Notes from a Frustrated Gardener

Everything Must Be Remade

2009-05-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

Sometime, in the garden or washing dishes, I hold onto certain phrases and, for the life of me, I cannot get them out of my mind.

"Everything must be remade" is the one that's been on me for months now. When I look at it, what my mind is really thinking that is, I can see it's really about the world being remade.

None of this comes as a surprise since some of my immediate family and friends have remade their lives, homeschooling, devoting themselves more to religious lives, etc. Somehow I've always skirted the issue of radical change, perhaps due to my Air Force Brat upbringing and always carrying a longing to "just get along", regardless of my personal feelings. (Perhaps I'm really Asian and was adopted into my family...)

As I look at the world around me and see in so many ways, what it's become, I do in fact realize what it could be, at least from a ecologist's standpoint.

Pulitzer prize winning author Jared Diamond wrote a book called Collapse, which studies how great societies fall into ruins. That book and that title have stuck with me. Especially in these times of incredible change. Will one of the world's richest and powerful countries overextend itself and end up in ruins? Is the world, in its global economy and global pollution, heading the wrong direction?

Well, some people say that you shouldn't wish for things you don't really want, and I guess the same could be said for thinking about things you don't really want. Over the last 6 months my office has undergone massive changes and, once again, I don't know if I'm in a good leadership role for it. I got a new manager in January, which was okay, as I know her really well and she knew what I did on a day-to-day basis. But then, 3 months ago, 50% of our HQ and 30% of the offices worldwide were cut. Friends I've know for years (10 years, some of them), were given severance packages and told to clean out their desks. It was heartbreakingly awful I mean, I realize business is just a reflection of what's going on in the world, but to have it all fall down after so many years of working together was in so many ways, more than my heart could bear.

Three months later, the whole company is being reorganized and my manager now is someone across the country and I'm not quite sure what my role is in this first week of the reorganization. Sadly, lots of people are confused over the details and the unknown is making everyone frustrated and nervous.

But here it is exactly: the old way wasn't working and everything has to be remade. People who did one thing will now do another. Certain ways of doing things will have to be rethought. There will be retraining.

My old boss, who is exceptionally smart, told me that with change like this, you can either just ride the wave under the radar, or use the opportunity to do something you really love. The problem I see with this is if what I start doing what I love, if it doesn't jibe with what the company loves, I'm going to be out of a job at a terrible, terrible time. But if change was easy, or if everyone could do it, the world would look a lot different than it does now, I suppose.

We know how evolution works, correct? The environment changes and whoever is adapted best to that change flourishes. This is really no different, except that this change can be exasperating, especially for people like me, who aren't incredibly comfortable with it. But then again, it's time to say goodbye to what was and move onto the next thing. I've done it before. When we moved into this house 14 years ago, I knew little to nothing about gardening. Now I take care of hundreds of plants on a small 1/8 an acre using less water than people with 4x that acreage using no pesticides or fertilizer. It's all possible. We've learned to live with less water, use less electricity and gas, create a compost pile, go organic, invite animals into our yard to live, and grow native plants in our yard.

It's not bad.

But even though this change at work isn't like working in a garden (the aloe doesn't complain when I cut in back by a third and the squirrels don't bitch when I move their feeder), I think I can do this.

If I really want the change, I'm going to have to.

Atwater Drift

2009-05-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

Garden log: Matillijas up, but more sparse than last year. Tomatoes already setting fruit, if you can believe it. Ryan's dream Big Max pumpkin plant (reputed to produce 75 lb pumpkins) in the ground. Love-in-a-mist blooming.

I'm sure everyone has this, you go out somewhere, the garden, shopping, bike riding, whatever, and you come up with this really terrific idea. You think about it and you're just in love with it.

Then you come home, get a drink of water, check the mail, feed the kids, whatever, and suddenly that idea is gone.

It's sad but true, even if you remember the idea, a lot of the fire behind it has disappeared.

"What the heck did I think that was so great for?"

Though there may be the case that the idea might not be so great anyway and it's probably best forgotten about.

Especially when you should be paying attention to the task at hand instead of drifting.

I'm a big drifter out in the garden. It's actually an observation I've had about writers, even garden writers, when you see the projects they're describing it's usually accompanied by a, "that's it?" feeling.

"That's the garden you've been going on and on about?"

Garden writers have a tendency to try a lot of different things, but they're essentially different people than great garden designers.

The garden writer for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Smaus, was always going over his new finds, creations, and critiques of flowers, vegetables, and the like. When I finally found his garden online I had that feeling described above. It was a very small garden with things pulled out, this set by the other, this needing weeding.

Martha Stewart Magazine it was not.

I still love Robert Smaus, and his work, but I wouldn't recommend him coming over to your house and redoing your garden. For the same reason (and more), I would tell you I'm fine bringing over bottles of wine, but probably not a trowel.

There was an amazing designer over at a nursery called Hortus years ago in Pasadena. My neighbor Dan just came over and was talking about it today and we recalled how stunning it was. I should have taken pictures, but there was a huge clock tower with the entire face made out of old farm equipment, a beautiful 1900's era steel hothouse, a working vegetable garden (I'm not kidding, the guy had a grounds crew whose job it was to tend to the plants including this veggie garden), four koi ponds... The place was magic.

It had two drawbacks. One really only pertaining to me, which was that you could pick up a beautiful little something only to turn it over and discover that it's $1,300. The other was apparently he wasn't such a great businessman. I heard one of his gardeners tell me that he owed so much money by the end that someone was yelling at him while he was at the cash register who proceeded to grab him by the collar and pull him across the counter. The owner broke free and took off down the street. And that was the last the gardener ever saw of him.

Good designer. Bad money guy.

I guess the point is you can't be good at everything. Or maybe very few people are good at everything. Or that that the old adage is true, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym."

Back in the Mix

2009-05-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

The tomatoes are in and the world is in bloom.

The gardening month has been made "interesting" due to my dealing with a walking cast and a strict order from my podiatrist not to work in the garden. So it's been a bit of teaching for both Ryan and Abby (the latter, being 6 and having a very short attention span, picking a weed or two then wandering off). I've taught Ryan how to mow the lawn without running over the power cord, which is pretty good, considering how likely an event that actually is.

Looking over the tomatoes at the heirloom-specific Tomatomania this year, I was convinced that I needed these cool pulp pots, essentially large pots made out of old pulp that can be used for a couple years, then break down in the compost. Okay, maybe I was dreaming that last part, but that was my original intention before I discovered they had none of them by the time I got there. 12 o'clock on the second day of the sale. They're pretty hot, these pots.

We bought our normal boatload of tomatoes, for us - 6 plants, and I went home wondering where the hell I was going to put all these things. Like all plants and puppies, when you get them they're so small and cute you wonder why you didn't get 20 or 30, never realizing that they will take over your home rather quickly. I've learned to limit myself (and Ryan) over the years. Which is ironic, since Ryan loves to buy plants but refuses to eat most vegetables.

I had been reading online a lot about these EarthBoxes, which are essentially containers within containers that allow you to water at the bottom and grow more in a small space than you ever dreamed possible. Well, that's what the ads say. The ads also say that they run about $55 apiece not including shipping. Which would put me in the $200 range for planting all the tomatoes I just bought (3 per box).

Why not plant in the ground, you ask? Very smart question. We've been planting in the ground and in planters for a few years now (trying interesting techniques like an inground terra cotta pot full of water to help keep the ground around the plants moist), but the problem is that you're supposed to rotate your "tomato" crop in three year cycles. Which means if I plant a tomato outside my back door this year, I'll be waiting three years until I can put another tomato plant there. I don't know about you, but I live in the middle of a rather large city. And my whole front yard is a jungle. I don't have a heck of a lot of space to plant my leggy, thirsty tomato plants.

The clever thing about container gardening is that you can put the same tomato in the same place year after year.

That's the plan anyway. Finish the season in October, dump the soil, wash out the pots, put some lettuce in, then use the same pot in the same place next year for tomatoes.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, since I have absolutely no fruit as of yet.

After reading forums about creating your own "EarthBox" and deciding, yes, they work, but I'll be damned if I'm putting one more ugly thing in my yard (ask me about my radial tires!), I went with a company called The Garden Patch.

I know, they had to search long and hard to come up with a worse name than EarthBox, but by gum I believe they nailed it.

So I sat on my chair and directed my 9-year-old son to haul around the 30+ pound bags of soil and my dear Abigail to stop listening to High School Musical 3 long enough to put at least one scoopful of dirt into the container. She actually was good enough to help me haul them, one by one, back to the back of the house and try not to squirt the hose at me. (Which went something like this: "Hmm, the directions say DO NOT GET THE FERTILIZER PACK WET BEFORE PLANTING.... Ack!!! Abby!!! Put down the hose, PUT DOWN THE HOSE!!! AHHHHH!!!!" Something like that.)

We got all the tomatoes in and the fertilizer packets stayed relatively dry.

I did not.

And I tried not to look fazed later in the day, upon going back to the garden store, when Ryan picked out a seedling for a pumpkin called Big Max.

Would you laugh when I told you that it supposedly grows pumpkins up to 75 pounds?

Yeah, I wonder where that's going to go...

The End of Violence

2009-04-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

I walked the children to the car this morning, as I do each weekday, and they got in the car and we drove away.

Nothing new, nothing different.

Which is what I had planned.

What they didn't see was the pool of blood on the sidewalk that was there last night, right in front of my car, from where a 21-year old man lie, bleeding to death out of his femoral artery, where he was shot, just minutes before.

But that probably makes sense.

I don't know what to tell them and I don't know exactly how to share this with others, or get it out of my head in the light of day.

We've already talked about it, Wendy, my neighbors, the police, and we even joked about it and went to bed and slept soundly, but the fact remains, the kid was shot 100 feet from my front garden and bleeding to death while the bad guys drove off.

The kids were asleep last night when I heard what sounded like a large firework outside my front window. I was doing dishes and it didn't sound like a gun, because I've heard gunfire before and it's always muffled, as its usually far away. This sounded like a firecracker. But then there was shouting and I could see, from my dining room window, a 20-something kid with a shaved head and white tee shirt scuffling with someone else. I didn't see the someone else. But there was shouting and I figured out pretty quick that someone shot a gun, so called 911.

I explained the whole thing to the woman on the phone, play-by-play. A black truck (an Avalanche, which I didn't know at the time) was pulling away from the scene. The shaved head kid was on a cell phone and limping and seemed to have a red splotch covering his white tee shirt on the right side. I figured he was the one hit.

There was also a red SUV, which looked like an Isuzu Rodeo, that was there and stopped during most of this, before heading down the street. I kept telling the woman on 911 that the black truck was still there, had come back, and if the police would get there immediately, they could catch them. I think she was trying to take down everything I was saying. (but the weird thing was, she put me on with paramedics afterward, who already had a call in).

I ran to the living room, still talking to 911, and turned off the lights, trying to get a good look at the kids and see if I could get the license plate of the black truck, which had turned around and was now heading out.

I ran out to tell Wendy what'd happened and by the time I came back in, the police car was pulling up. I ran out the door and saw the kid I thought was shot just had a red graphic on his shirt, but there was someone lying on the ground down the street. The kid on the phone kept yelling, "My friend, they shot my friend."

The police were everywhere. They kept pulling up. I directed the fire engines down to where the kid was and the two others were wandering around, trying to catch their breath. The neighbors all started coming out of their houses and we started gathering in little groups. I asked the guys if they were okay, did they need anything. No.

The kid was lying right outside my neighbor's house and the paramedics were hooking him up to an IV, stripping off his bloody clothes, and getting him onto the gurney. One of the other kids was vomiting into the gutter, from exhaustion?

These were young Armenian kids driving a car well out of my price range. What were they doing in our neighborhood? What the hell happened? They told the cops they were visiting a friend's girlfriend, but they didn't buy it any more than we did. The cops pointed out that there was broken jewelry, a hat on the ground that didn't belong to these kids, and other stuff that showed this was really a fight, and they would guess, probably with something to do with drugs.

There's still really only one kid we know on our block who sells drugs, Andrew, and he's been selling them for 10+ years. He walked by while everyone was standing there, but I don't think he'd be stupid enough to do that if his customers were just getting shot. Wouldn't they finger him?

Our neighbor told us one of the other kids, the shooters, had run into his back yard for a few minutes, which prompted him to call the police. The car apparently came back around picked up that kid and they took off.

While talking to all our neighbors a policeman came up and asked us if we'd stand outside yellow tape. We all looked up and realized they had cordoned off the area we were standing. I didn't know what to do. It was kind of like being kicked out of the party, so to speak.

The cops came to our door, talked to us some more, and we learned the red SUV I saw was stopped and they were witnesses, if you can believe it. They saw everything and then drove away. So I may have done my good deed (imagine how surprised they were when the cops pulled them over as they were driving and asked if they just witnessed a shooting).

The kid who was shot, it turned out, was bleeding to death, and flat lined on his way to the hospital. He was brought back and they said if he died, the detectives would be back asap.

He must still be alive, because we didn't see them.

Around 10:30 I realized there was a pool of blood in front of my neighbor's house. Her lights were on and I knocked and asked if I could borrow her hose. I didn't want my kids to see all the blood. Or the blood to stain the sidewalk, to remind us what'd happened there.

So we talked a bit while I washed.

And the conversation moved away from this and onto that, her termite infestation, her aunt, who'd recently passed away, my kids...

It seemed so normal, though I was watching blood, which looked so black in the light, down the sidewalk and into the sewer.

I don't know if the two can't coexist in my brain, or if I'm so over it that I don't want to think about this.

The second can't be true, because I can't stop thinking about it, but I'm not sure I know how to handle the anger and pain. It's been a long couple months - with layoffs at the office, my foot in a walking cast, and tons of work to catch up on (which is to be expected when there are layoffs).

In the light of day, I walked my children to the car and let them in. We passed by the elements of the fight I didn't see in the night. Someone had been pushed into the irises. There were torn tree branches.

As I opened the door for them to get in, only I could see the bloody footprints which were out of my hose's reach last night. The boy had run up and down the street bleeding, and at 7 in the morning, you could still see the bloody tracks leading up the street.

I grew up in Nebraska, where in a lot of ways, it's more violent in everyday life than here (there's a special breed of men who lurk in bars drinking and looking for their next fight), but seeing this - it's just so harsh, so close, and I want to protect my children from it so badly.

What Have You Done to Save the Earth Today?

2009-02-04T21:09:00.000-08:00

It sounds ridiculous, when you put it that way, doesn't it? But it's a phrase I play in my mind, over and over again, like a CD that skips right where you put your dirty thumbprint.

I realize many people who, like me, are into causes for the earth have a tendency to be a little bit of downers. But don't blame the cause. If we weren't here, we'd be downers about the state of the economy, the state of religion, or the state of the prisons in America. Thankfully many of us are here, so you can poke fun of us in a big group.

But getting back to my original point. I find life sometimes boring. And depressing. Why? Because that's just me, damn it. Here I am. I've been like this since I was 15, maybe before. And yes, I find doing the dishes just as damn boring as most. I hate doing the dishes. I don't really like doing the laundry, either. And, by God, if I was alive during the pioneer days, I'm sure I'd hate shoeing horses, plowing, and killing chickens for dinner. Even though I've read many Zen Buddhist monks expound the wonders of doing the dishes and calming the mind, it's never really made sense to me.

Which is why the mantra above, What have you done to save the Earth today?, makes so much sense to me. Okay, maybe I'm overly melodramatic. Or incredibly pathetic. But putting those things together in my mind makes me feel good about the trail I'm leaving behind. Which is something you can't say when you go through a 12-pack by yourself watching TV all Saturday. (Or really, going through it while you're camping, either.)

Those little damn things - they may not even make you feel all that good. Like taking all the leaves last Sunday, mulching them up, then putting them back on the yard as mulch. It took a lot of time. I sweated and sweated and sweated. (Right here is where the doctor of your choice says, "Well, that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Not sitting inside reading a book!") And I sort of liked it. But that's not the point. I don't have to like it. The same way I don't have to necessarily like having to go to work every day. But it's related to the rest of your life, and beyond your life. In the case of both of those, they are legacies I leave for my children (who will benefit from me working and me working in the yard.)

Much of life is boring. I 've heard people complaining about it in school, church, home, work... And the funny thing about a practice like meditation, which we've all heard is so wonderful, secret, and inspiring, is how boring the actual act itself is. You don't sit up and say, "I'm inspired!" The opposite! You're calming down your wild mind, with all its crazy ideas like how you'd love to make $1B by becoming a wind power entrepreneur to why the heck people spend money on slot machines. And there's the rub: by smoothing out your mind, you are doing the same thing, leaving a legacy, the history you leave as you interact with everyone and everything around you.

It's tricky, right? And sort of stupid sounding, if you don't think it out. I understand that. Believe me, I understand that.

But it's important to keep these things in mind when we lower our thermostats and put on a sweater, choose to walk to the library instead of driving (even though it'll take 20 more minutes out of your day), or the myriad of things we do which are perceived by many, even ourselves, as taking too long, too hard, seemingly not worth the extra effort.

What did we do to save the Earth today? Well, we just talked about it. And hopefully we'll go away with something to do, in the right frame of mind.

Light It Up

2008-12-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

As I said, always a strange season for me. But then again, all the seasons are strange, this one is always crazy busy. If I'd known how much busier I'd get throwing kids into the equation for this holiday season... Well, I wouldn't have changed a damn thing, but I might have paused and reflected for something like 10 more minutes.

I fulfilled my family duties last Sunday and actually got on a borrowed 20' ladder and stuck lights on my house. Yes, I know, hard to believe. I've been trying to talk my family out of wanting them for years with arguments like, "Do you want our house to end up looking like the house across the street?" (which turned out to be rather poor, as it's got every Christmas decoration available strewn across it and thus is a child's dream) and "Do you know what it costs to run those little lights for a month (poor argument, too as I have no idea, either. It could cost a nickel).

Hard to believe Ryan, a 9-year old boy, and I actually pulled the whole thing off. We went to the requisite Big Box Hardware store and stood for those stunned few minutes while surrounded by the myriad of lights (or myriad lights, if you prefer) only the Big Box Stores can offer.

Well, except of course, the ones I wanted. The white mini lights with the white cord.

But we were here. And, apparently, few other people in the aisle. Which as we all know from past holiday shopping experiences, is a good thing.

A guy started talking to me when I was looking for the white lights - telling me he hadn't had to put lights up for years, since his divorce, and now that he and his fiance were living together here he was back buying decorations.

You know, I never divulge stuff like that on aisle 23, or any aisle in department stores. In fact, it took me a long time to tell my therapist I wanted to leave my girlfriend.

Regardless, this was a really nice guy, and it turned out, a heck of a source of information on Christmas lights. He knew stuff about lengths, timers, cords, all that stuff and really sounded down-to-earth about it. Before I hear you complain, "How could he NOT sound down-to-earth, they're Christmas lights", I'd like to remind you Martha Stewart bought 7 large houses explaining to us a variety of things that we should know and that should be easy, things like pie crusts. So hearing someone say, "Ah, they say 3 sets, but really 4 won't matter much if you string them together", was really reassuring.

I hoped for the best with this guy's new fiancee. I mean, he started giving advice to the woman behind me. When I went to go check out the LED lights, I got advice from that woman, too (was it his advice passed on or her own advice? At this point I didn't care. I needed everything I could to get me up that 20 foot ladder.)

We bought under $50 worth of lights and said No to the animated deer that pretends to eat your flowers (which is funny, I'm guessing, only if you don't have real deer eating your begonias on a regular basis).

I explained to Ryan the plan and, if you can believe it, he was really good about the whole thing. He got down off the roof when I told him to, he reached over the side and did not slide down the saltillo tiles onto the sidewalk, really it was a banner day. We did have problems with him wiggling the ladder for some reason while I was 18 feet up and (I felt) really close to crashing through our plate glass front window.

When Wendy came home, she was more than surprised - she let out a, "Gorgeous".

Now this is a woman who never lets out that sort of sentiment and we'd done it, we'd moved her with miniature Christmas lights hung all across our Spanish style 1927 casa, which is a beautiful thing.

I'm going to try to hold that moment close as long as I can.

For I know when January 7th comes, I'm going to back on that roof with the shaky ladder.

Not Playing Possum

2008-11-30T22:16:00.000-08:00

November and December are without a doubt my busiest months, both at home and at work.

We host an annual Early Thanksgiving, which has blossomed into a sit down potuck dinner for 70 which is almost immediately followed by a party I throw at work for 200, then for staff at work for 80.

On top of that we throw all the rest of the holiday craziness, kids plays, Wendy and Ryan's birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a trip back to Nebraska for the Christmas holidays.

By the time I get back to the Midwest, honestly, all I want to do is collapse in a chair.

This was the weekend after our enormous potluck. So it was supposed to be the weekend we put the house back in order. Which would have been fine if we hadn't had house guests for the Thanksgiving vacation.

Happily, it's our favorite family, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Unfortunately, today meant a lot of putting stuff back, cleaning, and getting our world back in a little bit of order before the week starts.

Wendy had asked me to grab our big metal bucket out back to be used as Woodstock's nest in the school Charlie Brown Christmas play (Abby is playing Woodstock). You know, the last thing I expected to see when I lifted it up was an incredibly angry mother opossum baring her teeth at me. Ryan was behind me and I jumped and pushed him back into the garage. He had no idea what happened. He thought there was a skunk underneath there. Nope, just an angry opossum.

After going back with a large poker and being greeted once again by those bared teeth, I decided it wasn't the brightest idea in the world to take on a possibly rabid varmint in my back yard. (The coach of Ryan's soccer team just picked up a snake last week, only to discover it was a baby rattle snake, which also has a venomous bite.)

