grow this

Guest posting from SE Michigan

2009-07-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

Your volunteer sunflowers reminded me of a photo I had been meaning to share of my own garden volunteers. When I returned from a trip in late June, my vegetable garden (indeed, my entire yard) had become a miniature maple grove. Other than the basil and tomato plants, everything else growing in this photo is a tiny maple tree. (Note the jury-rigged but so far effective anti-bunny fencing, too.) I murdered them by the thousands when I mowed the lawn.

Over the years, I have allowed one or two to shelter and grow strong in the raised garden beds (i.e., in the decent soil I have built above my native clay) for a year before transplanting elsewhere. Successive Arbor Day plantings by kids at the local elementary school had produced a respectable grove of them — before the parking lot was enlarged, alas. Still, a 60-footer remains in the court median in front of my house. The satellite shot shows its form via its shadow. Imagine what our lawns would look like if we did not murder these eager and vigorous multitudes regularly.

Walnuts and Wine

2009-07-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

Some writers make their readers feel
Provided with a good square meal,
While others – such a task is mine –
Supply the walnuts and the wine.
A sip of truth – the merest smack,
A pinch of salt, a nut to crack.
- Charles E. Benham, Jottings

The perfect recipe includes a mere sip of truth, the balance of the ingredients being forms of craziness, and various spices. That’s exactly the kind of blogging I aspire to. Why limit yourself to truth when you can blog about alien invasion conspiracies, or spilled birdseed sprouting among the balls?

I’ve been gently moving trowel-fuls of black sunflower birdseed sprouts to sunnier spots in the backyard, and then carefully mulching them against the blistering sun. They began life as sprouts among the decorative garden balls, including the non-reflective repurposed bowling ball trying to look inconspicuous among them.

This is not particularly lovely corner of my yard, but where better to illustrate how well a sip of food fight goes with a sunflower seed to crack? The feeder itself (the white house hanging above in this picture) provides not only opportunistic flowers, but is also the source of loud and messy al fresco bird parties all day long. Birds have poor table (or, feeder) manners.

But my greedy birds go together with sunflowers as well as walnuts with wine.

Serene and Bright

2009-07-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
William Wordsworth, “To a Young Lady Who had Been Reproached for Taking Long Walks in the Country”

Melancholy is easy. Serenity seems to be a bit harder, perhaps more so as pale grey hairs begin to outnumber the dark ones. Things fade, as do people, flowers, draperies in the sunny windows, and bones of beached whales bleached by the sun and smoothed by the tide.

So, my hypertufa Pequod is poised on the side of the pond, ready to hunt the elusive white whale. The fish fountain at right only spouts water when the sun shines serenely and brightly on its small solar panel. Apart from the fact that he’s hardly white, he spouts from his mouth rather than his blowhole. So, Melville would probably not appreciate my horticultural tribute to Moby Dick.

Mr. Mosshead has been moved farther into the shade as the summer sun closes in everywhere. I’m not sure if he’ll survive in the south-facing side of the house. While he evokes serenity, he doesn’t do bright. Perhaps I should return him to the spot out front where I harvested the moss. The spot in perpetual shade also gets the direct runoff from a sprinkler head that creates the ideal conditions for moss. Not exactly the lingering summer twilight in Lapland, but perhaps more appropriate to his needs.

Bacovegetarian

2009-07-02T12:08:00.001-07:00

"The soul may be a mere pretense
The mind makes very little sense
So let us value the appeal
Of that which we can taste and feel."
Piet Hein, A Toast

Yep, that’s right. I'm a bacovegetarian. You’ve probably heard of the lacto- and ovo- kinds of vegetarians who also eat, respectively milk products and eggs. Me too. I couldn’t live without cheese, and on my weekly trips to the local egg lady I obtain the most wonderful fresh delicious eggs. Recently Tech Support Guy ordered an egg dish at a local restaurant and we barely recognized the anemic tasteless egg-shaped thing on his plate. He reported that it had a vaguely egg-like flavor, but had hardly any taste at all.

But bacon is, well bacon. Now, don’t judge me. I won't ever eat deep fried Snickers. I can’t stand the things big agriculture does to pigs. Shooting them full of antibiotics within days after they’re born, cutting their curlicue tales off because they pack them so tightly together that they’ll eat each other’s tails otherwise. Feeding them nasty muck and making them stand in their own poop.

We recently saw the movie Food, Inc. which doesn’t talk so much about pigs but will make you cut beef out of your diet unless you’re a soul-dead consumer seeking a slow death from nutritional deficiency and obesity-related diseases. The local county fair is a positive hotbed of irresistible bad food seemingly designed to make you sick and fat at the same time. I particularly love that all the trash cans wore patriotic dress and reminded the overweight customers to keep America beautiful.

So, I pay more to get organic bacon, certified as cage-free or humanely treated. I’ll eat bacon on/in anything: tomato sauce, potatoes sautéed in garlic and bacon grease, buttered toast. I haven’t sunk to coating my bacon with chocolate as they do at the fair, but I’m not saying it couldn’t happen someday. If only I could figure out how to get bacon into my morning coffee, I think I would have invented the perfect food.

The Moral of the Story – Making Existential Jam

2009-07-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
- Albert Camus, the Myth of Sisyphus

I won’t pretend to understand existentialism. I don’t have to articulate the philosophy however, to like what Camus offers. I just love that in the final sentence above, he argues that hope that can be found at the end of Sisyphus’ rainbow. No pot of gold, no pie in the sky, no pretending we have immortal souls. But, instead of despair, we find reason to hope.

My latest obsession is making jam, which I apparently understand as well as existentialism. I’m experiencing some problems there, mostly involved with the last part where the jam is supposed to set up and get jammy. Mine is more soupy. When, despite carefully following the recipe, the stuff doesn’t gel, I begin to despair. I then add pectin, and end up with something rubbery that would make a better hose gasket than toast topping.

While my jam jars boil in the big pot on the stove, I experiment with making labels, which is almost as much fun as making the jam, because at least I can control the result. Someone used to say that if you were an atheist you might as well murder your neighbors in cold blood because the only thing stopping the rest of us from doing that was our fear of eternal damnation. Yeah, that was my Mom, whose faith sustained her, but mostly puzzled me.

The moral of this story? Why, simply that the godless can’t possibly fuck things up worse than the religious fundamentalists who have conflicting Divine Causes to kill and die for. For me at least, it’s easy to imagine us happier without god than to imagine that some day my jam will set.

