Water, Water Everywhere... Wait, Nowhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.