Life’s Daily Prospect

"Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me--her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.”

"These given, what more need I desire
To stir, to soothe, or elevate?
What nobler marvels than the mind
May in life's daily prospect find,
May find or there create?

To the stone-table in my garden,
Loved haunt of many a summer hour…”

John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale

After a long day working in the back yard, I sometimes sit with a glass of wine and a garden journal, trying to remember and note what is planted where. It’s a practice I often used to skip – trying instead to wring out the last daylight out doing whatever needs doing during this busy season before twilight chases me indoors.

In recent years, I find the stopping and sitting to be increasingly more important than the busy doing of gardening chores. My knees are worn out, and my sprained ankle continues to remind me it’s not quite ready to get back out into the game. Sitting on the bench, I find these aches and pains recede as I learn to observe and enjoy life’s daily prospect from my stone table.

The trick is for me to learn how to look at the garden and see beauty, to watch the bees, and listen to the wind. If I sit still, I can hear the water splashing into the pond nearby, the birds in the canyon nearby, and to hear somewhere in the distance an unseen dog barking and children shouting in sheer joy. It’s not easy for me to sit and appreciate what’s here now instead of seeing what needs doing tomorrow, or next week, or next year. But learning to enjoy mother earth’s humble mirth and tears is a skill worth mastering.

Roadside Attractions

"The works of a person that builds,
begin immediately to decay;
while those of him who plants
begin directly to improve."
William Shenstone, ‘Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening’ (1764)

Speaking of the glories man builds, driving through the optimistically named Inland Empire the other day, we encountered a billboard that proudly advertised “the Largest AM/PM in the World!” at an upcoming rest stop. Proving what, exactly? Why, the particularly American phenomenon that pride in a particular thing doesn’t necessarily signify the intrinsic worth of said thing. Although in fairness, the restrooms were sparkling clean, if somewhat overdosed in a room freshener that smelled like a cross between unmade Jell-O and the lobby of an overpopulated convalescent home.

The Japanese lady is admiring the water lilies from the bridge. You take your inspiration where it comes, driving through Southern California where the process of growth and decay seems to be speeded up. It’s not like the good old days.

The AM/PM billboard recalled a long-ago road trip from Salt Lake City, Utah to Washington DC, through the barren Midwest mega-farms. Roadside attractions were manufactured by the locals, we reckoned, in an effort to lure drivers into spending a few bucks on coffee, gas, or admission to contrived attractions - like a “zoo” for two retired circus elephants and an anorexic coyote. Across the corn fields of Kansas, we kept seeing signs advertising roadside attractions like “the world’s largest prairie dog” and Daniel Boon’s burial place. We saw so many of the latter, that we became convinced that poor Daniel was disinterred and moved regularly to give small town truck stops a point of interest sufficient to induce travelers to stop. For us, it simply made us put the pedal to the metal in an effort to outrun Daniel’s restless ghost. The World’s Largest Prairie Dog turned out to be a crude concrete statue standing approximately two stories tall, painted in that brownish-pink color that paint stores produce by mixing all the leftover paint together in one barrel. Sadly, as with most works of men, the World's Largest Prairie Dog will never last. We never did find out where Daniel rested finally in peace, and that still disturbs my dreams.

The other night, we went out to dinner at a recently opened chi-chi restaurant decorated in a style that reminds me of nothing so much as the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Gleaming faintly threatening brushed stainless steel appliances in the restroom, gauzy curtains with gleaming gossamer threads separating booths, curly metal and ceramic low voltage light fixtures that look like a nightmare that even Salvador Dali would wake screaming from. The martinis were good, but the entertainment was priceless: it was prom night at the two local high schools located equidistant from the restaurant, across the country club golf course in one direction, and the shopping mall in the other. These are upscale schools, the kind where the parents buy their daughters convertible Mini-coopers or PT Cruisers for their sixteenth birthday, and where big hair has never gone out of style. The dress code this year was sequined gowns and ill-fitting rented tuxes.

We observed a table of pampered, overdressed girls with professional makeup suitable for an Academy Award ceremony; another table of cheer- leaders, each matched perfectly with a color-coded jock; and notably, a party of two dignified young men unaccompanied by young ladies – further evidence that the anti-gay marriage vote in California was an aberration that will ultimately be undone.