Fish Saved by Gentle Persuasion

2009-06-26T12:10:00.001-07:00

“You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.”
Al Capone

My perfect and adorable cat serves a function other than making it necessary to change a litter box weekly. She’s like the tiny rubber gasket on the lid of a pressure cooker. Holding her up to my ear while she purrs releases enough steam to prevent my head from exploding.

She also recently saved the life of a fish. She noticed something on the patio the other morning, and kept running between the windows facing the incident, being more vocal than usual. I finally took notice. Because I’m a half blind idiot, I thought it looked like a bird flapping around on the patio to get seed spilled from a bird feeder overhead. So, I got the camera to get a zoomed-in picture. Imagine my surprise when I saw this through the lens of the camera:

I shouted to my faithful spouse, who came running. We – and by we, I mean he – managed to get the koi back into the pond and save its life. This time of year the fish are making babies and that involves a bit of jumping around. I imagine he had quite a tale to tell about his escape from the pond.

We used to net the too-shallow pond to protect the fish from egrets and raccoons. One morning, the net had been torn and many of the more colorful fish were distributed throughout the yard, partly eaten. It was horrible and it made us decide not to replace fish or net. However, we later observed that there were survivors whose dark color confers some camouflage – like the guy in the picture. I moved some pond plants from the shallow end to the main pond to give them cover, where they have lurked in safely since the massacre.

The previous day, this fish-out-of-water event had been weirdly and dramatically foreshadowed.

I was hand watering in the sunny back yard, topping off the half whiskey barrel that houses a lotus plant and a few mosquito fish to eat larvae. When I refill the barrel, I generally use a heavy spray to aerate the water. I noticed a small movement on the grass adjacent to the water and realized I’d sprayed a small fish out and onto the ground. Before my girlie yuck reflex kicked in, I dropped the hose and heroically gathered the squirming thing in my hands, returning him or her to the water. For my trouble, the dropped hose turned on me viciously and soaked my shirt, which I thought was an unfair payback for my brave and selfless action, but once again I was reminded that life isn’t fair.

What any of this has to do with Al’s wise words about kind words isn’t clear, except that I have to respect his form of persuasion in the face of life’s unfairness. Perhaps my kitty’s annoying vocal attempts to persuade me to look outside were simply her version of Lassie - barking to alert Timmy’s mom that Timmy had fallen down the well.

Shrug it Off

2009-06-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

“We should most of us agree, I think, that in the individual life of each of us there is much that, in the long run, one cannot do anything about. Death is a fact – one’s own death, the deaths of those one loves. There is much that makes one suffer which is irremediable: one struggles against it all the way, but there is an irremediable residue left. These are facts: they will remain facts as long as man remains man. This is part of the individual condition: call it tragic, comic or absurd, or, like some of the best and bravest of people, shrug it off.”
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: A Second Look (1963)

I was in the back room (hiding from pirates) the other day, when I came across the above quote that I’d dated April, 1989. I had been directed to this book by a wise librarian who said the (then) new publication of a book called “Innumeracy” (I think) was already written – citing CP Snow, who’s original book about the Scientific/Lay Person divide was written in the 1940s (I think).

Those plucky Brits, growing vegetables adjacent to their bomb shelters, grinning and bearing it through the Blitz. All I’ve ever withstood are the quotidian slings and dull arrows of outrageous fortune, like being woefully underpaid my entire professional career because I have tits. It’s a wonder I’m not bitter.

But Americans of a certain age have also made a passing acquaintance with the facts of life Snow recounts so depressingly. My Mom used to say “offer it up” when we complained of some hardship, some injustice at the hands of the sadistic nuns, or the occasional scraped knee. These days, my grown brothers, watching their small grandchildren stumble and fall, tend to say “Walk it off” or “Be a man,” (even to their granddaughters).

Watching the dragonfly make a monster shadow on the leaf where it rested, I was thinking of ranting about the idiots who deny global warming, who say Baby Jesus will take care of it, who drive big cars to compensate for their small anatomy. Then I thought I should be thinking about how we need to bridge that communication breakdown, not make it worse. However comma. I’m more inclined to want to marginalize the kooks by publicly laughing at their stupidity. I’m not sure I want to bridge any divide that separates me from the morons who say that, in the long run, one cannot do anything about the future. And not just because that’s a) redundant; and b) repetitious – the long run is the future.

Then, I thought I’d blog to speak out against the wave of domestic terrorism now sweeping our already violent country. Hypocrites who demonstrate their respect for life while condoning murder, deserve my contempt. I simply hate hate, and I simply won’t tolerate intolerance. If you outlaw abortions, outlaws will still have abortions. I know this from personal experience.

But then, I found something much more important to rant about: the San Diego County Fair is now underway at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. On local news the other night, the bubble-headed reporter at the fair asked a lady how she liked the newest midway treat: chocolate-covered bacon. The ginormous lady, who could have knocked Kirstie Alley over with a backhand slap, said it’s true she isn’t spending as much money at the Fair as last year, but she couldn’t resist the bacon. Antidote for bad economy? Chocolate covered bacon, she said.

Oscar Wilde said a gentleman is one who is never rude unintentionally. Accordingly, I think we can still claim to be a gentleman/gentlewoman and intentionally insult these fat rubes with guns and obese progeny. Should any insult so directed happen to inadvertently injure someone else’s feelings, I’ll hasten to apologize, instead of saying shrug it off you big baby.

Edumacation Paradox

2009-06-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

“The most insidious influence on the young is not violence, drugs, tobacco, drink or sexual perversion, but our pursuit of the trivial and our tolerance of the third rate.”
- Eric Anderson

Went to a college gradumacation (sic) ceremony in the Inland Empire last weekend. Got the last hotel room in town – a “smoking” room, which meant that everything in the room smelled like an overflowing ashtray left out in the rain. The light in the bathroom, when turned off, flashed about every 5 seconds, like paparazzi flashbulbs going off all night behind the bathroom door.

The graduation ceremony was at 8:00 am, to make room for at least one subsequent ceremony. The early “Arts” graduation at least didn’t include Business majors, who are reputedly more rowdy, and their parents interrupt the ceremony with applause or bleating air horns. Vulgar barbarians.