When I came in to tell Wendy her response was, "Wow, really." Then a pause. "Well I guess your turning the yard into a nature sanctuary is really starting to work."

Damn her eyes.

This Is Not A Love Song

2008-10-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

There was a time when I would have gone to see No Country for Old Men at the movies with friends. Or by myself. Or as part of a class in college.

And perhaps I'd think about it, talk it over with people.

The fact is, I'm intrigued by it.

For one, I love Cohen Brothers movies. Raising Arizona remains one of the funniest movies I've seen of all time.

But I've also heard how violent it is, even from people who watch violent movies.

I was so intrigued that I watched the first five minutes of it - just enough to watch to young Sheriff (so young, apparently, that he doesn't put his detainee in the prison, he leaves him sitting behind him, so he can't see him) get snuffed in under 20 seconds.

And then I took the movie out.

I'm done with these movies.

I don't know about you, but I have a ton of hatred in my heart. There's bad guys I want to see strung up by their thumbs... And not just the bad guys you'd think of, but those politicians, businessmen, and rulers who lie and cost people their lives financially or physically.

Watching a mass murderer doesn't mean anything to me, except that I'm watching an aberration of society. Fact is, I don't really care to have a look at how Hitler became the colossal madman he'd become.

I just had to start asking myself, "Why"?

When there's so much work to be done in the world, with famine, hatred, intolerance, and disease, it seems myopic to stare at these glaring man made errors in a darkened movie theater.

I know I'm sounding a hell of a lot like those Sally Do Gooders I used to abhor so much in high school and college. But I'm able to admit I'm wrong. There's some art for art's sake, which doesn't make much sense to the cognizant, thinking person.

Maybe this in fact is a great Cohen Brothers flick. And all I have to do is make it through "strong graphic violence" to get to it. But I'm not going to do it. I've seen torture scenes, then had to listen to the description of how we treat men in Guatanamo Bay. Or how the Japanese treated Asian Comfort Women. When I hear such stories, of how humans brutalize one another, it breaks my heart for all of humankind. At that point I don't know if we are above dogs, bears, or even the lowest of the animal kingdom. At that point we have debased ourselves, we've lost control of what someone has given us which could only be called a soul.

There are better, higher things to do than watch this movie. Lest we all forget that this is entertainment.

I would suggest to you that instead you listen instead to Father Boyle, who lifts up men from streets of violence and gives them something so much more.

That's here.

And I bid you goodnight.

Insert Sad Face

2008-10-07T21:04:00.001-07:00

It's funny, I've been a writer forever and a gardener for so few years, that it's odd I spend so many waking hours thinking about the latter.

And how working with the soil just a few hours a week can change your viewpoint.

I was having a discussion with my brother a few months ago who turns out to be a "man is not the cause of global warming" person (or just being a naysayer to irk me). Being smarter than me by a long shot he can rattle off all sorts of facts he's read and remembers at his finger tips.

I'm not good at arguing. And I am woefully slow. But when the US government's own Environmental Protection Agency (who has been heavily influenced by an anti-environmental Bush presidency) puts out this Q&A on their site,

Q: Are human activities responsible for the warming climate?
A: Careful measurements have confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions are increasing and that human activities (principally, the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use) are the primary cause. Human activities have caused the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane to be higher today than at any point during the last 650,000 years. Scientists agree it is very likely that most of the global average warming since the mid-20th century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gases, rather than to natural causes.

After our own government doing so much to negate such statements for the last many years, how can this not move you to get on board,?

My wife had this brilliantly simple (but not simplistic) thought:

If I'm right, and human influence is heating up the earth and potentially going to kill us all, then cutting back on carbon emissions may save us.

If you're right and the pollution we toss into the air isn't doing anything to warm the earth and we cut back, we'll just have cleaner air.

Not really a loss.

When you put it down to that simple statement, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

Mind Weeds

2008-10-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

I remember years ago listening to this Zen Buddhist monk speak about mind weeds.

I love that he chose an expression so rooted to the earth to explain a simple, pervasive phenomenon.

Everyone knows what mind is and even the person who has spent their life in Manhattan knows what weeds mean to farmers.

The funny thing for me is how intertwined these two can become when gardening. I go out to the yard to take care of things on a Saturday and suddenly all I can see is weeds.

And my mind starts whirling, "Where am I going to start?", "Look at this mess, how the hell did I ever think I was going to tackle this without a gardener?"

I should take a moment to remind you (and myself) that most people who talk to me about my yard think it's beautiful. They don't see the weed patches the way I do. Or, if they do, they mean little to them in the big picture.

But I am so caught up in these weeds because they mean something to me, they actually set off many different parts of my mind. This dandelion over here says that I'm lazy. That volunteer fennel tells everyone I'm sloppy. This huge patch of grass tells the whole world that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing out here.

It's inescapable, actually. Well, almost. I've learned only over the last month or so, that two cups of coffee before working in the yard is one cup too much for me.

Wendy's perfect solution was to only concentrate on one little patch of weeds at a time and tackle them.

Bird by bird, Anne Lamott might say.

Your Lucky Day

2008-08-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

August 10, 2008

Roses blooming again (even though I never feed them. Benign neglect?) Tomatoes finally coming in. Eggplants blooming. Lantana, as ever, blooming its blooming head off. Fennel gone to seed.

Ah, the fennel gone to seed.

Talk to any naturalist or ranger in Southern California and they'll tell you, fennel is one of the scourges of the Southwest. It's a weed, that's for sure. It grows in vacant lots, along disturbed roadsides, and anywhere the soil has been broken up to let it get a toehold.

When I tell them at the native plant centers that I have some in my yard (most likely volunteers), they almost always tell me to rip it out. I don't, for my own reasons, I'll get to in a bit. But what I do is, before it goes to seed to feed the birds and thus spread into other disturbed places, I cut it back and put it in the compost bin.

Ryan and I took our trimmers out yesterday to bring down and stood beside the 10 foot plants. Butterflies and bees were buzzing around the flowers and, as every time we cut them back (twice a year? three times?) they are covered with ladybugs.

I'm talking hundreds.

So it's a bit of a dilemma when we stand out there with our trimmers. Sure fennel is a heinous weed, but here it is producing the number one natural control of pests in my yard. It's always hard for Ryan because he thinks not only is fennel cool looking, it attracts all these wonderful insects.

He's right (though really you do have to cut them down to the ground or they get a bit ratty mid-summer), so we we make it our duty to cut them down, but to try to save as many of the beneficial bugs as we can.

So yesterday Abby, Ryan, and I took our places. Ryan was the fennel chopper ("Timber!!!"), I caught each as they fell down, and Abby was in charge of relocating as many ladybugs as she could to neighboring plants. It was a nice little set up, actually, as Abby has wont to play imaginative games while Ryan and I are working in the yard ("Okay, Dad, you're the gardener and I'm your daughter who is just going to school.")

We chopped them all down (and thus exposing a really ugly and weedy patch of the yard, unfortunately), put the pieces into our green yard waste bin and left the lid open for the ladybugs to fly away away, hopefully, to our yard.

I don't think anyone who has read my take on gardening, or even the title of my blog, believes I think gardening is easy. It's physically hard and sometimes frustrating work. So why have it as a hobby? Why indeed.

Our Saturdays are free(ish). Wendy, my wife is at work until 2 or 3, and I'm in charge of a 6 and 8 year old. I did my years of staying inside and playing Thomas the Tank engine, or racing outside to do my work while someone was napping. I needed something that was close to home and was actually interactive with my family (Wendy pointed out, rightly so, television and movies aren't really interactive.)

So here it is, something close to home, that teaches my kids about the natural world around them, and something that allows me help bring back a little patch of ground to a sort of balance.

And, of course, there's moments like these ladybugs.

Who can deny such a wonderful moment such as this?

No one indeed.

Bike It

2008-05-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Matillijas popping like mad. Love-in-a-Mist flowering and becoming seed pods. Corn coming in. Roses out our ears.

The big news, the wind. Earlier in the week we were in the mid-90s downtown, unheard of in this season. Now the northern wind seems to have picked up (and man is it picking up, the trees are swirling like mad) and is driving everything back to a reasonable 70s.

I'm on Day 8 of biking to work, with a brief drive in on Monday.

How is it? Surprisingly good.

I'd spent so much time ruminating (which I'm sure comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me) about how I'd get myself and the kids the 6 miles to their school and me 4 more miles to my work without using a car. The grand fact is, unless I want to take the bus and 1 1/2 hours to get there, it's not going to work.

There, I said it. IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, PEOPLE!

There was a fellow who suggested on his Website taking kids in a trailer. Hey, fella, the trailer company, that is the company who manufactures the trailer to carry children, doesn't recommend taking them on streets. Why? Because your kids are eye level with the bumper of cars like the Toyota Tercel. And pretty much under the tires of anything the size of an SUV.

It's not going to work. As hard as that was to tell myself.

But I digress.

Fact is, I can haul the kids into work (which is sort of a three-fer with fuel, right?), then take the bike off the back of my car, and ride the rest of the way to work.

Now I'm not saying I'll do it every day. If I can eke out one or two days a week, that'll be good.

The reason? Well, it's manifold. (That's weird, isn't that a weird word?) a) saving gas b) getting exercise c) getting outdoors

I really don't enjoy driving cars, and I really don't enjoy traffic. I don't really even like it on the bike, as a matter of fact. But I do like riding a bike. And I love, love, love being outside. Which is how the hell I became a gardener in the first place. Trading the inside Saturday chores for the outside Saturday chores.

I do not know why I have biophilia (that is, love of the outdoors) or why I love stuff that people do under their own power, but it has fascinated me since I was a kid.

Well, here I am, 42 years old and enjoying the heck out of it.

Who'd have thought?

All The Best Things

2008-05-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

I have an amazing tendency to put things off. Like buying mutual funds for instance. After researching them on the Web and settling for the advice that Motley Fool was offering, I went to the library Web site to get an interlibrary loan on one of their books. Which led me to an Amazon review of it, which essentially ripped its pages out and threw them on the ground. Then ignited them.

Which, ironically, was very pleasant for me, because I was back at Square One, which is much more enjoyable than reading about mutual funds.

This led me to order Mutual Funds for Dummies from the library, which is now gathering dust on my nightstand. And now I'm blogging instead of reading about mutual funds. Do you see how this intricate system helps me prepare for my retirement? See? Oh, consider yourself lucky that you didn't hitch yourself to this star. Honey, we're 67, and it's time for the Trailer Park!

Which leads me to those pictures of my yard I promised several months ago. Before I had a camera. Or could hook it up to the computer. Or get around to reading the instructions.

Lucky star indeed.

Working Backward

2008-04-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

My mother writes to me that it's snowing outside in Nebraska. That sneaky Midwestern weather.

We're having our spring and a quick weekend into summer, with temperatures in the mid 90s in most of the city.

Here comes spring.

I'm still figuring out what Microsoft Vista has done to not recognize my camera anymore, so you'll have to do with this picture of a Joshua Tree Ryan took during our yearly camping trip to the park.

Everything is in bloom in our garden, the lavenders, California poppies, irises (both Dutch and Siberian), all the rose bushes, the Catalina Island tree poppy, alyssum, snapdragons... it makes you realize why all the gardeners wait for spring.

Having spent last weekend out in the desert, this weekend was (mostly) devoted to trimming the rapidly growing grass and installing shelves into the kids' bedroom closet.

The grass always makes me think. For one, I kind of love grass and sure enough when I was thinking about it while mowing a young, tattooed couple walked by and the woman sniffed the air. "I know", I said, "It smells like summer." And it does for me. And nothing feels like a better accomplishment than mowing a fresh carpet of grass.

The sad fact is, what lies beneath the surface. Yes, I'm going eco Nazi on all of you. I can't lie and say that I don't live in a Mediterranean climate, I do. I can't tell anyone who has watched Chinatown all the way through that the fight to bring water to this dusty little town led more than one person to their early grave. I know, I know. But I'm not preaching, I'm just trying to be realistic. I love the grass, but it's not really grass anyone uses. It's that sad little area between the sidewalk and the street. The area officially owned by the city yet maintained by the homeowner (as we discovered when our tree needed to be cut down because it was breaking the sidewalk and our main sewage line). It makes a convenient walkway for people avoiding the onslaught of matillija poppies when they come into bloom and reach over the sidewalk.

I mean, it's a waste.

I dutifully mow it once a week, trim it every other week, water it two to three times a week during the hot season, and fertilize it with a nice organic fertilizer a couple times a year.

And thus my working title, "Working Backward".

I left the Midwest with a snooty Easterner's attitude. I was going to move to the city where people understood more my way of thinking. Probably true, as I might be more of an outcast there than here. But there were a lot of things, homey things, I thought were ridiculous, which have only made sense to me in the last ten years.

Like what? Can you believe canning? Making homemade cookies. Garden tomatoes. Feeding songbirds. Using your ingenuity to make due when you can't have what you crave.

That last one is the kicker. Yes, making due. I think of the people of the past and how we've found their garbage in piles and deduce what kind of people they were. I'm guessing they'd be the kind of people who wouldn't be able to stop vomiting when they saw the sort of excesses in which our society lived.

Lawn is an excess. And, crazily, it's part of a landscaping dream spread to my dry little corner of the country by people living in "it's raining even when it's dry" England.

The 50's were about moving forward, conquering nature. But I think we've figured out that's not exactly working the way we envisioned, with flying cars and... what the hell did the People of the Future eat?

I'm willing to say I've gone too far on some things. I don't need to be able to go to Paris tomorrow on a jet. That's a nicety.

I mean, hell, we've got a pretty cush life here, if you look around. I can go home to Nebraska every year, which was not always the case. I can afford to call my family and spend tons of time on the phone with them for dollars, not hundreds of dollars, as it was when I was growing up. I don't have to dry my laundry in the freezing winter down in the basement, as my grandmother did.

We've got it very nice, and maybe that sometimes makes me feel a wee bit guilty when I think (or I hear about in church) all those people have nothing. I mean, I've got more than a wonderful wife and two kids, I've got a roof over my head, a decent job, and a car to get me back and forth to work. Heck, my kids are going to a better school than I did growing up.

And the grass? The grass in comparison, isn't even a nicety, it's kind of this bad-tempered friend at a dinner party who keeps eating everyone else's dinner.

I'll keep you posted on how this goes.

High Hopes, We've Got High Hopes

2008-03-10T21:44:00.001-07:00

Roses trimmed. Lettuces out of their cups and into the garden. Broccoli sprouting. Pregnant squirrel raiding all bird feeders (save the hummingbird's). California poppies blooming, blooming, blooming.

And, god love him, the Golden Cat Bee (a Carpenter Bee? We're not sure) has returned himself for the Spring.

Summer cannot be too far away.

When I worked for The Walt Disney Company one day I was reading a newsletter missive from the then CEO, Michael Eisner that I've kept with me for awhile.

He said something like this, "Being Disney, we are expected by the public and our customers to have higher standards. Thus we get a lot of criticism when we fail to meet those expectations."

Many non-practicing religious people think of practicing religious folks as hypocritical.
"How can they claim to worship God when they won't welcome homosexuals into their churches? Or bad mouth each other as soon as they get into the parking lot".

And though they have a point, I believe thoughtful Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists keep those points in their minds during their days. And to stand off to the side and pretend to have no opinion on anything is a bit ludicrous. You can say you're not perfect, but choosing to do nothing about it is a bit like wishing you could save money, but spending your paycheck every week. You're basically never going to hit any goals.

The same applies to trying to be "green", I believe. I've got a friend who is a bit "greener than thou". She does a lot for the environment, she gives freely of her money to worthwhile causes, she's rid poisons from her house (and thus our landfills), cuts back on utility, water, and energy costs, and has made her landscaping business as green as they get. But, unfortunately, she's not quick at making friends because she's a bit of a bull in a china shop. When you say you've switched to Method Cleaners, she tells you she mixes her own Soap and Baking Soda Cleaner and dresses you down for going to the store and buying another bottle.

She's a bit like Frank Lloyd Wright, who insisted everyone who he built a house for use the furniture he built, which, it turned out was incredibly uncomfortable. Sure enough, when they paid him off, they threw it into storage and got furniture that made sense.

Frank Lloyd Wright never understood how to convince people without throttling them around the throat. If he'd made a stunning argument why his furniture made sense, maybe everyone wouldn't have chopped it into firewood when the going got rough.

Yes, there are high standards with going green. And yes, it's hard when there's so much bad news facing you every day telling you that what we've become, especially we Americans, are wasteful, polluting nightmares hellbent on destroying their home.

So the stakes are high, but does that mean you should badmouth your friend who drives to and from work alone in her Chevy Suburban? I don't think so.

We used to sing a hymn in church when I was a kid, "They will know we are Christians by our love." What made it so special to me was its proof in the pudding type of thought. People who get Christ's message need to strive to love one another, even though what you actually feel sometimes is intense hatred.

Maybe one day people will look at our little, old stupid Jetta and wonder, "How the heck does a family of four get along without an SUV?" Maybe they'll ask us why we don't use pesticides in our garden. Or, better, ask how they can stop using them in their garden.

Yes, maybe I'm a bit of a coward. But I don't see the point of telling my neighbor his gas lawnmower, ever minute its in use, is the same as 5 cars idling at a stoplight (which is when they're polluting at their maximum) and that's why I chose an electric one. He'll probably think, "Damn, what an ass." Then speak to me less frequently and think, "What an ecofreak!" every time I'm dumping old eggshells into my rosebush soil.

At that point, I've certainly turned myself into an ecofreak.

An environmentalist group could probably come into my house and gasp at the amazing array of plastic, PVC, and use of chlorine. But I would hope they'd be above that.

We've got hard enough work to do as is, without criticizing each other on the methods we're using to get there.

And, don't you know, there's people like Rush Limbaugh out there who'd love to see us fail miserably.

Which is sad, because if the world goes to hell, someone's going to try to eat that man.

Golden Hour

2008-02-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

The poppies are up. Bound to be the best time for the garden. Broccoli in (and already attacked by the snails) as well as Golden Lights Swiss Chard and some mesclun type lettuces Ryan and I raised from seed.

I don't know if it's from the weekend we mostly spent at home (true, I went to bed Sunday thinking, Hey, I haven't left my front yard today), but today feels, what? Vast. Vast, upon coming home.

I think it's a feeling we regular folk don't have very often, this sense of glorious opportunity in front of our evening. Often, when my inner mind is complaining about the dishes I'm doing at night, knowing I have another hour worth of bookwork out at the computer, I think of the single moms, and how insanely taxed they must feel all the time. I cannot imagine what it's like to go this route alone and on half the money.

But today, or tonight rather, exactly the opposite. My office is finally clean. A bamboo palm the kids and I picked up from a Plant Yard Sale for $10 brightens up the corner, and there are a few bills to go through, but they can wait for this post.

Spring in so many ways signals beginning for gardeners. The dreams you have looking through catalogs, the hopes as the seedlings come to life in little rooms lit merely by grow lights. The season mimics the life of the young. Before we had responsibilities, when everything rolled ahead of us like a carpet of grass.

Maybe it's just the memories of an aging man. Or of someone who had the privilege to dream. But the days begin to creep up on all us adults where the dreaming stops and the hard work of doing and being busy begin.

Raising children is harder, far harder, than gardening. And it's hard to stop and think, If I don't stop and try to enjoy some of these moments, they'll be gone soon.

Sometimes I'm worried that my writing at home has dwindled to nearly zero after so many years in front of the computer screen or writing pad. But sleeping in the next room is my real work and what I'm aiming at giving the world. It's scary, yes. But very important.

Where am I going with this post? Hell, I wish I knew.

Let's leave it at being happy at the res of the evening being ahead of me.

Good night.

Manic Sunday

2008-02-24T18:10:00.001-08:00

You know you can tell people that January is different when you live in a Mediterranean climate, but you really have to see it to believe it.

Which is why I give to you the picture on the right - taken sometime in mid January.

The good news? It was warm enough to be wearing t-shirts and shorts.

The bad? Those leaves didn't just pile themselves up like that.

Living here and doing your own gardening is like owning a house anywhere, everything is your responsibility all year long. Which gives new meaning to the word "Winter interest".

It wasn't such a manic Sunday today, and I'm sure everyone now is cozied up to their TVs with popcorn in hand watching the latest Academy Awards. We had a party to attend but Ryan woke up sick with a fever. Again. Two weeks ago he and Abby missed their whole week of school (with me working at home) because of the flu that's been going around. Wendy caught it, too.

It took a whole week to catch up to me and put me into the shivers for two days, and I'd just begun to hope we'd all turned a corner.

Nope.

It's a mystery to me. Ryan was just up yesterday playing soccer and helping with dig free mulch from the City Free Mulch Giveaway.

Which, in itself is hilarious. We'd been waiting forever for a mulch giveaway that was closer to our house and were excited when I got a flyer announcing a new location. Less that 3 miles from our place. Ryan, Abby and I set out in the car with two shovels, gloves and two of those enormous storage containers [one which would weigh more than 70 pounds when I was done filling it. Smart move with my back]. We had trouble locating it and I told Abby to look for a brown sign and Ryan to look for a gate with someone posted out front. Then we saw we were headed down a one way street. "Wait, this can't be right," I started to protest, but then I saw it. Right there at the end of the street in a light-industrial area, mulch piled about 8 feet high with a sign behind it [already graffiti'd] Free Mulch Giveaway. I don't know which was more hilarious, us standing on that steaming pile of mulch, or the guys walking around us going down to the toxic LA River to fish.

