A poem....

During the Christmas break, I was catching up on some magazine reading to reduce some piles around here.  Today, I read a really beautiful interview with Kim Rosen about the role of poetry in our lives called "Written on the Bones" by Alison Luterman.  The title comes from a Tibetan saying for how our songs, stories, and poetry are passed down without being written down - like how a musician might know how to play a song he's heard without ever having read the sheet music.  The interview was in The Sun, which is a magazine that has kindly bought a few photos from me over the years.

I'm not a big fan of poetry per se, but after reading this interview, I think maybe in the New Year I will try to read a poem each.... wait for it... week.  Let's not get carried away with anything daily!  Now, if only I hadn't given away all those English Major books just this year!

Anyway, at the end of the article was this poem.  It spoke to me about my garden failures and successes, the lovely cast of international friends I have in my life and most of all about letting go of perfection.  I find that especially when it comes to anything ranging from cooking to photo making to writing, I am often paralyzed for fear it will be amateurish or foolish.  I surround myself with so many talented friends and colleagues in those areas, I fear I simply won't be good enough.  And I'll be a disappointment to them and to my own dreams.

So, maybe along with some poetry reading, I'll let go and just let my words and photos stretch into sentences and stories, no matter how weedy...  Oh, and I'll plant that quinoa and not be too disappointed if it doesn't flower and bloom as beautifully as it does in my mind or on the package.  

WITHOUT TENDING

by Christine Poreba

Just down the road a row of basil stands tight

in plastic bags, a line of buoys in a frigid sea,

while our yard lies open in the bitter cold.

I confess I didn't know which plants

to cover, so I left them all to freeze.

And back in the summer I never

thinned the lettuce or tried to stop 

the birds from carrying off

our spinach, corn, and sunflowers.

Even my students, adults from various

continents, speak an English I don't

always correct:

"poultry" for poetry

"bookkeeper" instead of librarian,

"cole" without the "slaw" to mean cabbage.

Yet we plow along, the odd bunch of us,

in rows like my garden, from whose dry

soil springs a surprising pepper crop,

a generous mass of rosemary.  And

my students' words, small as seeds, stretch somehow

into sentences:  weedy, bright.

My Garden Is Like A Duck

Here in "Sunny California", we've had nothing but gray skies.  For weeks.  It's made getting around hard, getting things done hard, meeting emotional challenges hard, and for me it means a lot of leaky windows and ceiling....  It didn't really feel too much like "The Holidays". 

But, finally, yesterday the sun came out.  So even though I'm fighting a bad cold, I gathered up my best Laura Ingalls "the crops can't wait" attitude and abandoned the ark to run over to the garden.   On the short walk over, with a few seeds in hand and some fingers crossed that the torrential rain hadn't drowned what little I had growing,  it seemed as if I was seeing the world for the first time.  Sun, light!  What a concept.  Everything seemed brighter and shinier after so much rain.

Until I got to the garden.  The garden, on the other hand,  looked barren and empty and just generally gray.  The raised beds were gray, the straw was gray, the skies by the time I reached the garden had even turned gray again....

But, like most things having to do with my garden, there was a lesson in it for me.  This time, one of appearances.  Because when I pushed away the wet and wasted straw, underneath was my own version of black gold and an entire eco system that seemed quite happy going about its busy work.  While the top was resting, the underneath was busy at work making a new life.  Or like the old duck metaphor;  no movement on top, but paddling like hell underneath.  Despite all the gray, that garden is anything but dead.  "It's Aliiiive, It's Aliiiiiiive" (imagine the mad scientist voice from some movie there....).

And I'm thanking the "green manure" for this Christmas Miracle.  This is my first season amending the soil using only the green manure method.  Whoa.  When I turned over that straw, I felt a bit of a marauding invader that had interrupted what was clearly a lively little community at work under it.   Best, of all, in turning over that first pitchfork full of dark, wet, lovely soil I unearthed more earthworms than I'd ever seen.  Can I get an AMEN?!!??  If there is a correlation between number of worms and healthy dirt, I'm going to be eating like Henry the VIII at a turkey farm!

Along with the worms, the monarchs have been busy at work despite the rain.  I found chrysalis' everywhere; hanging on eye hooks, off wrought iron planter stands, plants - you name it.  And proof positive that they are on track for their journey home I found this little monarch caterpillar working his way towards some milkweed.  I apologize all these were shot with my iphone...wasn't expecting so much excitement and didn't bring my big girl camera:

Once I saw that beautiful, healthy dirt, I found my inner Mary Ingalls, too, and set about actually doing some gardening.  

Fava Beans and Garlic:  I took them both out of their prisons and mulched between rows.  I need to order another packet of fava seeds to fill in the row and a half that did not sprout.

