September 24, 2006
Seeing Is Not Believing
The nights are growing colder, but days remain in the mid to upper 80s, the sun hitting you like a furnace when you stand in the Farmers’ Market at noon, as we just have. Even though it’s traditional apple season everywhere else, all varieties have virtually disappeared from our little Atwater Farmers’ Market and been replaced by plums, peaches, nectarines, and, I hate to say it, pluots.
(Oddly, after years of making fun of them, I just did a test taste of all the former and discovered I liked the pluots best. There’s always something to be said for not being quite so judgmental. Though they taste good, I still have no idea what the difference between a pluot and an aprium is, though they both seem to be a cross between a plum and apricot.)
We still try to keep the house cool naturally as much as we can. Even though we were stupid enough to put in heating and cooling before putting in insulation, we can get by especially comfortably on most fall days keeping the windows shut until 4 or so in the afternoon. On some mornings you have to open up the windows because it’s a heck of a lot warmer outside than in.
The lion’s tail and fennel are making their way back after being cut to the ground so many weeks ago. The Mexican sage is a little slower to recover, but is making the effort. Our zucchini has all but given up producing, which is okay, they’re plentiful and cheap in the market now and our Cherokee Purple tomato plant is still going gangbusters.
I don’t know if I had mentioned it before, but I tried an ancient Chinese method of irrigation a few months ago. (You thought I was going to say “ancient Chinese secret” didn’t you?) What you do is seal the bottom of an unglazed clay pot with silicone, bury it up to its lip by a few thirsty vegetable plants, fill it with water, then cover it with a pie tin. It didn’t work so well with the zucchini I planted it right next to, but the Cherokee Purple plant seems to have gotten its immense roots over there and be sucking up the water up with reckless abandon. I’m starting to believe this is one of the secrets to its success, though I do suspect that the fact that the damn tomato type has been around for over 100 years might have something to do with it.
As I’ve been saying, I’ve been thinking a lot about reality lately. I don’t know if this strikes everyone as a pertinent subject, but it’s been on my mind at least, as I deal with Marketers who deal with “the experience” of restaurants, shopping excursions, and advertisements.
Since we’ve stopped watching TV, lots of other advertisements and “experiences” have started driving me nuts.
I hope I didn’t come off as someone who is Hell Bent on Living in the Now and is trying to undo the shackles of what the Hindu people refer to as Maya, the mask of this world, because, folks, that is not me.
Do I dream ridiculous dreams? With great frequency.
It’s absolutely true that when I operate my little espresso maker I believe that I am actually more Italian than I actually am (which is one-quarter, overwhelmed by the one-half Irish. Ridiculously, I look very Irish. Just so you have this hilarious picture of an Irishman making a cappuccino with a jaunty cap on.) Ditto, when I make pasta, risotto, or lasagna, drink my red wine, and listen to The Big Night soundtrack on the kitchen CD player. Some Buddhist monk is bound to be wagging his finger somewhere. “Where are you?” he’d charge. “I’m in Vernazza, Italy, making my Penne and Broccoli Rabe overlooking the ocean, thank you very much.
And for those few short minutes (or hours, depending on the recipe), I am in Italy, right here in Atwater Village.
But I’m not, right?
That much I believe we can all agree upon.
I was talking to a coworker the other day who said he’d be spending all Sunday inside watching football. Not being a big watcher of TV, much less sports, I began wondering what the men in the world did on Saturdays and Sundays before there was televised football, baseball, basketball, and Pro Bass Fishin’.
I mean, in some ways while you are still at home when you’re watching TV on the weekend (thus fulfilling your promise to your wife to be around the children more), you really count yourself as “in”.
Which might be, after all, be the big clue about men; wanting to get away, but forever feeling the familial pull to stay put. Or maybe just us modern men. Perhaps those men of yesteryear went out fishing, hunting, or down the street with their buddies after they’d gone to church or synagogue. Maybe since the invention of Dads-Who-Pitch-In some of the dads went out to the garage to do their woodwork or fix their car, some sat down with their books and music in the den, or, some (like myself) went out in the garden among the flowers, bugs, and endless amount of nature in the middle of the city.
I’m guessing you know already that raising children involves for most a lot of staying home, so I think we’ve all figured you might as well make the best of it.
I do know, when I’m in the planning stage of gardening that I am Dreaming with a capital “D”. Lusting after the perfect tomato to thrill friends and family alike. Delighting to the imagined sound of my own faux creek in my back yard.
And even though it is Dreaming, I enjoy it immensely.
Where I find my Real Self, not surprisingly, is in the actual act of gardening. Weeding, mostly. And I guess if I asked around I’d find the same with the woodworkers and car fixers of the world, too. The closest Buddhist expression I can think of for this is “being fully present.”
Whether or not you think that’s a load of religious hooey, you can’t deny the power of everything harmonizing and quieting so beautifully that it makes you want to never leave.
Ahhh, but we must leave, right?
This is not the same as running away, (and I’m thinking having a drink to calm your nerves after a hard day’s work), this is exactly the opposite, bringing yourself to the task and having to deal with your real Self during your project.
Actually I can tell when I’m sorely out of practice in my gardening. It’s when I want to talk, write, or fantasize about gardening rather than actually doing it. Perhaps this is what makes me such a Frustrated Gardener in the first place. If the truth be known, I’m more of a writer than a gardener. (Which would explain this blog.)
As luck would have it, I run into the exact same problems writing.
I sit in front of the blank screen and my first thought (especially if the screen is blank), is to get the hell away out of there. I ask myself, “Why the hell would anyone in their right mind actually sit down and write? Isn’t drinking cappuccino at The Coffee Table more enjoyable? Hell, isn’t commuting to work 5 days a week more enjoyable?” Well, no. Easier, yes, but they’re cakewalk stuff. Like reading Cat in the Hat in 9th grade when everyone else is tackling Catcher in the Rye.
So is this false reality called dreaming bad?
Maybe not in moderation.
