foot of the driveway, mutely reminding me of my gardening faults and failures every time I journey out or back home. But I don’t morbidly trouble over all the unfinished tasks, even when I don’t accomplish what I started out to do. I have cleared the underbrush from the junipers and they look happier than they’ve been in years. And, I’ll get to that dead pine tree sooner or later. Either me, or the ubiquitous red apple…

Shopping Mall Gardening

“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more important: He is making a vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration. And his sense of humanity’s dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful.” Wallace Berry, essay “Think Little” from collection “A Continuous Harmony”

One of Berry’s biggest complaints is how Americans expect “abundance without thrift”. One of his gardening commandments is to put back more than you take. Gardeners eventually learn that secret ecological rule. If you just put more ammonium sulfate on the flowers each Spring, your yard eventually may take on the Disneyland appearance of fakeness with swaths of colors God never intended, banks of bright disposable flowers. And they’ll last long enough for you to take a picture to post on your blog, demonstrating your gardening expertise. Good on you.

But this isn’t seasonal gardening so much as it’s what I call Shopping Mall Gardening: replacing hundreds of 4” plants at least four times a year on those tiny patches between the parking lot and the stores. Amid post-Xmas white sales last month, the mall gardeners were tossing out the bloomed-out poinsettias for begonias who always look embarrassed to be following the bright red pointsettias with their meager faded reddish and white flowers. Soon, when the begonias have done their gelatinous best, they’ll be rewarded by being tossed into a dumpster, and replaced with geraniums in shades of Pepto-pink, just in time for the Spring Sales.

The hundreds of 4” plastic pots the geraniums came in will be tossed on top of the corpses of the begonias, as will, presumably, the empty plastic bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizers. Instead of being returned to replenish the soil, I imagine that the begonia garbage will be barged to Indonesia along with mountains plastic drink containers and dead computers and cell phones with their poison and radioactive parts.

I am far from a careful expert farmer, nurturing the soil generation after generation. But I am a novice composter – putting kitchen waste and shredded junk mail in a small tumbler, and forking it into bottomless plastic garbage cans when it’s halfway ripe. A Master Composter would point out that my compost often smells like rotting garbage, and we all know that’s not right. But compost forgives all sins, eventually turning into my homemade version of “black gold” shot through with shiney short ribbons of non-degradable plastic windows that are all that’s left of the junk mail envelopes.

My garden doesn’t care about that, or about the frequent volunteer tomato and pepper seeds that I sow along with lovely wormy compost. I don’t waste, and I don’t consume mass-produced “color-packs” of short-lived flowers, or potted mums that have been forced within an inch of their life to bloom profusely and to collapse and die in exhaustion. A professional horticulturist I know once told me that Miracle Grow stuff, apart from poisoning the soil with salt, acts like, and I quote, crack for plants. That’s a temptation I – and my garden – can resist.

Rainy Day Thoughts

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind
As if my Brain had split--
I tried to match it--Seam by Seam--
But could not make them fit.

“The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before--
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls--upon a Floor.”

Emily Dickinson, The Lost Thought

I’ve heard of balls to the wall, but I’ve never heard of anybody feeling like balls upon a floor. Well, maybe close – I sometimes feel more like those loose balls of dust that gather themselves into corners neglected by the mop – almost, but not quite, coherently ball-like. Would balloid describe that in-between state? Is that what Emily meant?

It’s rained heavily the past few days. The other night, when warning about the coming storm, the weather dude explained we’d have over 8 inches of rain so far (for the year that begins 7/1/08, but wherein the rain doesn’t fall until January), and that the average by this date is only six inches. He reminds us, as we sit before a toasty fire, we’re still in a drought.

If there was a webcam in my yard, it would be obscured by the green shade-cloth that has come unhooked and is flapping in the strong gusty wind. It’s also cold outside – in the 50F range. I know, that’s not something most people would consider cold, but to those of us who have acclimated to So Cal, it’s winter if it’s necessary to actually wear a coat when you go outside.

Days like these are good days to get lost in thought - as opposed to lost from thought.