So, not so manic. Just rerouted Sunday. Which is not bad, just takes some adjusting.

The rain was on and off today. Finished the leftover chores from yesterday: the cat box needing emptying and the compost taken out.

Oh, ordinary day.

Tonight, fewer than five miles from here, people are walking down a red carpet, flashbulbs are popping, and microphones are stuck in the faces of actors and directors who will voice their opinions to their adoring fans worldwide.

Oh, but I believe the opinions elsewhere, among those watching, are much more valuable. Take it from a guy who worked those trenches for 7+ years and still lives close to that world.

"The common man's opinion" I say is a diamond in the rough.

Like a mulch pile in the middle of the city on a dead end block.

Hardship

2008-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

What, you were expecting a funny title like: "Roses are Red, My Violets Aren't Blu-ming?" Surely that's got to be somewhere on the blogosphere somewhere....

Rains a comin', they say, but I haven't seen it yet. When it comes, it's supposed to come gangbusters.

I'm backdating a bit, because I'd meant to write about this, but hadn't had time during the holidays.

The second Saturday in December I was opening the windows to let some sun in, inching by our Christmas tree when I saw a mess outside the window. My Mom once told me an ice storm had hit Eastern Nebraska before the leaves had time to fall; the ice collected on the full trees and pulled entire hundreds of pounds branches to the ground, closing streets, downing power lines...

This wasn't that, but in some ways it was as hard to take.

As I looked out the front window I could see that half my lion's tail, 4 feet high and 6 feet across, had been ripped in half, the bed of irises all trampled, ditto the daylillies and fennel. The lantana had been ripped to the side and newspapers, the sex ones distributed for free around the city, lay on the ground making a bed.

My first thought was, "Oh my god, I don't want Ryan to see this."

And I didn't let him for a bit. I went out and assessed the damage.

It was hard to tell exactly what happened, but it looked like a homeless person who was either extremely drunk or just out of their mind, had repeatedly rammed a shopping cart or something like it into the butterfly bush, making some sort of hole. They ripped out 7 fennel plants and strewn them everywhere, and any other plant he or she could get hold of.

The last sign of them, beside the bed of papers and cardboard, was a black trail of wheel marks headed down the street and my daylillies all over the road, flattened by countless cars who'd passed over them in the night and early morning.

Ryan made it out of the house and started asking questions. "What's going on, Dad?" I had him go inside, get into his work clothes and get our gloves. I brought the yard trimmings can and tools over to the site.

It was hard to separate. Here nature hadn't taken its toll, but a human had purposely done this to my yard. All our hard work just ripped out by its roots and crushed. It felt as if someone had punched us in the gut and laughed.

But they hadn't. This wasn't a malicious act by sullen teens out to prove they aren't piano keys, this was an act by someone who didn't know better. Someone whose life was so much worse than ours. Who obviously didn't have anyone to care for them or love them. A man or woman who didn't even have a place to sleep and saw the world as hostile and hateful.

Ryan, Abby, and I had just volunteered (for the first time) at a homeless shelter the weekend before and we'd seen how down on their luck many of these folks are. Somehow that act helped me see through this one.

When Ryan came out he was... well, devastated. "How could someone do this?" He was also angry. He wanted to call the police and tell them to find this awful person who crushed all our work.

I explained to him what I thought happened, and tried to explain we should feel sorry for this person, as hard as it is, because we had this wonderful yard that would grow back, and a house and pillows to lay our heads on, and we had each other. This person probably didn't even have anyone to love them, to tell them goodnight when they go to bed every night.

It worked for a bit. He cleaned up near the daylillies, then suggested calling the police again. Got himself together then ran to the front porch. I didn't know for a few moments where he'd gone, but I sensed that he wasn't doing okay with it.

I set my rake on a bush and went up to the porch, where he was sitting, crying.

I put my arm around him and explained again. I told him I didn't quite understand, either. I didn't explain alcohol, drugs, or mental imbalance, but I don't think I needed to. I don't think it helped me understand. The heart of the matter was that this person didn't know what he or she was doing and we, thank god, have each other - and that is worth more than anything we own.

He was at least able to get up and begin to work again, still not totally grasping the point, which is understandable. I mean, he's in 2nd grade, Pokemon is in his grasp, but we're struggling with explanations of racism, segregation, and the Civil War.

We put up a little mock fence, just to tell the person, should they come back, (as I explained to Ryan and Abby), "This isn't a place to sleep. Please go find a shelter like the one we were just in."

I convinced Ryan we didn't need to arm the fence.

Like I said, the points are slow going with him sometimes.

Bring Me Your Huddled Masses (Friday, Bloody Friday)

2007-11-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

Ryan's zucchini finally producing (though he insists on picking them small and bringing them in beaming). Another rush from of flowers from the roses. Newly planted Cleveland Sage shooting up new leaves (probably one of the best smelling plants in the California chaparral).

Up early today to wash dishes, get in a much-needed meditation, and get onto the blog before everyone in the house gets up. The temptation to be drawn into the LA Times has been averted, perhaps the calming energy from the meditation let me pull myself away.

Why is it so often we want to do what is easy after contemplating what is good, but harder? After all, when the easy is over, so many times we think, "Why didn't I do the other?"

It's probably the ease of those tasks that draws us to them.

I will head out into the garden again today, gently, as my back is still out - keeping me up for a good part of the night, but others, oh, the others, will already be heading home after standing in line for the 4am JCPenney post-Thanksgiving sale.

I'm going to try not to step on toes now, because a few people near and dear to my heart go once a year to shop on Black Friday when stores open their doors early and lure people through "loss leaders" or items marked below cost to generate a feeding frenzy.

And that's what it reminds me of, a feeding frenzy.

But not, sadly enough, for food to live on. It's for, once again, consumable goods that will be forgotten in years to come. The latest video game for the kids, the pair of earrings for the girlfriend, etc., etc. I do know people on strict budgets who use this day to try to make their Christmas lists fit their income, but it seems to me very backward. And that's probably not a surprise, considering what a contrarian I am.

When I was a kid Sears used to put out what they called their "Wish Book" which was full of toys, furniture, earrings, etc. Stuff people would hopefully wish for. I spent hours, I mean hours, looking at it until all the pages were dogeared from all that incessant, OCD-like turning.

I understand want, I am a victim or want, but in retrospect I realize how very wrong I was. Just as Jesus never stood in front of his apostles and told them which way to vote (the Son of God wasn't much into politics), I can't imagine Him telling Peter what to buy Paul for Hanukkah.

You'll hear no such advice from the Buddha, Mohamed, Moses, or really, the corner preacher.

Because it's of little importance in the scheme of things.

I agree with the expression Giving is More Important than Receiving, but it gets a little convoluted when you start making lists of all your Wants and handing it out to people. And, unlike the frontier woman who needs a new pot to cook her family's meals in or one nice dress to wear to church on Sunday, we're incredibly rich people, even if we're on a strict budget and trying to make ends meet.

I hate to inform the US of A, but a Wii system means little in the scheme of things. It can't educate, love, express gratitude, or even try to save the planet. It is an entertainment system, something that takes us out of our lives and distracts us a little while. Like alcohol without all the negative implications.

I'm not suggesting that everyone go home and write poetry to their loved ones this holiday season, because I too will be buying gifts just the same as you, but that seeing something like Black Friday is a portrait of how bad it all can get and hopefully will help remind ourselves that blatant consumerism can get incredibly obscene.

The reason the prophets didn't mention it, nor is it mentioned on the pulpit, is because it is a colossal lie, we think we need things that we don't because: we want to be more attractive; we want to be more entertained; we want to keep up with our friends, business associates, and neighbors...

Consumerism is a fact of our life, and I'm not going to change such a fact in my post for me or anyone reading, but I think what smarter people than us are saying is for us to shift our focus, to be thankful for what we already have and pass blessings on to those in real need.

I had trouble being thankful yesterday and I don't really know why, because I am so very, very, very blessed... but with an unsteady mind, many times it's hard to focus on those things that give you joy. I stepped outside the house, sat down on the steps and started to pick a few weeds from the garden, just alone, sitting under the toyon tree and doing nothing but picking.

A neighbor stopped by, Ryan came to see me, the sun shone on my face, I petted a dog, the day was warm, the house finches came by for food, and I was calm again. Not thankful yet, but calm.

I considered it the road to thankfulness, right here, in silence, and later, meeting with friends who had spent all day cooking so we could share a meal together.

There is your grace, there is that which holy people are speaking.

You may not know this, but the ads for many 4am post-Thanksgiving sales, if they are plain and not glossy paper, may be placed out in the garden, covered with fallen leaves, and used as mulch to deter unwanted weeds from popping up.

Which is where I am headed right now.

(photo byJef Poskanzer)

Please Don't Read!

2007-11-15T21:03:00.000-08:00

Unless, like me, you are fascinated with other people's frustrations.

This is not a gardening entry, this is not a cooking entry (though it is on the eve of having 50 people over at my house for an early Thanksgiving feast, which we've done for 9 years), this is just one of those long, boring kvetches about other people who have no say in my life.

Wendy has a bag from this clever, and very expensive company, called lululemon which reads on the side: "Jealousy works exactly the opposite of the way you want it to," or something to that effect.

Well, I've been having what you'd call a jealous day. Maybe it comes on the top of working hard, being busy with the kids, prepping for this function, and having my back go out. Maybe it just was lurking underneath the whole time.

While listening to NPR's podcast of Driveway Moments today I heard a voice from the past talking. It was Mitch Hurwitz, maybe known by everyone else as the creator of Arrested Development, but to me he has more personal ties than that. While I was working for the production company, Witt-Thomas-Harris, he was the golden boy I watched rise to the top. Was he a bad guy, no, no certainly. But there is something to watching someone have it so good on paper (I believe he went to Harvard and had already started and sold the Boston cookie company Chipyard that he and his brother had started in their youth), go onto better things.

There is something about looking the part, acting the part, and becoming the part. And there is something to being a middle-class, not-going-anywhere-fast person who watches that ascension.

Not that I'm saying that I was the creepy guy who lurked in the shadows fixing computers, writing scripts late at night and hurtling darts at his picture. Exactly the opposite. He and I hung out, dated the same girl, and I had him look over my scripts, he being a fledgling writer on the fast track.

Now here's the odd thing, I did not want to stay in TV. After coming home one night at 5:30 in the morning after a long (and really crappy) script rewrite, my wife broke into tears saying she didn't want to live this way. She was right. I hated almost every show on TV and I was breaking my back to entertain people I thought had very low expectations.

So Mitch is one of those people you think about when approaching your high school reunion. That person you know has become wildly successful (Emmys, anyone? 7.5 million house, sir?) and you wonder why you have not.

I have a closer friend, who went onto produce movies, TV shows, and become a household name and left all the rest of us gasping for air at the end of his unanswered phone calls.

What is this jealousy? What is it we wanted so desperately out of life that we have trouble hearing other people's good fortune?

Maybe it was because we tried ourselves and failed. Which is partly what happened with me in TV. Failing and quitting. Regardless, it still feels bad when you hear that person and instead of an old flame, who brings back old feelings, this person brings in new feelings like, "What the hell went wrong in my life that's going so incredibly right with theirs?"

Bringing me back to the golden boy. Both of these friends were set up for it. Both are talent writers who worked endlessly to get their scripts to be as incredible as they could get them. One had a prominent father in the business, the other business acumen.

I tell myself, often, that the things that really matter in life, those items I hear time and again from everyone from Jesus to the man on the street, is family, God, and happiness. Sometimes they even let happiness drop off! (The Bible's full of unhappy souls doing God's work.)

And when I was in TV, I saw second and third marriages and some of the unhappiest (yet funniest) people I've ever met. If I was going to stay there, there'd be a good chance I'd sacrifice all that I now have. (My friend's wife told us a few years ago they've teetered on the brink of divorce many times.)

So what, Mr. Jealousy? What to do with you now?

I can't explain you away and I can't drink you under the table.

I'll have to sit with you awhile, the same way I did with Forgiveness when he wouldn't let me forgive someone I believe wronged me.

Ugh.

Double ugh.

Now aren't you glad you didn't read this?

Same Old Story?

2007-11-05T22:36:00.000-08:00

Black zucchini finally starting to fruit. California poppies sticking their tufts out of the soil. Roses back in bloom (candy striped one blossoming as I haven't seen it flower in years).

You'll have to excuse me if you've heard this story before. Is my mind getting weak? I'm not sure. I'm getting older, this much I know....

But this, my friend, is the story of how I got rid of my gardener.

When Wendy and I moved into this house lo so many years ago, we fell in love with it because it had this beautiful wild garden out front. Okay, that's sort of a lie. Wendy knew I loved the outdoors and plants and figured I would love this place and gardening.

She was, as usual, right. What she didn't think of was that the garden would be a bit much to take care of by ourselves.

One of the previous owners was a landscape architect. At some point in the distant past he had decided to take out most of his broad front lawn (the house is on the corner, pushed all the way back to the lot) and put in an array of plants he'd apparently collected from some of his paying gigs from around town, as well as some I'm guessing he'd bought at the native plant place up in the valley.

This was all beautiful to look at, but when it came time to take care of it, I think both Wendy and I realized it'd be an enormous task to do ourselves. I come from Nebraska, but knew nothing about plants that weren't growing in the wild. I didn't even know anything about the grass I had to mow every summer as a kid except that we had to water it every once in awhile instead of going off and playing with our friends.

Wendy was worse off. Both her mother and grandmother are consummate plant people and Wendy could give a hoot.

So here we were standing in front 200 or so of our favorite plants wondering what the hell we were going to do about it.

Enter Javier, well-dressed (he also sold houses) with hands roughened by years of yard work, he introduced himself as the ex-owners' gardener. We struck a deal and were happy to have him on board.

It only took us a few months to discover he mowed the yard, blew the leaves around, and left.

They call it "Mow, Blow, and Go".

We, on the other hand, were expected to do the weeding, fertilizing, watering, and, essentially, everything else.

I cataloged plants, sweated over watering systems, memorized Latin names, and so much more. Those were the crazy, freewheeling days before children and after the bar scene.

Regardless, I realized as much as I did, I'd always need Javier for his extra four hours a week with a helper to get things in order. 8 man hours! What the hell kind of garden did I get myself into? Believe me, surrounded by silence, you get to ask that question to yourself many, many times.

Last summer (2006 that is) I was listening to my wife talk about her yoga teacher. Wendy said she'd heard the woman give this interesting piece of advice to her class:

"You come here once or twice a week, that's great. But what about the rest of your week? We hire gardeners, house cleaners, car washers, dog washers, and dry cleaners to do all the physical work that our bodies need. Your paying them to do the hard stuff then coming here to pay me so you can do the hard stuff."

Maybe she wasn't the best salesman for yoga, but she had an interesting point. And I was listening. On Saturdays Wendy works and I take care of the kids. This used to involve Thomas the Tank Engine track building, reading time, long walks trying to get them to sleep, and every other activity you could think of.

As soon as they grew older, though, I noticed I could be outside with them for a good 20 minutes before they started to complain. My older son, Ryan, could last an hour.

So when they turned 7 and 4 respectively, I decided to take the plunge. Instead of staying inside (where I am all week at work) and vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning the dishes, I decided I should be outside, taking care of my yard.

I made sure I had all the equipment I needed before I actually called and spoke to Javier. This was a task in itself. I scoured Craigslist for used bargains, which, it turned out were plenty. Mostly people who said something like this in their ad, "I wanted to do my own gardening, but it turns out I'm too lazy. Get this mower for cheap."

In my choice among mowers, it was easy, according to the Union for Concerned Scientists a gas-powered lawn mower "emits as much smog-forming pollution in one hour as eight new cars traveling at 55 miles per hour."

Probably didn't know that, did you? Neither did I.

So the choice came to electric lawn mowers. (I studied the high end Brill reel mowers, but I was cautioned that unless I was going to mow every week and never take a break, don't get one.) The Neuton mower, which is cordless, seemed like a good choice, but they were expensive at $400 (they're lower now). I did want to make sure if this whole thing didn't work out, I wouldn't be staring at $700 worth of lawn equipment rusting in my garage.

I finally decided on a used electric (corded) mulching mower. I figured I could:

Mow quietly
With less pollution
Mulch the lawn with clippings instead of fertilizing

In all of these, the mower scored big. The bonus? I don't know if you mow your own lawn, but I remember having to yank the hell out of that cord every time I wanted to start the dang thing up. And you had to restart it every time you wanted to empty the bag. The electric engine starts automatically and, best of all, if people are walking by you can stop it. Not idle. Stop it completely.

Now the fact that I have very little lawn and can reach the whole dang thing within the reach of two orange extension cords has to be taken into consideration here.

And that I had to learn how NOT to run over my own electrical cord while I was mowing. That is tantamount.

Plus, the guy who sold it to me threw in a Weed Whacker/Edger for free! Hard to beat a bargain like that, huh?

The first time I did the lawn (adding an electric blower into the mix from a woman who'd recently moved to an apartment and didn't need hers) it took hours and hours, but I did it.

I called Javier and told him the news, and told him he may be hearing from me very soon in the event this whole thing didn't work out.

Oh, it's late, and this story is just half way through.

Until next time....

Guarded

2007-10-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Fires are up. Well, that's an understatement, the fires are the worst they've been in California history.

But it's not gardening I want to talk about today. Or fires.

Luana, the woman guard who has been downstairs for what, 3 years?, is leaving.

She's a level-headed woman in her 50s who I think lives down in the inner city.

She'd been gone for several weeks and I'd worried about her, because she's there every morning at 8:00am when I come in. She's always smiling and has a bit of that "well, hell, we're all working here" attitude that I always like. But she's a damn hard worker and incredibly nice.

She came back one morning and I said, "Hey Luana! We missed you around here!" (It's not that either of us ever has a lot of time to speak in the morning, but I had to figure out what was going on). "I thought you'd left us!"

She laughed and replied with her Southernish accents, "Aw Tim, you know I wouldn't do that. I was taking care of a family emergency."

"I'm sorry to hear. What happened?"

"Aw, my aunt died after a long battle with cancer."

"Oh, Luana, I'm sorry."

"That's okay, she was sick and she's in a better place now."

I agreed.

"You know, September's going to always be a hard month. My brother was murdered in September. My uncle was shot. And now this."

I told her I was sorry again. Honestly, I didn't know what to say.

"And problem with my aunt is, she's got four foster kids and they said they was going to put them back in the system since there's no one to take 'em. So they've all moved in with me."

Which is right around the time I went into shock. Here's this woman, with grown kids on her own, taking in four foster kids, with an array of history and problems, into her home. The oldest 16 and the youngest 5.

My first thought was, "Are you crazy? Do you know what the hell this is going to do to your life? How it's going to shake it the hell apart?" Wendy and I had already taken in a teen, our niece, for a little over a year and her general lack of discipline and our straight-and-narrow made for terrible bedfellows. It ended badly.

So this was the story several weeks ago. Yesterday she told me she's leaving.

"Tim, these kids have a lot of special needs. I've got to run them all around town to therapists, doctors. Sometimes I have to go to three appointments a day. I can't do that and keep this job."

I suggested maybe the building that employed her would let her stay on a flex schedule.

"Naw, I already tried that, and it's not going to work. They're trying everything they can to make me stay, but it's better to leave while they still love me."

I didn't ask her how she was going to make ends meet. I don't know. I know that foster care will give you money for each child, I'm just not sure if that's enough for everyone in her house to live on.

Of course part of me feels bad for losing her, I love seeing her everyday. But I told her anyway, "You're doing the right thing. You're changing the course of these kids' lives. And that's a really honorable thing to do."

I don't know what I'd do in similar circumstances. Not at all. Hopefully I'll never have to face it. Hopefully if I ever do, like Luana, I'll know what to do.

It is funny, you see someone every day, an acquaintance you see, the teller at the bank, the postman, the UPS guy, but you may have absolutely no idea what's going on in their lives, or how similar their lives are to yours.

Or mine.

We're talking about me here, Mr. Know-It-All-Seen-It-All.

I'm glad I talked to Luana. I'm glad she's my friend. I'm glad she's taking care of those kids who probably never had a first chance, so someone else can give them their second.

You Don't Know From Funk

2007-10-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ryan's corn picked and in the fridge (small, but edible). Squash producing flowers but no zucchini (further evidence that we are not very good vegetable gardeners). Roses sending up blood red stems and leaves. Tiny annual mums still blooming.

There is one amazing thing about gardening that makes it so apart from writing and exercise, that I wonder why anyone wouldn't trade in the latter for the former: you can garden no matter what mood you are in.

It's true. Gardening almost always makes you feel better when you do it. Whereas a bad day of writing. Hell, there are months of bad writing sometimes. Sometimes you just sit and look at the writing or exercise bicycle and you say, "Aw, the hell with it," then flip on the TV.

I do not know why gardeners won't fall into this dilemma, but as depressed, lazy, wound up, mad at your spouse/boss/children/society as you can get, there's never a moment you can't look out the window and say, "Dang it all, I'm just going to go out there and pull some weeds."

And, it is a small miracle. Problems seem to recede in the distance, you forget why you were mad in the first place. Yes, you may still be mad when you go into the house, but while you're out there, fingers in the dirt, you are not.

Is there a secret? I don't think so. Except perhaps exercise does really feel like a lot of work to go do, even if you feel great afterward, and writing... hell, I don't know why anyone writes. Maybe they like to be tortured.

Today this blog post is brought to you by PostSecret, which is a site that accepts postcards with people's secrets on them to an address in Maryland, then posts them to their blog. It's like popcorn, I read 10 in fascination, and weirdly, got the energy to finally come back here and write.