Which brings back my original point, if the salesmen (the marketers, advertisers, businessmen, etc.) are selling you the idea of something, say a realistic looking early twentieth century milk carrier made in China with the sticker “For decoration purpose only” on the back, and you’ve built a whole little kind of faux Kountry Kitsch house, maybe something’s going wrong.
The unfortunate fact is that those marketers tend to do this kind of stuff a lot.
The real has been replaced by the faux real which is created by someone else.
I mean, isn’t it ridiculous to get a Dream Catcher that’s been created in China, thousands of miles away from Native Americans. Especially when you live within miles of real Native Americans who make Dream Catchers?
“Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.”
- M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled:
True, Peck is talking about those huge lies in ourselves, but you can see where he’s going.
So we can dream away that we are in Japan or Spain, or wherever we want to be, just as long as we all realize there are quite a few people out there who are willing to sell you that dream state.
And I don’t mean a vacation package. I mean something that disconnects us from our day-to-day reality. Birth, death, pain, true love, all those things that makes life deep and true and meaningful.
When you look at a picture of a beautiful luncheon at a winery in Martha Stewart Magazine, realize that everyone in the picture knew the magazine was coming months in advance. (Which gives you quite a bit of time to get rid of the weeds.) And there was a food stylist, hair stylist, professional photographer, editor, and writer to create that dream. That dream doesn’t exist, though Martha would love you to believe it does. The kids were fighting and had trouble sitting still. Uncle Bob and Uncle Harry still aren’t talking. The duck was too dry, but everyone ate it anyway (and it photographed well). It was a little too chilly to be wearing summer dresses, but that’s what the magazine wanted everyone in.
This, my friend, is what we call a narrative.
Instead of Jack Kerouac selling you the idea of life on the road to break yourself out of yourself, Martha is selling you the idea of privilege, money, taste, and perfection. And none of it is attainable, really. But it’s hard to sell someone the idea of breaking out of themselves.
Plus, hot damn, we really like those new towels Martha’s selling at Target. Admit it.
(If you don’t think consumerism runs like blood in our veins, next time you go to a museum, check out how long people stay in the exhibit versus the museum shop. I think we have a general need to own things.)
Are these Marketers and Salesmen bad? I don’t know, they’re just trying to make a buck, and lord knows, they just go where our wallets take us anyway. They didn’t invent any of the dreaming, they just knew we were headed there anyway and decided to build a town for us.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Seeing is Believing
9.11.06
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the reality of things lately.
Many of the things we see with our own eyes are, in fact, not very real at all.
I worked in television for over 7 years, the number of shows currently running that are considered “reality TV” is astounding to me. Can it be “reality” when a camera is there? How about after a Producer decides to cut it up in the editing room so this woman is the bitch, that guy the jilted lover, and the last is the everyday underdog queen all of us long to be?
You may think you know Martha Stewart’s magazine, but you may not. It’s a patchwork of DreamWorld ideas. Women read about stirring up a pot of minestrone at the dinner table while sitting in front of their Lean Cuisines or Triscuit crackers with “alive with Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil”. How do I know that? Because I’ve seen the ads. You have, too: Newman’s Own dressings, Smart Ones dinners, Claussen Pickles, 100 Calorie Packs of Ritz Chips minis, Carnation Instant Breakfast packets...
I understand, and Martha does too. We long to be that invented person who whips up crème fraiche for a party of 16 in their 2nd home on the Vineyard.
Don’t feel bad, even Martha isn’t that person. Did you think a woman who owned a media empire would be? I’ve heard people who’ve worked with her call her house on Turkey Hill “Turkey Hell”.
So, we’ve been had. Now what?
Thanks, Tim. Thanks a hell of a lot. Fact is, I was having fun pretending to be Martha while eating my damn Lean Cuisine and I don’t need you here busting my chops.
Point taken.
Believe me, I like it no better than you. I don’t read Martha, but I sure as hell drool over seed catalogs, bike catalogs, the LA Times food section. I, too, live in LaLa Land where everything is okay because I can daydream away about taking company for a little stroll past my 10-foot tomato plants producing until well after Thanksgiving. And if that’s not daydreaming, I don’t know what the hell is.
I’d explained before (I hope) that the world is not our WYSIWYG, a Web term for What You See Is What You Get. There’s always something lying beneath. When people see my yard they may think it’s beautiful, they may think it’s a damn eyesore. (Buddhists would point out these people were only seeing their own perceptions. Happily there’s nary a Buddhist in sight.) What they probably won’t see, unless they have a trained eye or I’ve spoken with them, is that Nature has come back to my yard and I am trying to work with her, not flog her into shape with a bullwhip. My yard is full of earthworms, pill bugs, monarchs, Western Swallowtails, spiders (you have to hold your hand in front of you all summer long when walking out in the morning), hummingbirds, crickets, skunks (you can smell them), opossums, ants, flies, and a million other microscopic things that I can’t see.
Does that mean that my yard is so much better than my friend in Pasadena who has your everyday average garden and is constantly struggling with her lawn? Sadly, no. She has Praying Mantis and I’d be damned if I’ve ever seen one in the 13 years I’ve worked in this garden.
The point is, there is a reality underneath, but we may not be able to see it yet.
What the hell does that mean?
You know, I really wish I had an answer for that. But I don’t.
Maybe the message is don’t believe media conglomerates who tell you the world is one way because they are trying desperately to sell you something, or entertain the bejeezus out of you, then sell something to you while you are not paying attention.
That sounds right, doesn’t it?
I was just listening to a radio program on Local Food, which has suddenly become all the rage for some strange reason (I bet that woman who wrote about it 2 years ago is pissed off she missed the whole boat). It considers such things as a fresh strawberry in Connecticut in the middle of winter.
And they ponder, Could there be anything more absurd?