The student valedictorian spoke about what she had learned in her average of 4.5 undergraduate years, including how to “pound shots of Jagermeister” which was pretty close to the top of her uninspiring list. The official speaker was a former chancellor who has an appointed position in the current presidential administration, somewhere in the range of the Assistant Undersecretary of Solid Waste at the Environmental Protection Agency. Inspiring in its own way I suppose.

I observed a man on a cell phone (everybody has cell phones, and everybody scoffs at the suggestion that we turn them off for the ceremony). He’s standing a row or two ahead of my seat waiting for the ceremony to begin. He’s trying to explain to the person on the other end how to locate him. He points over my head at the building behind us, “I’m here next to Pierce Hall” as if the caller could see where he was pointing. So you see why HE wasn’t in the graduating class.

Behind us, a group of three guys sat and mused about how they wished they’d snuck in an air horn to hoot when their buddy walked up to get his handshake. He wasn’t kidding about the sneaking in part. They searched ladies handbags before letting us enter the carefully plastic-fenced and guarded perimeter. The fence was not enough to stop Tech Support Guy with COPD from breaching as he located a shortcut he was able to negotiate despite having to stop several times to catch his breath. Not sure how said fence would protect the audience from a terrorist attack…

Apparently, a few years ago a disgruntled senior phoned in a bomb threat to avoid having his parents find out he wasn’t cleared to graduate because he’d failed a final course. Although he succeeded in having the graduation ceremony cancelled, his very act demonstrated the kind of maturity and decision-making skills he clearly didn’t master during his undergraduate period. During our ceremony, a suit in reflective aviator sunglasses sat facing backward at the head of each row: surveying the restless crowd for any sign of suspicious activity. There was a bulge in the suit jacket of the guy at the head of the row we sat near. I hope his concealed weapon was pepper spray can and not a loaded gun, but perhaps it didn’t matter, since no terrorist threat materialized.

Our graduates each received a PhD in Anthropology, making them a pair of docs. This, as I understand it, entitles them to a 10% discount at all Anthropology stores, something the clerk in the local mall store didn’t get, alas. One graduate proceeds to law school in the fall. The other will probably work at Starbucks: but at least the doctorate may be enough to score a starting position as shift supervisor.

Apocalypse Not Yet

2009-06-17T12:24:00.001-07:00

“I bear a weight of terrors, and dark hosts
Of phantoms haunt my steps and seem to lead.
I walk, compelled, behind these beckoning ghosts
Down sliding roads and under skies that bleed…

“Far from your kind, outlawed and reprobate,
Go, prowl like wolves through desert worlds apart!
Disordered souls, fashion your own dark fate,
And flee the god you carry in your heart.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Cicadas and Other Poems (1929)

Now it’s all well and good to subscribe to the ‘whatever will be will be’ school. But there’s your benign indifference of heaven, and then there’s your bleeding skies.

Time is the blindness of justice, the Scythe that harvests us all after our season. Time is the clock that started running when Eve tossed the apple core on the Path and God stepped on it.*

We’re all here such a short time, so sad. Coyotes prowl my front yard as the fire season looms. Our fate is to die. That whole thing about Paradise is a crutch to wave impotently at Death as he looms above us in the bed each night.

And yet, we have the saving grace of joy. We have the consolation of being able to laugh to keep from crying. What I love about this otherwise bleak vision of judgment day is the hope in the final line. Huxley spells god without the big G.

We who have all the time in the world have no fear of Time. We each carry the light in our own hearts that can shine on us while we’re alive in the world. I build my own garden in the world. The first picture above is the view outside my back door in September, 2004. The second picture is that view today.

*This lovely metaphor is from Philip Booth, “Time Was the Apple Adam Ate”.

A Jester’s Garden

2009-06-10T10:08:00.001-07:00

"...Earth gets its prize for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;

At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking;

'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer..."

- James Russel Lowell, “The Vision of Sir Launfal”

Ahhh, June. Beloved Cliché Season. Grist for every poor poet’s fondest seasonal metaphors. Who am I to consider myself cliché-immune?

My three June wishes?
1. I would like to have an original thought in or about my garden.
2. I would like to have an epiphany or otherwise achieve self-realization in my garden.
3. I would like to leave the world a better place.
4. Two more wishes, please?
5. Sit perfectly still and meditate in my garden.
6. Negotiate a bargain for the grave I will lie in.

…. Although, the final wish sorta reveals the existential capitalism of my soul, eh? I don’t think Marx would spin in his grave if I defined “value” as some quantity other than legal tender. Like self actualization or inspiration. Perhaps I would value my garden more if it had a coherent design; if it was more sublime than cute, more conducive to thought than clever jokes or cliches.

Probably not. The value of my garden is more to be seen inside my head than inside my garden. Not only is it’s worth invisible to others, it is impossible to describe in words. If I tried using only words to explain my garden’s worth, I’d at least have to add different colors to different words, and special fonts to indicate mood, and italics to indicate slightly crooked thoughts – like Emily Dickinson said about telling the truth, but telling it slant. Come to think of it, I would need to include sounds of nature, sounds of my latest iPod playlist, maybe even sounds audible only inside my head. So I’d need all my senses to even attempt to describe the value of my garden, and even then it would probably involve more clichés than an attempt to describe a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

I don’t have to spend my life, or sell my soul, or steal a solitary place to die in like a wild animal. I’ve got my garden to grow old in, and to tally my regrets before I die. First regret: the transience of Youth. You made me cry, when you said goodbye. Ain’t that a shame?

And yet. Heaven is free, and so is my garden. My cap and bells cost me nothing except a propensity to use lame metaphors in lieu of original ideas.

Besides, I don’t have to leave the world better than it was when I arrived. I only have to, on balance, do more good than harm while I’m here. Hence, the garden and its intrinsic value to me. June may be had by the poorest customer for free. It’s priceless.

Garden or Crime Scene?

2009-06-04T13:00:00.001-07:00

Sometimes a garden isn’t so much as retreat as it is an attack.
- Ian Finley Hamilton

I could post crime scene photos taken in my vegetable garden of the before/after veggies I’ve seen cut down in their prime. Beans mostly, but eggplant and even peppers and tomatoes. Yesterday, I found an optimistic list of the warm season veggies I proposed to plant in the public veggie garden. Heirloom tomatoes, peppers, some interesting grain and ornamentals like giant cardoon. Why bother? They’re gone, all gone. I could post a graphic depiction of the timeless battle: Una Chicka vs. Hostile World. But again, why bother? If a garden is supposed to be a peaceful refuge from the slings and arrows of outrageous animal fortune, than what the fuck? Like Tech Support guy is wont to say: it’s a wonder I’m not bitter.