Carrots:  planted Botanical Interests' "Carnival Blend".

Beets:  planted Territorial Seed's "Touchstone Gold" and Botanical Interests' "Gourmet Blend".  First I put them between wax paper and broke the hard shells with a rolling pin.  I had lunch with a famous seed saver two weeks ago and this was his advice.  But, more on that another day.

Flowers:  planted some bulbs so that come spring I can attract some bees. 

Peas:  Made like a druid (see photo below) and inoculated and planted Territorial Seed's "Canoe" Shelling Peas around my tall wrought iron structure. 

I built more booby traps to keep the cats and racoons out and hoped the incoming rain wouldn't wash my tiny little seeds away.  

Then, as the rain began to drizzle down again, I headed home....  So, it's been a strange "holiday season", which for me also means I turned another year older.  I was alone, but I wasn't...  There were big highs and big lows.  And there was a LOT of rain.

But, maybe, like "the dark night of the soul", you can't see the light if there hasn't been some dark.    You can't swim smoothly unless you paddle.  You can't feel the joy if there wasn't some sorrow.  You can't build a new life until you've rested a bit from the old one.  

You can't grow an eco system below if there isn't some gray on the surface....

A New Toy

I treated myself to a little birthday present (on sale, plus coupons!).  I haven't decided if the "bloggie" or "the flip" is for me - this is my first go at the Sony "Bloggie" (such a stupid name!!).  I have two weeks to return it.  I also haven't figured out how to get the video into my imovie in order to edit.  But, I thought this could potentially be a nice addition to the garden blogging, keeping in touch with my nieces and nephew, and forcing people to see how cute my cat Ozzie is...

For the first trial entry, I went in between downpours to see if the garden was holding up against the torrential rains.  As witnessed here, the fava and the onions seem to be doing just fine, thank you very much.  Notice how I have to keep my seeds in prison until they grow big enough to keep the birds, racoons, and cats from eating and destroying them....  Once the rain lets up, I'll take the bars away and just mulch to keep the cats out.

I think the video has potential, although I'm not crazy about the quality of this today...  I may have to play with the settings (one thing the flip doesn't have, but maybe that's for the best).  Eventually, I'd love to interview my fellow gardeners and have them share their trials and tribulations, as well as their successes.  Maybe each of them would be willing to share their own special tips and secrets to a successful harvest.

Now if it would stop raining so I could go plant all the rest of it...

Book Review: My Empire of Dirt by Manny Howard

Somewhere in or around 2007 I read an article in New York Magazine about a guy investigating the "Locavore" movement (only eating food grown within a few miles of your home) and the magazine challenged him to write about only eating food grown within a few feet of his home.  In other words, his backyard in Brooklyn.  I had lived in Brooklyn in the late 80s/early 90s and by 2007, living in Los Angeles, I was feeling the pull of my upbringing and dying for my own piece of dirt (I was still a year and a half away from getting my little 12x5 plot in Long Beach).  I recall liking the article.  I'd never forgotten it, actually.

When I was shopping around for something to use my two year old Amazon gift card on a few months ago, I stumbled on this title which stopped me in my tracks.  It could have been about backhoes and I might have been tempted to read it.  Those that know me well know that, along with my love of my garden, my cats and U2, I love Nine Inch Nails.  In the early "aughts", I spent a summer on the road following the band with a bunch of people I'd met on the internet.  It was one of the nuttiest things I've ever done and one of the most fun.  Every night, Trent Reznor closed the show out with a song called "Hurt"; a gut wrenching tale of failure and loneliness that Johnny Cash would go on to cover.   One of the lines is, "you can have it all, my empire of dirt'.  So, yeah, I hit "buy" on Manny Howard's book.  How bad could a book be that combined gardening and NIN lyrics???  

Um, BAD.

This book is brutal.  He's generally an unlikeable lout.  Granted, he seems like a good Dad, I guess.   He lets his kids bargain for the life of the ducks he'd planned to use for food and cooking fat.  But, he paints his wife as a shrew.  It's understandable that maybe his obsession becomes more about how to change the clay in his NY Borough backyard to mineral rich dirt, but once the "building of the farm" is done, he rarely seems to engage in the miracle of what is happening around him. 

His challenge is to eat for a month just from the farm.  And somewhere in there he decides that absolutely means animals for protein.  The problem is that he's woefully unprepared for anything that comes with that be it shelter, food, or upkeep.  He's always reading the "how to" book AFTER he's gotten the animals.  And what that results in is some pretty distasteful, dare I say, cruelty.  It isn't until the chickens he plans on killing start laying eggs that it occurs to him that maybe subsisting on a month of eggs to add protein to his diet might have been sufficient and he mail orders laying chickens.  As with the ducks, rabbits, and eating chickens, he doesn't have the proper laying set up or housing set up for them until he's had them awhile.  To add insult to injury, that move on the board (or farm as it may be) doesn't seem to stop the mishandling of the rest of his food animals.  But, every time an animal dies from said mishandling, he chalks it up to tough life on a farm and the book spirals down further into ugliness.