It’s “cheap” relatively to grow it in Chile, ship it in a refrigerated truck and airplane, then put it in a heated store in a little refrigerated section that advertises Fresh Strawberries on December 23rd. It takes a lot of fossil fuel and creates a lot of pollution for that little strawberry, doesn’t it? But that’s the trick! You can’t see the fossil fuel being wasted nor the pollution, all you see is that dead on ripe, luscious red strawberry, out of some sort of obscene mid-winter dream you had. And, hell, at $7 for the pint, that’s nothing!
Well, it is something, but you just have been misdirected, as the Magician’s Union might tell you.
Ignore the man behind the curtain!
(Poor little Oz, I always did feel a little sorry for him, though really, he didn’t deserve my sympathy, he made Dorothy go through hell.)
Everything we buy has some sort of impact on the rest of the world. It’s something our ancestors knew a little about that we’ve kind of forgotten. Well, the ones who didn’t build an unsustainable society in the middle of the desert then become really surprised when they found out they were due for a 100 year drought.
Okay, I’m not doing anything to alleviate your depression, am I?
Yeah, I guess I’m not.
Well, here’s a good fact, you’re probably never going to accomplish the Off the Grid, Make Your Own Clothing Out of Goat Hair dream you’ve had going on in the back of your mind. (I hope that was your dream, anyway.) If you start small enough, you can do a few things to lessen your impact. You’re still going to rationalize, we all are. That’s what we do. Hell, we live in this ultra-rich society and we’re surrounded by messaging that tells us we need a 54-inch plasma TV and we think, Hell, why not? Indeed why not. That sounds pretty damn nice, doesn’t it? Think of the Movie Nights on the big screen. Hell, as nice as it is in DreamWorld, the damn thing is still made in China and getting cheaper by the moment at the Store of the Apocalypse, Wall*Mart.
Maybe what I’m telling you is to go and pull some weeds (if it’s daylight out). Do something you’re somewhat proud of, like bringing your own bags to grocery store or not spraying all the ladybugs to get at all the aphids, then get down on your knees and weed. Because, truly, weeding is where It’s At. I do not know why. But once you’re there only 5 minutes, the man made world seems to melt away. All those ads for Hummers and the 15th installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, become refuse for that old Calgon commercial, Calgon, Take Me Away!
Weeding.
That’s what this is all about.
I’ll start tomorrow.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the reality of things lately.
Many of the things we see with our own eyes are, in fact, not very real at all.
I worked in television for over 7 years, the number of shows currently running that are considered “reality TV” is astounding to me. Can it be “reality” when a camera is there? How about after a Producer decides to cut it up in the editing room so this woman is the bitch, that guy the jilted lover, and the last is the everyday underdog queen all of us long to be?
You may think you know Martha Stewart’s magazine, but you may not. It’s a patchwork of DreamWorld ideas. Women read about stirring up a pot of minestrone at the dinner table while sitting in front of their Lean Cuisines or Triscuit crackers with “alive with Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil”. How do I know that? Because I’ve seen the ads. You have, too: Newman’s Own dressings, Smart Ones dinners, Claussen Pickles, 100 Calorie Packs of Ritz Chips minis, Carnation Instant Breakfast packets...
I understand, and Martha does too. We long to be that invented person who whips up crème fraiche for a party of 16 in their 2nd home on the Vineyard.
Don’t feel bad, even Martha isn’t that person. Did you think a woman who owned a media empire would be? I’ve heard people who’ve worked with her call her house on Turkey Hill “Turkey Hell”.
So, we’ve been had. Now what?
Thanks, Tim. Thanks a hell of a lot. Fact is, I was having fun pretending to be Martha while eating my damn Lean Cuisine and I don’t need you here busting my chops.
Point taken.
Believe me, I like it no better than you. I don’t read Martha, but I sure as hell drool over seed catalogs, bike catalogs, the LA Times food section. I, too, live in LaLa Land where everything is okay because I can daydream away about taking company for a little stroll past my 10-foot tomato plants producing until well after Thanksgiving. And if that’s not daydreaming, I don’t know what the hell is.
I’d explained before (I hope) that the world is not our WYSIWYG, a Web term for What You See Is What You Get. There’s always something lying beneath. When people see my yard they may think it’s beautiful, they may think it’s a damn eyesore. (Buddhists would point out these people were only seeing their own perceptions. Happily there’s nary a Buddhist in sight.) What they probably won’t see, unless they have a trained eye or I’ve spoken with them, is that Nature has come back to my yard and I am trying to work with her, not flog her into shape with a bullwhip. My yard is full of earthworms, pill bugs, monarchs, Western Swallowtails, spiders (you have to hold your hand in front of you all summer long when walking out in the morning), hummingbirds, crickets, skunks (you can smell them), opossums, ants, flies, and a million other microscopic things that I can’t see.
Does that mean that my yard is so much better than my friend in Pasadena who has your everyday average garden and is constantly struggling with her lawn? Sadly, no. She has Praying Mantis and I’d be damned if I’ve ever seen one in the 13 years I’ve worked in this garden.
The point is, there is a reality underneath, but we may not be able to see it yet.
What the hell does that mean?
You know, I really wish I had an answer for that. But I don’t.
Maybe the message is don’t believe media conglomerates who tell you the world is one way because they are trying desperately to sell you something, or entertain the bejeezus out of you, then sell something to you while you are not paying attention.
That sounds right, doesn’t it?
I was just listening to a radio program on Local Food, which has suddenly become all the rage for some strange reason (I bet that woman who wrote about it 2 years ago is pissed off she missed the whole boat). It considers such things as a fresh strawberry in Connecticut in the middle of winter.
And they ponder, Could there be anything more absurd?
It’s “cheap” relatively to grow it in Chile, ship it in a refrigerated truck and airplane, then put it in a heated store in a little refrigerated section that advertises Fresh Strawberries on December 23rd. It takes a lot of fossil fuel and creates a lot of pollution for that little strawberry, doesn’t it? But that’s the trick! You can’t see the fossil fuel being wasted nor the pollution, all you see is that dead on ripe, luscious red strawberry, out of some sort of obscene mid-winter dream you had. And, hell, at $7 for the pint, that’s nothing!