Meanwhile, back at the real world, things are pretty wacky. Dick Cheney blamed Richard Clark for not catching the whole 911 thing. The man behind the curtain we were supposed to pay no attention to for the last administration is now ubiquitous, not to mention full of shit. No (undue) disrespect.

Meanwhile, back inside the house, I’m listening to Eddie Vedder saying if you have more than you need, you need more space. That wisdom consoles me. Ahhh, entitled aging boomers, protected from the recession by our defined benefit health care and pensions. Scolding our grown children for their failures in raising our frightened, over-protected and under-educated grandchildren. Forget that I was the generation that invented the term “latch-key child” (or Douglas Copeland, one or the other). Why should I bother to clean out the carport or the back room when I can always rent a personal storage pod to stash my overflowing stuff. For that matter, as long as I can get more stuff, I can always replant my veggies.

Social commentary is generally sort of a sideline to my gardening blog. And although I’m usually sweet as a spoonful of honey on a warm Spring morning, I sometimes find myself ranting about the insult du jour. Some days, it’s just to hard to ignore what’s happening outside the gate as I cower inside my garden, looking for some place to bury my treasures against the coming rough days.

So going outside to hand water this afternoon was equal parts of genuine peace slash contentment, and impotent rage at the essential cruelty of an uncaring universe. Good thing I don’t have a job.

Music to Garden By in Times of Drought: Interview with a Terrible Drought Gardener

2009-06-01T15:56:00.001-07:00

“Mind and experience are like water and earth co-operating—neither of which alone can bring forth a flower.”
Jon Wortabet, Arabian Wisdom, [1913]

Kent Brokman: What are you listening to these days as you garden?

Terrible Drought Gardener: That’s a long story, Kent. Recently, my iPod screen got wet in my apron pocket, as I bent over a tub of water lilies to trim some mums, and wicked up enough water to burn out the screen. I did not know this because the pod kept on playing, not that it probably would have mattered. The result is that I now can listen to it but without knowing what play list or how music was selected. I just turn it on and mess with the controls until music starts. Buck Owens after Martin Denny? Existential! After two swings and two misses at getting the Apple so-called “genius” people to locate my on-line appointment, I was considering whether or not to try to baptize it (the pod, not the geniuses) again in the hope that it would be born again. Cooler and more secular heads prevailed.

KB: So, what’s this we hear from San Diego County Water Authority about a Stage Two Drought Alert?

TDG: Gardening in a stage two drought alert is a challenge for the expert and careful gardener. So, I’m sure you can imagine what a pain it is to a terrible gardener like me. I worry whether I will get to a point where I have to triage and sacrifice some bushes in their second year of settling in, still fitting in a one gallon pot size. Will some of them have to die, like say, the stupidly impulsive miniature weeping cherry tree at the left of the lantern in the above pic, or the juvenile Alphonse Karr bamboo way out back? Will the slow and steady baby’s tears in the tsukubai garden (above) shrivel before the creeping thyme can spread to shelter them and gradually replace them? I have no lawn left to kill, no martyr to the cause of having a 1.5 Million population in a region where there’s enough local water to support 100,000. Between the gophers and the rabbits, the thirsty coyotes and the drought, this may not be an ideal summer to garden.

KB: Excuse me, coyotes?

TDG: Yep. Coyotes strolling through the front yard at midday. Lean and parched looking themselves, I’m considering luring them into my backyard to feast on the rabbits and gophers. The water features may draw them naturally, especially now that the old dog is barred from my yard since I got tired of picking up his poop. Come for the water, stay for the rabbits and gophers. The damn gophers have now invaded a rocky section of the garden at the shallow end of the big pond where I moved my precious bearded Iris, thinking the rocks would deter burrowing animals. BTW Kent, my water features are ok as long as they aren’t spraying water into the air. I’ve bypassed the waterfall, and the small “old pond” filtration system (behind the big rock in the rear of above pic, at the end of the brick pathway) has managed to eliminate the trickle of water there. That leaves only the tsukubai water(pictured above), which is a small flow that drops barely 4 inches into the black stone bucket.

KB: Good luck, TDG. And may the drought bring new lessons and wisdom about water and the cooperating earth.

Life’s Daily Prospect

2009-05-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

"Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me--her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.”

"These given, what more need I desire
To stir, to soothe, or elevate?
What nobler marvels than the mind
May in life's daily prospect find,
May find or there create?

To the stone-table in my garden,
Loved haunt of many a summer hour…”

John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale

After a long day working in the back yard, I sometimes sit with a glass of wine and a garden journal, trying to remember and note what is planted where. It’s a practice I often used to skip – trying instead to wring out the last daylight out doing whatever needs doing during this busy season before twilight chases me indoors.

In recent years, I find the stopping and sitting to be increasingly more important than the busy doing of gardening chores. My knees are worn out, and my sprained ankle continues to remind me it’s not quite ready to get back out into the game. Sitting on the bench, I find these aches and pains recede as I learn to observe and enjoy life’s daily prospect from my stone table.

The trick is for me to learn how to look at the garden and see beauty, to watch the bees, and listen to the wind. If I sit still, I can hear the water splashing into the pond nearby, the birds in the canyon nearby, and to hear somewhere in the distance an unseen dog barking and children shouting in sheer joy. It’s not easy for me to sit and appreciate what’s here now instead of seeing what needs doing tomorrow, or next week, or next year. But learning to enjoy mother earth’s humble mirth and tears is a skill worth mastering.

Roadside Attractions

2009-05-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

"The works of a person that builds,
begin immediately to decay;
while those of him who plants
begin directly to improve."
William Shenstone, ‘Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening’ (1764)

Speaking of the glories man builds, driving through the optimistically named Inland Empire the other day, we encountered a billboard that proudly advertised “the Largest AM/PM in the World!” at an upcoming rest stop. Proving what, exactly? Why, the particularly American phenomenon that pride in a particular thing doesn’t necessarily signify the intrinsic worth of said thing. Although in fairness, the restrooms were sparkling clean, if somewhat overdosed in a room freshener that smelled like a cross between unmade Jell-O and the lobby of an overpopulated convalescent home.