Look, I grew up a country girl, where the first day of any hunting season be it fishing, pheasant, or deer was an unofficial school holiday - farmer's kids had allowable absences.  And while I honestly understand and respect my friends who choose not to eat animal flesh, I am not a vegetarian (although I do my very best to eat humanely raised meat and eggs).  I never had the interest or desire to be the one shooting,  but I've walked the fields with my father quail hunting.  I learned how to clean and dress game birds at the feet of my grandfather and great uncle.  There is a photo somewhere of a 3 year old Squidly smiling happily over a pile of colorfully plumed pheasants.  Every winter,  I knew one day I would come home from school to find a dead deer hanging upside down bleeding out in the garage.  Once, the entire house shook as we were getting ready for school which, we discovered as we all ran out of our rooms, was caused by my Dad standing in the kitchen door in his underwear shooting a turkey that had been walking a few feet from our pool.  But, all the dying came with a code of honor.  You never shot anything you weren't going to eat and as the meat was being cleaned and then cooked and then eaten, it was done with thankfulness and ritual.  I spent plenty of time on the farms of my friends and I know these can be brutal places for both man and animal, but this book turned my stomach more than once.

Beyond the issues I have with him and his approach to "farming",  it's not a well written book.  I'm not sure if he needed to flesh out what really should have remained an interesting and well written article, but there are tangents that we are forced to explore that are utterly, utterly either straight up boring or require great strain to see the connection.... 

Probably the worst of the worst of all the death, destruction and marital ugliness (TMI), is that at the end of this wretched experiment he has no opinion.  He hasn't decided that there is any purpose or lack thereof to the locavore movement, the organic movement, or any other of the issues associated with what he just did beyond that he likes that he no longer has to buy eggs, and oh, yeah, they sort of taste better.  I mean COME ON, you built a farm, ran a farm, ate from the farm, put your marriage in second place to the farm, almost lost a finger to the farm and you don't come down on any side of the issues???!!!!   

I love Brooklyn, I love the idea of growing ones own food no matter where you live, and I love the lyrics to the Nine Inch Nails song, but I really did NOT like this book....  Save yourself the money, time and feeling sick to your stomach and just read the New York Magazine article by clicking here.

The "Chips and Salsa" Lady Says I'll Love Them...

I tried to grown green beans in the garden again this summer.  I had visions of dilly beans dancing in my head.  But, all three or four attempts at growing them from seed failed me.  So, mostly, in an effort to keep a pretty and tall wrought iron lattice I got on super sale from a closing Smith and Hawken store from "disappearing" from my garden one night, I planted seedlings from the garden center.  They were labeled your run of the mill "Blue Lake" beans, but I found that unless you picked them less than 3 inches long, they were all seed, all the time.  While they grew lushly, they "weren't no eatin' beans".  I let them go to seed and thought nothing more of them.

But, yesterday, as I was chopping the bean stalks down to green manure, a pod opened up and I found some creamy, smooth, white beans in my hand.  I thought maybe it was worth exploring these seeds after all.  I gathered what was easy to harvest and headed home after three long, hard hours in the garden turning over soil and green manuring the last of the summer crops.

Since I was well past when I should have been eating for my adrenals, I stopped at a little local Mexican joint called "Chips and Salsa" for some quick nourishment.  They know me and my eating habits pretty well there, which meant as soon as they saw me walk in, they started some shrimp tacos without even asking.  While I waited, the owner and I started talking a bit.  She speaks little English.  I speak no Spanish.   But, we didn't need words to see that with bean leaves still stuck to my shirt, dirt on my knees, and hay stuck to my skin, I'd just come from the garden.  She gestured to my garden bag and I pulled out the beans.  She immediately smiled.  I asked her if she knew what they were.  She said a "Mexican bean.  Very yummy.  You will like".   I tried to ask if I need to soak them overnight and I'm not sure she understood, but she said to cook "like a white bean, pinto bean".  And again reiterated I would like them.  I said, garlic? Olive oil?  And she said, "yes, yes, very good!".

This concept of dried beans excites me, now.  It brings out the Laura Ingalls in me.  Putting away beans for soups or smashes for the winter is a whole new adventure.  As much as I loved the fresh fava beans last spring, I think I will double my crop and let half dry out.  I would love to make some genuine fuul next year.  And maybe I'll peruse the catalogs for some black bean seeds.  It would be nice to make my black bean quesadilla with feta next winter from dried beans I've grown myself.  