Well, it is something, but you just have been misdirected, as the Magician’s Union might tell you.
Ignore the man behind the curtain!
(Poor little Oz, I always did feel a little sorry for him, though really, he didn’t deserve my sympathy, he made Dorothy go through hell.)
Everything we buy has some sort of impact on the rest of the world. It’s something our ancestors knew a little about that we’ve kind of forgotten. Well, the ones who didn’t build an unsustainable society in the middle of the desert then become really surprised when they found out they were due for a 100 year drought.
Okay, I’m not doing anything to alleviate your depression, am I?
Yeah, I guess I’m not.
Well, here’s a good fact, you’re probably never going to accomplish the Off the Grid, Make Your Own Clothing Out of Goat Hair dream you’ve had going on in the back of your mind. (I hope that was your dream, anyway.) If you start small enough, you can do a few things to lessen your impact. You’re still going to rationalize, we all are. That’s what we do. Hell, we live in this ultra-rich society and we’re surrounded by messaging that tells us we need a 54-inch plasma TV and we think, Hell, why not? Indeed why not. That sounds pretty damn nice, doesn’t it? Think of the Movie Nights on the big screen. Hell, as nice as it is in DreamWorld, the damn thing is still made in China and getting cheaper by the moment at the Store of the Apocalypse, Wall*Mart.
Maybe what I’m telling you is to go and pull some weeds (if it’s daylight out). Do something you’re somewhat proud of, like bringing your own bags to grocery store or not spraying all the ladybugs to get at all the aphids, then get down on your knees and weed. Because, truly, weeding is where It’s At. I do not know why. But once you’re there only 5 minutes, the man made world seems to melt away. All those ads for Hummers and the 15th installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, become refuse for that old Calgon commercial, Calgon, Take Me Away!
Weeding.
That’s what this is all about.
I’ll start tomorrow.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Rock the House
The heat has let up for now, but fall is on its way with heat and that famous Mediterranean light. Matilijas mostly done blooming and ready to be cut down (as soon as there’s room in our Green Trimmings Only trash can), the fennel the same, having been cut down by Ryan last week. The California fuchsia are in full bloom along with the lion’s tail, lantana, and the fortnight lilies. The Acer tomato still continues to need water three times a week, compared with the century old heirloom Brandywine, which merely needs it once every Saturday. Another nod to the expression, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (Tomatoes like Brandywine were pushed out of production because they couldn’t be picked green and “ripened” in shipping like other more modern, tasteless varieties. Oh, and they can be incredibly ugly. But the taste! Oh, my god, once you’ve had one, it’s hard to ever return.)
Wendy’s and my backs are feeling the effects of putting in tons of pebbles in the back yard, those tiny pebbles sometimes referred to as gravel.
And when I say tons, I mean tons. Or tonnes. Depending on where you’re from.
We’ve been struggling with our small and mostly shady back yard for the 12 years we’ve lived here. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. There was pea gravel in the back yard when we moved in and a driveway up to a garage. We had the driveway was replaced by a flagstone path and we converted the two-car space into a studio (which then turned into a kids’ playroom, then our niece’s room, and now back to a studio) and a storage area. The gravel was nice for a while, but once Ryan was born I wanted grass.
You know, grass? You can almost see the picture of baby trying to catch the bubbles that you’re blowing while sitting on a carpet of green. Man’s biggest gardening project, the endless fight for a green, leafy lawn. You probably don’t have to go far in your imagination to see the dads yelling at the kids to stay off the work of art they’ve created. “Stop walking on it! Someone tell that dog to defecate somewhere else!”
The Japanese have their bonsai, our American control of the environment is shown in our slavish love for the shorn pasture of endless verdant green.
You probably don’t want to know the facts and figures about the water wasted (probably more so here in the Southwest than the rest of the country, we’ll take full blame), not to mention petroleum-based fertilizers, and herbicides/pesticides that kill all the intended and not-intended violators of our personal yard space (then wash down the sewer and get into our streams and oceans). Over the years of gardening I did come to recognize what a hypocrisy it is to work so closely with nature in my yard to the detriment of nature outside of the confines of my property.
But all that comes later.
I had to have grass for that baby. And if you can believe it (if you’re a gardener I’m sure you can), I spend the last 8 years trying to grow it. Does anyone spend 8 years doing anything? If you spend 8 years in college, you’d be broke and probably declared insane. Wait, I think my friend who is getting his PhD in Mythology has been going for 15 years. Still, it’s a long time to do anything.
When I first looked at our back yard and many people suggested grass I replied, “It’s just too shady.” Turned out I was right. Just took 8+ years to prove my point.
First I bought the Marathon shady mix of grass and spent days preparing the space, putting in sprinklers, laying down the topsoil, and watering three times a day. The grass came up wonderfully. It was magic. For about a month. Then it seemed the grass wasn’t getting enough of the sun it needed. It turned spindly and when you walked on it and never popped back up. It was like a lawn full of sullen teens. I mowed it, watered, fertilized, and continued to be disappointed. Over the next several summer months, it disappeared back into the dirt. Leaving it its path, well, dirt. Which was worse than the gravel I was dealing with in the first place.
Next I tried St. Augustine grass, which you may or may not know is not available in seed. I’m not sure if this is a gimmick or if it’s just too hard to have sprout, but I have to buy flats upon flats of it from my local nursery. I got the full skinny from Don at the store, bought all the right stuff (again) and was on my way.
The St. Augustine never took at all. It sat there and instead of spreading its magical tendrils across the 700 square feet it curled up and died. I don’t know much about the actual St. Augustine, but perhaps this is what he did, too. Maybe the Romans didn’t give him water and he perished. Regardless, it was sad. And my manhood was becoming serious damaged. There are a few things men in America need to know how to do and a big one of those things is to know how to grow a decent lawn. (Some others are how to make a fire and then barbecue over it and at least look like you know what the mechanic is talking about when he’s discussing the problems with your car. “It’s the manifold, it’s all gunked up.” “Uh huh, I see. Damn Chevy manifolds” must be your reply.)