So of course, the minute a swarm of young ladies headed to the restroom, I couldn’t resist. The girl talk in the restrooms was deeply superficial: Do my bra straps show? Your manicure is gorgeous and I love the way the green tip color matches your sequins! Do you believe what his mother said about her own prehistoric prom when his father was taking our pictures? Such self-conscious beauty. As the Japanese lady admires the flowers, she is unaware of the giant alligator on the rock behind her. Danger lurks everywhere.

Meanwhile, back in the back yard, I am at that stage when I wait for the garden to blossom into its full potential – beseeching the seeds to germinate, reminding the hop vines to twine counter-clockwise, smelling the pure white roses which I’d never wanted in the first place but have come to love for their lovely flowers as well as their deadly thorns which I refuse to remove, despite the rose’s overreach of a garden path. Walking through my garden is much like driving through the Inland Empire: you take your chances looking for points of interest. Sometimes you could be attacked by a rose bush, but sometimes you get local prom night. I’m thinking of making a miniature billboard to tuck beneath the thorny rose and warn the rabbits as they forage at night amid the windy mossy ways: World’s Biggest Rose Thorns Ahead.

Souless Capitalism

"God gives gifts to all creatures… no matter what their station or condition. He may give innocence to a lunatic, or heaven to a thief. Contrary to most theologians, I have always believed that even worms and weasels have souls, and that even they are capable of salvation."
- Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"

My Mom used to say that animals don’t have souls. Her complex religious beliefs didn’t leave room for puppies and kitties in heaven. Which was probably just as well since she was busy raising too many kids and taking care of her invalid mother-in-law while we were growing up. That didn’t leave any time or money for household pets. Thus, it wasn’t until I was older, and a bit wiser, and considerably more doubtful than Mom about the business of immortal souls, that I got a pet cat.

My cat is my pet, my blood pressure medication, my solace, my furry cuddly toy whose purr can induce amnesia about whatever was bothering me before I picked her up and held her to my ear and buried my nose in her warm soft fur. She listens and I’m pretty sure understands every single secret I whisper to her.

Regardless of whether she has a soul - or for that matter, whether I have one - doesn’t matter to me so much these days. Mom would be shocked – shocked – at how I have expended so much devotion on a small brown animal of no particular beauty.

But even Mom wouldn’t have been able to put a price on a soul. My grocery store, apparently, can. I recently purchased a “secret invisible sol” (sic) for my cat at the bargain price of $2.46. I do think however, that Mom would agree with me that a soul shouldn’t be taxable.

The Dry Season

"The flowers anew, returning seasons bring; but beauty faded has no second spring."
– Ambrose Philips

Already it’s hot out – a week of >80F in my yard. At least the hot flashes of summer are merely summer weather these days. Relax, it’s only the postmenopausal postmodern condition, not the approach of doom and night sweats. The Chinese refer to menopause as a woman’s second spring. Mom called it The Change. Californians call it midlife transition.

Menopause isn’t a pause at all. It’s more like a running stop. It’s Wylie Coyote, running two steps beyond the edge of the cliff. Suspended in midair, before gravity kicks in, he floats, dawning surprise filling his eyes. Menopause is that moment, only it stretches out month after month.

This season is like that fall – I’m still sowing hope, but I cringe anticipating the landing of coming summer, and what I might never reap. The hot dry desert looms below Wylie. The desert floor, simply obeying the laws of gravity, welcomes him. He has plenty of time to wish the fall would be over and he’d land already.

Thus Spring passes, with no promises, and Summer advances on my unsuspecting young seedlings and transplants. Grasshoppers are already mowing down the last of the lettuce and the beans left behind by the rabbits. I hope the grasshoppers leave me a few sunflowers. No second spring here, grasshoppers, nothing to see here. Please move on.