I would've gardened, but Wendy said if she caught me gardening at night, she'd kill me.

I don't know why I haven't become an eccentric. Seems easier to live that way.

(photo by Ingorrr)

September 4, 2007

2007-09-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

Lion's Tail trimmed. Plumbago, aka Sticky Bush, trimmed so car can get by. Corn silking. Black Zucchini flowering, flowering, flowering. Fennel cut down to their very stalks.

That's fennel up top. Not the same fennel you've had in what many Americans would call a "fancy meal" (Farfelle with Seafood and Chicken Bolognese Sauces, Fennel Apple Salad, and Watercress Soup, but the one that grows in ditches, throughout parks, and in vacant lots even Chevron has abandoned.

I love fennel. Even though mine has no bulb as the Italian one does. (That's the trick, aye. Fennel with the bulb. That's the delicious part.) When I was a little more passionate about cooking, I'd go out in the spring and fall and snip some to put in the salad. Yes, I liked the taste, but I think I liked the fact something from my garden was actually in the salad more.

Still, when it's coming back, poking its furry fronds out of the soil, I still do like to grab a bite and get the licorice rush while doing my yard work.

Sadly, fennel is not from here. In fact, it's from very far away from here originally, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Also, sadly, my fennel, bulb-less seems to be the noxious invader taking over wild spaces throughout California.

I've got three stands of fennel, with which I've decided to make a compromise after speaking to a native plant guy who educated me on the threats caused by it. I promised to cut it down before it went to seed and could make any more fennel plants.

Ryan has been dying to cut them down for at least three weeks now, but I was waiting until they were absolutely done flowering, mostly because the bees and butterflies love them so much.

It was only when we did cut them down that we discovered most of the stalks were dotted with empty ladybug larvae skins. Looking at them, I thought I had to rescue them before putting them in the green bin. It was only when Ryan and I looked closely that we discovered these were empty shells, the ladybugs flown off to other venues.

Now I ask you, how can I cut down a veritable ladybug creating machine?

Ryan, now wary of spiders and tall grasses did his best to jump into the fennel, cut a stalk down, then jump back. I tried not to be the Father of Yore and yell. When was the next time I'd spend with him out in the garden? (I don't know, it's an interesting edge. You spend too much time pandering to them and it can work against you. Why? I'm not sure, it just does.)

He cut down 10 or so stalks and was done. I finished up, hoed the rest of the grass that had grown up between it and considered going out for mulch.

That would have to wait for another day. It was aptly Labor Day, 9:30 in the morning, and the temperature was climbing in the upper 80's already.

I headed inside for a shower and breakfast.

(Photo by ellengwallace)

Raising Cain

2007-08-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

Most flowers fading. Cut back Lion's Tail and Dr. Seuss bush. Roses coming back for a second round, albeit smaller flowers. Second batch of corn taller than Ryan, Black Zucchini larger wider than Ryan.

There may be a victory in the air today, I just don't seem in the mood to get it yet.

One of Wendy's friends is starting a Web site for eco friendliness with a leaning toward families. And, get this, they want to pay me for content.

The problem? I've heard promises like this before and I'm a little too old to be spending my evenings writing away while the supposed check is in the mail.

Yes, doesn't that sound cheery? Don't you wish you were right here beside me hearing these words of encouragement I give to myself? Hell, yes, I hear myself oftentimes and wonder who the hell I am. But that's just me.

Haven't been having the greatest runs of days lately. And it's nothing to do with the garden. It's just... maybe midlife crisis? Who knows. But if you're at the same job for 9 years, as I have been, you can find yourself in a rut.

I meditated this morning, something I rarely do, and the clarity you can get from just sitting on the edge of the bed and taking 5 minutes (yes, 5 minutes) worth of deep breaths is simply stunning. Why? Not my role to ask why, I just know this: my mind was clear and I could see things beyond the everyday ordinariness which clouds my mind so many days out of the month.

Oh, this isn't a cheery entry at all, is it?

Darn it.

Anyway, getting into work and I'm dreaming a bit about being in the garden, feeling connected. Is that the feeling? Connected? Is that what we long for, then rush around looking for other things instead of connectedness because it's easier to buy stuff than do all the hard work?

Got me.

But here it is: Got the opportunity to write for the site. I'm stupid not to take it.

As my friend, who recently moved up to Oregon (from Nebraska) said: Why are you waiting for your life to begin?

Garbage Day

2007-07-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

July 30th

Fennel going to seed; tomatoes coming in gangbusters; daylillies fading; magnolia still flowering; lion's tail needs cutting back; grass still going crazy in all those areas I haven't been able to get to.

I'm not saying that every person who works in their garden ends up thinking about garbage, but surely the ones who compost do.

We have a little composter under our sink. Called the MaxAir, it's from Norway (wildly) and is outfitted with compostable "plastic" bags made of corn. When Wendy or I cut vegetables, as we are wont to do, we just throw the scraps into the little composter. On Saturdays, gardening day, I take the bucket out back and dump it in the big composter, bag and all.

In theory, what is supposed to happen is this is all supposed to happen smoothly. Like everything outside of a catalog, it doesn't.

For one, the MaxAir composter needs to be emptied twice a week. And it leaks, even though the ads say it doesn't. So we have to put it in a little Tupperware container. And it has to be outside in the summer. We get fruit flies in Southern California, and I'll be damned if they don't convince you of Spontaneous Generation. There are hundreds of them just a day after you put your first banana peel in there.

The rest, however, works pretty well. I take care of the composting, which I think is the part most people are grossed out by. I don't blame them. The composter is not the pretty one you see in the catalog, it's out in the corner of the back yard collecting spiderwebs over the week. Plus, mind you, it's full of rotting vegetables. OMG! "Rotting vegetables....? Grosssssss." Yes, you can hear the Vals screaming now. (I hadn't even started in on the worms that had moved in.)

Here's the weird thing: we ran out of the compostable bags (we have to order them online. Wait I have to. I just did. But it took me awhile) and in the meantime we've been throwing away scraps into the trash, just like we used to. But get this, we feel guilty about it now. Why? Because somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds, we became bonded to the idea of greencycling. Yes, we can buy organic vegetables (sometimes we do, sometimes we don't), but if we throw them out with the regular old garbage, they're going to be trapped under the miles of rubbish and compacted for the next millennia. " From Packaging Digest, an industry publication on packaging: "studies of landfills have revealed that on the whole, they tend to be tombs rather then composting reactors". I'm not saying the banana peel is as bad as the plastic bag, but still, if I'm here, and I've got space in my yard?

And do I rove the neighborhood endlessly spouting off about my "Black Gold", the compost of kings? No. I don't. Actually I rarely even use the compost out there in my bin. Why? I don't know why, exactly. Maybe because I've never been taught how to use it properly. But I really think that's a step that will come. For now I've got this little thing going. We buy the apple. We feed the apple to our kids. We toss the core and stem into the composter. Organisms that are already living out in my backyard break it down to usable compost for plants (or just a little ever growing pile of compost in my backyard).

I think about those people who lived here only 150 years ago, only a few generations ago, actually, and how they had to make things last forever. And how closely they had to live near their garbage. Our garbage is whisked away once a week and taken to a far off place. We don't see it. We don't smell it. And yet, it's there.

I'm not sure if it's a result of this, but we've started to look at all packaging and garbage in a different since starting this a few years ago. Most everything is broken down, even if it is a colossal pain. Toilet paper rolls go in the Paper Cycling. Plastics go in the Recycling Bin.

It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying, though, that's it's right and it's good.

There's a Zen Buddhist saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Some things, raising good (or relatively good) children, work, gardening, relationships, are not easy. That's what makes them incredibly valuable to us. The world should be of inherent value to all of us, but we've been fooled, lulled to sleep actually, about its value. As hard as it seems, it's going to take work to get back to a proper perspective.

And that's not a bad thing.

(Picture by nanaandbump)

Cows for Freedom

2007-07-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

About 5 years ago, I'm not sure where, I heard about an interesting non-profit organization named Heifer. It was founded right after WWII, it's a "humanitarian assistance organization that works to end world hunger and protect the earth."

Essentially, at the beginning, cattle, goats, ducks, and such were flown by B-52s into wartorn Europe. After those many years of bombing, farmers, ranchers, and everyday people were left without fresh milk, meat, or a way of making money.

This organization has grown immensely, even in the time we've been giving to them. But the important first point remains, whoever receives the gift (the cow, duck, chicken, etc.) must "pass on the gift" to someone who is needy when the animal has offspring.

Through reading their material I learned a lot I didn't really want to know and information I think they've found to be vital, such as, in many countries women wouldn't be entrusted with running a business like selling eggs. But often the men are in such dire straits and caught up in, um, activities not conducive to raising a family and rescuing a people out of poverty.

My wife being a vegetarian, when we send gifts to families, they are often not meat products: trees, bees, llamas, etc. The kids aren't so crazy about sending bunnies to a place where they're going to eat them, either. Even after I made my, "Well, what the heck are they supposed to eat?" speech. In the land of Chicken Nuggets, it's hard to get back to a place where people butcher their own food.

Their magazine is no shrinking violet, either. Their book reviews, while not LA Times caliber, do review and point out fluff when they see it. Even if it's a book you would think would be near and dear to their heart. They include articles written by people such as environmental analyst Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and author of, most recently, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

As I said earlier, some of the things you read in their magazine are a little difficult to listen to, especially when we have it so easy. On the positive side, it makes me know my money is being used for something productive that I believe in and, here is the odd, personal part, I feel a more a part of the whole world. Which is a feeling I really don't get that often.

Often when I'm gardening, even though I am working for a semi-invisible world, a complicated web of insects, animals, and teeny, tiny organisms in my yard so they may survive. And I can get some peace and educate my children. But I miss that many times. I don't see what I'm doing. I'm caught, as many of us, in my daydreams, worries, etc. so that I've been blinded.

Hell, I don't know where I'm going with this.

Give to Heifer, you'll do something good.

Whether you actually "feel" it or not.

(Photo by squacco)

Water, Water Everywhere... Wait, Nowhere

2007-07-07T14:27:00.001-07:00

Matilijas going strong, Catalina Island Bush Poppy flowering, roses finished, daylilies in full effect.

But the corn, oh the corn. Ryan's corn is stunted. It got "knee high by the Fourth of July", but that's essentially where it stayed. Now it's producing corn which will be too small to eat and if it weren't for Ryan, I'd pull them all out. He believes these corn plants are terrific, which, in his mind's eye, I guess they are. He'll learn later that these can't be eaten, but I'm sure he won't be disappointed the way and adult would. (Which in itself is kind of interesting. I can understand an adult who is trying to grow food for his family being crushed when they don't turn out, but it's a bit silly to think of adults crying because the forsythia isn't performing the way they'd like.)

After talking to Jimmy, the plant guy at the Hollywood Farmer's Market, my suspicions were confirmed: not enough water. I kept telling Ryan to water it more frequently, his fault, but didn't listen to him when he indicated we should plant it in front of the house (my fault and faltering memory, it'd done well there a few years back).

We've bought new corn seedlings, Jimmy telling us that you can plant them well into September in Los Angeles. September! It makes you wonder why everyone isn't growing their own vegetables in this city. I guess it's a time/money conundrum. Hell, corn is 10 for $1 during high season. Really hard to beat that deal.

Sadly, the water issue being played out in our garden is being magnified a millionfold over Southern California. While Kansas is being drenched, we just completed the driest year in recorded history (measured July to July, year to year since the late 1800's). And yet, no word of it yet from the politicians.

When I asked someone who works in the DA's office why that was (knowing full well it's not the most politically connected office, but heck, he was available to me at a children's party we were at), his answer was no that one wanted to be the unpopular politician who told everyone to cut back. It makes sense. Pathetic as it is.

I think of JFK's speech about going to the moon:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too"

What caught my eye was the expression, "not only because they are easy, but because they are hard". It echoes, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Where is this sort of speech in the light of the current global warming events facing us? It's no secret that many politicians dumbed down the scientific report on climate warming, and that the current administration loves to turn things around to suit their own needs (as every administration does, but in this case, it's not something that you really want to put your spin on. The earth is warming, now what do we do about it?)

Happily this is going to come from the grass roots up (no pun intended), which is probably for the best. The government has never had much to say about organic vegetables and the fact that we're poisoning our soil, it was the public who has made it a multi-billion dollar industry. Once the farmers come on board, they're going to find (my guess) they get a lot more money for their crops when they're grown organically.

Okay, enough gardener soap box. But when you're weeding you have a lot of time to think and I'm not always vocal when talking to people personally (like to the guy I met at a party who told me busing and desegregation was political posturing. Wow).

Water is something I'm always thinking about and I do believe I err a lot on the underwatering side. I think often of the advice a naturalist, my friend Alan, gave me when I told him about my garden: "Don't bother watering it and plant more of whatever does well." Sound advice to a city that gets so much of its water from rivers diverted into a tremendous aqueduct system.

Though we often think we have no control over problems, it's eye opening to see the facts and figures of the average American household "footprint" on the planet these days. Households, not farmers, use more pesticides:

Suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre (3.2-9.8 lbs) than agriculture (2.7 lbs per acre on average). Source, National Research Council. 1980.

The amount of water used for our home gardens is also staggering:

One third of all residential water use in the nation - about 7.8 billion gallons of water annually - goes to outdoor landscaping.

Can we start with ourselves, with our own front lawns? It's hard to believe this answer is a hearty "yes", but there it is.

It's not every day you can find yourself saving something precious, but here it is right in front of our faces.

You just need to get down close enough to the roses to hear them whisper, "Thank you".

* dewdrops courtesy of listentoreason via creative commons

Giving Back

2007-06-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

June 16 (photo credit Jeannot7)

Matilijas going strong, butterfly bush, lion's tail, and daylily in full bloom. Roses almost spent, but no rose hips yet.

I often hear people saying one of two things about gardening: it's hard work or it's not hard work.

The second type of people are usually teens who discover, upon being demanded to come out in help, that it is damn hard work and that they're sore in places they didn't even know existed the next day.

The first type are right, it is hard work, but what they fail to see is the sheer joy of it. Like single people in their 20's who visit friends who have children, they see the non-stop demands of time and the exhaustion, but they cannot feel their friend's incredible joy. Well, during the quiet moments.

I think gardening, like child rearing, religion, meditation, starts to change you from the inside and changes your view of the world.

An eminent Buddhist monk once said, "You do not see things as they are, you see them as you are."

And as you change, that tree, weed, child, song, history lesson, etc. transforms as well.

Though gardening throughout the mid-20th Century has leaned toward vast waste of water and poisoning the soil (I'd read a few years ago that home gardeners' use of pesticide dwarfs the volume used by farmers), I hope we're past much of that now. People have stopped believing that everything put on the market is safe and, thanks to books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, realize the implications of using dangerous poisons out in their front yard.

For me, this garden has been a lesson I've taken into my life. Though I'd asked myself questions about environmentalism before, I'd never really taken them to heart. Does this mean I'm going to turn into a vegetarian? Probably not, but heck, would their be any loss if I did? But it has made me calmer and see the world as less my enemy and more something I'm directly a part of. Hell, I'll go one further, Something I'm supposed to care for.

It may not obvious to an industrialist that his pollution is killing the fish in the lake, but it probably will be if he is a fisherman.

There's a few blogs out there who say they are for "the lazy environmentalist" or for the "fashionable environmentalist", but I'm too practical for that. To me it does mean work: hauling the water, chopping the wood, as the expression goes. I work, I sweat, I'm caretaker of this tiny eighth an acre of land. I believe this is the right way. I'm not a fan of golf or retiring in Florida, because I've been surprised by my own love of this work. And how many people I admire who take this kind of work into their lives: men and women who bicycle into their eighties, 97 year old gardeners, those early risers who are out for walks before everyone has even gotten out of their beds.

What's so crazy about it is how shocked I'd be if I could have seen myself when I was a teen. "That's me??? Hell no!"

But then again, like those single friends, I can't see the inside and how close this is to my heart. If I could understand that as a teen, I would see it all.

Fairly Corny

2007-06-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Though I grew up in Nebraska (from 11 to 22), I never grew my own corn.

Being the son of two Philadelphia natives, I was taught to not even think that much about it, as it paled in comparison to Sweet Jersey Corn. According to my parents, anyway.

We've grown corn in our own little sad way for a few years now, only getting three or four pieces from the stalks. Yes, we are not farmers. We're not even really good gardeners. We are Frustrated, Puzzled, and Many Times Amazed Gardeners.

Ryan's so proud of the ones pictured up top, and he should be, as he grew them from seed.

What's so strange to me is how much we are taught about this stuff when we are young and how faded it becomes in adulthood. Every classroom I visit seems to be hatching eggs, growing beans, or releasing butterflies, yet we moved as a society farther and farther away from nature and agriculture. I don't really have an opinion whether moving away from the family farms is good or not, there's so many valid points on each side, but nature has become such a valuable part of my life (and seems to be a valued part of a student's education) I'm surprised to find so many adults are more caught up in the current state of American Idol rather than what's going on in the world which we are so much a part of.

I shouldn't be shocked, especially considering I've worked at jobs (TV, Marketing) intended to distract people from reality in a sense.

I still have so many thoughts outside while gardening and I often sit up and think, "Hell, I should go in and blog about this," but I usually don't.

The other day I had a mild revelation about this.

I was weeding Wendy's Garden (lavender, roses, herbs) and I got an idea to blog about. I was going to get up, but something stopped me. I looked up and saw the hummingbird at the feeder, I heard the songs and chirps of the birds in the distance, and I looked, from ground level at this beautiful world all around me and I realized this place, right here, right now, was where I wanted to be. So often I spend time on my place to somewhere else or thinking of somewhere else, like a G.I. on the Greyhound Bus headed home after war.

I haven't had that feeling in such a long time, and it really seems, as adults with so many responsibilities, we move further and further away from this kind of peace.

Speaking of which, the children are finally coming out to the office and Wendy is up and getting her first cup of coffee. It's time to post this puppy and go back inside.

What Was, What Is

2007-05-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2007

Matilijas in bloom as well as Love-In-A-Mist and hundreds of roses. Really a beautiful time to reflect on the garden, if it weren't for the tall grass going to seed. And...

That two days ago I was looking out the window at this:

(photo credit: iwriteplays, see all her photos at her flickr site)

Griffith Park, the 4000-acre park that is home to the Greek Theatre, Griffith Observatory, LA Zoo, and hundreds of miles of trails, was on fire. It's less than a mile from our house and across an 8-lane freeway and the LA River, so we weren't in danger (or evacuated, like our friends in Los Feliz). But we did have a view of something we may never see face-to-face again, a raging wildfire right in our front yard.

We knew we were safe and just shook our heads as we watched the fire lick the night sky. 80-foot flames? 100-foot flames? It was hard to tell.

We were aware everyone had been evacuated from the nearby hills and hoped and prayed that it wouldn't destroy their homes. It didn't, luckily, not a one. The ancient carousel in the park was saved, though flames came within a thousand yards. Crews worked around the night to put it out, and could only say today, days later, that it is near contained.

What we are left with something that looks a bit like Mars.

The firemen have been explaining something that I've been trying to tell people since we were watching the fire that night, when you have a wild area that has not been burned for 50 years, you have a lot of raw material for fire. I hear the rangers try to tell visitors about the role of fire in management of national and state parks, but I think the image of Smokey Bear is so ingrained in our minds and the advice that Fire=Bad, we have trouble accepting it.

Fires are supposed to burn wild areas occasionally. In fact, many wildflowers and pine trees can't bloom or reproduce without the burns. We've only been creating parklands for 150 or so years, these ecosystems have developed over tens of thousands of years. Yes it's sad to think of the animals running away from the fire - but please don't try to deny that an animals life is full of predators and prey, starvation, and other hardships people in our country don't have to bear.

The park will be beautiful again. In fact, in a few weeks, we'll hike around and look with awe at the forces of nature, just like we did when the floods knocked down the great oaks, obliterating trails and ruining walking bridges.

This is our lesson, from Mother Nature herself, please don't miss it by going somewhere else.

Birds of a Feather

2007-05-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Phase 2: For the Birds

Doesn't it sound important when you put the "Phase" in there, like something really big is going on and you're a part of it? Doesn't always happen. In fact, in gardening, most of the time that doesn't seem to be the point.

After spending a full year revamping the garden after telling my gardener Javier we wouldn't need him anymore, we're ready to move in a few different directions. We've got a good habitat, or infrastructure, now for the animals: shrubs for cover, flowers for food, and no pesticides to spoil the treats that lay under the surface for the few skunks and raccoon we've been seeing, but I've started to think about the birds a little more lately.

Our St. Francis bird feeder (now standing more appropriately on the ground due to a broken hook) feeds the ravenous English Sparrows as well as the Mourning Doves, Scrub Jays, Mocking Birds, and recently moved in squirrel quite well. We've gone through two hummingbird feeders, the first crashing to the ground during a windstorm, refilled weekly. We could probably use two, as I've heard (and seen) these little beautiful creatures are so aggressive that any other hummingbird coming to "their" feeder better be ready for a fight. The recent turn of events is the appearance of a Hooded Oriole, as pictured above (credit, under creative commons, to bbum) feeding off the feeder. I'd seen Oriole feeders before, but we've had a hummingbird feeder for years and only within the last week have we seen one. It is really heartening to see; let's me know we're headed in the right direction.

Speaking of which, on a lark (ha! see, that was a joke) I bought a sock Finch feeder at the pet shop a couple months back and hung it on our Toyon tree. (Toyon looks very similar to holly and used to cover the entire hills around our house, which gave them their name, the Hollywood Hills.) After a full month of absolutely nothing, one Saturday the kids and I went out front and scared 5, count 'em, 5 House Finches on the sock feeding away.