The Japanese lady is admiring the water lilies from the bridge. You take your inspiration where it comes, driving through Southern California where the process of growth and decay seems to be speeded up. It’s not like the good old days.

The AM/PM billboard recalled a long-ago road trip from Salt Lake City, Utah to Washington DC, through the barren Midwest mega-farms. Roadside attractions were manufactured by the locals, we reckoned, in an effort to lure drivers into spending a few bucks on coffee, gas, or admission to contrived attractions - like a “zoo” for two retired circus elephants and an anorexic coyote. Across the corn fields of Kansas, we kept seeing signs advertising roadside attractions like “the world’s largest prairie dog” and Daniel Boon’s burial place. We saw so many of the latter, that we became convinced that poor Daniel was disinterred and moved regularly to give small town truck stops a point of interest sufficient to induce travelers to stop. For us, it simply made us put the pedal to the metal in an effort to outrun Daniel’s restless ghost. The World’s Largest Prairie Dog turned out to be a crude concrete statue standing approximately two stories tall, painted in that brownish-pink color that paint stores produce by mixing all the leftover paint together in one barrel. Sadly, as with most works of men, the World's Largest Prairie Dog will never last. We never did find out where Daniel rested finally in peace, and that still disturbs my dreams.

The other night, we went out to dinner at a recently opened chi-chi restaurant decorated in a style that reminds me of nothing so much as the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Gleaming faintly threatening brushed stainless steel appliances in the restroom, gauzy curtains with gleaming gossamer threads separating booths, curly metal and ceramic low voltage light fixtures that look like a nightmare that even Salvador Dali would wake screaming from. The martinis were good, but the entertainment was priceless: it was prom night at the two local high schools located equidistant from the restaurant, across the country club golf course in one direction, and the shopping mall in the other. These are upscale schools, the kind where the parents buy their daughters convertible Mini-coopers or PT Cruisers for their sixteenth birthday, and where big hair has never gone out of style. The dress code this year was sequined gowns and ill-fitting rented tuxes.

We observed a table of pampered, overdressed girls with professional makeup suitable for an Academy Award ceremony; another table of cheer- leaders, each matched perfectly with a color-coded jock; and notably, a party of two dignified young men unaccompanied by young ladies – further evidence that the anti-gay marriage vote in California was an aberration that will ultimately be undone.

So of course, the minute a swarm of young ladies headed to the restroom, I couldn’t resist. The girl talk in the restrooms was deeply superficial: Do my bra straps show? Your manicure is gorgeous and I love the way the green tip color matches your sequins! Do you believe what his mother said about her own prehistoric prom when his father was taking our pictures? Such self-conscious beauty. As the Japanese lady admires the flowers, she is unaware of the giant alligator on the rock behind her. Danger lurks everywhere.

Meanwhile, back in the back yard, I am at that stage when I wait for the garden to blossom into its full potential – beseeching the seeds to germinate, reminding the hop vines to twine counter-clockwise, smelling the pure white roses which I’d never wanted in the first place but have come to love for their lovely flowers as well as their deadly thorns which I refuse to remove, despite the rose’s overreach of a garden path. Walking through my garden is much like driving through the Inland Empire: you take your chances looking for points of interest. Sometimes you could be attacked by a rose bush, but sometimes you get local prom night. I’m thinking of making a miniature billboard to tuck beneath the thorny rose and warn the rabbits as they forage at night amid the windy mossy ways: World’s Biggest Rose Thorns Ahead.

Souless Capitalism

2009-05-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

"God gives gifts to all creatures… no matter what their station or condition. He may give innocence to a lunatic, or heaven to a thief. Contrary to most theologians, I have always believed that even worms and weasels have souls, and that even they are capable of salvation."
- Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"

My Mom used to say that animals don’t have souls. Her complex religious beliefs didn’t leave room for puppies and kitties in heaven. Which was probably just as well since she was busy raising too many kids and taking care of her invalid mother-in-law while we were growing up. That didn’t leave any time or money for household pets. Thus, it wasn’t until I was older, and a bit wiser, and considerably more doubtful than Mom about the business of immortal souls, that I got a pet cat.

My cat is my pet, my blood pressure medication, my solace, my furry cuddly toy whose purr can induce amnesia about whatever was bothering me before I picked her up and held her to my ear and buried my nose in her warm soft fur. She listens and I’m pretty sure understands every single secret I whisper to her.

Regardless of whether she has a soul - or for that matter, whether I have one - doesn’t matter to me so much these days. Mom would be shocked – shocked – at how I have expended so much devotion on a small brown animal of no particular beauty.

But even Mom wouldn’t have been able to put a price on a soul. My grocery store, apparently, can. I recently purchased a “secret invisible sol” (sic) for my cat at the bargain price of $2.46. I do think however, that Mom would agree with me that a soul shouldn’t be taxable.

The Dry Season

2009-05-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

"The flowers anew, returning seasons bring; but beauty faded has no second spring."
– Ambrose Philips

Already it’s hot out – a week of >80F in my yard. At least the hot flashes of summer are merely summer weather these days. Relax, it’s only the postmenopausal postmodern condition, not the approach of doom and night sweats. The Chinese refer to menopause as a woman’s second spring. Mom called it The Change. Californians call it midlife transition.

Menopause isn’t a pause at all. It’s more like a running stop. It’s Wylie Coyote, running two steps beyond the edge of the cliff. Suspended in midair, before gravity kicks in, he floats, dawning surprise filling his eyes. Menopause is that moment, only it stretches out month after month.

This season is like that fall – I’m still sowing hope, but I cringe anticipating the landing of coming summer, and what I might never reap. The hot dry desert looms below Wylie. The desert floor, simply obeying the laws of gravity, welcomes him. He has plenty of time to wish the fall would be over and he’d land already.

Thus Spring passes, with no promises, and Summer advances on my unsuspecting young seedlings and transplants. Grasshoppers are already mowing down the last of the lettuce and the beans left behind by the rabbits. I hope the grasshoppers leave me a few sunflowers. No second spring here, grasshoppers, nothing to see here. Please move on.