Hops Envy

Members of the Western North Carolina (WNC) branch of my family (Ruby and her Faithful Spousal Companion, or FSC) grow hops organically. I find no consolation in the fact that Ruby is a professional horticulturist with years of experience growing things so lovely that when she publishes gardening books, pictures of specimens in her former Southern Maryland back yard feature prominently. My hops, pictured at the end of this post, are sickly and stunted compared to theirs. Here's what they have to say:

"First, at the risk of making you jealous, we are experiencing the wettest spring here since becoming permanent residents. The regular rain--mixed with plenty of sun--was a major factor in attracting us to the mountains. Southern Maryland summers seemed to be turning dryer and dryer with every year. Little did we know that three straight years of draught would mark our transition to WNC. As I write, however, the weatherman is calling for severe thunderstorms today through tonight. This event will end @ six days of on/off rain. Can't really get in the fields with things so damp, but it sure beats irrigating with the hose….a major chore last spring. Of course all the moisture raises the alarm for things like powdery mildew! Ahh, the farmer's lament: it's either too much or too little. Maybe being a paper-pushing bureaucrat was a better option. Nahh, at least as long as my living doesn't depend on it.

"I suspect the precipitation is a significant factor in this season's growth in our hop yard, but we're still learning what is/is not to be expected as we enter season #2 with a major expansion. You may recall that last year's "test plot" was comprised of five, 20 foot rows with four hills apiece. This year we extended each of the original rows to 50 feet, and added seven more 50 foot rows plus three 75 foot rows. That translates into a total of @ 260 hills. We figured an expansion of this magnitude was necessary to produce a harvest of "commercial" relevance. Even with 260, we may have to await 2nd year yields to peddle cones at the wholesale level. Time will tell. While all five original varieties were expanded with the extension of the original rows, the 12 new rows were limited to three: Cascade and Willamette (due to vigorous growth & cone production); and Nugget (to provide a high acid variety)…

"Also, you may not be aware that we're working to get formally certified as organic (USDA sticker and all). Organic is a huge factor in much of the WNC community….at least one microbrewery is 100% organic. We believe that flying the organic flag will be a crucial marketing lever, and it should allow us to demand a higher price for product. Our first visit by inspectors is scheduled for next week…

"6footVine - To illustrate progress, this picture (taken cinco de mayo) shows the original ('08) Willamette hills, including above sprouts, with @ one month under their belt. That's a yard stick leaning against the center vine, attesting to the 6 foot milestone.

"08-09 Contrast - Seeing is believing: the second pic (also 5 May) captures a 2nd season Willamette hill (actually the same hill as sprouts above) as well as the '09 extension of that row. Quite a difference! Based on last year, the '09 plants will ultimately approach or reach the 12' trellis top and produce a "credible" number of cones. However, we're eagerly awaiting what the Lit tells us will be a much larger crop from the 2nd season plants.

Final Thoughts: This physical undertaking has given me new respect for the rigors of farming and those who choose it, forever reminding me that I'm no longer eighteen. Both Ruby and I have always wanted a rural life….for as long we both can remember. We've made it, but on many occasions I worry that we made it too late. That said, we're loving life (with limited endurance and sore muscles), and we plan to press for as long as the bodies allow. 20-something lower backs of our sons have been life-savers every now and then."

Compare with my second year of growing hops in San Diego: barely visible in this picture.

It's not that I envy their hops, so much as I'm disappointed in my hops. It's one thing for Ruby and FSC to have green thumbs, it's an entirely different thing for me to have to contend with drought, pestilence and plagues of locusts, at least figuratively speaking.

Spring Interview With a Terrible Gardener

"When you have heard all my adventures, you will understand what trials and vicissitudes I have had to undergo to reach the felicity of this palace; you will realize that I have had to purchase the wealth which sustains my age with strange and terrible labors, with calamities, misfortunes and hardships that are scarcely credible."
The tale of Sinbad the Sailor, Ten Thousand Nights and One Night

Kent Brockman: So, TG, what are the most calamitous misfortunes and hardships associated with Springtime in Garden Blogville?

Terrible Gardener: Well, it would have to be the Spring garden blogging cliches I have to I have to endure. For example, the zoomed-in pictures of flowers, in artful pastels, some even with dew drops.

KB: And that upsets you why?

TG: When I grew up in suburban Washington DC, this is the time of year we’d head out to Haines Point, walk around the Jefferson Memorial where people were carefully framing their souvenir pictures of Cherry Blossom Time with the Jefferson Memorial in the background, reflecting basin in the middle, framed by overhead cherry blossoms reflected in the water. We’d stroll past, right into the picture frame, and whisper “Been done.” (Do a Google image search on “cherry blossoms, Jefferson Memorial” and you’ll get about a million lovely pics.) Besides, anybody can get flowers to bloom in Spring. That’s why god invented roses.

