March 27th
The rain has just set in. Temperatures in the mid 70s. The California Poppies are just coming up, Ryan was excited to show me two this morning.
The weekend in the yard wasn't a particularly difficult one, I'm still maintaining (or trying to maintain) the balance between working in the house and outside on Saturdays while Wendy is working. And, yes, by the end of the day (5pm) I am ready for a) a long bike ride or b) a cold beer.
We'd all gotten free seeds last week from our little Farmer's Market (I think there are only 10 stalls, one of them devoted entirely to mozzarella, if you can believe it). They're last year's seeds and I don't expect them to take. Thankfully. Abby I believe is trying to grow turnips, which I can't stand. Ryan is frustrated that we have to wait a few weeks before planting the watermelon. We have a few Gold Rush yellow zucchini sprouts up which we'll move to the back, where they did so well last year.
Working in the garden started me thinking (which is actually not such a difficult task) about what is real and what is fake. Moreover, where are we lying to ourselves and where are we true.
I was thinking in particular about this really awful restaurant we took the kids to just outside Disneyland, called Rainforest Cafe. What's so terrifically sad about it is how goddamned misguided the whole adventure is, from the gift shoppe at the front to the food choices for the children. If you can believe it, at a place called the Rainforest Café a child’s plate does not come with fruit. The adult plate does not come with fruit. What a perfect opportunity to give a kid a banana (though, notably, I’m sure plenty of rainforests fall to make way for banana plantations, but still…) And how about donating a portion, even a nickel a plate, to saving the rainforest? How about skipping the desserts and sponsoring a gorilla in the wild? How about compostable plates? Here was the horrible themed restaurant based on a fragile ecosystem which is dying while you eat the fried onion blossom appetizer.
Honestly, you can’t take me anywhere.
We did get drinks, and sometimes that takes me out of If-I-Ran-The-Circus mode.
But still, where does this enormous corporation get off fooling people into thinking their somehow a part of the circle of life while they run laughing to the bank in their Hummers?
One of the very things I love about my garden is it is true. Whether or not you see it as a weedy mess (and most people don’t, I’m probably the worst offender here), it actually is a pesticide free, fertilizer free, environment for that circle of life Rainforest Café was imitating. Everything from the skunks to the billions of little ants living under my porch have a place to live. You can’t dig in my garden without turning up earthworms. That, my friend, is what they call a good thing.
The birds come in looking to eat the worms, and when they do they don’t have to worry that they’ve been soaked in Malathion or something else. And the worms that live can do their business. This is real, this is what’s happening as you stick your hands in the soil. Not a flock of birds trilling at the push of a button.
I may have said it before, but I always wondered why those crazy Zen monks were always telling you to do the most boring things: wash dishes, weed your garden, sit and stare at a wall for 40 minutes. But here it is, can’t you see? Here is where you can’t escape yourself and you can’t run away from reality. Boring old stupid reality. Just sitting there and clearing out the pond of amusements, taxes that need doing, and plasma screen TVs.
I’m not saying that diversions aren’t fun, and aren’t necessary, but I always crave something deeper, something meaningful. Which often makes me a pain in the ass.
I need to learn to sit and weed and listen and not get up on my high horse (as it were) taking potshots at passers by. Do not judge, lest ye be judged, boy. That’s the difficult part. Even taking away many of the diversions, which I seemed to have done, is not enough, the road is longer, and you have just taken the first steps.
Not that they are bad steps.
There are just a hell of a lot of them.
And I hope they will get easier somewhere along the way.
