Insert Sad Face

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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!

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?

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:

1. Mow quietly
2. With less pollution
3. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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