KB: I see. Trials and vicissitudes indeed. So, what's your number two Springtime blogging cliché?

TG: Next would have to be garden bloggers who talk about Spring Fever being the cure for Cabin Fever, or use metaphors more faded and worn out than a prostitute’s chenille bedspread. Like, the Great Circle of Life, renewal, rebirth, resurrection etc. That would include references to god’s (with a capital G) renewal of His promise to us that we are immortal. All’s I’m saying, Kent, is that Spring is equally likely to awaken bleak existential flashbacks and blunt reminders about how life has no meaning. Nobody blogs about the dark side of gardening in Spring, Kent. It’s garden bloggers’ dirty little secret, and it dominates my meditations as I soak in the spa at the end of a day gardening.

KB: Thanks for sharing your self-absorbed opinion of what constitutes hardship. Finally, what’s your number one beef about garden blogging in Spring?

TG: Simply that Spring makes me feel old, Kent. It makes me feel older each year, as I drag my creaking ass outside to overdose on the joy everywhere. If not for ibuprophen and the spa, I’d never recover from the pain that seems worse after each winter, or accept that my fingernails won’t get clean until next November. Spring’s the time of my annual realization that it doesn’t get any better than this. It really doesn’t – it gets worse.

Gardening Bliss By Any Other Name

“If by some miracle I ever did something the right way the first time I tried, I would have absolutely no idea why it worked. If the goal of man is knowledge, I am reaching my goal via the path of maximum mistakes.”
Ellen Sandbeck, Eat More Dirt

I sometimes label plants in my back yard. Most times I don’t bother because many who are called to my garden are not chosen to remain there long. I don’t know the names of many of the survivors, and furthermore, I frequently have no idea why they survive when so many others don’t make it past the first season, or even through their first night.

The point of gardening for me has little to do with creating the kind of yard that will impress my neighbor, the president of the local garden club. When her garden club people do their annual tour of member gardens, they rarely peek over the fence at my often abortive gardening results. This neighbor has a gardener she pays to busy himself weekly in her yard: trimming, grooming, planting and removing as necessary to attain the kind of garden-club look you might see in garden design magazines. Lately, the Garden Magazine Style tends towards an icy postmodern minimalist chic that "doesn't speak to me." Those GMS garden chairs pictured would kill your back if they tempted you to sit and relax, though god knows they look pretty untempting.

Seriously, how seriously can one take gardening when one doesn’t bother to actually garden? At this time and in this place, the more senior your garden club membership, the whiter your gloves, and the more translucent your bone china teacups, the more serious you are as a gardener.

Despite the fact that I don’t pass any of those tests, and despite my poor habits in labeling plants, at least I know the flower pictured above is a white rose, and that works for me. My own gardening goals are more directed at creating a place that induces my own tranquility and personal bliss, and are thus undeterred by failure.

By my measure, I am reaching my goal, my admittedly poor plant labeling skills notwithstanding.

Another Sunset

The sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,
Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire,
Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams,
Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.

Look round;--of all the clouds not one is moving;
'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving.

William Wordsworth, On a High Part of the Coast of Cumberland...

The Old Man’s Wish

“I govern my passion with absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away.”
Walter Pope (1630–1714)

I know an old man who is making his way out of a long and happy life. The end won’t be dignified or even terribly coherent: the later being the saving grace offsetting the former. The cobwebs of confusion are replacing the wisdom of age, just as the wisdom once replaced the grace of his youth. Sooner or later, whether our lives are long or short, they end in darkness. There’s no way out of here alive.

In response to a question about what he feared most, another wise old man once replied – dogs, Dutchmen, and the gathering darkness. That man was Abe Simpson, shuffling slippers, enigmatic response, and mumbled phobias about Dutch people. Abe teaches me that life is too short to take the gathering darkness too seriously.

Meanwhile, I struggle to govern my passions, if not with absolute sway, then at least with a nudge or two of reason. For now, I have the time and presence to pay attention. I have the wit to see things clearly rather than seriously. But as I age, I realize I’m growing too damn slowly into the wisdom my creaky diminishing strength entitles me to. At this rate, I’ll be wise about an hour and forty-five minutes after I’m dead.