I decided to bring in the big guns. I called Javier, my gardener, and had him access the problem. “It’s too dark,” he said wisely. “We’ll need to take out that tree,” he advised with little dollar signs lighting up his eyes.
So not only did I tell him to take out the tree, but to bring in sod, too.
For the unfamiliar, sod is what you get when you have more money than time. If you want someone out in Central California to grow your grass in the desert by sowing seeds, then pounding the ground with water 4 times a day, and finally scraping it and a ½ inch of soil up with some kind of industrial spatula, loading it onto a truck, and delivering it to your house, then this is the option for you. Did I say it was expensive? Like almost everything made easier, it comes at a price.
The sod looked wonderful when Javier was done. We celebrated. Sat on it. Bought a nice little table and chairs. Basked in its grassy glory. For a month or two. Then the familiar scenario played out again: the grass not getting up after being stepped on, kind of withering, then went away completely. Luckily this was after our largest party of the year, when 70 or so of our closest friends for an early Thanksgiving pot luck. (It’s all about impressing other people, isn’t it?) Javier was nice enough to come back with some more after several weeks of living with the dirt. I began to suspect he hadn’t used the brand I’d told him to, Marathon, which is some sort of patented Wunder Grass, guaranteed to grow in a cave alongside mosses. That grass also lasted exactly two months, then became mud when the winter rains blustered in.
Insert heavy sigh here.
I want to say this whole grass shindig ended around January of this year. Which would put that newborn boy I so wanted to impress with my manly grass know-how at a ripe old age of 6 and a half.
Wendy tried to explain it this way, “The kids don’t give a damn about grass. They don’t play out there.” True enough. We tried to play ball a few times back there, but 15 feet between catcher and pitcher, surrounded by 7 or so very breakable antique windows didn’t seem like the best idea. Oh yeah, and there were all the plants that kept getting pummeled by our ball, feet, or hands as we dove for to make the play.
Do you ever get the feeling you’ve watched too many movies, seen too many commercials, been subjected to so many advertisements that you’ve been convinced that’s reality? I think that’s what I had a case of here. Altered reality. But not the good kind.
We discussed everything from patios to decks to dichondera (a type of invasive “grass alternative,” whatever that means), but nothing seemed to fit the bill. Until we were on vacation and walked into a Japanese store that had a tiny little traditional house in it and outside were these beautiful black pebbles which went crunch, crunch, crunch when you walked over them. I called Wendy over and asked what she thought of them. “Perfect,” she said. And it was. I asked the woman if they sold them, she said no. She did tell me where they’d gotten them. Sort of. She was nice, anyway, as she told me in very broken English how to get to the place in Torrance which she did not know the name of. I decided I should probably wait until our next visit there before making any journeys with two kids and a wife in tow. A month later we were back and got proper directions from the owner and even the name of the company. That next Saturday Ryan, Abby, and I were smack dab in the middle of the busiest little rock shop you’ve ever seen. Dust flying everywhere, no real parking, and forklifts zooming by your car door at NASCAR speeds. I told the kids to stay close and follow me inside. Inside, by comparison, was a little oasis. The relaxed guy who helped me showed me where to look for the rocks we wanted. We went out and crunched around a bit on them. I saw another color, sort of a sandy beachy shade I liked, so I took down the names of both and went back inside.
The guy gave me an estimate for 500 square feet.
$856.
Wow.
Seemed an awful lot for a bunch of rocks. But he suggested the whole thing be 2 inches deep and it was $150 for delivery alone. We were talking 4,000 pounds of rock. Obviously not going to fit in the back of the Jetta with two kids.
I took the numbers home to Wendy, fully ready for her to tell me that’s too damn much for rocks, but I got the opposite. “Sounds great,” she said. “Let’s do it next weekend.” I realize that sometimes when I answer for Wendy in my head, I just sort of put a wig on myself and answer. Of course she said yes. She always says yes.
We discussed color. Though I was originally drawn to the black color, I believe it was due to our back yard already having a major Japanese theme. We have a stand of 45-foot giant bamboo, a running stand of bamboo, golden bamboo, and heavenly bamboo. In other words, a lot of bamboo. The problem with black rock, I figured, was twofold: one, you can see every leaf that falls on it. If you know anything about bamboo, you probably know for 365 days out of the year they drop their leaves to the ground to smother weeds and provide silica (?) as a sort of fertilizer to their roots. 366 days during a leap year. The Japanese people have a reputation of being pretty neat, and I couldn’t imagine myself out back every morning with a wooden broom, clogs, and a Vietnamese hat sweeping before going to work. I’m just not that Zen. Reason number two, black doesn’t seem to me to be the coolest surface on earth. In fact, I remember just the opposite when playing on the blacktop at school when I was young. Sometimes it would be so hot that when your feet hit it after jumping from the swings and you’d make a dent into it. These were two things I didn’t want in my back yard. So we decided on the lighter color.
(I did make the mistake of asking my fastidious neighbor, Mark, his opinion on color. He voted on the black. Mark is one of those people who has lawn furniture that he moves out of the way every morning before watering his lawn. Mark, obviously, has no children and belongs to that other traditionally neat culture: gay men.)
We decided to fill in a little more alongside the side of the house where the grass just seemed to be taking (by “taking” I mean the way hair seems to be taking on a man’s comb-over. Not exactly what everyone wants to look at). The new total for the rocks came to just over $1,000. After I ordered I thought, “Man, do I hope I didn’t make the biggest $1,000 mistake of my life.” Which is ridiculous, as I have made many, many $1,000 mistakes in my life and will probably continue to do so in the far-flung future.
Wendy and I had both taken two weeks off for summer vacation and, as usual, we’d make some plans for home improvement so we wouldn’t get bored.