Mood Swing Threat Level Scale

"In winter, I’m trying to get this Earth Mother vibe going, trying to find my way back to The Garden. Instead of fearing the oncoming darkness of age, I’m trying to go with the flow and wiggle out of some of those anger straitjackets, Try and stop being so pissed, for Crissakes! Embrace your mortality. Here too short and gone too long. So what?"
The Gardener

Here is it:
Red: ThelmaAndLouise Manuver, aka holding hands and jumping off a cliff
Orange: Hair on Fire
Yellow: Pants on Fire
Green: Get out the lawn chairs and watch the pretty lights hurling through the winter night sky.
Blue: Say ‘goodnight to Mr. Pillow…’

If that was the Threat Level Scale for Mood Swings, that’d be mine. And yes, I know. it’s not calibrated correctly. One week ago today, I went off the scale into threat level "Indigo".

Here's what happened. I thought it was today’s date. Since turning the page to February, I’d read the calendar wrong This day last week, I dragged Tech Support Guy up to Pasadena to the Huntington Gardens/Library for a lecture on the language of flowers. K skipped teaching his class so he and J could join us. Turns out, the lecture was next week, i.e. today. Worse: turns out we came on the first Thursday which is free day, and the place was mobbed. Did I mention it rained a lot? A Crap Trifecta.

So, we drove 2.5 hours to get there, grabbed a coffee and a bag of potato chips out of the pouring rain at the courtyard snack cart, and then drove back home, timing it just right to hit rush hour – in the rainstorm. In case you don’t know, rain is to people in Southern Cal, like ice is to Washington DC. It either terrifies drivers into slowing down to single digits on the freeway, or it makes drivers impatient with such slowpokes, causing them to drive too fast. The picture is heading south on Rt 15 between Riverside and San Diego, about 4 pm. Most of the traffic is heading north. I was peeking above the windshield trying to figure out what that wet stuff was that was coming down from the sky. The darker it got, the more drivers we encountered who were as befuddled as I.

So that happened.

Then later, we went to the home brew store and bought a bunch of fresh whole grains. I picked mostly hard winter white and chocolate malt. Then, I saw some lovely mysterious grains: long-rice shaped pale green rye, Dingman’s Special Red; and Vienna Blend - a lovely golden. The aromas alone from the grinding was a delight to the senses.

I use the small-quantity exotic grains to make pungent starters and levains. For example, I use it to add rustic color and crumb to dark spicy Eastern European loaves. Since I buy types and quantities that no sane home brewer would ever conceive of, the clerk (a twentysomething of non-specific gender with lots of tats) was confounded by my choices. Instead of providing reassurance by explaining I bake bread, I smiled, cocked my old gray head, and explained that I brew beer in nano-craft quantities. Wow, I just blew your mind, you young wipersnapper!


So, that happened later, and that made the calendar error ok. Maybe I am hitting the breaks better these days. Note to self, why do we keep using metaphors filled with suicidal precipices, small cars out of control, and no metaphorical driver at the wheel? Then again, who cares? At least I’ve got better airbags these days.

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.

The Tree of Lights

“She carried a basket
full of flames, but whether fire or flowers
with crimson petals shading toward a central gold,
was hard to say—though certainly, it burned,
and the light within it had nowhere else
to go, and so fed on itself, intensified its red
and burning glow, the only color in the scene.”
Eleanor Wilner , The Girl with Bees in Her Hair

A long time ago, Annie Dillard (In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I think) wrote an essay about a person, blind from birth, whose sight was restored when they were an adult. The problem was, their brain didn’t know how to interpret what their eyes were seeing. Upon seeing a tree, back-lit from a low sun, in the brilliant colors of autumn, the newly sighted person called it a tree of lights.

Wouldn’t it be fun to see something in your garden so new and fresh that your brain didn’t know what to make of it? I wouldn’t want to go blind first, but I would like to be able to see things with new eyes. Especially in this black & white month when there’s nothing much happening outside.

Sanity and Handbrake Turning Points

"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!"
Shakespeare, King Lear

We saw Laurence Olivier's King Lear last night. Simply the best performance ever. Thanks, Netflix. But, how to describe the play?

