72 Degrees and Sunny

(Pictured, right, the Manzanita I started growing from a twig 2 years ago, just in bloom again.)






The unusual and the usual side by side. It's one of those warm February days caused by the Santa Ana winds coming up. High today is expected to be 84, while much of the rest of the country lies buried in snow.

Once again I come back to thea fact, this is what it's like here. A man was complaining in the newspaper about the trees on his street the other day, after an article ran lauding the beauty of native species. "Do not expect me to believe that the sad brown curling leaves found on the California Sycamore can be interpreted as a beautiful harbinger of winter. They are ugly in comparison to the fireworks show of maples on the East Coast."

Bah humbug, indeed. Perhaps this guy should take himself back there. These trees have been the "beautiful harbinger of winter" for 7,000+ years and this jerk is a newcomer who misses his "real" fall. Sorry, guy, this is the real fall in Southern California. As the saying goes, If you don't like it, you can lump it. Please don't debate what is real and what is not real in the natural world when you know nothing about it. It'd be like sending a Chumash Indian to Minnesota and having him declare the snow and ice were unusual and ugly.

I often wonder about garden writers and think I'm correct in believing, like all writers, they're better at writing about what they're doing than actually doing those things themselves. I'm thinking about sports writers, garden writers, etc. I think the only exception I can think of, is cooking writers. My thought about garden writers comes from the thought that there's just not enough time to do both. Gardening seems to take more and more time in my case and it becomes somewhat of an obsession. Plus, it seems to me, whenever I see garden writers' gardens, they never seem to be completely finished. When you're a perfectionist and you take on the task of manipulating nature, you've got a pretty tough row to hoe. (If you don't mind the gardening pun.)

It's funny, sometimes, to see something a writer has written about so lyrically and you stand back and say, "That's it? This is the beautiful pond they were writing about? It's really a hole in the ground." To hear some people waxing poetic about a muddy hole filled with plants truly addresses the phrase, In the eye of the beholder. So perhaps we're better hearing their inspiring thoughts about the hole rather than visiting it ourselves and taking our interpretations along with us.

I probably need to come to the conclusion that my garden will never be finished, but rather a work-in-progress. And also need to understand my obsessive behavior means that I should put limitations on the hours I spend out toiling in the garden. Otherwise, I tend to get a little crazy and very worn out by the time evening comes. (The workout each week, since I got rid of my gardener, I think, along with my higher fiber diet, helped lower my cholesterol to the point my doctor was no longer recommending medicine for me.)

I read about meditative joy, and I realize at some point I actually lose that joy and move into some weird dark area. Of course, that dark area seems to be around more when I'm inside doing housework. And joy seems to be an essential component I want in my life. I just need to be wise about getting to it.