Hops Envy

2009-05-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

Members of the Western North Carolina (WNC) branch of my family (Ruby and her Faithful Spousal Companion, or FSC) grow hops organically. I find no consolation in the fact that Ruby is a professional horticulturist with years of experience growing things so lovely that when she publishes gardening books, pictures of specimens in her former Southern Maryland back yard feature prominently. My hops, pictured at the end of this post, are sickly and stunted compared to theirs. Here's what they have to say:

"First, at the risk of making you jealous, we are experiencing the wettest spring here since becoming permanent residents. The regular rain--mixed with plenty of sun--was a major factor in attracting us to the mountains. Southern Maryland summers seemed to be turning dryer and dryer with every year. Little did we know that three straight years of draught would mark our transition to WNC. As I write, however, the weatherman is calling for severe thunderstorms today through tonight. This event will end @ six days of on/off rain. Can't really get in the fields with things so damp, but it sure beats irrigating with the hose….a major chore last spring. Of course all the moisture raises the alarm for things like powdery mildew! Ahh, the farmer's lament: it's either too much or too little. Maybe being a paper-pushing bureaucrat was a better option. Nahh, at least as long as my living doesn't depend on it.

"I suspect the precipitation is a significant factor in this season's growth in our hop yard, but we're still learning what is/is not to be expected as we enter season #2 with a major expansion. You may recall that last year's "test plot" was comprised of five, 20 foot rows with four hills apiece. This year we extended each of the original rows to 50 feet, and added seven more 50 foot rows plus three 75 foot rows. That translates into a total of @ 260 hills. We figured an expansion of this magnitude was necessary to produce a harvest of "commercial" relevance. Even with 260, we may have to await 2nd year yields to peddle cones at the wholesale level. Time will tell. While all five original varieties were expanded with the extension of the original rows, the 12 new rows were limited to three: Cascade and Willamette (due to vigorous growth & cone production); and Nugget (to provide a high acid variety)…

"Also, you may not be aware that we're working to get formally certified as organic (USDA sticker and all). Organic is a huge factor in much of the WNC community….at least one microbrewery is 100% organic. We believe that flying the organic flag will be a crucial marketing lever, and it should allow us to demand a higher price for product. Our first visit by inspectors is scheduled for next week…

"6footVine - To illustrate progress, this picture (taken cinco de mayo) shows the original ('08) Willamette hills, including above sprouts, with @ one month under their belt. That's a yard stick leaning against the center vine, attesting to the 6 foot milestone.

"08-09 Contrast - Seeing is believing: the second pic (also 5 May) captures a 2nd season Willamette hill (actually the same hill as sprouts above) as well as the '09 extension of that row. Quite a difference! Based on last year, the '09 plants will ultimately approach or reach the 12' trellis top and produce a "credible" number of cones. However, we're eagerly awaiting what the Lit tells us will be a much larger crop from the 2nd season plants.

Final Thoughts: This physical undertaking has given me new respect for the rigors of farming and those who choose it, forever reminding me that I'm no longer eighteen. Both Ruby and I have always wanted a rural life….for as long we both can remember. We've made it, but on many occasions I worry that we made it too late. That said, we're loving life (with limited endurance and sore muscles), and we plan to press for as long as the bodies allow. 20-something lower backs of our sons have been life-savers every now and then."

Compare with my second year of growing hops in San Diego: barely visible in this picture.

It's not that I envy their hops, so much as I'm disappointed in my hops. It's one thing for Ruby and FSC to have green thumbs, it's an entirely different thing for me to have to contend with drought, pestilence and plagues of locusts, at least figuratively speaking.

Spring Interview With a Terrible Gardener

2009-05-11T12:22:00.001-07:00

"When you have heard all my adventures, you will understand what trials and vicissitudes I have had to undergo to reach the felicity of this palace; you will realize that I have had to purchase the wealth which sustains my age with strange and terrible labors, with calamities, misfortunes and hardships that are scarcely credible."
The tale of Sinbad the Sailor, Ten Thousand Nights and One Night

Kent Brockman: So, TG, what are the most calamitous misfortunes and hardships associated with Springtime in Garden Blogville?

Terrible Gardener: Well, it would have to be the Spring garden blogging cliches I have to I have to endure. For example, the zoomed-in pictures of flowers, in artful pastels, some even with dew drops.

KB: And that upsets you why?

TG: When I grew up in suburban Washington DC, this is the time of year we’d head out to Haines Point, walk around the Jefferson Memorial where people were carefully framing their souvenir pictures of Cherry Blossom Time with the Jefferson Memorial in the background, reflecting basin in the middle, framed by overhead cherry blossoms reflected in the water. We’d stroll past, right into the picture frame, and whisper “Been done.” (Do a Google image search on “cherry blossoms, Jefferson Memorial” and you’ll get about a million lovely pics.) Besides, anybody can get flowers to bloom in Spring. That’s why god invented roses.

KB: I see. Trials and vicissitudes indeed. So, what's your number two Springtime blogging cliché?

TG: Next would have to be garden bloggers who talk about Spring Fever being the cure for Cabin Fever, or use metaphors more faded and worn out than a prostitute’s chenille bedspread. Like, the Great Circle of Life, renewal, rebirth, resurrection etc. That would include references to god’s (with a capital G) renewal of His promise to us that we are immortal. All’s I’m saying, Kent, is that Spring is equally likely to awaken bleak existential flashbacks and blunt reminders about how life has no meaning. Nobody blogs about the dark side of gardening in Spring, Kent. It’s garden bloggers’ dirty little secret, and it dominates my meditations as I soak in the spa at the end of a day gardening.

KB: Thanks for sharing your self-absorbed opinion of what constitutes hardship. Finally, what’s your number one beef about garden blogging in Spring?

TG: Simply that Spring makes me feel old, Kent. It makes me feel older each year, as I drag my creaking ass outside to overdose on the joy everywhere. If not for ibuprophen and the spa, I’d never recover from the pain that seems worse after each winter, or accept that my fingernails won’t get clean until next November. Spring’s the time of my annual realization that it doesn’t get any better than this. It really doesn’t – it gets worse.

Gardening Bliss By Any Other Name

2009-05-06T13:45:00.001-07:00

“If by some miracle I ever did something the right way the first time I tried, I would have absolutely no idea why it worked. If the goal of man is knowledge, I am reaching my goal via the path of maximum mistakes.”
Ellen Sandbeck, Eat More Dirt

I sometimes label plants in my back yard. Most times I don’t bother because many who are called to my garden are not chosen to remain there long. I don’t know the names of many of the survivors, and furthermore, I frequently have no idea why they survive when so many others don’t make it past the first season, or even through their first night.