Permit me to digress. According to Wikipedia: “When Lisa and Homer discuss the language to use in his first review Homer attempts to augment nouns with 'groin-grabbingly'. Lisa offers the word 'transcendent' to which Homer replies, 'What about groin-grabbingly transcendent?'”

Sir Laurence's portrayal of a powerful king losing his mind, of navigating dysfunctional family relations and betrayal is best described using Homer's timeless phrase. And to those who say The Simpson's is low-brow, I say 'Good day sir!'

Which got me thinking about other experiences where the term is apt. Upon serious consideration, between loads of wash yesterday, I sat outside, warmed by the late winter sunshine, cleaning herbs for soup. I came up with this idea.

That expression also perfectly describes certain instances in one's life where great change is afoot. Such turns along the Road of Life are typically approached way too fast, making it feel like one is a passenger in a sports car careening down a steep mountain road, driven by a suicidal madman, and pursued by screaming daemons of age.

At such times, we struggle to retain compos mentis while navigating handbrake turns: dangerous, dramatic and, life-changing. Once such turns are in the rear-view mirror and the death-defying theatrics are over, the moments are recalled as “groin-grabbingly transcendent”. Surviving handbreak turns provide us with moments of such clarity, albeit tinged with a kind of life-flashing-before-your-eyes panic, that ordinary life becomes once more relatively peaceful and bearable.

At such times, I think it helps to think of what King Lear said. I would like not to become mad. Handbreak turns are sometimes required to keep on the right road, and I think they can sometimes help us to stay sane and temperate.

Lucky Seven and Cleaning House

“’Cleanliness is next to godliness’ was one slogan to which it was difficult to subscribe. If by the last quarter of the twentieth century, godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.” Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

Our cable went dark midway through the Inauguration yesterday, but at least I got to hear Aretha. She’s still got it. I sorta missed seeing the door hitting Dubya on his way out, but at least he’s gone. Whew!

So, because the only other alternative to TV was to talk to each other, Tech Support Guy and I watched Disney’s anniversary edition CD of Snow White last night. There are lots of features besides the movie. There’s an interactive game where you see the seven guys in silhouette as they return from work and march single file across a log bridge. In the game, you have to name the Dwarves in order. Sure, Doc is first and Dopey is last, but who’s in the middle? Let’s just say I nailed it. (Mom would be so proud!)

Meanwhile, until the cable guy can fix the box, our living room is littered with books from the bookcase we had to move to get behind the TV. And talk about dust! Not a pretty picture, albeit a mute testimony to my housekeeping skills; or more precisely, a testimony to the lack of exercise of my housekeeping skills. Because the cable box is always warm, the cat likes to sleep on top of it. There was cat hair embedded in dust, and even a desiccated hairball. You’ll understand why I didn’t want to accompany this post with pictures.

The seven dwarves aren’t the only thing that comes in sevens (isomers of heptane come to mind). The cable guy came while I was writing the above, and installed a new cable box which promptly registered 11:07 AM. Coincidence? Luckily, I now have a brand new cat warming machine on top of my TV, and a shiny new remote to learn how to use. Even better, the first thing I saw on headline news when the TV woke up was Michelle Obama’s white gown for the Inaugural Ball last night. This was probably the most important piece of news I was deprived of yesterday.

Now, it’s back to dusting and replacing the books on the bookcase in an effort to be more godly. At least I have CNN to keep me company.

Encounter on The Road of Life

"One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it." Albert Camus

Tech Support Guy and I were out in redneck country the other evening, on our weekly trek to get fresh eggs from a lady who raises chickens in her suburban back yard. Tech Support Guy was driving, and I was riding shotgun. While we were stopped at a red light, a red pickup truck pulled up in the lane to our left. From my seat, looking out the driver’s side window, all I could see was a ginormous right front tire: large, bumpy, and - because the truck was jacked up so high - an obscene amount of muddy undercarriage, looking a little like dirty underpants glimpsed beneath a bright red dress.