They weren't very timid, either. We sat down under the feeder and they came back and started feeding again. The woman who has the garden down the street came by and Ryan had to tell her all about the birds. He's not really a shy kid, by the way.

We've been back to the pet store a few times, to fill up the sock and eventually got an actual finch feeder (a few are available, the ones from Droll Yankees are expensive, but come with a lifetime warranty, but I opted for another brand, cheaper, but made in the US as well.)

This is probably what happens to those crazy bird people, I imagine, because I've already started browsing around for birdhouses. But it's great, right? A middle-aged man without kids feeding the birds can be considered a little bit sad, but a man with kids, why he's just educating them, right?

Plus, hell, it's fun to see them out the window when you're doing the dishes.

Just Too Much

2007-04-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

Back from Joshua Tree on Sunday. Half asleep on Monday. The winds are up and gusting at 30mph they feel as if they will blow everything over, but they will not. They are just winds.

The news broke of Vermont Tech's massacre while I was scouting a Caribbean lunch place with my coworker Karin, neither of us could really tell what was going on until later that day.

33 people massacred by an angry, confused boy.

I haven't watched the TV since and just looked at the papers today. The stories of the lives lost were hard to read.

When I turned the page, I saw that the Pulitzer prizes for journalism were handed out and this photo series on a mother's last year with her dying child stared at me from the pages.

Some days the pain in the world is just too much and you must cry, pray, or hug someone you love so hard you may think that they'll break.

The Japanese poet Issa wrote this haiku in the early 19th century, after the death of his infant daughter:

dew evaporates --
and all our life is dew:
so dear, so fresh, so fleeting

The winds will not blow us down and we will not break the ones we love.

But remember this day, remember these feelings. Fight your anger and pray, meditate, or cry until you find peace.

For some reason, I believe our future depends on it.

First Days of Spring

2007-03-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

Rain, gloomy weather, flowers, termites. What more could you ask of spring?

Yes, I'm dealing with termites, as mentioned on my other blog, thus not worth mentioning here.

Spent the day at home with the termite inspector/fumigator writing in the studio. I'm actually in a pretty good mood, but I imagine it takes some getting used to, this working from home. I made a go of it, as I have before, but it's just so... lonely? Ah, a writer's life is lonely, unless you're stuck on a godawful TV show with a bunch of people in a room for 12 hours straight. (In that case, I'd prefer the loneliness.)

The irises have come up - they haven't been attacked by the snails just yet, but I know it's coming, it always does. Sad, but the snails love them almost as much as I do. Maybe more so.

The daylillies are coming up, which the snails could care less about, as well as the California poppies. I don't know how it is every year I invest in a big bag of poppy seeds and I'd be damned if I see more than 10 in my yard come spring. Either I'm not doing something right or there's some very full birds flying around out there.

I'm going through something (aren't I always?) which is neither quite forwards nor backwards. It's limbo almost.

We went to Eaton Canyon on Sunday with the kids for a good long hike. We were disappointed when we went in and saw the little river was empty, but it turned out we just had to hike a bit upstream 20 minutes or so to get to the water. Ryan met some 3rd graders and they spent time catching water bugs and looking for frogs.

Wendy and I talked about water and how drawn people are to it. We were so sad to see the river empty downstream, but joy came back when we saw it rushing over rocks and couldn't wait to get down near it. Much like fire, you feel strangely drawn toward it. It says something about safety, about being home, having your basic needs met. And it is just so wonderful to sit by it on a rock and hear the sounds of a splashing, laughing brook.

We should have stayed there but decided to follow the boys up on an adventure to the waterfall (pictured at the link above). We started 10 minutes after them and Lord knows arrived how many minutes later. The trail had been washed out in all sorts of places and I found myself trying to balance Abby on my front and a ten pound bag on my back (I was stupid enough to bring the Sunday Times) while trying to climb from rock to rock over the stream. Wendy and I did work pretty well together to get her across, but as the afternoon came on, the fog lifted and we were being beaten by the sun. Us with no hats or sunscreen. Did I mention my children are almost see-through they're so white? Regardless, I was the only one who got burnt. Right where my hair used to cover my forehead.

The waterfall at the end was really, really disappointing. Everyone was there picnicking and there were wrappers, bottles, and pieces of sandwiches everywhere. There was also tagging (graffiti) in places all over the waterfall, a legacy of some of the idiots in this city. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig says of his visit to the Grand Canyon, it was odd NOT to see a bunch of beer cans piled up at the North Rim, it felt false. Just because that's how crappy it had become.

Well, maybe he should have come to the falls with us, because this certainly did look like crap. The kids, of course, didn't notice it - which is one of those wonderful things about children. They only see certain things and have trouble noticing people sleeping on the streets, taxes, murder, robbery, etc. But, honestly, I have trouble explaining those sorts of things to them. ("Hey, kids - you're not going to believe what kind of horrible world we brought you into. Sorry, but your Mom and I really, really wanted to have kids around so we wouldn't get bored. Catch you later.")

The hike back was better, mostly down hill and we knew there actually was an end in sight. We saw two deer and a woman who was, I kid you not, hiking with her pet goat. I have no idea what kind of person has a pet goat, let alone hikes with it, but there she was. (She wasn't interested, if you're wondering, in talking about the goat, mind you. I imagine every person she passes asks her about the goat and I was just one more. Maybe she should disguise it as a dog.)

I love being outside, that's the truth. And I love being busy. Both of which are a little problematic when it comes to the life of a writer, which is mostly spent indoors wandering through your brain for something good. A) Not outdoors B) Not particularly busy

Aw, hell, Frustrated Gardener, Frustrated Writer. What's the difference between friends?

90 Degrees and On Fire

2007-03-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

The smell of night-blooming jasmine and smoke of the nearby burning Griffith Park are intermingling. The sun is up late, it seems like summer.

How long was it since I was a boy?

Just reading Rolling Stone (please don't ask, it was a gift) and going down memory lane with R.E.M. Reading Michael Stipe say, "We don't look much in the past, we're so excited about the future," and I wonder myself how long it's been since I've said as much.

I'm traveling backward some days, with my head in my hands as it were.

The scorching heat and high desert winds have set blazes 6 miles from my house and across the river and one of the nation's largest freeways (the 5). It happens a few times a year, with bright orange pictures of flaming hills splashed across the cover of the LA Times.

We found termites, again. In a wood pile I'd left by the giant timber bamboo for the last few months. They were just milling in and out like ants, busy as you please, 12 inches away from my studio.

Well here's a precarious situation, Organic Gardener meets Vermin That Eats His House.

Sorry, everyone, but this is one of those scenarios where the chemicals come on big. I call one of those places that comes and dumps chemicals aplenty down the holes, killing the queen and all her drones.

Does this mean I've failed as an organic gardener? Perhaps. But then again, my yard provides more than its share of fun stuff to do for the average skunk (we have two), hummingbird, mourning dove, and mockingbird. This is just one of those things I really can't chance with the biggest investment I'll ever make.

Termites and Taxes.

Is there any escape?

Beautiful Surprises

2007-03-12T22:09:00.000-07:00

You know that poem someone made up about Jesus, the one called Footprints? I just had what I'd call a Footprints moment. I've been using blogger for somewhere over a year now and seeing no comments, even though a few times people have emailed me comments.

Wouldn't you know, just switching over to Google's Blogger a few moments ago and something like 10 comments appeared out of thin air. Posts from friends. I know you're there (hell, at 50,000 new blogs coming up an hour, I can't imagine many others migrating over here).

Oh, thank you friends, for your thoughts, your minutes spent here, your charity, and your posts.

This does leave me at a sort of conundrum, do I go back and answer all those old posts, which no one is going back to read anyway, or move on?

I think I'll reread them, smile, and be off to bed.

Good night, and thank you again.

72 Degrees and Sunny

2007-02-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

(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.

Naming Things

2007-01-27T16:18:00.000-08:00

The rain has come back, but it's light. I think the fact that I started to wash and wax my wife's car brought it. Raked up some of the magnolia leaves, they're heavy, like cardboard and tend to smother anything little underneath them. The little California poppies have begun to rise out of the mulch, which is always amazing to me, no matter how many times I see it. You may know already, I'm not the happiest of people, though people mistake me for being one most of the time, but those little sprouts are one of the few things on God's green Earth that moves my heart.

The others? Seeing my children play. Being in church and hearing singing (even if I'm a non-believer). Favorite songs. The beginning of most movies.

I guess that's a lot more things than I thought there'd be.

Met Jimmy Williams again at the Farmer's Market in Hollywood. He's the man who brought back his grandmother's tomato, the Goosecreek tomato, singlehandedly. (Hannah over at This Garden is Illegal has a wonderful post on it.) He's such a wonderful and thoughtful gardener. Was giving me his secrets to growing wonderful tomatoes, and I discovered, as I discover time and again, I am a Frustrated Gardener. I read a quarter of what I need to, try it anyway, and usually end up in disaster. For some reason this sort of jump-in-the-fire thinking isn't in all of my hobby forays. I'm a meticulous cook and writer. But gardening. Hmmm, gardening. There are just so many directions. And when you've got monkey mind, as I do, going out to the garden can lead you in more directions than you're ready for. (Much like the Internet, I've found.)

I probably sound like more of a wreck than I am. But maybe that's the same with all of us.

I spent last year pursuing a more environmentally-conscious living, and, by gum, I was actually able to do it. I just took everything in small steps and kept the steps posted where I saw them every day, by the calendar, right above the toaster and coffee maker. I had plans this year, but where are they now? In a drawer somewhere, I imagine. Well, I'm familiar with those things I need to do: get another IRA, move up a level in yoga and continue to go once a week (if you're laughing, I beg you to join me, this may be pain like you haven't felt since high school football), ride my bike more, meditate more.

The garden, well, the year since taking over the garden from Javier isn't quite over yet and it's been a rousing success. (I said "rousing".) I haven't mowed my lawn in 3 weeks, and to be honest, I don't know what the hell he was doing in my garden all winter long. The big project, taking the leaves, shredding them, then putting them on newspaper spread on the garden floor, won't be completed until early summer, I'm guessing. But, as I've said before, if you're in a hurry, don't take up gardening. It's really an anti-city task. Or maybe an antidote-city task.

The manzanita is flowering and just beautiful with little white bells all throughout the interior. I've managed to keep it from leaning too far into the sidewalk, which I hadn't imagined it'd do when I stuck it's twiggy self into the ground. The nearby Catalina poppy blocked so much of the sun, the sidewalk was one of the few places the manzanita had to go to get some. (You never imaging they'll get big, do you?)

The back yard looks good, but still needs a few tweaks, which will be my next post.

I mean, if you're still listening.

God Head

2007-01-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

A new year and so much newness has gone to pot already.

Not in the garden, thankfully, all is quiet, all is bright. I haven't mowed the grass in three weeks, which is a relief. If I was smart, I'd have my mower blade sharpened. Luckily, for me and my laziness, I'm not that smart.

Many times I'm out in the garden I look around in wonder. Other times, I look around and wonder. I wonder stuff like, "What the hell am I doing out here?" I really wish I could answer that question. I ask it at work, too, many time. And at home. I don't ask it when I'm with my children. I know what I'm doing here, but when I'm asking such questions, I worry that I may not be the best influence on my kids. I think they need someone more positive, more outgoing, someone of strong with plenty of faith. In other words, someone else.

I lost my faith in the last year or so. I would love to say it happened quite gradually, but it didn't, it came as a direct result of working toward faith. Growing up, as a child, I went to church every Sunday and all the holy days (which, in the Catholic faith, there are many). I considered myself a believer, but by 18 I was ready to give up my faith entirely.

The strange thing, really, is how often I thought of myself as a lapsed Catholic or Christian at that time. "Well," I would think, "I'm a Christian, but I just have a few problems with going to church." Which was true enough, but I wasn't really taking the time to go back to church and find out what those problems were precisely. When Ryan was young, Wendy and I began going back to church (oops, she was going for the first time). I decided to take this seriously and start taking a Bible study course. Yes, there I was, in the middle of Hollywood, alive with aspiring actors, musicians, producers, and writers, wanting forever to talk about themselves and their projects learning about God, Moses, Jesus, Abraham... you know, all the biggies.

I studied hard. I tried to believe. I prayed for guidance, I prayed, as ridiculously as it might seem, for faith. I tried for 3 years, at the end of which I found out I don't believe at all.

It was a startling revelation, but one who had been nibbling at my brain for quite some time. Many of the faithful at this point will jump up and say maybe I didn't have the right teacher or maybe I wasn't studious enough. Maybe that's true. But then again, maybe they don't know what it's like to experience faith in another person's shoes.

I love my family, most of whom are devout Catholics and wonderful people, and it was hard to tell my mother over Christmas vacation that I was an agnostic. She really didn't want to believe it, which I don't blame her for. I'm sure she wants me to be a joy to God and worship Him. But I had to go through this story and tell her by the end of all this study and prayer, that I didn't believe the basic tenet of Christianity, that Jesus is the Messiah. And that, to me, is reason enough to not go to a Christian church and pretend to be a believer. I mean, if it's true, I'm a hypocrite for attending for my children's and society's sake. Jesus will be aware of that. And if Jesus is not the Messiah, then I'm wasting mine and everyone else's time.

It's funny, because the Catholic church is one of the few places I've met people who are sort-of faithful. People who go to church because their family and society expect it of them. It's a bit sticky for me, as my son is going to a Catholic school. I'm still working out quite how to explain this to him. I mean, here are all these people saying this thing is true, and here's Dad over here who doesn't believe it. It might be a little freaky. But, honestly, I'd rather have it this way than have he and his sister accuse me of being a hypocrite when he's 12 years old.

I wish I did have faith. It'd make some things that much easier, but I just don't.

Do I believe there's a God? Maybe. I'm not really sure. Some say you'd have to be pretty arrogant to think you could figure out whether there's a God or not, but I'm not sure I'm really biting. I know certain things which have nothing to do with faith, like meditation, love, and childbirth open you up to mysteries no one will ever be able to explain. Does that mean there's a God?

At this point, I just don't know.

Fewer Thoughts About TV

2006-12-19T22:58:00.000-08:00

Lantana continuing to bloom in a frenzy. Frost-kissed (aka brown) artichokes proliferate in the markets. Roses starting to form buds and lettuce sprouts coming up (mesclun mix). Just cut back our Catalina Island Poppy to one half, it will grab the winter rain and rebound by late January.

Christmas is over and the rains have come. The kids and I bought Wendy a milkweed plant in the fall, which was supposed to attract monarchs. It probably would if it still had any leaves. This is the second one we've planted in the last two years and I'm thinking they're just not crazy about our soil.

By weird coincidence, the other Blogger for my company led me to a NYC Blogger who I've been reading. That Blogger, in turn, loves a LA Blogger who is a Writer/Actor/PowerPoint Artist that I'd met at my company-sponsored portfolio review last summer. She goes by the name Communicatrix on her blog and she, like I, has given up TV wholly, choosing instead to watch only DVDs and videos.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, wish I could declare that giving up TV has led me down the path of finishing that novel I always had been trying to write or has brought my family magically together or even that it has brought me fabulous wealth, but that's simply not the case. (Maybe it has indeed brought my family together, but it's hard to tell with such young children. How am I to compare?)

This woman seems to be experiencing the same phenomenon, which is something I love hearing. Mostly because of the sheer honesty of such a statement. There are probably people giving seminars on giving up TV who are expounding those very things I have no achieved. And, sure enough, I could get in front of a bunch of people and tell them the evils of TV and how much better I am as a result of dropping it out of my life, but I'd be on the road to politics at that point. And I'd be a colossal liar.

I was just talking to my officemate, Ryan and his wife the other night at a party. These are two confirmed TV addicts who have no idea how I can live my life the way I do. Actually their jaws dropped to the floor after I told them I didn't watch TV, then they asked what I do instead. I told them flat out there's nothing to do.

But that's the strange thing: I don't think there's ever been anything to do. I mean before the invention of radio, TV, or the Internet. People sat around and played games, or did that endless amount of work they always had to do, got drunk and beat their wives and children, I guess.

Wendy and I eat dinner together, without the kids, in our own dining room twice a week. I go to yoga one night a week. We both get out for bike rides at night during the week. Honestly, that's about it.

When I first gave up TV, I'd go for walks around the block and, weirdly, I couldn't walk by a house without seeing that familiar blue tint coming out the living room window. It was a very creepy experience. It was almost as if some alien race had come down and bribed us with the ultimate drug which would keep us passive, afraid, and inside all night, then kept setting our country up with worse and worse presidents.

For those who don't believe it's a drug, consider the fact that it's one of the few resting activities that actually lowers your metabolism below normal resting rate. Yes, if you are sitting at home and staring at your wall, you are actually burning more calories than watching your favorite show or DVD.

And you thought playing video games was bad.

I don't know how to promote the no-TV thing. The two facts I keep coming back to are a) that most people don't have anything good to say about it except that it's entertaining, mostly and that b) it's great way to find out whether to wear a coat or not to work. Not overly compelling arguments.

A strange fact is how guilty people feel about watching it. I noticed, after asking many people about their viewing habits, that they generally underestimate the time they spend watching it. They tend to forget about the news that they watch every night, which adds an additional 7 hours a week to their viewing schedule. And the sad fact is that news on television is not very good, and the local news (even LA), is some of the worst trash televised.

One night, years ago, I was talking to Wendy about watching a program together and she said, "You know, it's not really an interactive activity." Which, until that very moment, was news to me. But damn it, she was right.

Giving up TV was hard for me. I am, at heart, a TV addict. I can watch program after program until I am essentially sick to my stomach. (My friend, and quite possibly twin-sister-separated-at-birth, Lauren has the same issue. She watched the Home & Garden channel, HGTV, so much one day that they actually started to run the programs again. Sadly, she watched a few the second time around.)

When I was in high school I started to realize the most interesting people I knew watched hardly any television at all. The couldn't digest many references I made pertaining to Gilligan, the Brady Bunch, or any of the 5 to 6 hours of television I watched daily.

(And I'm not exaggerating much about this daily intake. I watched, after school, TV until dinner time, 3:00 to 6:00. After dinner I would often rush through my homework to get downstairs before 8:00, prime time. I'd watch that for 2 hours, sometimes 3, until the news came on.)

This whole No-TV thing started as a Lenten promise. Though not a practicing Catholic (okay, not true. Not a Catholic at all. An agnostic), I still observe Lent, which are the 6 weeks after Ash Wednesday leading up to Easter Sunday. You choose something to give up which is not "going to church" or "Lent", then see if you can actually do it. I'd given up the radio, my favorite section of the LA Times, meat, and alcohol, when it came to me that I should try to give up television. Both Wendy and I did successfully (alcohol and radio were the most challenging by far) and really never looked back. For awhile we watched movies on Thursdays and Saturdays, but Wendy, it turns out, is a bigger fan of having me cook dinner and sitting down for a few hours over a nice meal and wine.

She gets up for work at 5:15a six days a week, so by 10:00 on most nights she's ready for bed. I'm just worn out by then, and unless something's really holding my attention, I'm in bed a few minutes after her.

Besides being painfully unaware of the goings-on in the latest hit TV shows, a strange side effect is existing outside a major part of the advertising loop. People reference commercials all the time and we have no idea what they're talking about. We also have no idea what the hell a Hemi engine is. Or why anyone in their right mind would make Paris Hilton a star.

Which is probably the strongest argument against watching TV. There's some mediocre programming on there, but, let's face it, for many of us, most of it is crap that we're afraid to admit we're dumb enough to watch.

And aren't our minds worth more than that?

(Photo by Hamachi, courtesy Creative Commons)

In The Gutter

2006-11-26T21:37:00.000-08:00

When your mind is in the gutter, at least you know where you are, right?

Today was officially Gutter Cleaning Day at my house. Which meant getting on the roof with my 7-year-old son, Ryan, and cleaning off all the debris that'd collected over the summer and early fall. (Are we into winter already? I can never see the clear demarcation point. It was 90 degrees last week.) I'd waiting until Wendy went out shopping with Abby because it's difficult enough to have one child at the bottom of the ladder bugging you two come up. I don't know what happened to my generation of adults, but when I was a kid, we didn't want to be anywhere near our parents and their ladders. We begged to go watch TV. We knew if we went up there they'd make us do work. And they'd yell at us. Mostly to stay away from the edge. ("Keep away from the edge, Tim!") I remember getting kicked out of a friends yard because I was goofing off instead of helping his family unload a cord of firewood. Can you imagine? I was hurt, insulted. I was also pretty stupid. Why the hell would anyone want to help unload firewood? (I really don't know. It must have been because my friend was there, because I'd be damned if I wanted to help my own family when it came time to unload our cord of wood.)

Hard as it may be to believe, when I got up on the roof, I was actually happy with my wife's decision to cut down the wretched eucalyptus by our bedroom window. This was a tree literally two feet from our house with branches sweeping majestically against the roof tiles during windstorms. A nightmare, essentially. Our roofer told us the debris it was dropping was guaranteed to take 5 years off our 10 year roof. (Which sounds like a deal, 50% off, but really it's not so much.)

When I got up to the roof with Ryan I was met with 75% less debris than I was used to. (Which really is a deal.) In my move to do my own gardening this year, I'd bought the Black and Decker Mulch Hog or some such deal, which is a blower and a vacuum/shredder, which turned out to be the perfect thing for the roof.