Guest Ultracrepidarian Musings

This reaction became too long for a comment, thus the guest posting.

"Authoritative but stupid opinions" have been much in the news lately. For example, a recent Nick Kristof column:
"Ever wonder how financial experts could lead the world over the economic cliff? One explanation is that so-called experts turn out to be, in many situations, a stunningly poor source of expertise. The 2005 book 'Expert Political Judgment,' by UC-Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock, is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts' forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about. The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses. The only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones."

They did so because they were over-confidant and so ignored all facts that might contradict their opinions. Remind you of any recent federal administrations?

Wired reports on another study: Expert Financial Advice Neurobiologically 'Offloads' Financial Decision-Making under Risk" by Engelmann, Capra, Noussair, and Berns; Public Library of Science ONE, March 24, 2009. Conclusion: Given "Expert" Advice, Brains Shut Down. This study "and another on hormones and day trading (testosterone is good for individual traders, but possibly bad for everyone else), have cast scientific doubt on a central tenet of free-market fundamentalism. Contrary to neoliberal economic theory, markets are not always driven by individuals acting rationally in their own best interests."

Then there's my favorite book by George Lakoff, The Political Mind. Although we grew up with an Enlightenment view of reason — that it is logical, universal, unemotional, and interest-based — recent brain research (especially that facilitated by functional MRIs that show in which areas the brain is active during tasks) has conclusively demonstrated that the dichotomy between reason and emotion is false. We think we can divorce reason from emotion because most (an estimated 98%) of reason is unconscious. Our ancestors didn't have time to reason consciously about the best thing to do, so we've evolved to think and behave reflexively. They do experiments (see Restak's The Naked Brain) to show that your body reacts before your brain has received the nerve inputs on which to base a conscious decision. Our cognitive unconsciousness is really running the show.

We are making very complex and subtle assessments all the time of which we are not consciously aware. Our reasoning is more like after-the-fact rationalization of decisions we've already made. Now, I do think that that more information makes for better decisions, but both research and the results of "negative campaigning" show that our "free will" is more limited than we like to think. We use the emotional subtext in our decision-making because we can't not do so. And these kinds of subconscious evaluations have been shown to be surprisingly sophisticated.

So, iBRAIN by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan has me worried about a loss of skill in gut-level assessments. Their thesis is that "these kids today" never tear their attention from their phones and computers long enough to hone their ability to "read" people. If our young are losing face-to-face cognitive skills due to immersion in technology, that portends poorer decisions by future voters. If they don't look people in the face anymore, they either never make or gradually abandon the neural pathways allowing them to assess expressions with any validity. Does that mean that our subconscious judgments about who we can trust not to betray us are becoming less reliable? Does it offer some explanation of the popularity of affable empty suits like [insert your favorite populist here]?

Ultracrepidarian Musings

“It is a happy thought to believe that our gardens smile at us and hold for us a genuine understanding. At the same time, we must not forget that of all the humorous things in a garden, we who pretend to be gardeners, are the funniest.”
Louse Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden

Here’s an adjective you might not know you needed. But you do. Ultracrepidarian: of a critic, giving opinions on something beyond his or her knowledge. Example: I have a relative whose ultracrepidarian pronouncements on subjects ranging from antelope colostomies to zebra vasectomies belie his/her almost total ignorance of the subject at hand.

Um, I know somebody like this. Don’t we all? They’re probably the people who would order bacon yogurt from this menu.

Immediately before they express an authoritative but stupid opinion, these people typically say: “You know… (insert something you presumably don’t know)…” On second thought, perhaps my anonymous relative is a mere crepidarian, (rather than the superfluous conjugate) seeing as how he/she often begin conversations propounding on topics he/she clearly knows nothing about with: “I could be wrong, but…”

Everybody has an opinion once in a while, even, surprisingly, me. I’ll even concede that some peoples’ opinions are sometimes based on their life experience as minor characters in the reality show I star in. Other times, well, let’s just say such people apparently live in a world where they are seemingly the only people who know not to touch the fire on the stovetop, and it’s their mission to save us all from burning our fingers. Of course, you can’t reason with such people. You’re more likely to win an argument if you make shit up and change your position with impunity as the argument progresses.