Flashback: Years ago, when out with our then teenage daughter, we parked at a restaurant in Pasadena. The same type of vehicle parked next to us: a pickup truck painted in a bright primary color, oversize tires, heavy-duty suspension and whatnot, and raised so high off the ground that you would risk a nosebleed getting into the cab. As we passed this monstrosity on our way to the restaurant, the driver climbed down. Our daughter said, as we passed him, sort of under her breath, but actually loud enough for him to hear, “Dude! Sorry about your penis.”

Since that day, it has been a sort of family sign language/shorthand, upon encountering obvious manifestations of monumental overcompensation, to gesture with thumb and forefinger spaced an inch apart and to say “TLP” which stands, of course, for tiny little boy parts.

Back to our red-light. Tech Support Guy glanced over at the pickup truck, turned slowly to me and gave the TLP sign.

Me: “I’d love you so much more if only you were more of a real man. Like TLP there.”

TSG’s reply was interrupted as the light turned green, and TLP gunned his truck through the intersection and up the hill, probably consuming a half gallon of gas. Nobody saw that coming.

TSG: (choking on TLP’s exhaust and easing our politically correct Prius through the intersection) “Yeah, baby, I hear you. And if only you wore your clothes two sizes too small, dyed your hair with Clorox, and chewed sugarless bubblegum, we’d both be much more satisfied with life in general.”

Me: (Hopeless, wordless, shoulder shrug, conveying my world-weary acceptance of the crushingly dull lives our vehicle bespeaks, as well as the failure of so many of my own dreams and ambitions, like never learning how to crush a beer can on my forehead.)

TSG: “But, we each play the hand we draw, you know?”

Me: “Boy, howdy.”

Memoirs of a Docent

"We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing."
Henry Kissinger
Winner of the coveted "World's Most Ironic Come Back to Bite your Ass 2009 Award", in great part because he said it years ago, and I just rediscovered it.

I’ve been a docent at a Southern California Water Smart Garden since I retired about 5 years ago. In my professional life, I was an attorney writing and negotiating business contracts to buy and sell professional services and subcontracts. Managed to get out before my ethics were compromised, that is, before work began to feel like a Mission Impossible scene where the hero escapes the last closing door by sliding beneath it like a slider heading into home plate. Despite the lack of professional respect or commensurate pay, I actually liked what I was doing, and believed I was doing good. Now that retirement has overtaken who I was then, I have shed that mask like a retiring superhero who simply becomes his once secret identity.

The up side of getting no respect was that, never being suicidally inclined, I didn’t define my identity by what I did. I always peed sitting down, but that didn’t threaten my grip on my own value. Once I retired, I had to become acquainted with the person beneath that conservative dress suit. Get back into my own skin and my old t shirts.

I gave some thought to what I’d do to keep busy, and in how I valued such activities. I decided to get out of the lawyer ‘business’ and into the gardening ‘pleasure’.

To keep my mind from slowing down, I sought something to keep my body from freezing up and becoming brittle. Gardening, when done right, can be a sort of purification ritual, an improvisational tai chi and moving meditation, and a simple stretching and slow moving in all physical gardening actions. I may have only successfully grown cabbage once, but there are other measures of success in my current career.

I haven’t had to stretch my brain to learn new lessons since I was trying with mixed results to memorize the 8 times table a while back. My experiences as a docent have been in realm where I have never been before. I have some residual interpersonal skills and expertise in kissing management ass that served me well those first touchy months.

People I worked with for most of my professional career are strangers to me now. But they knew I was a smart-ass, but tempered by being on the losing/weak/defensive side in contractual transactions. I once knew how to smear Vaseline on the lens of my actual thoughts to make them presentable to mixed company. With other docents, I have had to learn a whole new set of interpersonal skills. Trouble is, as my Daddy used to say, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. I’ve got to remind these new friends what a cynic I am. Must work on my profanity, dammit!