Hilariously, I always forget that cleaning the gutter is a multi-step process sort of like painting,
you always think of the painting itself, which is the easy part, the labor is really in the cleaning and prepping. So the first step was getting rid of Abby. Check. Second step, taking all the tools you need out of the garage so you won't have to come all the way down to grab something, or try in vain to yell at someone inside the house to come out and throw you up something. Check.

While Ryan pruned branches and threw them over the side, I took the blower and scooted everything into a couple of corners. Then, Transformer-like, I reversed the blower into a vac and bag and sucked the whole thing into two trash bags, instead of the usual 10. Of course, some of this would have to do with the disappearance of the eucalyptus, but there's always something that beats hard in a man's heart when the machine he bought is living up to the task.

This whole process took about an hour. And you may notice is has absolutely zero to do with the gutters. Well, yes, to the untrained eye. Fact is, when the winter rains come in two weeks or so, all those leaves, seed pods, branches, etc. float across the roof and try to go down the gutters. Now when the gutters are clogged with all this stuff, the water stays on the roof. You don't need Bob Villa to tell you that's not such a great thing or that even the sturdiest of roofs can hold only so much water before it drops it on its surprised occupants.

After having Ryan stick a hose down the first gutter, I was ready to have him come down and start chopping up the branches he just cut. Well, I got him down, but the fact that I was up on the ladder in the front yard turned out to be too intriguing to him. Oh, and the fact that the water was streaming steadily down the driveway, into the street, and down the other gutter into the sewer. Turns out that's really fascinating to 1st graders and no amount of yelling from 10 feet in the air with your hand stuck in between a gutter and a saltillo will make any difference.

Oh, well, I thought. What good is yelling at him going to do? I decided I'd only yell at him when he came over to tell me he was bored or could he come up the ladder, which was exactly 5 times.

Gutter cleaning, like dish washing, is lauded by the Zen Buddhist monks who tell you this is where you find enlightenment. But, really, for the rest of us, it's drudge work. The kind of work our immigrant forefathers did before us and the kind of work current immigrants do today. Of course, there are those of us who can afford to have those immigrants over to do stuff like this for us, but for some reason, good or bad, I think it's one of those drudge jobs you might as well do yourself. I didn't get a glimmer of enlightenment while I was cleaning, but I did pass through some pretty interesting conversations in my head while I was working, "Why do I keep hearing the tune for 'Jessie's Girl'?", "How long did I live with my first girlfriend before we got sick of each other?", and "Those guys who painted the house did a great job, but man, why did they screw up all the things that hooked on the screens?"

Ryan came over occasionally to hand me the hose or ask if he could come up, which led to me saying thank you or yelling at him.

I did see an article in Martha Stewart about cleaning gutters, but a couple things about it turned me off. A) The fact that the guy in the picture was wearing khakis and obviously was posing for a photo shoot and not actually cleaning gutters, as his clean pants would attest to.
B) Do I really need Martha to tell me how to clean gutters? I mean, isn't this one of those things, like peeling an orange, that comes naturally to all of us? The article did mention something called a Gutter Cleaning Tool, which looked more practical than the one Advertised on TV that can be operated while you drink your coffee and read the paper. Still I was suspicious enough not to investigate the tool and take the complicated task of gutter cleaning into my own hands.

My dirty, grimy, filthy hands.

The only advice I have for you is to wait until you are absolutely finished cleaning out the dry gunk (which is fire tinder dry if you live anywhere out in the Southwest) before you shoot a hose down the gutter to really clean it out as that stuff that hasn't been cleaned out gets nice and gooey after a good spraying. Turns out it's also a little harder to handle. I probably learned this lesson last year, but I have a really bad memory. My thought was, I'm not going to place my ladder precariously every five feet and clean that out by hand only to have to come back to each spot to clean it out by hose. That seems to be the only way to do it, by the way. Well, unless you like wet gooey hands.

I almost lost my wedding ring in the gutter. Gotta make that note for next year: Remove wedding ring before starting.

I was halfway around the house when I realized I am never going to get this done in one day. I think this is a step in the right direction for someone like me. Someone prone to keep working until he has to clean up the area while holding a flashlight and rake. Someone who discovers in the morning that he's left his ladder and blower out on the front lawn all night and now they are very wet from where the sprinklers hit them.

I cleaned up, trimmed the branches Ryan refused to take care of, and still have time to remember I'd left my wedding ring in the jeans I was just about to throw into the clothes hamper.

All in all I'd say it was a successful day.

Knives and Wanderers

2006-10-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

October 8, 2006

While working in the garden I’m asked, at least once a month, whether or not I am Dr. Schubert M.D., Physician and Surgeon.

The man or woman usually points at the shingle over our nearly century-old carport and look at me wantingly. I answer no and explain the sign belonged to the man who built the house in 1927 and belonged to he and his wife until both their deaths in the early 80’s.

Usually the person listens kindly to me for a moment, then explains a medical problem of one sort or another and its then I understand why they are asking. And why I’ve seen them pass by my house several times pretending to be taking a walk, like some kind of jilted lover pacing in front of their former girlfriend’s house.

It’s at these moments I feel sorry for doctors, though we often see the best part of their lives, say their beautiful cars, large houses, and prestige in society in general (“Oh, you’re a doctor,” people say to them, moving them up a notch or two in their mind’s eye.) What we don’t see, however, is the sadness associated with living life in general that so many people want to share with doctors. That many times we are just tired, worn out, and want an ear to bend for even a few minutes. We may not want to burden our friends and work associates with these very personal problems, but a doctor (who is many times a complete stranger) has the odd role as an authority figure with their finger on the pulse of the miracles of life.

We hear the ads that tell us if we are consistently sad, find ourselves crying when we awaken, we should ask our doctor about Naproxium or some such drug. Society has told us doctors can take care of many problems that were long ago referred to priests, ministers, monks, and/or phrenologists. And, while true doctors have a great many anti-depressants in their drawers, they went to school to learn physiology, not psychology. I wonder how they can handle it.

So today, while raking leaves I listened to a fellow named Don who told me his mother owned the duplex across the way, which is the house where he was born. He looked okay, but he didn’t sound well. He told me he lived up in Sun Valley (an aptly name scorching part of the San Fernando Valley) and was staying with his mother because he might need surgery. I didn’t ask about the surgery, because it seemed rude to ask. But I did wonder, why would he tell me, a complete stranger, and one he now knew, who was not a Physician and Surgeon?

Maybe he just wanted to be heard, I supposed many people do. People like me go to therapists because we know at least they won’t let us go on forever complaining, they’ll help figure out what’s making us feel so poorly, then give us some homework to try to work it out. But for the majority of people they think going to a therapist shows some kind of weakness, as if they were admitting to everyone life was just too hard for them. Even if it actually is.

Don eventually told me his lower back had been giving him severe pain in both his legs (I diagnosed it was a problem with his sciatica, weirdly) and he was apprehensive about going under the knife, because he’d never had surgery before.

I told him I’d had a couple of surgeries and the techniques have come so far that people are now in and out of hospitals in hours instead of days. He asked about my surgeries. I told him about my broken jaw, he looked for the scar and I showed him it, and about my corneal rip, a surgery from which I was able to drive myself home 30 minutes later.

I said he was in one of the best places in the country for surgeons, to which he told me he was flying to Florida, where he found the expert in this area. I laughed and said he’d obviously done his homework, he had nothing to fear at all, he’d be okay.

I told him I’d better get back to the lawn or it’d never get done. He told me it was nice talking to me and hoped I’d see him walking with a smile on his face very soon. I told him I hoped so, too.

As I was walking back to my mower he added that it was nice meeting me, as if just the act of talking to me wasn’t enough, he was actually glad he met me in the first place. I said it was nice meeting him, too.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, but it was indeed a pleasure meeting him.

Seeing Is Not Believing

2006-09-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Seeing is Believing

2006-09-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Rock the House

2006-09-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

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.

How The Grinch Stole My Garden

2006-08-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I was having lunch with my workmate Ozzy yesterday and I admitted that I am a terrible gardener.

"I thought you were a great gardener!" he said.

I replied, "I like to garden, yes, but I'm really hit-or-miss at it."

The reality is, I'm a better cook than gardener. Of course, with cooking there are far fewer variables than out in the garden. Let's face it, bugs aren't going to attack your enchiladas while you turn around to cut the bread, nor will a hailstorm knock the living daylights out of your soufflé while you run to get an umbrella. Gardening, especially organic gardening faces so many, many variables. And I guess you just have to live with them.

Why did my tomato plants stop producing? Why do some of my zucchini shrivel up and die when only 3 inches long? What the heck is that ugly bug that doesn't seem to move doing on my lettuce?

Maybe I don't pay enough attention.

But maybe, after all, it doesn't matter.

What is my garden there for? It's organic, so it exists for all the insects and beasts of the world, from hummingbird to grasshopper. It's my retreat. Like you, I work, I raise kids, I get all bent out of shape by all the crap we adults have to suffer through most days. When I come home I can head into a place that is a sanctuary, someplace bigger than myself and deeply connected to where we all came from (and will return to in the end). It's a lesson to my children. Ryan and Abby are excited to see things grow, to pick the fresh tomatoes and show them proudly to their mom. On how many levels does that work? Responsibility, stewardship of the environment, hard work, time spent with Dad... that list is just endless.

So maybe it isn't about me and how great a tomato I can grow.

Perhaps, like the Grinch, the garden is about much more than we really know.

Go Ahead, Cry Yourself to Sleep

2006-08-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's odd, really, how normal we all try to appear. I was just thinking this while I was out at OSH during my lunch (buying sprinklers, wouldn't you know).

I'm walking through the store and just for some reason becoming untethered. Why? I don't know. I guess I become untethered quite a bit. But maybe we all do. Maybe that's why we all need the cell phones to keep us at the ready at all times. I don't blame those people. In fact, often I want to be one of them. When I get lonely, freaked out in the world, to reach out and hear a friendly voice.

"Hey, man, how's it going? Oh, I'm just at OSH picking up sprinklers. No, the OSH down south of Pico."

But I don't. And maybe it's because I crave those moments, because that's when real magic happens. Not the kind of magic you get from TV, the movies, or Disneyland, the magic that comes from life all around us. The people who you don't know yet, who you may never know. What will they say to you? How will you interact with them?

When I lived in Venice, California all those years ago, I felt like a reporter. I was lucky enough to have my brother Jack and his high school classroom read about all my adventures in a really, really crazy, at-the-end-of-the-earth life. I don't know what I would have done without an audience, actually. Go insane? Get in more trouble than I did? Got me. That's a question for the ages, I guess. The fact is I did have a wonderful brother who was able to help me make sense of it all and bang, here I am many years later with a writing job and, better, a wonderful wife as my best friend and two children.

Is it boring? Yes, sometimes it's all colossally boring. But when we are bored is that when we reach that area where danger, Life, lurks?

What happens when you tell your trainer that you might cry during leg lifts because your mother has Alzheimer's and you just had to put her into a hospice?

There is so much fertile ground there, so much room for danger, compassion, love, curiosity, intrigue, and so much else.

I'm old enough to know those habits I use to keep myself from feeling such things (yet I do them anyway), but I don't want to add to that list. As crazy as I am, I really believe I might be much worse if I tried to pretend I was everyone else.

In my opinion, those "everyone else" people are much, much crazier. They just don't realize it. Yet.

Shamrocks and Whiskey

2006-07-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking about him, which is ridiculous, isn’t it? Since my family is so much more in tune with him going, right?

My father passed under a month ago. He was sick with cancer, not moving around so well, even when we saw him last July (before they had diagnosed him).

I raced back home to see him after spending the day before trying to get an overnight plane from Los Angeles to Omaha during their College World Series. He was alive then, and hanging on. I ended up flying into Kansas City and driving the two and a half hours, seeing a gorgeous sunrise, listening to satellite radio (jazz, classical, and indy), and drinking bad coffee all the way.

It was corny in a way, saying stuff like, “Come on, Dad, just hold on until I get there.” Right out of a movie. Yet I found myself saying it. And wishing it. Then actually convincing myself he’d be alive by the time I got to my parents’ house.

I walked in the door at 8am, wondering when we’d be going to the hospital. My Mom, reiterating what she’d assumed I’d already been told said, “Well, you know your dad passed away at 3:30. Jack’s on his way over here.” She could tell by my face that I did not know. It was news I wasn’t really prepared to hear. “Oh, sweetie, I thought someone called you.” She hugged me. But I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready.

I keep saying, in my mind, that death is about all of us who are left behind. Dad is already gone on his great adventure, wherever that may be. But the sadness, longing, and paperwork belong to us. (Mom commented she knew why Indian women threw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre: to avoid the mass of paperwork that follows). And yet even trying to make this brief rationalization hasn’t been much comfort. In the weeks that have followed, I’ve thought about never seeing him again. And how sad that is, that I will not hear the voice of the man who raised me again.

Maybe this ties into my not exactly being a big believer in the afterlife. To me, this is it. And, I guess, I should figure it doesn’t make a damn whether there’s an afterlife or not. When I go, it won’t make any difference, will it? If there’s a place to go, we’ll go there. If not, we won’t. What’s so profound is the hole left here.

My family is still so much to me. They have been since I was created and we relied on each other for support during all those Air Force moves. To think of my mom without my father still breaks my heart, even though my mom is good with it. Perhaps because he spent so much time in that other room for so many months. (Someone commented wryly, “He just moved a little further away.”)

My dad would think I was wasting my time with all of this. He had his bouts with sadness, and he was a big softy under a very tough exterior, but he would say enough is enough. But I’m not ready to hear that. Again. I don’t want to let go and I’m terrifically unprepared for losing a person who is such a lynchpin in my life (his word, lynchpin).

I’ve thrown myself back into work, back into the garden, back into my family, where I belong. I’ve just gotten around to exercising for the first time since his death (okay, I went for a few walks around my home town), but I long for him. That’s probably the best word to use.

I could never think what it would be like to lose a spouse when you have young children at home, or, like our neighbor, lose your 26 year-old child in warfare. My father led a good life and lived to be 70. He tried his damnedest to create a family when the one his father created was ramshackle (my grandfather was an alcoholic man-about-town. When he died and was buried in the cemetery, my grandmother said, “Well, at least now I’ll always know where he is). He strove to rise out of that, and though the alcohol didn’t elude him, he was able to do his best to be fair, send us through school, support our family even during those times we were all on the other side of the fence politically.

The flowers and letters had flooded my parents’ house, and my mother feels inundated. But what a way to be snowed under, with gifts and thoughts of love celebrating what you’ve given to the world. My mom is looking in the checkbook register and figuring out just how much he gave away every year to charity, on top of the tithe he gave to the church. It was a lot. He gave to me in need. His old car when I moved to Los Angeles. Money to help my children go to a decent school. Honestly, I feel pretty much a skinflint in comparison.

I could go on and on. And I’m sure I will in the days and weeks and months to come. I know, as everyone says, the holidays are going to be hard.

I know it will end, and the sadness will cease to seem unbearable. And everything will be normal again, without him.

I guess like most things it just takes patience and time. Two things at which most of us are abysmal.

There's a lesson here somewhere, right?

A Year in Atwater

2006-07-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

7.4.06

There are times when I do feel for the guy who wrote A Year in Provence, say for instance, when my whole house is being painted on July 4th and I’m trying to live normally while eight men whistle, sing, and joke in Spanish. It’s hard work for them, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s hard to try to act normally when there is so much going on and it’s 84 degrees in the house.

The painter, Ricardo, comes from El Salvador, and is about the friendliest painter you’d ever long to find. He jokes, his English is great, and he believes all transactions are for the customer’s sake. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone so conscientious when it came to painting the house. He’d painted the three down the street from us, and now I know why he came so highly recommended.

There is, of course, that stuff you cannot avoid with workmen, the endless amount of trash, broken sprinkler (sigh), and trampled zucchini plant. The dust is the worst. We finally gave in and gave a quick dust today after fighting the urge over the last few days. Every day we would dust and sweep, only to come back and find a thick layer of dust everywhere. I’m just hoping it’s not full of lead.

We have cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. And all the cleaning we did just to get the dust off led us invariably to other areas. Wendy found the source of the weevil invasion, three loosely sealed bags of pizza dough that a friend had given us a month ago. Ridiculously, our friend Denise told Wendy we’d need an exterminator to get rid of them. I reassured her all that needed to be done was get rid of everything milled (flour, corn, etc.) that was filled with the suckers. Clean up, spray some of the least offensive Raid on the market, wash up, and be done with it. We had them all the time in Georgia. They’re a pain, but, hell, in the scheme of Bugdom, “merely a bagatelle” as they say.

We started into the closets, in the living room, under the beds. Lord knows why, it’s supposed to be our day off. But we’re stuck here, and we’ll be going swimming in a little while, so we both figured we might as well make the best of it.

The worst part is trying to keep your wits about you while surrounded by dust and general mayhem (as in, “Oh, no, no bother. Just a little dust, and muck, and everything not where I wanted it to be and the heat, and the flies and leaves coming in the windows. La dee da da…”)

Honestly, I have no idea how people (say the aforementioned author of …Provence) managed not to kill anyone while they tore up his house over the year. He actually had it easy. He didn’t have children, he was with his wife, he was wealthy, and he had a whole new country and culture to explore. Not to mention he was gleaning every interaction he had for the book he was going to write when the whole damn thing was over. Much like some of Wendy’s clients, who can afford to rent other houses while theirs are remodeled, it’s inconvenient, but it pales in comparison to folks like Wendy’s mother who moved her kitchen out onto the back porch for 6 months while new cabinets, stove, and flooring were put in.

This is a small job, and only going to take a week, but with everything else going on (my father’s death, asking our niece to leave after lying to us for what seemed like the 100th time) it’s been a tough run of it.

I guess other folks would probably just head off to the movies.

Either we’re not so bright, or we’re industrious.

Or, of course, we are out of our minds.

I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Reality Bites

2006-05-10T12:33:00.002-07:00

May 10th

Matilijas in full bloom, Dr. Suess bushes going crazy, arugula gone to seed...

I was going to write about reality. But something got in the way.

I was thinking, and have been thinking for awhile, about the nature of reality in our manufactured world.

So, it's 2006 and you build a Tudor style house in Southern California. A house designed a long, long time ago in merry old England. Think about Tudor. Perhaps there are timbers because that was an affordable way to build a house, since timber was everywhere and made great frames. The whole style of the house was based on the reality of the situation. Much of it was build out of need, economy, and some style. Yet, here we are, hundreds of years later, trying to protect the forests and spending a lot more money to build a house which doesn't fit any bill except that it is pretty and makes us all think of England.

When people come in they think the house is charming. It whisks them back to another era. I don't know about you, but that wasn't a particularly healthy era when it came to living past 40 years old. We are, in so many senses, living in this fantasyland and dreaming about a place we don't really know.

Those people, way back a when, lived more in reality. Hopefully they were looking at their surroundings and acting upon them. When all they had was mud, they made a mud house. Attractive? Maybe not particularly, but it did, and here's the only word I can think of to describe it, resonate. Resonated with the surroundings, with their economy, with their tribe who lived in like houses.

It's exactly the same with the garden. We put 40% of our water into lawns, which remain highly unused for the most part, then complain that the well is going dry. (Okay, maybe we don't complain, but if you read the papers, scientists and farmers are complaining.) Speaking of England, that's where the idea of a grass lawn comes from. A country whose trademark item is an umbrella.

Like I said, I was going to write about it (and in many ways, I guess I am), but walking back from yoga, exhausted, tired, and going by the Korean church with their dandelion garden, I thought, "Who the hell cares?"

Maybe not my best turn of phrase, but I get the point even today. All this complaining and worrying, is it really getting us anywhere? So my neighbor waters his lawn every single night and my other neighbor smothers his grass with pesticides and fertilizer, does it make them worse people? No, they're great people, I just happen to think both are misinformed.

Here's the problem: how do I continue to do what I think is right (in all areas of my life) and not get angry with someone else for their actions?

It's a question I can't really answer today.

But I believe that starting at the beginning, calming myself, working with my hands in the garden, has the answer. In the same way you don't decide to start your diet on the maddest crazy busiest shopping day before Christmas, trying to calm yourself while you're yelling at people just doesn't work.

It feels good.

But it doesn't work.

Reality Bites

2006-05-10T12:33:00.001-07:00

Reality Bites

2006-05-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Love Lies Bleeding in my Hands

2006-05-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

May 1st

May Day.

The Matillija poppies have risen their full 8 foot height and are just beginning to open in their "dancer's pose", as Wendy likes to call it, or "fried egg" pose, as I do. Love-in-a-Mist, a flower from the time when they named them beautifully (think Love-Lies-Bleeding or Fireman's Britches) cluster around what is left of an ancient cactus garden I have yet to rip out. That area, so hot, hot in the summer time you couldn't walk across it, was home to so many borage plants, it's hard to believe I only have one left.

Just thinking about them reminds me how charmed I was when we moved into this house. By the late-20's era, by my new love, by this massive garden that had gone to seed after one of the men withered and passed away from AIDS. I remember sun, heat, and opportunity. At that time I was still hoping to write for television or movies and did not have children.

It's easier to look back, right? To see everything was much easier then? We forget so much. I was in emotional pain then and had trouble with direction in my life. More trouble than now, if you can believe it.

This house has so much history, built by a surgeon, lived in by a landscape architect. We're only the third owners in all those years. With all the terrible things that have gone on around here (and I believe I've only heard more since joining the Neighborhood Watch Program), I still feel so rooted historically to this house.

I was going to write today about what is real and what is not, something that's been on my mind since I worked at Disney and was intrigued by the arguments against the Disneyfication of Fill-in-the-Blank (New York, LA, Paris, the world), but it doesn't feel like that kind of day.