The point of gardening for me has little to do with creating the kind of yard that will impress my neighbor, the president of the local garden club. When her garden club people do their annual tour of member gardens, they rarely peek over the fence at my often abortive gardening results. This neighbor has a gardener she pays to busy himself weekly in her yard: trimming, grooming, planting and removing as necessary to attain the kind of garden-club look you might see in garden design magazines. Lately, the Garden Magazine Style tends towards an icy postmodern minimalist chic that "doesn't speak to me." Those GMS garden chairs pictured would kill your back if they tempted you to sit and relax, though god knows they look pretty untempting.

Seriously, how seriously can one take gardening when one doesn’t bother to actually garden? At this time and in this place, the more senior your garden club membership, the whiter your gloves, and the more translucent your bone china teacups, the more serious you are as a gardener.

Despite the fact that I don’t pass any of those tests, and despite my poor habits in labeling plants, at least I know the flower pictured above is a white rose, and that works for me. My own gardening goals are more directed at creating a place that induces my own tranquility and personal bliss, and are thus undeterred by failure.

By my measure, I am reaching my goal, my admittedly poor plant labeling skills notwithstanding.

Another Sunset

2009-04-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

The sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,
Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire,
Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams,
Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.

Look round;--of all the clouds not one is moving;
'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving.

William Wordsworth, On a High Part of the Coast of Cumberland...

The Old Man’s Wish

2009-04-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

“I govern my passion with absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away.”
Walter Pope (1630–1714)

I know an old man who is making his way out of a long and happy life. The end won’t be dignified or even terribly coherent: the later being the saving grace offsetting the former. The cobwebs of confusion are replacing the wisdom of age, just as the wisdom once replaced the grace of his youth. Sooner or later, whether our lives are long or short, they end in darkness. There’s no way out of here alive.

In response to a question about what he feared most, another wise old man once replied – dogs, Dutchmen, and the gathering darkness. That man was Abe Simpson, shuffling slippers, enigmatic response, and mumbled phobias about Dutch people. Abe teaches me that life is too short to take the gathering darkness too seriously.

Meanwhile, I struggle to govern my passions, if not with absolute sway, then at least with a nudge or two of reason. For now, I have the time and presence to pay attention. I have the wit to see things clearly rather than seriously. But as I age, I realize I’m growing too damn slowly into the wisdom my creaky diminishing strength entitles me to. At this rate, I’ll be wise about an hour and forty-five minutes after I’m dead.

Guest Ultracrepidarian Musings

2009-04-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

This reaction became too long for a comment, thus the guest posting.

"Authoritative but stupid opinions" have been much in the news lately. For example, a recent Nick Kristof column:
"Ever wonder how financial experts could lead the world over the economic cliff? One explanation is that so-called experts turn out to be, in many situations, a stunningly poor source of expertise. The 2005 book 'Expert Political Judgment,' by UC-Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock, is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts' forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about. The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses. The only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones."

They did so because they were over-confidant and so ignored all facts that might contradict their opinions. Remind you of any recent federal administrations?

Wired reports on another study: Expert Financial Advice Neurobiologically 'Offloads' Financial Decision-Making under Risk" by Engelmann, Capra, Noussair, and Berns; Public Library of Science ONE, March 24, 2009. Conclusion: Given "Expert" Advice, Brains Shut Down. This study "and another on hormones and day trading (testosterone is good for individual traders, but possibly bad for everyone else), have cast scientific doubt on a central tenet of free-market fundamentalism. Contrary to neoliberal economic theory, markets are not always driven by individuals acting rationally in their own best interests."

Then there's my favorite book by George Lakoff, The Political Mind. Although we grew up with an Enlightenment view of reason — that it is logical, universal, unemotional, and interest-based — recent brain research (especially that facilitated by functional MRIs that show in which areas the brain is active during tasks) has conclusively demonstrated that the dichotomy between reason and emotion is false. We think we can divorce reason from emotion because most (an estimated 98%) of reason is unconscious. Our ancestors didn't have time to reason consciously about the best thing to do, so we've evolved to think and behave reflexively. They do experiments (see Restak's The Naked Brain) to show that your body reacts before your brain has received the nerve inputs on which to base a conscious decision. Our cognitive unconsciousness is really running the show.

We are making very complex and subtle assessments all the time of which we are not consciously aware. Our reasoning is more like after-the-fact rationalization of decisions we've already made. Now, I do think that that more information makes for better decisions, but both research and the results of "negative campaigning" show that our "free will" is more limited than we like to think. We use the emotional subtext in our decision-making because we can't not do so. And these kinds of subconscious evaluations have been shown to be surprisingly sophisticated.

So, iBRAIN by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan has me worried about a loss of skill in gut-level assessments. Their thesis is that "these kids today" never tear their attention from their phones and computers long enough to hone their ability to "read" people. If our young are losing face-to-face cognitive skills due to immersion in technology, that portends poorer decisions by future voters. If they don't look people in the face anymore, they either never make or gradually abandon the neural pathways allowing them to assess expressions with any validity. Does that mean that our subconscious judgments about who we can trust not to betray us are becoming less reliable? Does it offer some explanation of the popularity of affable empty suits like [insert your favorite populist here]?

Ultracrepidarian Musings

2009-04-15T11:06:00.001-07:00

“It is a happy thought to believe that our gardens smile at us and hold for us a genuine understanding. At the same time, we must not forget that of all the humorous things in a garden, we who pretend to be gardeners, are the funniest.”
Louse Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden

Here’s an adjective you might not know you needed. But you do. Ultracrepidarian: of a critic, giving opinions on something beyond his or her knowledge. Example: I have a relative whose ultracrepidarian pronouncements on subjects ranging from antelope colostomies to zebra vasectomies belie his/her almost total ignorance of the subject at hand.

Um, I know somebody like this. Don’t we all? They’re probably the people who would order bacon yogurt from this menu.

Immediately before they express an authoritative but stupid opinion, these people typically say: “You know… (insert something you presumably don’t know)…” On second thought, perhaps my anonymous relative is a mere crepidarian, (rather than the superfluous conjugate) seeing as how he/she often begin conversations propounding on topics he/she clearly knows nothing about with: “I could be wrong, but…”

Everybody has an opinion once in a while, even, surprisingly, me. I’ll even concede that some peoples’ opinions are sometimes based on their life experience as minor characters in the reality show I star in. Other times, well, let’s just say such people apparently live in a world where they are seemingly the only people who know not to touch the fire on the stovetop, and it’s their mission to save us all from burning our fingers. Of course, you can’t reason with such people. You’re more likely to win an argument if you make shit up and change your position with impunity as the argument progresses.