This is not to say that I’m surrounded by boors and morons. This is more like and advance apology. Should I offend even those of my fellow-docents who I’m slightly fonder of than I am of poison ivy, I offer these, the “least of my brethren” my sincere apology. I may occasionally remember my experiences with docents in this blog, and if that offends, then I'm sorry you can't quit your moralizing, and doubly sorry you're a hypocrite, and that you identified something I said with your own character. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I couldn’t be sorrier. Seriously.

In addition to my gardening activities, I now hereby decree that this blog will be about my growth in every respect, notes of lessons I’ve learned, skills I’ve mastered, and my attempts to chronicle lessons lavishly failed. I’m the center of this tiny universe and make no apologies for speaking my biases here. Notwithstanding the foregoing however, to the best of my knowledge, no actual persons or events was/will ever be discussed here. Should anybody in real life disagree with that, I hereby stipulate that my autobiography often misquotes me. Immoral as hell.

Caring, Hoping, and Cease Fires

"He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'"
Lewis Carroll, A Strange Wild Song

The term “caregiver” has been on my mind lately. When does love fade from complex devotion into simple need? Don’t think of the myriad awful interminable little assaults to caregivers. Don’t think of the burdensome begrudged undignified duties involved in caring. I’ve been thinking of what the lover gives to the loved one. Can the loved one tell the difference between love and need? How do we need care and give care except through love?

Today, I’m wondering why can I devote lavish care to cultivating my garden (in the way Voltaire spoke of Candide, in my blog, and in my yard) while I resent demands to care for the people I live with? One could argue it means I care for the garden more than the people. I protest it’s not that simple. I think it’s a more complicated mixture of resentment at having to provide certain chores, putting up with the passive aggression and ingratitude, my growing desire to stop pretending to play nice, and needing care desperately myself.

I do know however, that I’m finding it harder and harder to muster the resources for caring. My body aches with new and strange pains, and they come more frequently and go more slowly. My spirit is exhausted by trying to steal moments alone to meditate and try to find my way back to the neighborhood of good moods. To good days and pain-free nights. To be myself again.

I think there is a cycle, or perhaps spiral, playing itself out. Good days and bad days. Honest attempts and resentful failures to connect. I’m less able to extend the good days; less able to hurry past the bad days. Our lives are spinning past, and daily we are reminded what we lose despite our best efforts to stay limber, inventive, inquisitive, interested, alive and together.

On good days I replenish reservoir of love for coming droughts, remember the promises we made each other, and do the simple math: there’s more good than bad. Way more. We’re not going anywhere, and we’ve managed to keep each other entertained pretty well over the years. It’s been a blast.

On bad days, I see old age as an unavoidable descent into indignity and dependence. Those days, I just try to remember it’s not a defeat to stop shooting first, no matter who started it. It’s the way we care for the ones we love. It’s also, incidentally, how we all care for each other. So stop shooting.

Make haste slowly

"We are ordered to hurry
and to take our time.
Let the arrow with a snail on it
make this clear.
The snail is slow
and the arrow swift."
Andreas Alciat, “Liber Emblemata”, Emblem 53 “Ripening”

My resolution for 2009 is to learn to make haste slowly. I’m going to be the snail, balancing precariously on top of the arrow sailing above the mountains.

Or, is that a pie balanced on the flying arrow? In which case this emblem could mean to always send chicken pot pie via airmail, just like your mamma advised you. Either way, I’m cool.

Interview with a Terrible Gardener

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
- William Wordsworth

At what level of garden kitsch would you draw the line?
Just before I got a bunch of old tires from a junkyard; painted them white; lined both sides of the driveway with said recumbent tires, and planted strawberries in each wheel well.

How many times do you re-dial a number when you get a busy signal?
Once, each time.

What garden plant or decoration do you consider the most unfortunately and sadly overused?
Ceramic fairies crouching beneath cement toadstools.

What’s the punch line to the funniest joke you know?
It’s elephants all the way down, my friend.

What is the worst invasive pest you can imagine threatening your garden?
The dog that craps on my garden path. It’s not my imagination that makes me think I’ve stepped in a pile of shit. It’s quite real. As for imaginary pests, I suppose the most awful would have to be the ghost of the world’s worst Elvis Presley impersonator (the old, fat Elvis), haunting my garden and singing Midnight Train to Georgia.