Yesterday was tiring and uplifting in the garden. The lawn hadn't been mowed in two weeks and Mark, my neighbor, just got his new lawn in. And is one of those people who picks up every leaf that falls. Sharp contrast to the people who used to rent the place. I hate to take part in competition, but there's nothing that quickens your game as much as someone who is excellent at what they do.

I finally ripped out two large lavender bushes and an enormous fortnight lilly that had taken over part of my front walk. I'd spend the last four years fighting them, continually cutting them back, only to have them return with a vengeance. Maybe taking over my own garden instead of having someone else do it for me has someone empowered me, because I ripped both out without much pity, then stood back and saw how good it looked. I stopped and tried to think why I was so concerned about ripping them out before. There is a great possibility they were part of my "If it's green, it stays" policy. We'd lost so many plants over the years, I was hesitant to clear something out that was actually doing well. No one likes a hole in a garden and what are the chances whatever you put there will do well? (The answer to that is 60/40.)

I did, however, take the time to divide the fortnight lilly into 10 smaller plants and put them out back, which is something that still amazes me to no end.

The thing that always surprises me in regards to yard work, is where my interests lie. There is nothing so enjoyable as sitting down with a catalog and picking out new plants and nothing so disheartening as seeing those plants or seeds fail to grow, get eaten, or downright perish.

But with all the big work putting in walkways, clearing out brush, dividing perennials, nothing comes close to the act of solitude known as weeding. You can be amazed through all your other big actions in the garden, but I feel you can only enjoy God's presence or "the big picture" in the small act of getting your face ten inches from the soil and picking out a weed.

And yes, I don't think I did enough weeding yesterday.

As luck would have it, there's still time tonight.

Marketing Nature's Own

2006-03-29T22:49:00.000-08:00

March 29, 2006

Rains again. Rains expected.

Ryan has 4 zucchini seedlings up now and you have never seen a kid so excited by vegetables. Well, he likes watching them grown and picking them he doesn’t necessarily enjoy eating them.

Someone was cursing Marketing and Marketers the other day, primarily because it’s so difficult to keep track of what’s good for you because they are constantly playing with the words. If wheat bread is good for you, they’ll include something in the title of their product like Ground Wheat Flour (which I believe is actually just flour, ground from wheat, which we eat all the time) to make you buy it with the understanding that this is good for you like wheat bread is. Which is essentially a lie.

I laughed. It imitates Nature herself, don’t you see?

Let’s say there’s a butterfly, like the Monarch, which tastes good to birds. Somewhere along the line, nature produced a toxin in some of them which made them taste horrible to birds. In time that feature came to be in all Monarchs, and as a direct result, birds won’t eat them. What is also interesting is that birds will associate the color and pattern of the Monarch with the foul taste. Now along comes this other butterfly (and I’ll be damned if I can remember the name) who develops the same coloring and marking of the Monarch but, get this, don’t contain the toxin that makes them so inedible. They are mimicking in order to increase their chances of survival.

And if that’s not Marketing, I’ll eat my hat.

Our ancestors didn’t have it any easier, so don’t fool yourself. Anyone who foraged had to be able to tell the difference between an edible morel mushroom and a Death Cap. They also needed to know the time to pick wild berries, roots, and tubers, because doing so at the wrong time could cause illness or death. They needed to be able to read seasons, prepare meats, buy meats and vegetables from sometimes untrustworthy sources; in other words they had a hell of a lot of work to do that we never even think about.

These people were up at dawn and asleep before their heads hit their pillows.

So complaining about a bunch of stuffed white shirts making marketing campaigns trying to fool you doesn’t get you very far when you look back historically.

In fact, we look bad because we have it so damn easy. If the Marketers are trying to stick it to us, don’t just sit and complain, you’ve got 3,000 pages of reference materials all over the Web on any subject from Types of Wheat Flour to the difference between Biodegradable and Compostable.

As my mother always used to tell me, referring to those hucksters who sold vegetables on the streets of South Philly, “Did you ever hear a huckster yell, ‘Rotten tomatoes!’”

Stay one step ahead of the Marketers and read as much as you can to give your family the nourishment they need, your planet the treatment it deserves, or the company the money for products made that agree with your actual standards, not ones laid on afterwards by a campaign team.

And don’t be surprised when they change their stripes because you aren’t buying.

Lying Down

2006-03-27T22:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Green is also the Color of the Ocean

2006-03-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

I'm jealous. Today, anyway, of my friend Karen. And Anne Lamott. They're both writers who write during the day and are devoted to it. That's actually a little unfair, since Karen is home schooling children during the day and shouldn't have the energy to write. But they both write anyway.

I think it's painful to write sometimes. Especially when I'm reading Anne Lamott, who not only goes into her past addictions and bad behaviors in general, but brings you into the uncomfortable present. Here she's out of money right near the end of her last book, here her son Sam is telling her how much he hates her, here another parent is worried about her son's school performance. Okay, that last one is hilarious:

"Sam really has a gift for making things out of next to nothing… His last teacher, after expressing some concern about his handwriting, said, "He makes such amazing things out of… of… of," and I said, "Garbage?," and she said, "Yes!"
Sometimes I have a knee-jerk concern that he has so little interest in school. At the end of second grade, on of the mothers said, "Gee he doesn’t go much for homework, does he?," and I wanted to scream, "No, but he makes inventions, you dumb slut, out of garbage. While your kid is an obsequious little Type A suck.
I realize I may be the least bit sensitive."

-- Traveling Mercies

Wendy, my wife, is very shy though startlingly open to those who are open with her. I'm afraid at times to bring my life out into the open, when the open is so horrifyingly scary sometimes. The open, it seems, is Howard Stern and American Idol. It's people who grew up in schools making fun of other people, now spending all their free time to laugh at people on TV. (If you want to know, the people who produce those shows more than likely hate the shows and themselves for making it. They also hate the people watching it. It's a tiny little circle of self-loathing anyone outside of the TV industry cares to talk about. I know, I worked in it for 7 years.)

So I take those moments to the garden. And most times they go away. And I wonder, am I stunting my writing by gardening, or does writing stunt my growth?

I keep thinking of those crazy Zen Buddhist monks telling everyone to shut up and go back to washing dishes. Washing dishes! What the hell can you find there? We should be at revivals, or shopping, or learning new things with our friends, you're telling me I'm going to find peace doing something I wanted to hire a housekeeper to do?

(Those not my personal thoughts at the end there. I can't afford a housekeeper and I do my share of dishes every day.)

The garden brings all those self-loathing, confusing, and horrifying thoughts to soil level. And I don't know how it does it, but it usually can take care of them in an hour or so.

So, I don't know if it's I'm afraid to write because I'm shy or because I'm lazy.

Regardless, lunch hour is over for this day, and I guess I got to spend this time writing at least.

It'll do.

Rainy Days and Saturdays

2006-03-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2006

The rains are just finishing here today. People in Southern California, the ones who live in the city anyway, look at rain as an inconvenience. Maybe all people in the suburbs and cities around the country do. As if the weather was here for them, to help them go about their days of shopping, soccer practice, golfing, or whatnot. I think it’s one of the beautiful things gardening taught me about the nature of weather and its intimate connection with the growing things on the planet. Without rain, the trees in the forest would never grow, nor the wild berries that feed the bears. It may sound corny, but when my corner of the world gets rain I know intimately about the water percolating down through the soil and each plant bringing in the life-giving nectar. Listen to me, waxing poetic about the rain.

It’s just that in my mind before rain was entwined with bad feelings like loneliness and depression. I imagined Karen Carpenter standing with an umbrella in my front yard singing to herself “Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down”.

Perhaps, too, that our lives are so busy as adults that it’s nice for once to take a break and sit inside. Since there are so few bad weather days here, it’s easy to hear your mother still yelling, “Go outside, it’s a beautiful day.” Going to a movie during a sunny afternoon here is still one of the few guilty pleasures I still love.

Ryan and I have gotten out the seed growing tray and have been trying to germinate some old seeds that the garden store guy gave us last time we were there. They hadn’t taken off all last week so I thought they needed the warmth of being inside. Ryan was very excited yesterday when he showed me the sprouts. Unfortunately they were sprouts of various kinds of mushrooms whose spores must’ve been in the soil mixture. We’re really not the best seed growers. In fact, I’m always surprised at how brown our thumbs are. Sometimes I think I’m just lazy because I don’t want to do all the work so many other gardeners do: the endless watering, daily checking on seeds, fertilizing, double-digging, and mulching. We do some of that, but really we kind of let things fend for themselves and consider it a huge bonus when we get lots of lettuce or see our Spanish lavender blooming.

I’m excited whenever I see a plant with the description Thrives on Neglect.

I guess I swing back and forth in my heart on what a gardener really is. Which is what neurotics do really well. The one thing I can confirm is somehow both our children, Ryan especially, have an appreciation of nature I never had as a child. They are excited, as they should be, when they go pick lettuce for us. Though kids with massive gardens in their back yards may dread going out, that we have just a taste of it brings a sense of wonder which is enough, I think, for city kids.

We will never be great gardeners. That’s just a fact (unless, of course, Ryan suddenly decides when he is older to raise his own vegetables and flowers). We will never be leaving bagfuls of zucchini and tomatoes on our neighbors porches then run away into the night, as we barely grow enough for ourselves.

I think it’s okay we still experience the awe of plants growing and the it drives us out, farther out, to the deserts, the forest, and the ocean. And while others are hell bent on taming it with their noisy, obnoxious machinery, that maybe we will have the patience to sit quietly for a minute or two and fully enjoy God’s bounty and gifts to us.

Gardens Gone Wild

2006-02-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

February 5, 2006

Well, it's finally happened, after much hemming and hawing, we've finally let Javier, our gardener, go. It's very strange, because everyone I spoke to about doing this (which, neurotically, were many) kept asking me, "Did you fire your gardener yet?"

But I wasn't actually firing him. I just wasn't going to be using him anymore. Or I have great hope not to be using him in the future. Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen.

I spent Saturday, after taking Abby and Ryan to a friend's Princess Party running the electric mower and weed whacker and it was strangely refreshing. The mowing, of all things, was incredibly easy, because we have so very little lawn. Where I thought we'd get hung up was in the leaf litter and trimming department. Traditionally, I have always done most of the weeding here as well as cutting back the perennials like the Matillija Poppies and Lion's Tail in the fall and winter. That being said, I wondered if I could add on top of that a weekly foray into the jungle to cut, hack, trim, plus do the mow, blow, and go traditional to Southern California. Well, it's worth a try. The worst that can happen is I can decide this was a terrible choice, call Javier and have him charge me an extra $20 a month to do the job he was doing before, right? Or maybe the worst is I could end up with hundreds of dollars worth of hospital bills. But let's not spend time there yet.

What I did find, was I felt more in control of my garden. Not that I ever felt like a stranger, like those folks in those beautiful houses who have landscape architects incessantly building them Zen rock gardens and koi ponds so they are "surprised every time I come around the corner" (I'm quoting an LA Times article). If you're taken aback when you go into your own garden, you really can't call yourself a gardener. The surprises a gardener gets is when they find the area they haven't been able to get to all season has become a pumpkin patch by accident and is chock full of 10 pounders.

There are beautiful things I don't think translate to normal gardeners, or maybe even normal city dwellers. The beauty of fallen leaves, for instance. Gardeners spend every weekday and weekend blowing them around, herding them into, and putting them into bins and lawn and leaf bags. But when you go into the country, it seems like no one's been in the lawn to mow or rake in weeks, if not months. Removing the leaves, also, destroys nature's very process of decomposition. The leaves suppress weeds around the tree, conserve moisture, and allow microorganisms and earthworms to break the leaves back into usable compost to feed the garden.

Ah, the kids have found me. They always find me. And of course they want to play on the computer. It's probably because we limit their time on both the computer and watching videos/television (called "screen time" in my brother Jack's house), so every time one is on they tend to look like deer in the headlights.

Soon, I guess, I'll wonder where they and the time have gone.

Of course, that doesn't nothing for my sanity-preservation moves at the moment, but…

Letter to Cal

2006-01-28T09:58:00.000-08:00

January 28, 2006

Saturday morning. Wendy’s at work, as she usually is until two, and I’m here with Ryan and Abby.

Saturdays are hard. They always have been for me, unless I had a very, very late Friday and woke up late. I think much of it is the childhood memory of waking up to my mother vacuuming. I was asleep and the world had already started its busy little chores. But my mistake, really, being alive is full of busy little chores, and we are lucky enough to grow up in a time and place where we won’t be spending our day gathering firewood, food, or tending to the plants and animals all day. I know, odd thoughts for a man who lives in the center of Los Angeles, but there you have it. We could deny the reality all day long if we wanted to that other people pick our food and create our energy for us and all we have to do is find to enough work to pay for it, but there you have it. I’ve always been fascinated by what I used to call “those early people”, but let’s face it, those people are living less than 2,000 miles away from me in the heart of Mexico.

You asked me in your letter how I was doing, and I don’t rightly know how to answer that. I should be wonderfully happy, but admittedly, I feel worn out in many ways. There is joy in my life, yes. I think I don’t have to tell you about children being a joy I could’ve never imagined (true, how can a rain cloud imagine the wonderful feeling of sun?), but the ordinariness of life, and its chores have gotten the best of me. You’ve known me for long enough to understand I haven’t always been the happiest of people and I am, in fact, happier now than I was when we were roommates in college.

I guess the question I ask myself, now that I have children, a wife, and a job where I write every day, what’s next?

Like the rain cloud, I don’t think I can leap to that answer directly. And I believe I’m starting to understand again, the importance of faith. I wrote to you in the past about my attending a Presbyterian church and dong some important work on becoming a Christian. Three and a half years later, I have fallen out of Christianity. Maybe that’s no the right grouping of words. I wanted to become a Christian and attended church regularly and went to Bible studies (which were taught by a really fascinating guy from Belfast, who had a lot to say about “terrorism”), and though I respected the teachers and found my heart softening, I could never grasp the central dogma. I don’t believe either Christianity or Judaism are true to me. I wanted to say true, but that’s not fair. Though all religions have their terrible pasts, the people that really “get it” are miles ahead of the rest of us. I don’t want to belittle their faiths, anymore than I want to belittle those people in the rainforest who believe their gods live in the trees and in thunderclouds. It’s just something I couldn’t take to for a number of reasons. I feel strongly toward Buddhism, and you may know that many years ago I spent two years studying a few times a month with Zen Buddhists, but their work is difficult, and sitting for 30 minutes staring at a wall can be torture.

You probably know this feeling: part of you wants to run off and join a monastery and the other part of you wants to run away screaming.

So many people have said, I believe truly, you see things not as they are but as you are. Probably the most affecting story I’ve heard about this was from Victor Frankl (not sure about that spelling), who was tortured endlessly in a Nazi concentration camp and envisioned himself years from then, telling his pupils about it. (How is it I can’t mention the Nazis without become violently angry and at the same time sad?)

So where does that leave a husband and father of two? I realize I’m being ridiculously black and white about this. I can go a couple times a month to meditate. I don’t need to sell everything I own and go off to the mountains. I still find time to go to yoga once a week, which I love for its workout and calming effects on my crazy head, but its not enough; religious people see (and have seen since the dawn of man) something we don’t, something not only extraordinarily important, but something essential to living with joy. We both are basically non-consumers (well, within reason, right?), but to see the culture of consumerism and media and have nothing that you can hold up against it to say “see, this is what is all about” is disheartening. No, debilitating.

Other men and women have hobbies or sports to turn to. Well, the ones who haven’t turned to the 2+ hours of TV every night. And I think now that the incredibly time-consuming part of raising Ryan and Abby is over, I am ready to do something with my nights more interesting than making sure we have enough money to make it through the month on Microsoft Money.

There’s so much else, but without this essential fact, I think the rest might sound like that fluff you find in the lint filter in the dryer.

And though I, like my mother, spend much of my Saturday cleaning this place up (and starting next month, taking care of the yard in lieu of our gardener), but I thought it would be better spent kicking off with a letter to someone I find so important.

Um, that’d be you.

I miss your voice and your talks and hope one of us is smart enough this February to pick up the damn phone and call.

You know my time zone, right?

Hoping you and everyone you love is doing well,

Tim

Gangsta Crap

2005-10-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

October 24, 2005

It’s misting again outside, but harder than it has been the past two mornings. It’s enough to change the timbre of the cars as they pass by our house, enough to start the germination of all those native seeds I have yet to plant. Enough to make you a little sad if you stand in it by yourself and feel the fall coming on.

Maybe it’s just because I’m done paying bills (which is always excruciating to me), or because my wife is talking to her estranged father on the phone, but the sadness gripped me when I stood on the porch looking out at the massive juvenile California sycamore we planted when Ryan was born.

There are reasons I’m a frustrated gardener. Probably one is, like the bonsai artists, I want to control the world, and it angers me when it doesn’t listen to my commands.

Looking at that beautiful tree we planted when Ryan was born I think of how different I want the world to be, a longing for peace. In my garden I hope to undo a little of what my fellow humans have instigated on the very ground we walk on. Ridiculous as that sounds as a man who lives in a dirty, crime-ridden city, it’s something I still believe strongly.

There was a day, a cold day last year, maybe the year before, Wendy was working and I took the children to Descanso Gardens to have a look around and ride the train once around the park. It was around this time of year, and the winter rains were just setting in. It wasn’t that cold when we started, but by the time I bought them hot chocolate and I held Abby’s little ice cube hands in mine, I felt terrible for letting her run around without gloves on.

They both fell fast asleep by the time I came home. I put them into their beds, turned on the radio, and started to wash dishes and look out at the beautiful rain.

Just then shots rang out, about a block away from our house. I could barely make out a black SUV driving away and a figure lying down. Police cars arrived in waves no more than three minutes later and neighbors started pouring out of their houses to find out what had happened.

Of course it was gang related. Of course all these misguided kids were killing each other like the assholes they admire so much.

I went back to my house and said, “We are moving”.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of how ineffectual my puttering in the garden had been. How, like the priest in the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby he walks away from the grave and “no one was saved”.

I believed strongly in God when those kids were shot and killed. And I do still, mostly. I don’t wonder how He would let them do something so horrible as that. He has let much, much more horrible things happen on a daily basis for everyone, humans, animals, and insects alike.

I wondered, tonight, staring out at that black, black rain, about another man’s garden, in a country like Iraq. A garden that has seen dictators come and go, withstood wars, jihads, and so much human misery.

Those closest to God, even the Buddhists who don’t necessarily even believe in Him, would tell me to continue to garden, regardless.

Mother Theresa continued to heal the sick though Calcutta would always churn out an infinite number more than she could ever heal, or help through the night as they passed out of her arms and into their Lord’s.

And those people would tell you that Smith & Hawken, Gardener’s Eden, Sunset, and your Sunday supplement are full of shit. There is Gardening, and then there is all the crap thrown on top of it. There is a deep reason for putting your hands in that soil and it may not always be clear. Many of those incredibly, wonderfully, unfathomably smart people would tell you they were not always clear, either, but you should do it.

Because it is in your bones.

Do it if you’re tired. Or nervous. Or feel like taking a rifle to every gangbanger, politician, and black SUV driver in sight.

There is a connection between your hands and the earth that started before you were born. Probably before any of us were born.

And it is as rich as any loam you could find in the finest garden on the earth.

Box Stores and Gardeners and Whiskers on Kittens

2005-10-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2005

It’s 8:30 at night, 68 degrees outside, the children are (finally) asleep, Wendy is being taken out for her birthday by our friend Denise, and, I finally get a chance to sit down and write.

This morning, the light came streaming in where the eucalyptus once stood. All that remain of the giant are tiny woodchips and (ironically) a little replanted jade plant the tree guys had to relocate when they disassembled the fence to get the stump grinder in.

I’m not going to be romantic about this tree. You can write poems about them, you can drain them of sap to make syrup, use their fronds for houses, curse them when you hit your head on them, and you can cut them down when they become a nuisance. I’m not crazy about killing living things, but there are several factors about this tree you have to consider. One, in a good wind limbs drop on my roof. In fact, all the crap it drops on a regular basis are giving my saltillo tile roof a half life (I’m guessing $20K to replace). These things explode when they catch fire. Okay, maybe that’s a myth, but still… Two, it really doesn’t belong here in the first place. All the eucalyptus trees you see in California are related to ones brought over by one guy from Australia in the 30’s and 40’s as windbreaks, landscaping, etc. Yes, they are drought tolerant, but they don’t feed any wildlife that I know of and they stink to high hell. Which brings us to point three: they stink to high hell. Wendy wanted to get rid of it when we moved in and has always regretted not doing it before we did.

For the job of removal we ended up going with Paul instead of Javier, our normal gardener. Besides the money thing (which was about a $2K difference) I was unsure if Javier could pull the dang thing off without killing him and us in the process. What I haven’t done, unfortunately, is tell him someone else ripped out the tree. I have four days to do that before he comes over here and discovers it for himself.

Worse yet, I’m going to have to tell him we’re going to attempt to take care of the yard ourselves starting next month. “Just in time for Christmas”, Wendy commented when I told her.

I told her that wasn’t making the decision any less difficult. Javier has been working in this garden for at least 15 years. I’ve heard about his kids going to school and then college, and for a guy who came from Zacatecas, Mexico 30 some years ago, he’s done all right. It’s nice knowing, too, in some way we helped him by being his clients. It’s the opposite feeling you get when you go to visit the near Dead people at Costco or Wal-Mart to purchase some cheap shoes made for a nickel in China.