We do this a lot, in fact. I remember many a Labor and Memorial Day filled with painting projects while we listened to Flashback Weekends on the alternative rock station.
Already on this “vacation” we’d hired someone to paint Wendy’s Pilates studio and hang mirrors, while Wendy and I hooked up another phone line, cleaned all the incredibly dusty (not to mention high) windows, replaced lighting fixtures, and moved the machinery back and forth. Also on the list was to move our computer out to the studio now that our niece had vacated it. And, of course, the back yard.
They said to expect the pebbles at 9:30, to which I told Wendy, “They’ll be here earlier.” Sure enough, a semi pulled up at 7 o’clock, with two 3,000 pound bags of pebbles. And yes, a 3,000 pound bag of pebbles looks about as big as you’d expect. Six feet around and 4 feet high. Let’s put it this way, two children could comfortably sit on the pebbles in the bag with sand toys and play while I took wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of pebbles to the back yard. Oh yes, and the first bag had an opening just large enough to put a shovel in but not quite pull it out. I remembered my breathing techniques while trying not to curse. Remember that the children were in the other bag. I was a quarter way through when I started to think we’d made a mistake with the color. Could I return it? Could I say I was terribly, terribly wrong and would they deliver the black pebbles instead? About halfway through landscaping I realized it felt like walking through them was harder than walking on the sand at the beach. You had to slog to get that crunch crunch noise. But slogging wasn’t really what I wanted. Three-quarters of the way through, I realized it not only felt like sand, it looked a hell of a lot like sand. In fact, it started to look like one of those fake beaches they create in Nebraska so the kids won’t realize they’re thousands of miles away from the ocean. All I needed was a seagull ripping his way through a trashcan and lifeguards ripping through on ATVs to complete the scene.
But I kept working. I mean, what else was I going to do? Anyway, I know my own neuroses well enough to realize that many times in the midst of a creative project I will up and lose it. (I remember a documentary I’d watched about someone directing the Emmys and seconds before they went live he yelled, “It’ll never work! Call it off! Oh my god, what were we thinking!” took a moment, then called into his headset, “Okay, everyone, in five, four, three…” So obviously I’m not the only one who experiences such a thing.)
We filled in the spaces between our flagstones. The spaces that were supposed to grow a variety of different plants I’d purchased over the years which had become dirt spotted with the occasional moss.
I stood back and tried to enjoy my work.
Nope. Not taking.
My mind was still screaming, “You idiot!”, “Here you go, $1,000 worth of rocks!”, “Congratulations, sucker!” and the like. My mind can be very kind when it wants to be. Now was not one of those times. I kept trying to convince Wendy we should go out for a break and get some afternoon coffee. She, unlike me, was having a good time, seeing the bright side of things. “It does look beachy. Maybe we should put an umbrella over there and a bucket of sand toys.” Oh my god, woman, NO! We don’t want a beach scene here!
She was not helping quiet my mind. But then again, she wasn’t calling me an idiot as my own mind was doing. She said it’d look much better after moving the table back. We went out for a coffee break and I sat there and tried not to look forlorn. I really don’t know how some married couples manage to run a business together. As a couple Wendy and I have difficulty setting up the Christmas tree every year. I know couples who don’t even bother going with each other to the grocery store. I guess we’re ahead of some and behind a few.
I sat at the coffee shop trying to have a smile. “Yes, look,” my face was trying to say, “I’m a happy fellow! A dirty, yet happy fellow who just spent over $1,000 of his own money on rocks! See how it doesn’t bother me? I just spent $12 on coffee drinks for the family! Look at us, we’re rich, stupid people who blow money on stupid rocks!” I’m not sure I was fooling anyone except the kids.
Wasn’t it George Bush who said it takes a village to set up a back yard? Or was it Mark Twain?
Regardless, we came home and it did look a bit better. Not great mind you. But not The Worst Mistake of My Life that it looked like much earlier.
After we put the kids to bed Wendy and I slogged with our glasses of wine out to the table, lit some candles, and tried to relax. It was okay, but not great. I still had that smile of “this is not bothering me” on my face, kind of like that guy in the 1920’s who said, “Ah, what’s a little stock market crash?” right before stepping out the window.
Was this something I should have done? Absolutely. Will I get used to it. Most assuredly. Am I going to be a pain in the ass until I do?
Well, the jury is still out on that one.
I’ll let you know.
Wendy’s and my backs are feeling the effects of putting in tons of pebbles in the back yard, those tiny pebbles sometimes referred to as gravel.
And when I say tons, I mean tons. Or tonnes. Depending on where you’re from.
We’ve been struggling with our small and mostly shady back yard for the 12 years we’ve lived here. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. There was pea gravel in the back yard when we moved in and a driveway up to a garage. We had the driveway was replaced by a flagstone path and we converted the two-car space into a studio (which then turned into a kids’ playroom, then our niece’s room, and now back to a studio) and a storage area. The gravel was nice for a while, but once Ryan was born I wanted grass.
You know, grass? You can almost see the picture of baby trying to catch the bubbles that you’re blowing while sitting on a carpet of green. Man’s biggest gardening project, the endless fight for a green, leafy lawn. You probably don’t have to go far in your imagination to see the dads yelling at the kids to stay off the work of art they’ve created. “Stop walking on it! Someone tell that dog to defecate somewhere else!”
The Japanese have their bonsai, our American control of the environment is shown in our slavish love for the shorn pasture of endless verdant green.
You probably don’t want to know the facts and figures about the water wasted (probably more so here in the Southwest than the rest of the country, we’ll take full blame), not to mention petroleum-based fertilizers, and herbicides/pesticides that kill all the intended and not-intended violators of our personal yard space (then wash down the sewer and get into our streams and oceans). Over the years of gardening I did come to recognize what a hypocrisy it is to work so closely with nature in my yard to the detriment of nature outside of the confines of my property.
But all that comes later.