But, for the moment, maybe today I'll roast a chicken, do a quick soak of the beans and make myself some white bean/garlic/rosemary mash with my mystery beans.  And hope they are as my 'Chips and Salsa' friend said:

Garden Ghouls

Wondering what the garden connection is are you?  Well, I went up to Fourth Street in Long Beach to check out the Zombie Walk tonight and was quite taken with this character calling itself "Psycho Cindy".  As it turns out, "she" was our community garden co-manager, Patrick.  Remind me not to go to the garden after dark...

And some pro-garden slogans from the living dead....  

Happy Halloween!!!!

Harvest in Color and Infrared

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

A Secret Garden

A few months back my friend Hilary took me on a little adventure.  She took me to a secret garden in the hills of Los Angeles.  This garden has a name, but she is sworn (and therefore so am I) to not breathe a word of it.  It's a gated garden and because she is a true believer in all that is beautiful and life affirming, she has been granted a key.  A key which she, in turn, is granting to me.  And it makes my heart do flips.  In the words of Wayne and Garth:  I am not worthy.

This isn't a typical garden.  This steep and winding garden has lovingly and painstakingly been crafted out of tiles, stones, sculptures (wire and otherwise) and the things of life.  It has been erected piece by piece in moments of celebration (His Holiness The Dalai Lama has visited) and grief (the passing of loved ones) and horror (9/11, if only the people in charge of the NYC memorial who are fighting amongst themselves could see this garden's simple and loving memorial).  Oh, it has flowers and trees, but that isn't the POINT of the garden.  Its magic is that it's a garden of imagination and art and belief and faith and desire and music and chimes and soft breezes through the canyon.  And its magic is that, above all, it is a garden of thrones.

There is a throne for your every fancy, desire, dream, and anguish.  If you are in need of some self-compassion: here is your throne.  If you are in need of some flowing tears: here is your throne.  If you are in need of some laughter:  here is your throne.  How about some healing?  Do you need some of that: well, sit here in this throne.  And if you just need some silence?  There.  Over there is a throne for you tucked under an arbor.  Some are named quite specifically:

and as you climb perilously higher and higher, others are for you to just sit and imagine what it might be for you that day...

The makers of this garden are in love with music as much as they are in love with stone and reflection (both the light and internal kind).  There are chimes that ring and musical notes that dance.  And near the throne of music is a tribute to jazz.  Names I knew, names I didn't.  But, it rang its own chime in my heart.  Jazz was a great gift to me the past few years and so I sat in the throne of jazz for awhile, rubbing my hands over the smooth, ruby red stones feeling joy and regret.

And as I finally wandered from the jazz throne I took a detour along Route 66, realizing in many ways I'm a real California girl, now. 

But, you can change your perspective here....  You can look through the looking glass and see a man working in a sea of blues:

Or you can see yourself reflected back in some stones of blue:

Finally, Hilary and I met up on some adjoining thrones, choosing carefully which thrones we would finally rest in for a bit from our silent and individual explorations of the garden.  We would finally speak as we looked down over the winding road that embraced this magical garden in its curves.  We enjoyed the soft, cool, breeze that defied the hot summer day and talked about how lovely it would be to be here in the dusk with a bottle of wine.  I told her that I wanted to be in love here.  I wanted to be in love with someone who would love this garden, too.  Hilary looked off for a moment and then said that while she'd brought her husband here once and he'd appreciated it, she didn't care that he didn't want to keep returning to it, as she did.  She said that she loved the garden and that was enough for her.  I've always admired their relationship, so I thought hard about what I wanted and needed or misunderstood perhaps about myself when I was in a relationship.   I considered it deeply as I looked around at the beauty of the garden and the mystery of each turn of the hill of stones we'd climbed up.

Finally, with a sweet, far off chime playing softly with the breeze, I turned to her and said, "I suppose I don't need someone who loves the garden.  What I really want is to be loved by someone who loves me for being the kind of woman who loves this garden."

And with a graceful nod of approval from my friend, we both looked back down into the secret garden filled with colorful, useful, ethereal thrones and felt grateful for the key to it...

Start to Finish...

PART TWO interrupted

Harvest 10/3/2010

I'm still working on my garden dilemma.  I'll post PART TWO: the dilemma soon.  In the meantime...

After my walk to the Lighthouse this morning, I stopped by my garden to see what the intense combination of heat (113 in Long Beach!!!!!) and rain (torrential downpour for an hour) had done for the tomato plant I'd decided to spare from its green mulch death for another week.  Score!!  Or should I say STRIKE! Since I got one of those bowling last night (doing a happy dance).   Not only has this plant completely recovered from its blossom rot start, the green tomatoes look healthy and happy and these pictured above had vine ripened.