Okay, I’ve got a thing about box stores. And though I was probably halfway there anyway, working with my hands in the garden and seeing the fruits of my own labors (so to speak) has certainly pushed me the rest of the distance to hating gross consumerism.

The Javier decision is an economic one. We can either try to keep the filth in the house under control by bringing in a maid once or twice a month or we could have Javier. We can’t have both. We’re damn lucky to have even one. But my Saturdays are spent vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms while Wendy is at work, so you can probably venture a guess I’d much rather be out in the yard on those days.

What worries me, of course, is what if I make the discovery I can’t keep up with the damn thing.

He and his helper can fill one of those 90-gallon green trashcans every week with stuff from our yard. I have to figure out if I can do that without losing my mind and killing my family. Honestly, there’s a lot to love about this yard: we’re organic, we’re certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat (or front in our case), and whenever I’m out working I always here people say, “I love your yard”.

But then again, there’s a hell of a lot to hate: we’re inundated with Bermuda grass that Paul, the guy who lived here before, failed to kill before planting drought tolerant plants, it always looks like a mess to me, and I honestly get the feeling on some days I’m Sisyphus trying to roll that boulder up the hill before the damn thing comes down again and tries to run me over.

Maybe I should get my Master’s in Mythology of Gardening.

Hell, it’s California, someone’s probably already offering it.

Probably Berkeley.

Stinky Australians

2005-10-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2005

The Santa Ana winds are up. People in many parts of the country are putting on their warm jackets and collecting leaves to burn. In Los Angeles today it was 94 degrees and the leaves and the trees and the grass and several houses were burning regardless of anyone trying to collect them.

I think about the Santa Anas every year when they come up. Like the French Mistral winds, they are full of mystery. I can imagine people in the 1800s blaming all sorts of things on these winds. Anything from ripping down a neighbor’s fence to murder. Notably, I’ve never seen anyone go crazy from these particular winds. And even in a litiginious state like this has its limits for alibis. (Up to now, anyway.)

I’m going back to the back yard.

I started here years ago. And now I’m back. If I stay another 11 years, I imagine I’ll be back again a few times. Maybe I’ll leave a note for myself so I don’t forget what I’ve done.

We’ve decided to finally call it a day on the grass. Yes, men of suburban USA, I have given up on this goddamn grass and I am putting in something else. Something that uses less water maybe. Something that doesn’t die in patches when you put a pool on it for 4 hours one summer day. Something that isn’t a colossal waste of pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, and insecticide. Maybe bark. Wendy and I did take an honest look at the area (it didn’t take long, it’s only 500 sq. feet. There was still time for drinks and snacks.) and after thinking of what we use it for – parties, setting up the kids’ pool, something to waste water on – we both decided that grass was a waste. Unfortunately, I, like every other man in this country it seems, have been indoctrinated with pictures of kids lying on the cool, downy soft grass and watching clouds pass by. “Damn it, why can’t I give my kids at least that!”, I’d say in my head as I watered the browning St. Augustine, Bermuda, or what have you. I will try to remind myself that I am a former cult member and these thoughts, along with looking at pictures of naked women and taking bong hits while driving, were never really such a hot idea in the first place. And were a lot less hot after getting married.

It was only a matter of time, of course, for Wendy to look up at the towering 80 foot Eucalyptus that some ignoramus planted three feet from my house (and thus leaning precariously over my roof) and say, “We’ve really got to get rid of that thing.” She’s right, I know. Those things explode when they catch fire. They stink. They peel incessantly. Their branches fall on everything including my roof and my neighbor’s cactus garden. And my roofer told me I could take 5 years off the life of my roof if I don’t do anything about it. “But it’s been there for, what, 20 years?” I still counter, hoping that it doesn’t sound as dumb to her as it does to me.

But of course it does. So the first call I make is to our gardener, Javier. He shows up as I’m trying to eat lunch on a Sunday. He’s dressed in church clothes or realtor clothes (I can never tell) and assesses the situation. He pats the tree and says, “Mr. Tim. I’ve talked to a couple guys who have the equipment. And I’m thinking to cut down this tree and that one (he points to the other godforsaken eucalyptus which is also three feet away from my house, but has chosen to try to knock over my fence instead of smashing through my roof)… is, um…” And he pauses. I’m not a fan of his pauses. Because even though he does things very inexpensively when he pauses it means it sounds like a lot of money, even to him. “It’s a big tree, Mr. Tim.” Okay, that’s worse than a pause. That is a big red light warning me to run away. But I just stand there and take it like a man. A man who has chosen to put in bark instead of a lawn and will discuss this very expensive subject so his wife can sleep during the night when the winds blow. “Five, maybe six thousand.”

Man am I hoping he’s talking pesos. Even if it’s the new pesos, it’s still going to be cheaper than dollars.

But he is talking dollars. I go over the whole dance: what if we just take one down, trim two, trim one, and, lastly, take fifteen bucks and go in and tell my wife it’s impossible without knocking down the house first.

I do call another tree guy, Paul Shiver, who cut down the (Jesus, who are the people who planted this bunch of loser trees around this property? Can I find them? Can I sue them?) 80-foot cottonwood tree which ripped up our entire front sidewalk and was, get this, something like 8 years old. Yes, that’s 10 feet a year. If you are looking for a tree to rip up everything in its path to give you shade, here’s your best bet. Did I fail to mention that they are riparian, nee river, trees? That means they put their roots out nice and low looking for water everywhere, thus the ripping up asphalt and concrete problem. It also means that these 80-foot wonders don’t hold onto a heck of a lot of soil and can end up in your house with Piglet, Pooh, and Owl on a particularly blustery day.

Paul, who ripped out the cottonwood 5 years ago remembers our house when I call him. Not the house, the tree. “That was a big tree,” he says. For some reason I thought these guys were always ripping out big trees. Wow, he’s going to love his next challenge. But I called him, because even though I asked Javier if he’s bonded, I’m not really sure he is. And I’d hate to discover that moments after one of his guys accidentally bungee jumps through our front window.

Which leaves me hear, 9pm, 70 degrees, and waiting for Paul Shiver’s bid so I can actually bite my tongue off in conversation.

I could look at my bank account again. But that’s not really going to do me much good. I know this money’s coming out of the home equity loan. You remember that loan, don’t you? The one your financial guy tells you not to touch and yet the home equity people keep dreaming up new ideas how to use it: new bathroom, new car, new pool… or, in my case, new hole in your back yard where that stupid ass eucalyptus used to be.

September 19, 2005

2005-09-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

First rain of the season. First rain! Good lord, when was the last time we saw rain in September? My notes are bad, or I would tell you.

Everything is approaching the end of the season here, which means it’s time to go out and begin the heavy work of the fall. It’s different here than a lot of the rest of North America, fall is actually the best time to plant native plants, shrubs, and trees, because the rains of winter will soak the soil and let them set their roots deep into the earth. The rest of everything must be cut back. Not because the snows will bury them, but they’ll begin new green growth through the spring. The Matilijas, Mexican Sage, Butterfly Bush, and Fennel, all who have become heavy with seeds, must be cut down to the ground. No matter how many times I do it, I am always in awe that they come back, and just how quickly. The Lion’s Tail is leggy, as it is twice a year, and will have to be cut back by a third. The roses are coming back into bloom, after a month’s break (mine never seem to bloom during the heat of the summer – perhaps it’s because I starve them for water, which is no matter for me – we have native roses that make it here, these can certainly give it the old college try).

The rains, of course, have got me to thinking about the garage roof and the gutters I’ve failed to clean out. The leaves have just barely begun to fall on many of the trees, and I’ve been putting off going on to the roof for a month now. And not just because Ryan is insisting on “helping” me this year. We’ve got a 60 foot eucalyptus tree about four feet from our house that looms precariously over the roof. It scares the bejeezus out of Wendy. So much so that she wants it cut down. I’m not quite at that point, but I do often wonder who was stupid enough to plant a tree like that so close to the house. I know it sure as hell wasn’t me. When you live in a house and garden this old, you get used to looking at people’s mistakes (and your own) and learn to live with them until you can a) fix them yourself b) pay someone else to fix them. Getting rid of that tree, which I’m sure will run $2K, is not at the top of my list. You know that list, the one where everything costs two thousand dollars and above? Insulation, refinish the hardwood floors, paint the outside of the house, rip out the trees, get new gutters, install a fence around the front yard… Need I go on? You have your own list, so I’m sure I don’t have to. It’s depressing, that list. I don’t have it written down anywhere, it’s just we start talking about something like the tree and all those other items magically appear as if out of thin air. We talk a bit about making an actual list (we could have already crossed out redoing the moulding in the kitchen), but we become too exhausted about three-quarters of the way of discussing it. I think it’s me who usually changes the subject.

Which is why, if we have another record breaking rainy season, I am going to get it when it starts to really come down.

I installed the garage gutter by myself. And I just had the roofing guys come and take a look at why it was leaking (which wonderfully had nothing to do with my crappy handling of tools and vinyl guttering). Still, it’s a small area back there and I should really divert the water, like everyone else in the city, down into the gutter system so it can make the LA River swell to an enormous size. Every year our playroom, which used to be the two car garage, leaks a little bit. And it makes me nervous. I have no idea why I don’t just call the damn gutter guy. Maybe I believe it’s admitting defeat. I have a rain barrel back there which I’m sure is helping me save the earth with every 50 gallons I save (which is like a lot of people’s morning showers). Maybe I’m just damn cheap.

Honestly, I did call four gutter guys last year and exactly one called me back. One. When I arranged to meet him, I waiting here for four hours, and called him twice and left messages. I talked to this guy on the phone for 15 minutes, he knows what my house looks like, what the problem is, I know that his son lives close by. And yet, and yet, I never heard from him again. I called him the next day, just to make sure he’d gotten my messages. Got me. If I learned one thing from the experience, it’s that I know I should have my son go into gutter repair if he wants to make a good living.

Hey, they’re doing so well, they don’t every have to call anyone back.

Scrapping It

2005-09-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

So, there's just so much to be said about the past and I'm beginning to realize just how difficult it is to write from your own perspective even two years ago, not to mention nine.

Nine years ago I had exactly zero children (which is one of the few things I'm absolutely sure about) and 500 different plants in my garden. Today ithovers right around two children and 250 plants. Luckily for my wife (and children) I'm a considerably better father than I am gardener.

So, going forward, suffice it to say that when we moved into this house, I had a learning curve equivalent to Ben Franklin's when he popped into the Stevens household on Bewitched.

It's 2005 everybody, get on your party hats.

Gardening with children has its own difficulties. They always want to help, for instance. Yesterday I snuck out to the storage room to get my tools so I could fix a sprinkler in peace. Maybe if I cursed more like my friend Jerry, they'd leave me alone.

It does make me sad, though. My dad wasn't around as much when we were kids and by the time he took me out to show me how to change the oil in the car, I really wanted to just go back inside and listen to the Talking Heads or watch Gilligan's Island.

Yesterday's sprinkler repair wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, merely swapping out heads. It unfortunately does involve digging a lot of dirt and grass out from around the sprinkler head, something I fail at repeatedly, as I always end up with a great deal of dirt falling back into the pipe where the new head goes. (I always shortcut around this problem by turning the system on and blasting the dirt out via the created geyser shooting up through the pipe.)

I even got a "Man, that job is the worst" from a passing dad, who added, "I've got two at home I've been putting off". Which is much better than what I expected to hear: "I've got two at home you can do when you're done". Though I don't think anyone messes with a guy covered in dirt and laying prostrate on the ground with a screwdriver in his hand.

These sprinkler heads that I'm always fixing, by the way, are located on the area at home we used call "The Dead Zone". It's the area no one wants to mow or water. Located between the street and the sidewalk, the homeowner does not own this land, but is responsible for its upkeep. A fact we learned about when we needed to have our sidewalk repaired due to cottonwood tree roots ripping the living heck out of it.

Everything happens to these sprinkler heads. I see bikes riding over them, strollers, skateboards... I once saw a 16-wheel truck drive over some when making a three-point turn on my corner. I end up replacing one of these every other month. I do have Javier, the gardener, do a few as well (which sucks for him, I let him do all the ones where the line breaks and involves a lot of digging, replacing, and gluing).

I daydream each time I'm on my belly ripping one of these things out that I cover this area in bark and native plants and can forget about doing anything but weeding and summer watering.

But then again, I don't know if I'm up for adding another 15 plants to my care.

Mid-April - 1994

2005-07-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to be too harsh on the garden or give you the impression that this was a bundle of weeds out my front door, far from it. When we moved in, we saw the lushest array of plants I’d seen since the botanical gardens. The front yard was alive with a riot of flowers (love that expression) in every color and shape imaginable. Gigantic Matilija Poppies at 7 feet with what look like fried eggs atop each, gigantic purple plumes of what we came to call Dr. Suess Plant, blue and white rosemary, 15 different kinds of heirloom roses, canna lilies, ginger, magnolia flowers, acacias, hibiscus, lavenders, love-in-a-mist, borage, oleander... It’s not a big yard, but every part of it was covered in blooms that April. Butterflies floated through our path as we brought moving boxes in the front door, bees swarmed the blues and reds, drunk with nectar, and hummingbirds dove through the foliage at speeds I thought unimaginable. We moved in at just the right time, spring.

That first weekend I took my coffee and sat on the wood bench in the front yard, writing. I thought, “Now I’ve really made it. A house of my own, a garden of my own.” After growing up as an Air Force brat and living for years among the expatriates of Los Angeles, it felt like I was finally at home.

I was at home. But it wasn’t going to be as simple as just sitting there with my cup of coffee and drinking up the cool spring morning.

Endings like that are for movies and books.

And we know better than to believe those, right?

April -1994

2005-07-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

Javier Montes, who would come to be our gardener for 11 years, came and introduced himself to Wendy while she was still unboxing her stuff and getting my crap out of the hallways and wherever else I had dropped it before going back for more at my apartment. Javier, like many Angelenos, came to this city after growing up somewhere else. In his case it was the region of Mexico named Zacatecas. When he showed up at the door, Wendy was in grubby jeans and t-shirt, after having sweated through moving the bed from one side of the room to another, seeing which way looked best. Javier, on the other hand, was dressed impeccably in a shirt and tie, black hair and mustache slicked back, which we came to know as his Realtor Look. Kind of a roll reversal, I might add. Javier also sells real estate, or tries to, to the mostly Spanish speaking population of nearby Silverlake, Echo Park, and Eagle Rock. From what I gather he’s not incredibly successful, but he does enough to have an office number at a local realty agency and the chutzpah to ask once every 3 months if we are interested in selling our house.

But on the day he came by he was inquiring whether or not we’d be keeping him as the gardener. We’d never questioned it. He’d kept the garden for years and he obviously knew how to keep it, it seemed insane to let him go and try to decipher what the hell was going on out in the front yard ourselves. Our plumbing was already backed up and the bedroom was the color of green we came to call “vomit”, so we already had our work cut out for us.

Wendy and he shook on it, and there we had it, for $80 a month we would have someone to take one more chore off our hands. It seemed a bargain.

Well, it would have been a bargain if Javier took care of the whole garden from top to bottom. But he didn’t. To be honest, unless someone was actually living in a hut in our front yard and working in the soil while the sun was shining, we could never even dream of having this chore off our hands. We quickly learned that Javier is the standard “mow, blow, and go” gardener that homeowners know all-too-well. 80 bucks for four visits, I don’t know quite what we were expecting for $20 a week. But we got the standard watering, mowing, ear-splitting gas blower, a lot of raking, and a hearty Hi-O, Silver. It seemed like enough until we realized many of the plants were dying or in various stages of dying. An investigation of the drip irrigation system, poorly placed all across the walking paths revealed why: none of the damn system worked.

Drip irrigation systems (which were developed in the deserts of the Middle East) are a series of large tubes leading to smaller tubes leading to tiny emitters which spray onto the roots of specific plants, thus delivering water where it’s needed, but not the surrounding weeds. It sounds like a brilliant idea, and it is. But you have to keep in mind that this was probably one of the first non-commercial versions of this system and, like the first version of almost anything, it needed a lot of TLC. Okay, that’s being kind. This system sucked. It also revealed that Paul, the landscape architect who laid this oasis out, decided that his drip system should call the shots with plant’s watering needs instead of common sense. If he could deliver precise amounts of water to cacti and thirsty rose bushes (because he placed them on two different systems), why not stick them right by each other? Brilliant! Yes, brilliant indeed. You wouldn’t do such a thing, clueless, because you could end up selling the house and my girlfriend could go on a rampage against your decrepit Israeli-made piece of crap system and rip out all the hoses before we made any sense of them.

I’m not sure whether we were more screwed before or after the hoses were piled into the driveway roasting in the midday heat, ready to be chucked in the dumpster. But the fact was, we were pretty well screwed.

Day 1 - April, 1994

2005-07-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

This will take place in the past. This much you should know.

My wife (then girlfriend), Wendy, and I moved into this house on a sunny day in 1994, probably one of the nicest houses on the street on a wide, Los Angeles boulevard.

We had been going out for a little over a year, but had been friends long before - 5 years? She had the money then and bought the house. She promised me a month's free rent if I moved in with her. How could I resist?

The house itself was built for a doctor and his family in 1927 in an area of Los Angeles known as Atwater Village, abutting the infamous Los Angeles River itself. A beautiful Spanish Colonial with brown saltillo tiles lining the roof and cupola, curious angles and arches inside, and the garden. My god, the garden.

Two men who lived here before we did, one of them, Paul, was a landscape architect. The house sits on a slight incline on the corner. Houses in our neighborhood aren't known for their big back yards (I'm thinking of my Mother's tiny one and my Dad's non-existent ones in South Philly) but the corner houses were moved clear back to the lot, leaving a wide expanse of lawn to cover the front. That wide expanse wasn't good enough for the landscaper, though. He tore all the grass out and put in plants. And plants. And plants. When we moved in, there must have been 125 different plants out front. Since he'd moved out after his lover had died, his mother had been taken care of the place for a few years. And we found what was left of the drip irrigation system out front. (But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Wendy had heard over the years how much I loved nature and the outdoors. We would go for walks in the mountains, in Joshua Tree, and through botanical gardens and I'd tell her how amazed I was what I couldn't only call "God's work". What I didn't know was when she began her search for a house that a garden would be a good selling point.

And this was more garden then I'd ever seen before.

We loved it, though and were relaxed once we'd met Javier, Paul's gardener. Thank God, we said, at least there's someone to take care of all this.

Man were we wrong.

By Way of Introduction

2005-07-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

This whole thing was going to be a book, see? Then, after several months of trying in vain to sit down and write it, it became a loose series of journal pages and Word documents, all loosely grouped under the title “Frustrated Gardener”.

--------
Author’s Note

I did not intend on becoming a gardener, much the same way most people did not originally plan on working in middle management, talking all day about the widget industry, or becoming the janitor at their old high school. There’s a famous saying, “Some are born into greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them”, well you could just as easily say, “Some are born into gardening while others have gardening thrust upon them.”

This, my friend, is a tale of the latter.

You start out as a writer in a hovel in Venice, CA, and spending too many late nights in Tiny Naylor’s Diner listening to Talking Heads and filling reams upon reams of notebook pages until 4 AM every weekend, then you wake up one day to find yourself in a ground war to extract the last of the spent California Poppies from your yard while trying to make sure your son doesn’t run into the street.

It’s amazing how that this sort of stuff happens while you’re not paying attention, isn’t it?

I’m not complaining, far from it. I was fairly unhappy back there at Tiny Naylor’s (it may have had something to do with their weak coffee) and many times I find myself in the garden speaking to an unseen audience on such subjects as How to Weed without Hating Yourself and the Rest of the World; Hey, Ho, Where Did My Trowel Go?; and Wow, I’m Actually Learning to Like the Smell of Rotting Compost.

The audience has always been you. At least I hope it’s been you, because otherwise those 5+ years of therapy didn’t really pay off. And someone at Cigna is going to come looking for me.

What I’m saying is, if you meet me at a party, please don’t tell me you put down my book because you just couldn’t take the whining, crying, and bellyaching. I was counting on you to listen to all my drivel so I could go back into my house and not take it out on my wife, my children, and my incredibly cheap bottles of red wine.

You don’t become a frustrated gardener in a day.

Wait, actually you do.

So scratch that. It takes a long time to become a contented gardener. A wise gardener who knows the secrets to saving heirloom tomato seeds and dispenses advice over back fences like ATMs dole out 20 dollar bills.

Apparently, I’m not even halfway there, as I’m still having trouble raising large tomato plants I bought in four inch pots and forget the common and botanical names of plants the moment someone points at something in my yard and says, “What’s that called?”

So if you were looking for that book, please put this one down. I’m not kidding, I don’t want you coming up to me at Trader Joe’s and complaining that it’s not worth the $11.95 or whatever the hell you spent on this (of which I’m getting a nickel, so you can tell it’s REALLY not worth it to me). If that’s what you were looking for then pick up Rodales or Sunset, or, if you live in Southern California, Robert Smaus’ excellent book on growing plants out here. Those people won’t let you down.

I, on the other hand, am a dabbler, a procrastinator, and a guy who has no idea why it is you can plant four identical Mexican Sages in a row and three will do beautifully and one will die.

However, if you were looking to feel better about your own shortcomings as a gardener and maybe even as a human being, then you’ve come to the right place, fella (or ma’am).

I will guaranteed in this long intro that I have wounded, killed, or set fire to four times as many plants as you have. And am still chastising myself about it. (Mostly because Catholic guilt, much like a virus, never seems to go away.)

So this may be the very key to cheering you up.

Go ahead, I could use the nickels.

Tim Donnelly