If you ran for public office, what would your campaign poster slogan be?
Vote for me. What’s the worst that could happen?

How do you see yourself as a gardener?
By looking into a mirror.

What’s your ten-year garden plan?
For me to survive ten years, and keep on gardening the whole time.

Joyous Winter Solstice

We finde it common (but not comely thou)
That, when a good Endeavour is begot,
Unless, at very first, it equall grow
With our Expectance, we regard it not.

Nor Wit, nor Patience, have we to conceive,
That ev’ry thing, which by Man be wrought,
Proportionable Time, and Means must have;
Before it can be to Perfection, brought.

Yet, ev’ry day, in things of ev’ry kinde,
Experience has informed us, herein;
And, that in many things, a change we finde,
Which at first, would scarce believ’d have bin,

For, though a Gosling will not prove a Swan,
Unruly Colts become well-tamed Steeds.
A Silly Childe growes up a Mighty-Man,
And, Lofty Trees doe Spring from Little Seeds.

Learne, therefore hence, that, nothing you despise,
Because it may, at first, imperfect seeme:
And, know, how all things (in some sort) to prise,
Although, you give them not the best esteeme.

From hence, moreover, learne not to despaire,
When you have just occasion, to pursue
A toylesome worke, or any great affaire:
Since, all things, at the first, from nothing, grew.

And, I myself will, also, learne, from hence,
(Of all my Paines, though little fruits I see)
Nor to repine, nor to receive Offence:
But, rather joy in what befalleth mee,
For, though my Hopes Appear but meanely growne,
They will be Great, when some shall think them none.

Emblem 46 from: George Wither: A collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, Quickened witheh metricall illustrations, both Morall and divine: And Disposed into lotteries, that instruction, and good counsell, may bee furthered by an honest and pleasant recreation.

Slang or Secret Code?

“He that likes to plant and set
Makes after-ages in his debt.”

This post has almost nothing to do with gardens. Apparently, as the season outside my door becomes cold and wet and precludes me from working in the yard, the spirals of my always fragile grasp on reality start to wobble into paranoia. Accordingly, this post is about my latest conspiracy theory, involving the word verification choices when you leave a comment in Blogger.

Is it just me, or does the word-verification text seem to be veering closer and closer to selecting real words? It seems to be evolving organically. I’m wondering if the server where all our blog posts live is developing conscious intelligence. (I hesitate to call it “artificial intelligence” because I often claim that word to describe my own pretentious attempts as scholarly blogging.)

So, back to the conspiracy, I’m sure Blogger retains the capability to block certain words, e.g. profanity, from showing up in the verification. If so, then they should tighten their algorithms up to also block words like this wordoid from a few days ago: mossesse.

Think of playing the game balderdash – think of the word verification letters as spelling real but obscure words. Take “mossesse”. It could mean a hip hop gansta who raps in Latin, “esse” being the Latin root of the verb “to be”... On the other hand, it could be a proper noun, let’s say, the Greek God of motivational speaking. Or the name of the guy in this emblem, planting a tree for the ages. You can call him Mo.

Another theory: what if the letters spelled out hip new slang and you’re the only one not in on the joke? Know what a “kittenhead” is? Or what a prostitute means when she refers to a John as a thirty-three? Well then. Check out Caleb Crain’s article “Pixies, Sheilas, Dirtbags and Cougar Bait: Modern Slang”(This article appeared in the December 29, 2008 edition of The Nation)

Now, while you might be an obsolete old fogey when it comes to hip slang, there’s nothing to panic about wrt/word verification. You don’t have to put on your aluminum foil cap just yet. But please humor me and keep an eye out for a word verification that says “iniatelaunchsequence.”

See, this is what happens when I have to play inside out of the sun. Instead of planting for the after-ages, this is the time of year that I delight in finding monsters under beds and ghosts in the closets, and learning fun facts like garbage-man-speak for maggots is “disco rice”. And now you and every other Joe Sixpack knows too. Try to get that picture out of your head!