Granted, there may not be even enough to make a third quart of pasta sauce (I made and froze the sauce below last week), but they'll be nice to slice up here or there this week.

Pasta sauce for winter

One of the major components about adrenal recovery is eating regularly - not always my strongest suit. Some weeks I have a weird commuting schedule and now that I live alone again, it just doesn't seem worth it or I don't have the energy to always to cook something "just for myself".  Indeed, there is something healing about preparing a meal to share with people or the person you love, saying a silent prayer of thanks over it, but I digress....

Some days, honestly, my adrenals have knocked me so far off track I can't get the energy up to eat, never mind prepare a meal.  So, I subsist on things that are good for me, like sardines, and some things that are maybe not sooo good for me, but are easy and in an adrenal fog or thyroid low can get the job done like steaming some shrimp wontons from TJs.  

Occasionally I'll guard myself against those hard days and get something big going that will last me a week and just "be there" like a pot of veggie quinoa or the chicken curry I made last week (yummy, btw, w/ sweet potatoes and fresh corn off the cob).  But, today,  I've decided that I will cook individual meals for myself.  I will use the pepper, tomatoes and parsley on some lime grilled shrimp tacos for lunch.  And I will use the thyme and parsley on some salmon for dinner.  I will try to take care of myself like I would take care of someone I loved.

And because it is Sunday in October,  I'll turn on some football or jazz or maybe both.  I'll reorder my business cards because I forgot a letter in my website and they were printed wrong (did I mention I'm still dealing with some brain fog!).  I'll finish my business taxes that are due this month, and I'll work on both my real job and my fake job (look tomorrow for shots of a cool wedding I shot at www.squidpictures.blogspot.com).

But, mostly,  with the help of the beautiful bounty from my garden which I was blessed with today, I'll eat when I'm supposed to....

PART ONE: relationships

PART ONE:

I've been thinking about relationships a lot this week.  What it means to be in one.  What it means to keep one healthy.  What it means to fight for one or let one go.  What it means to be respected in one.

And as I stood over my 5 x 12 plot this morning contemplating a gardening dilemma I have (more on that later) - exhausted and spent from another night pacing the loft arguing with myself over some things -  it suddenly became clear to me that not only am I "in relationship" with my garden,  I'm "in" a relationship with my garden, too.  And while those are related, they are not the same. 

The garden and I most definitely have a relationship.  I nourish it.  It, in turn, nourishes me.  The most basic of needs met for a partnership, no?

Years ago,  I asked my father how he'd managed to keep a healthy relationship with my mother.  It wasn't like I never witnessed arguing or strain between them or even once what came close in my tattered childhood memory to a real separation.   But in the end they always chose love and commitment and the work that entailed.  He was driving, I remember, and he told me that the whole notion of relationships being 50/50 was a lie.  My father told me that in real life relationships are always 60/40.  He said, "Sometimes you are giving 60% and sometimes you are getting 60%".  And that made sense to me, somehow.

In practical terms, I can see where the garden can be a guide to a healthy relationship.  Certainly the 60/40 rule applies.  There are times in the season, like now, when the garden has finished producing for me.  And it's my turn.  It's my turn to buy seeds, start seeds, plant seeds.  It's my turn to amend the soil with back breaking work and create a fertile ground.  Stand my ground maybe?  I will give my 60% now, in order for the garden to give its 60% in a few months when it will be bountiful again with beets, carrots, radishes, fava beans, peas.  With maybe a minimal 40% effort on my part to water, the garden will hold up its end of our 60/40 relationship in the form of food and flowers for me.

And as I stood over my gardening dilemma this morning (we'll get to that shortly),  I thought about other ways in which my garden and I surprisingly reflected the human relationships I'm in or not in I suppose.

SPACE:  Every gardener knows that most plants need space to flourish.  There is that moment in the growing process, and in a relationship, where you have to trust that giving the plant some space - which can mean making some hard, painful, or scary choices in the short run - like pruning or culling - is the best thing for a healthy and fruitful long run.  Now, some plants, like people,  can do with a bit more crowding than others, but most plants definitely need their space.  And if you try to crowd them, they can't realize their full potential.  I've been guilty of this, I think.  I may have been too exhilarated about a relationship that I crowded my partner, not even realizing that had I given him the space he required, it would have also allowed me the the space I needed to grow, as well.

On the other hand, most plants can't grow completely alone.   Sure, there is the occasional Joshua Tree (great U2 album, buy it) or cactus seemingly sitting alone, miles from another cactus as you drive through the desert.  But, most plants don't thrive in that kind of environment.  Ultimately,  plants (and people, no matter what they might say) need companionship.  Sometimes it's because they actually can reach greater heights together by leaning on one another and sometimes it's simply that to bear fruit, to create if you will, they need to be pollinated by their fellow plants.  And all the bees in the world can't help the plant if there isn't another one of its kind somewhere nearby.