So, why haven’t I learned not to participate in such conversations? These days, too much of my energy is devoted to maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the throat of my own reality, leaving me little energy to spare arguing with morons, let alone trying to shine the clear light of my reason into the dark corners of their paranoia.

Which is where my garden comes in. That, and my twisted sense of humor. Judgmental, ultracrepidarian opinionated, know-it-alls probably also know more about gardening than I do. They know why one design scheme failed, why my pepper and eggplant seeds never germinated, what kind of caterpillars munched my fennel into skeletal stems. At times like that, I remind myself that I’m only pretending to be a gardener. What I’m really doing outside in the back yard is cultivating my own peace of mind.

The Ideal Life

YANG CHU said: "Yuan Hsie lived in mean circumstances in Lu, while Tse Kung amassed wealth in Wei.
"Poverty galled the one, and riches caused uneasiness to the other.
"So poverty will not do nor wealth either."
"But what then will do?"
"I answer enjoy life and take one's ease, for those who know how to enjoy life are not poor, and he that lives at ease requires no riches."
Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure
Chapter VI, The Ideal Life

Enjoy life and take one’s ease. Sounds great. And yet…

I just came in from sowing the last of my seeds. I wasn’t planning on doing that today, but I left the box of seeds out in last night’s unexpected (by me) shower, and they needed to be planted. Why is it that whenever I’m in the yard it’s because I’m working or performing some maintenance task? I can’t seem to sit still and enjoy the garden because it only takes about sixty seconds of trying to meditate before I see something that needs deadheading, or a weed that needs removing, or something that I have to tweak into perfection.

I have finally decided that performing such minor tasks is a way I maintain the “flow” of enjoying being in the garden in a sort of mental neutral gear where I don’t find myself flitting from one thought to another – which is what happens when I try to sit still and watch the bees playing tag around the shallow end of the pond.

For me, enjoying the garden means being active, even if it’s only a little bit. I envision how I want this corner to look in 10 years, or that planter to look in the next few months. I have a tiny loquat given to me in a 2” peat pot by a friend. I put it in the ground, but then put a plant stand and plant overhead to protect it from direct sun while it settled in. It’s been there through one summer, so I’ve now moved the shading pot. Someday, this tiny plant will shade a part of the garden now in 6-8 hours of sun a day, but if you saw it today, you’d see a 4” tall anonymous green stick with a few jaundiced leaves.

I’ve decided this endless tinkering is the closest I will get to the ideal life in my garden: perfectly balanced between all my “amassed wealth” and “mean circumstances” I find the ideal life at ease in my garden.

Sistertrip V

“You know I never like to interfere… but…”
Anonymous In-law
I recently returned from a 4-night trip with several of my sisters. This, our fifth biennial sister trip, was in Ventura CA. (For the archivist: Traverse City, MI, Harper’s Ferry, WV; Santa Fe, NM; and Savannah, GA.) Thanks to one sister’s timeshare, we enjoyed sunsets over the ocean as we sat and read our various books and newspapers, drinking good red wine and looking up to chat briefly about whatever we were reading. With four of us, we could enjoy a single conversation, whereas when all six of us get together, conversation groups generally break down into smaller units.

We had time to whine about our various family and home trials and tribulations, to discuss the amazing (and not-coincidental) differences of political opinion between us sisters and our brothers and boy cousins whose opinions range from uncompassionate conservatism to wacko conspiracy theories. We spoke about our various states of health, getting old, dying, shepherding aging pets and elderly in-laws “across the rainbow bridge” and toward the light. For several days, it didn’t suck at all to be me.

Here’s the thing about spending time with sisters. We easily slipped into intimate conversations, tapping the same veins of family history, dumb jokes and reminisces to provide context. Some things you can talk about only with people who understand on such a deep level you don’t have to qualify your statements with “I love ____, but…” We shared our favorite punch lines like “Liquor? I hardly knew her!” and “Do I remember the minuet? I don’t even remember the men I f*&%ed!”

We waited too long, drinking mimosas, for our overpriced lunch at an otherwise delightful sidewalk café in Santa Barbara. We exercised our privilege as white women of a certain age and laughed too loudly, shocking the locals. When I got a box for my leftover lunch, I took the “complementary” tiny metal sauce dish that came filled with cream cheese. Well, I’m never going back there.