So, why haven’t I learned not to participate in such conversations? These days, too much of my energy is devoted to maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the throat of my own reality, leaving me little energy to spare arguing with morons, let alone trying to shine the clear light of my reason into the dark corners of their paranoia.

Which is where my garden comes in. That, and my twisted sense of humor. Judgmental, ultracrepidarian opinionated, know-it-alls probably also know more about gardening than I do. They know why one design scheme failed, why my pepper and eggplant seeds never germinated, what kind of caterpillars munched my fennel into skeletal stems. At times like that, I remind myself that I’m only pretending to be a gardener. What I’m really doing outside in the back yard is cultivating my own peace of mind.

The Ideal Life

2009-04-08T16:06:00.001-07:00

YANG CHU said: "Yuan Hsie lived in mean circumstances in Lu, while Tse Kung amassed wealth in Wei.
"Poverty galled the one, and riches caused uneasiness to the other.
"So poverty will not do nor wealth either."
"But what then will do?"
"I answer enjoy life and take one's ease, for those who know how to enjoy life are not poor, and he that lives at ease requires no riches."
Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure
Chapter VI, The Ideal Life

Enjoy life and take one’s ease. Sounds great. And yet…

I just came in from sowing the last of my seeds. I wasn’t planning on doing that today, but I left the box of seeds out in last night’s unexpected (by me) shower, and they needed to be planted. Why is it that whenever I’m in the yard it’s because I’m working or performing some maintenance task? I can’t seem to sit still and enjoy the garden because it only takes about sixty seconds of trying to meditate before I see something that needs deadheading, or a weed that needs removing, or something that I have to tweak into perfection.

I have finally decided that performing such minor tasks is a way I maintain the “flow” of enjoying being in the garden in a sort of mental neutral gear where I don’t find myself flitting from one thought to another – which is what happens when I try to sit still and watch the bees playing tag around the shallow end of the pond.

For me, enjoying the garden means being active, even if it’s only a little bit. I envision how I want this corner to look in 10 years, or that planter to look in the next few months. I have a tiny loquat given to me in a 2” peat pot by a friend. I put it in the ground, but then put a plant stand and plant overhead to protect it from direct sun while it settled in. It’s been there through one summer, so I’ve now moved the shading pot. Someday, this tiny plant will shade a part of the garden now in 6-8 hours of sun a day, but if you saw it today, you’d see a 4” tall anonymous green stick with a few jaundiced leaves.

I’ve decided this endless tinkering is the closest I will get to the ideal life in my garden: perfectly balanced between all my “amassed wealth” and “mean circumstances” I find the ideal life at ease in my garden.

Sistertrip V

2009-04-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

“You know I never like to interfere… but…”
Anonymous In-law
I recently returned from a 4-night trip with several of my sisters. This, our fifth biennial sister trip, was in Ventura CA. (For the archivist: Traverse City, MI, Harper’s Ferry, WV; Santa Fe, NM; and Savannah, GA.) Thanks to one sister’s timeshare, we enjoyed sunsets over the ocean as we sat and read our various books and newspapers, drinking good red wine and looking up to chat briefly about whatever we were reading. With four of us, we could enjoy a single conversation, whereas when all six of us get together, conversation groups generally break down into smaller units.

We had time to whine about our various family and home trials and tribulations, to discuss the amazing (and not-coincidental) differences of political opinion between us sisters and our brothers and boy cousins whose opinions range from uncompassionate conservatism to wacko conspiracy theories. We spoke about our various states of health, getting old, dying, shepherding aging pets and elderly in-laws “across the rainbow bridge” and toward the light. For several days, it didn’t suck at all to be me.

Here’s the thing about spending time with sisters. We easily slipped into intimate conversations, tapping the same veins of family history, dumb jokes and reminisces to provide context. Some things you can talk about only with people who understand on such a deep level you don’t have to qualify your statements with “I love ____, but…” We shared our favorite punch lines like “Liquor? I hardly knew her!” and “Do I remember the minuet? I don’t even remember the men I f*&%ed!”

We waited too long, drinking mimosas, for our overpriced lunch at an otherwise delightful sidewalk café in Santa Barbara. We exercised our privilege as white women of a certain age and laughed too loudly, shocking the locals. When I got a box for my leftover lunch, I took the “complementary” tiny metal sauce dish that came filled with cream cheese. Well, I’m never going back there.

We (I) drove our rented Chrysler PT Cruiser over several curbs, while lamenting the awful turning radius. The hatchback trunk smelled like pot, you could see daylight between the closed passenger side door and the frame. The final insult was that the electronic key had a dead battery, and I was inconvenienced by having to actually use the key in the actual lock. How primitive! Can you blame me for punishing the car by driving into curbs?

While I’m casting blame, I also blame M1 for nixing the red Mustang convertible we could have had in lieu of the PT Cruiser. I have to assume it would have had a tighter turning radius and/or a functioning remote key. I blame Tech Support Guy for not letting us use the Prius with gps navigation, causing me to mistakenly enter Camp Pendleton Marine Base, where we were waved through by the 12 year old Marine guard at the gate who didn’t bother to notice we didn’t have a base parking sticker. I’m also pissed at Huntington Library for being closed on Tuesdays, as was the Norton Simon Museum and the Gamble House all in Pasadena. The picture of the Gamble house front door (below) was taken through the window on the patio behind the house.

We shared our favorite vulgar and unladylike synonyms for manure, or at least my sisters did when remarking upon the quality of my driving. We agreed that if, in any given conversation, the speaker forgets a crucial noun, the words “werewolf” or “tugboat” would suffice; and to our considerable surprise, this shortcut made conversations much more interesting. We visited the Mission in Santa Barbara and mused over the sanitized history of how the devout friars committed genocide on the natives in the name of the Lord. I scored the most tasteless souvenir: a credit-card sized 3-D picture of Christ on the shroud of Turin, that morphs into a lovely white man’s face – presumably that of an alive Christ - when you wiggle it in your hand. Priceless!

I wore my cheap pedometer all during the trip and logged 5k steps each day! Then I lost it – the pedometer, not the steps. Then I found it folding laundry this morning – it had been washed and dried and seems to be fine: 298 steps so far today. All in all, a very good sistertrip.