This all seems true of a relationship, too.  Each person in the partnership has their own needs in this regard - how much "space" they need to flourish as an individual and as part of the garden.  But, ultimately, they do need one another and will thrive in the larger picture of both their lives and the relationship because they have each other.  I find that comforting.

REST:  A garden, like a relationship, needs at times to rest from its frantic pace, sit squarely in some stillness to recover and evaluate.  To take a break from being "in" a relationship to just being "in relationship" with the gardener.  And the gardener gets to rest, too.  Although it doesn't mean that either one of them has "checked out" or that something becomes stagnant.  The garden, with its spent growth heating up under a lot of mulch simply changes gears.  It gets to break down old matter, process it, clean it up.  It can heal itself with some rest and reflection.   If the garden (or we) gets the chance to properly say goodbye to the old, to honor it, process it, and send it off as rich matter that will support the future, then the garden (and a relationship in the present) can grow and be healthy.  If the old, depleted soil or beliefs or attachments remain for too long - stealing nourishment and taking up space in soil or heart - then the new harvest won't stand a chance.  Garden and Gardener are simply stuck trying to grow something new where the old has taken root, but no longer bears fruit or simply impedes what new could come.  

To be prepared for a future growth we sometimes need to lay fallow, honor the past seasons, and repair in order for our garden to be ready and healthy for the possible new growth.  And the gardener, who has been off evaluating her own successes and missteps of the last season, making notes about what worked and didn't, what needs more attention or space can come back both renewed and more aware of what needs to be tended to in the garden.

PART TWO:  the garden dilemma,  to be continued....

Seedfolks

In honor of yesterday's Harvest Moon, here's another garden-centric book for your bookshelves:  SEEDFOLKS by Paul Fleischman.  This little novel, which I believe is technically a young adult novel, is a really fast read (I mean like an hour) for anyone who loves gardening or has been / wants to be a part of a community garden.

Told from the point of view of various folks who garden a "vacant" (except for the garbage and tires) lot, each one has something to offer to the group that is uniquely theirs and something they take away which nourishes them in the broadest of definitions.  It speaks to the universality of the joys of growing food to eat and share. 

I loved this passage in the voice of Nora, the caretaker of Mr. Myles - an aged, wheelchair bound man.  He gardens in a barrel contraption he can reach, which she rigs up.  But, the gardening isn't just for him:

That small circle of earth became a second home to both of us.  Gardening boring?  Never!  It has suspense, tragedy, startling developments -- a soap opera growing out of the ground.  I'd forgotten that tremolo of expectation produced by a tiny forest of sprouts.

How true!!!

SEEDFOLKS would make a great stocking stuffer for anyone you know who loves their garden or dreams of having one.

Gnome in the Northwest Corner

current garden plan 9.21.10

No, this isn't a secret play for the San Diego Chargers.  This is use 101 for my chalkboard dining room table... thinking out the garden plan.

This is generally what things look like right about now... the lettuces are taking well, and the summer crops are still holding their ground - green tomatoes and flowers, a single eggplant FINALLY forming and actually a few peppers growing.  But, things are going to have to change....  And soon, since the following seed packets have arrived:

Botanical Interests : Early Wonder Beets, Cherry Belle Radishes, Gourmet Blend Beats, Carnival Blend Carrots, Brightest Brilliant Quinoa (particularly excited about that one!)

Territorial Seed Company:  Canoe Shelling Peas, Broad Windsor Fava Beans, Winter Density Romaine Lettuce, Sylvetta Wild Arugula, Red Marble Onions, Top Keeper Onions, Touchstone Gold Beets, Nantes Carrots (thrown in by Territorial for Plant a Row for the Hungry via Garden Writer's Org - these will be given away).

Then there are the ranunculus I want to plant and some seeds from last year of this or that nature.

We've had a marine layer for at least one week straight, so I'm thinking unless next week's weather forecast has some miraculous heat wave, I should sacrifice the tomatoes to let that ground rest for a month before I plant there again.   But, cutting down a bevy of green tomatoes will be hard....  Especially since I have only gotten one quart of tomato sauce with maybe another waiting in line in the bowl of tomatoes on the counter. 

It's a lot of seeds for a 5x12 plot (plus that little extra L), so it's going to be tricky.  But, with the handy dandy erasable chalk plan, I should be able to come up with something!   I'll keep you posted. 

Song of Songs

Let us go early to the vineyards

  to see if the vines have budded,

if their blossoms have opened,

  and if the pomegranates are in bloom --

there I will give you my love.