I had to have grass for that baby. And if you can believe it (if you’re a gardener I’m sure you can), I spend the last 8 years trying to grow it. Does anyone spend 8 years doing anything? If you spend 8 years in college, you’d be broke and probably declared insane. Wait, I think my friend who is getting his PhD in Mythology has been going for 15 years. Still, it’s a long time to do anything.
When I first looked at our back yard and many people suggested grass I replied, “It’s just too shady.” Turned out I was right. Just took 8+ years to prove my point.
First I bought the Marathon shady mix of grass and spent days preparing the space, putting in sprinklers, laying down the topsoil, and watering three times a day. The grass came up wonderfully. It was magic. For about a month. Then it seemed the grass wasn’t getting enough of the sun it needed. It turned spindly and when you walked on it and never popped back up. It was like a lawn full of sullen teens. I mowed it, watered, fertilized, and continued to be disappointed. Over the next several summer months, it disappeared back into the dirt. Leaving it its path, well, dirt. Which was worse than the gravel I was dealing with in the first place.
Next I tried St. Augustine grass, which you may or may not know is not available in seed. I’m not sure if this is a gimmick or if it’s just too hard to have sprout, but I have to buy flats upon flats of it from my local nursery. I got the full skinny from Don at the store, bought all the right stuff (again) and was on my way.
The St. Augustine never took at all. It sat there and instead of spreading its magical tendrils across the 700 square feet it curled up and died. I don’t know much about the actual St. Augustine, but perhaps this is what he did, too. Maybe the Romans didn’t give him water and he perished. Regardless, it was sad. And my manhood was becoming serious damaged. There are a few things men in America need to know how to do and a big one of those things is to know how to grow a decent lawn. (Some others are how to make a fire and then barbecue over it and at least look like you know what the mechanic is talking about when he’s discussing the problems with your car. “It’s the manifold, it’s all gunked up.” “Uh huh, I see. Damn Chevy manifolds” must be your reply.)
I decided to bring in the big guns. I called Javier, my gardener, and had him access the problem. “It’s too dark,” he said wisely. “We’ll need to take out that tree,” he advised with little dollar signs lighting up his eyes.
So not only did I tell him to take out the tree, but to bring in sod, too.
For the unfamiliar, sod is what you get when you have more money than time. If you want someone out in Central California to grow your grass in the desert by sowing seeds, then pounding the ground with water 4 times a day, and finally scraping it and a ½ inch of soil up with some kind of industrial spatula, loading it onto a truck, and delivering it to your house, then this is the option for you. Did I say it was expensive? Like almost everything made easier, it comes at a price.
The sod looked wonderful when Javier was done. We celebrated. Sat on it. Bought a nice little table and chairs. Basked in its grassy glory. For a month or two. Then the familiar scenario played out again: the grass not getting up after being stepped on, kind of withering, then went away completely. Luckily this was after our largest party of the year, when 70 or so of our closest friends for an early Thanksgiving pot luck. (It’s all about impressing other people, isn’t it?) Javier was nice enough to come back with some more after several weeks of living with the dirt. I began to suspect he hadn’t used the brand I’d told him to, Marathon, which is some sort of patented Wunder Grass, guaranteed to grow in a cave alongside mosses. That grass also lasted exactly two months, then became mud when the winter rains blustered in.
Insert heavy sigh here.
I want to say this whole grass shindig ended around January of this year. Which would put that newborn boy I so wanted to impress with my manly grass know-how at a ripe old age of 6 and a half.
Wendy tried to explain it this way, “The kids don’t give a damn about grass. They don’t play out there.” True enough. We tried to play ball a few times back there, but 15 feet between catcher and pitcher, surrounded by 7 or so very breakable antique windows didn’t seem like the best idea. Oh yeah, and there were all the plants that kept getting pummeled by our ball, feet, or hands as we dove for to make the play.
Do you ever get the feeling you’ve watched too many movies, seen too many commercials, been subjected to so many advertisements that you’ve been convinced that’s reality? I think that’s what I had a case of here. Altered reality. But not the good kind.
We discussed everything from patios to decks to dichondera (a type of invasive “grass alternative,” whatever that means), but nothing seemed to fit the bill. Until we were on vacation and walked into a Japanese store that had a tiny little traditional house in it and outside were these beautiful black pebbles which went crunch, crunch, crunch when you walked over them. I called Wendy over and asked what she thought of them. “Perfect,” she said. And it was. I asked the woman if they sold them, she said no. She did tell me where they’d gotten them. Sort of. She was nice, anyway, as she told me in very broken English how to get to the place in Torrance which she did not know the name of. I decided I should probably wait until our next visit there before making any journeys with two kids and a wife in tow. A month later we were back and got proper directions from the owner and even the name of the company. That next Saturday Ryan, Abby, and I were smack dab in the middle of the busiest little rock shop you’ve ever seen. Dust flying everywhere, no real parking, and forklifts zooming by your car door at NASCAR speeds. I told the kids to stay close and follow me inside. Inside, by comparison, was a little oasis. The relaxed guy who helped me showed me where to look for the rocks we wanted. We went out and crunched around a bit on them. I saw another color, sort of a sandy beachy shade I liked, so I took down the names of both and went back inside.
The guy gave me an estimate for 500 square feet.
$856.
Wow.
Seemed an awful lot for a bunch of rocks. But he suggested the whole thing be 2 inches deep and it was $150 for delivery alone. We were talking 4,000 pounds of rock. Obviously not going to fit in the back of the Jetta with two kids.
I took the numbers home to Wendy, fully ready for her to tell me that’s too damn much for rocks, but I got the opposite. “Sounds great,” she said. “Let’s do it next weekend.” I realize that sometimes when I answer for Wendy in my head, I just sort of put a wig on myself and answer. Of course she said yes. She always says yes.