We (I) drove our rented Chrysler PT Cruiser over several curbs, while lamenting the awful turning radius. The hatchback trunk smelled like pot, you could see daylight between the closed passenger side door and the frame. The final insult was that the electronic key had a dead battery, and I was inconvenienced by having to actually use the key in the actual lock. How primitive! Can you blame me for punishing the car by driving into curbs?

While I’m casting blame, I also blame M1 for nixing the red Mustang convertible we could have had in lieu of the PT Cruiser. I have to assume it would have had a tighter turning radius and/or a functioning remote key. I blame Tech Support Guy for not letting us use the Prius with gps navigation, causing me to mistakenly enter Camp Pendleton Marine Base, where we were waved through by the 12 year old Marine guard at the gate who didn’t bother to notice we didn’t have a base parking sticker. I’m also pissed at Huntington Library for being closed on Tuesdays, as was the Norton Simon Museum and the Gamble House all in Pasadena. The picture of the Gamble house front door (below) was taken through the window on the patio behind the house.

We shared our favorite vulgar and unladylike synonyms for manure, or at least my sisters did when remarking upon the quality of my driving. We agreed that if, in any given conversation, the speaker forgets a crucial noun, the words “werewolf” or “tugboat” would suffice; and to our considerable surprise, this shortcut made conversations much more interesting. We visited the Mission in Santa Barbara and mused over the sanitized history of how the devout friars committed genocide on the natives in the name of the Lord. I scored the most tasteless souvenir: a credit-card sized 3-D picture of Christ on the shroud of Turin, that morphs into a lovely white man’s face – presumably that of an alive Christ - when you wiggle it in your hand. Priceless!

I wore my cheap pedometer all during the trip and logged 5k steps each day! Then I lost it – the pedometer, not the steps. Then I found it folding laundry this morning – it had been washed and dried and seems to be fine: 298 steps so far today. All in all, a very good sistertrip.

Adventures in Planting Seeds

“There was a small girl of Leeds
Who planted what she thought were seeds,
These she watered each day
But I’m sorry to say,
They never came up, they were beads!”
- Louise Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden

Failure already? Four entire seed packets (2 eggplant and 2 peppers), planted March 4 and nothing to show. How is this fair? Then there’s the thunbergia and sacred lotus, planted a mere week ago, and still nothing. I soaked the thunbergia and lotus seeds overnight in water with a little inoculant added. I even drilled tiny holes in the lotus seeds: shaped like black marbles and let them soak overnight before planting. I did the same with some seeds of Kapok (Ceiba pentandra) a friend liberated from the specimen adjacent to the Huntington Garden mansion. I expect the big and/or thick shelled seeds will take more patience, but it’s still discouraging to see several trays of peat pots looking empty as the day they were planted.

My home-made potting mix was probably infected with damping off. Or despite being covered with a plastic shower curtain on cold nights, the warm-season seeds were probably scared to death of the cold. Or perhaps I planted beads. I might as well have for all I have to show.

I’m having more luck in the real garden, where mustard seed sprouts already fill a large pot. I’ve got sprouts in the herb garden, but won’t know what they are until they’re a bit more grown-up. I think one of my hop vines is sprouting, but it could be a purple hyacinth bean, put in the same place at the same time.

I make no pretense of having a green thumb. Just because I like to garden doesn’t mean I’m any good at it. I can’t cultivate lush tropicals because I’m just too negligent. Exotic flowers don’t survive my benign neglect. While I no longer murder plants that don’t belong in my Zone 9 yard, I tend to push the envelope, with the degree of success a 15year old with a learner's permit would have in trying to jump their car over 6 school buses. I don’t have tall shade trees beneath which I can plant understory forest plants of my childhood: violets and lilies of the valley. I tend to (un-humbly) blame my environment for my gardening failures, making me slower to learn the horticultural lessons I most need to master.

Enthusiasm takes a gardener only so far. Cultivating patience probably takes one a baby step farther down the garden path. After that, a certain amount of skill is required – or at least a minimum of horticultural knowledge, and humility in the face of Nature. I expect I’ve got more in common with the small girl of Leeds when it comes to gardening savvy than I do with a genuine gardener. Now that I think about it, those lotus seeds did look an awful lot like beads…

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…