                                                  Song of Songs 7:12

I've been thinking a lot about pomegranates lately.  The tree in our community garden is hanging low with them and I'd gotten it in my head to make pomegranate jam.  Easier said than done, but I digress...

Long before I ever had ever held one, eaten one, or opened one, I loved pomegranates.  I don't know if it was the melding of the apple green and the garnet red or the little royal decoration at the top that reminded me of Max's crown in WHERE THE WILD THING ARE.  I was drawn to the gem-like seeds which were held like the greatest of treasure by this hardest of hard fruits.   The seeds glistened in paintings or photographs, seeming to me like the deep tones of reds went deeper and deeper into a tiny reflective pool.  I wondered if they tasted sweet or sour.  I wondered, before I knew, if that was even the part one might eat!

I'm not sure if I was drawn to them because pomegranates hold a special place in literature and once a "Lit Major" always a "Lit Major".  They showed up in books and poems representing fertility and beauty and abundance.  Pomegranates will often be eaten at Rosh Hashana dinner as Jewish tradition tells that pomegranates have 613 seeds which correspond to the 613 mitzvohs of the Torah. For them, these powerful fruits are a symbol of righteousness.  Or maybe it was just the exotic nature of them: The secrets that they might hold about far away desert lands.  They seemed forbidden and mysterious - as if they held primal information within them of who we are as people.  And in fact, the trees first grew in Iran and then during ancient times quickly spread to the Himalayan area of India and on to the Middle East, and Greece.  And having traveled in some of those regions and having felt the deep connection to them, to the earth - as if this is indeed where we sprung from - I think perhaps pomegranates actually do hold some secret to our being.

Now, of course, they are almost common place.  You can get them already juiced in your supermarket in the smallest of towns.  Doctors rave about the antioxidant nature of them.  They are being used for political and social maneuverings in Afghanastan to convince farmers to move from growing the lucrative crop of opium to the even more lucrative crop of pomegranates.   I mean have you seen the price of the juice?  Although, having attempted the jam, I have some theories about that.  But, again, I digress...

Ultimately, though, pomegranates are sexy.  When they ripen they gently split open revealing more and more of their plump, fertile, ruby seeds.  The darker, the sweeter.  Hanging open - their jewels to be plucked - they tempt birds and humans alike.   And they show up a lot in the grandest of grandest of literature: the bible.  While some scholars may argue that Song of Songs is a treatise on political dealings and conflict between beliefs and nations, others believe it might have been an early kind of erotic poetry.  But, no matter what the origin, there is our fruit in question front and center to the longing and desire with pomegranate-colored temple blushing and love making under its blossoms.  One can imagine lovers feeding each other the dark, sweet seeds while juices drip down upon their lips.  And maybe I'm just missing some romance in my life right now, but this seems reason enough to love pomegranates.

I would lead you

  and bring you to my mother's house --

I would give you spiced wine to drink,

  the nectar of my pomegranates.

                                                                                        Song of Songs 8:2

 Oh, and the pomegranate jam.  yeah, still taking those damn seeds out of them.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, please check out some photographs I took of the lovely poms from the garden over at www.squidpictures.blogspot.com

Farm City

It isn't a Fall day, but I'm pretending it is.  I've been sitting in my armchair with football on low in the background, mousaka warming on the stovetop for lunch, and a box of tissues because it seems I've found myself a cold.  Luckily I watered the garden yesterday (lettuce sprouts doing well!).  So, despite all the work I have in so many other vertical categories of my life, I decided to finish a book that my fellow gardener friend Kristin gave me for my birthday last year.  Shamefully, because of all the other reading I HAVE to do, it has taken me almost a year to finish a book for pleasure.  It is called FARM CITY: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.  She takes you along on her adventures in urban farming including the joy and heartache attached to raising pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, bees, and vegetables.  Carpenter keeps you very entertained as she leads you through how quickly a desire for sustainability can lead to finding yourself doing everything from dumpster diving to massaging a pig's hind quarter with salt in the quest for some homemade prosciutto if you aren't careful!  All this takes place on an abandoned piece of land next to her apartment in a "bad" section of Oakland, CA.  I highly recommend it.  This paragraph caught my attention:

While rooting around the history of prosciutto making, I had stumbled upon this quote from Pliny the Elder, the ancient Roman naturalist, about Epicurus, the famous Greek hedonist:  "That the connoisseurs in the enjoyment of life of ease was the first to lay out a garden at Athens; up to this time it had never been thought of to dwell in the country in the middle of town."  The garden, as far as scholars can sort out, grew fruits and vegetables.  

She goes on to write that the notion that an urban farmer existed before Christ made her feel as if at its very core, there really is nothing new.  And that we are all a part of it.  