We discussed color. Though I was originally drawn to the black color, I believe it was due to our back yard already having a major Japanese theme. We have a stand of 45-foot giant bamboo, a running stand of bamboo, golden bamboo, and heavenly bamboo. In other words, a lot of bamboo. The problem with black rock, I figured, was twofold: one, you can see every leaf that falls on it. If you know anything about bamboo, you probably know for 365 days out of the year they drop their leaves to the ground to smother weeds and provide silica (?) as a sort of fertilizer to their roots. 366 days during a leap year. The Japanese people have a reputation of being pretty neat, and I couldn’t imagine myself out back every morning with a wooden broom, clogs, and a Vietnamese hat sweeping before going to work. I’m just not that Zen. Reason number two, black doesn’t seem to me to be the coolest surface on earth. In fact, I remember just the opposite when playing on the blacktop at school when I was young. Sometimes it would be so hot that when your feet hit it after jumping from the swings and you’d make a dent into it. These were two things I didn’t want in my back yard. So we decided on the lighter color.
(I did make the mistake of asking my fastidious neighbor, Mark, his opinion on color. He voted on the black. Mark is one of those people who has lawn furniture that he moves out of the way every morning before watering his lawn. Mark, obviously, has no children and belongs to that other traditionally neat culture: gay men.)
We decided to fill in a little more alongside the side of the house where the grass just seemed to be taking (by “taking” I mean the way hair seems to be taking on a man’s comb-over. Not exactly what everyone wants to look at). The new total for the rocks came to just over $1,000. After I ordered I thought, “Man, do I hope I didn’t make the biggest $1,000 mistake of my life.” Which is ridiculous, as I have made many, many $1,000 mistakes in my life and will probably continue to do so in the far-flung future.
Wendy and I had both taken two weeks off for summer vacation and, as usual, we’d make some plans for home improvement so we wouldn’t get bored.
We do this a lot, in fact. I remember many a Labor and Memorial Day filled with painting projects while we listened to Flashback Weekends on the alternative rock station.
Already on this “vacation” we’d hired someone to paint Wendy’s Pilates studio and hang mirrors, while Wendy and I hooked up another phone line, cleaned all the incredibly dusty (not to mention high) windows, replaced lighting fixtures, and moved the machinery back and forth. Also on the list was to move our computer out to the studio now that our niece had vacated it. And, of course, the back yard.
They said to expect the pebbles at 9:30, to which I told Wendy, “They’ll be here earlier.” Sure enough, a semi pulled up at 7 o’clock, with two 3,000 pound bags of pebbles. And yes, a 3,000 pound bag of pebbles looks about as big as you’d expect. Six feet around and 4 feet high. Let’s put it this way, two children could comfortably sit on the pebbles in the bag with sand toys and play while I took wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of pebbles to the back yard. Oh yes, and the first bag had an opening just large enough to put a shovel in but not quite pull it out. I remembered my breathing techniques while trying not to curse. Remember that the children were in the other bag. I was a quarter way through when I started to think we’d made a mistake with the color. Could I return it? Could I say I was terribly, terribly wrong and would they deliver the black pebbles instead? About halfway through landscaping I realized it felt like walking through them was harder than walking on the sand at the beach. You had to slog to get that crunch crunch noise. But slogging wasn’t really what I wanted. Three-quarters of the way through, I realized it not only felt like sand, it looked a hell of a lot like sand. In fact, it started to look like one of those fake beaches they create in Nebraska so the kids won’t realize they’re thousands of miles away from the ocean. All I needed was a seagull ripping his way through a trashcan and lifeguards ripping through on ATVs to complete the scene.
But I kept working. I mean, what else was I going to do? Anyway, I know my own neuroses well enough to realize that many times in the midst of a creative project I will up and lose it. (I remember a documentary I’d watched about someone directing the Emmys and seconds before they went live he yelled, “It’ll never work! Call it off! Oh my god, what were we thinking!” took a moment, then called into his headset, “Okay, everyone, in five, four, three…” So obviously I’m not the only one who experiences such a thing.)
We filled in the spaces between our flagstones. The spaces that were supposed to grow a variety of different plants I’d purchased over the years which had become dirt spotted with the occasional moss.
I stood back and tried to enjoy my work.
Nope. Not taking.
My mind was still screaming, “You idiot!”, “Here you go, $1,000 worth of rocks!”, “Congratulations, sucker!” and the like. My mind can be very kind when it wants to be. Now was not one of those times. I kept trying to convince Wendy we should go out for a break and get some afternoon coffee. She, unlike me, was having a good time, seeing the bright side of things. “It does look beachy. Maybe we should put an umbrella over there and a bucket of sand toys.” Oh my god, woman, NO! We don’t want a beach scene here!
She was not helping quiet my mind. But then again, she wasn’t calling me an idiot as my own mind was doing. She said it’d look much better after moving the table back. We went out for a coffee break and I sat there and tried not to look forlorn. I really don’t know how some married couples manage to run a business together. As a couple Wendy and I have difficulty setting up the Christmas tree every year. I know couples who don’t even bother going with each other to the grocery store. I guess we’re ahead of some and behind a few.
I sat at the coffee shop trying to have a smile. “Yes, look,” my face was trying to say, “I’m a happy fellow! A dirty, yet happy fellow who just spent over $1,000 of his own money on rocks! See how it doesn’t bother me? I just spent $12 on coffee drinks for the family! Look at us, we’re rich, stupid people who blow money on stupid rocks!” I’m not sure I was fooling anyone except the kids.
Wasn’t it George Bush who said it takes a village to set up a back yard? Or was it Mark Twain?
Regardless, we came home and it did look a bit better. Not great mind you. But not The Worst Mistake of My Life that it looked like much earlier.
After we put the kids to bed Wendy and I slogged with our glasses of wine out to the table, lit some candles, and tried to relax. It was okay, but not great. I still had that smile of “this is not bothering me” on my face, kind of like that guy in the 1920’s who said, “Ah, what’s a little stock market crash?” right before stepping out the window.
Was this something I should have done? Absolutely. Will I get used to it. Most assuredly. Am I going to be a pain in the ass until I do?
Well, the jury is still out on that one.
I’ll let you know.
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