Indeed.

Cam's Garden

I'm probably the last garden blogger in LA to know about this guy, but he was featured in The LA Times today and just a few posts into his blog, I'm sort of digging him.  He's like the Apocalypse Now / Hunter S. Thompson version of a garden blogger.  

Caution:  Curse words and unkind thoughts towards gophers.

Cam's Garden

Tomato, Potato, Zucchini, Oh My! (what the heck do I do with it all!)

Bounty from one day last summer.

We've pretty much established that this Summer, my garden took a back seat to other kinds of growing (and hopefully harvesting).  It took a back seat to fitting in a yoga class or a long walk.  Sometimes it took a back seat to a bit of a longer sleep in the morning when my adrenals were kicking my butt.  It took a back seat to work, mostly.  All sowing was done there this year.  It had to.  And, of course, this past Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer I've had a strange and conflicted relationship to my 5 x 12 plot because of all that it meant for me before The Squeeze left me.  But, slowly, I'm getting back in the swing of things.... I have high hopes for the Fall plantings.

But, in the meantime, I'm a failed gardener this summer.  Oh sure, I've harvested one bowl worth of tomatoes and some herbs.  I picked one japanese eggplant and two cucumbers with a scattering of carrots.  And there were the two cabbages that grew ever so slowly over the Fall and Winter and finally were harvested a few weeks ago.   And, I picked... um, oh yeah.  Nada.  I mean I probably have broken some kind of gardening record.  A zucchini plant that grew NO zucchini.  Stop the presses!

But, if you happen to have had a much better growing season and find yourself sneaking around in the middle of the night dropping produce off on your neighbor's front porch.  Here's an idea:  Give it to the hungry.  I follow a lovely blog called GREEN FRIEDA.  And Audrey has posted HERE about a wonderful organization called Ample Harvest   So, if you find yourself with an embarrassment of riches in the form of garden produce, maybe this is the solution! 

Sometimes a Garden is Just a Garden

Last year's cucumbers.... sigh. 

Sometimes it's just about actually gardening:

- picked a dozen or so San Marzano tomatoes
- lamented over the second plant that seems to have fruit that is rotting from the bottom **
- picked two dozen or so yellow tear drop tomatoes
- planted lettuce seedlings in the plot under the peach tree (thank Leigh for leaving extras)
- planted snap pea seedlings (why not try for the third time this year!) Planted them closer together than last batch.  Maybe it will help.  ***
 
** Note to self.  Google this and figure out what you've done wrong.
*** Doubtful!  Mostly just get to the garden more to water, damn it!

Meditation...

I'm behind schedule today.  As usual.  I can't ever seem to find enough time to work, exercise, play, explore my photography, sleep, rest, organize, clean, and connect with friends and loved ones.

My garden keeps coming last these days, so true to my post yesterday I chose to spend the time I needed there this morning.  Bright and early at 8am I did the following:

****  Cut down most of my basil which I was finding too bitter to make pesto out of and "green manured" it to break down for a few months in my lettuce bed.
****  Green manured my japanese eggplant that just wasn't producing and truthfully looked like an abuse case.  Someone should call to report me to the plant equivalent of Child Services.
****  Replanted my cilantro to a shadier spot after googling that it can't be in soil that heats up to 75 Degrees.  um yeah.  Given my watering schedule the past few months it's like its been growing in the Sahara. All bolt, no leaves.  I have very little hope for its survival, but have learned for the next round.
****  Moved my zucchini plant to try to give it space and hopefully grow.  So far this summer there have been few flowers and absolutely no fruit.  How neglectful of a gardener must you be in order to not have zucchini grow.  Barbara Kingsolver talks in her book ANIMAL, MINERAL, MIRACLE about making sure in the summer that your house and car doors are locked so as to not find yourself with your neighbor's excess zucchini (usually while you are out trying to unload yours!)  That's how neglectful!
****  Pulled up runners for my Chinese Lantern.
****  Harvested:  tomatoes: san marzano and yellow teardrop, basil, rosemary, parsley, a leaf or two of non-bolted cilantro, thyme.  So, basically nothing is growing in my garden this year!
****  Pulled dead leaves off of the teardrop tomato plant.
****  Moved a pepper plant to a sunnier space.
****  Tied up tomato plants.
****  Picked off bolting bits from the one basil plant I left standing as a companion plant for the tomato plants.  I used the massive amounts of those flowering bolted bits as more green manure.
****  Mulched with the new straw that the garden manager brought in.
****  Weeded nut grass.
****  Composted one sage plant and prayed for the health of the other.
****  And watered.  Long slow watering for the entire time I worked in the garden.  And still I know it wasn't enough to get down deep - my plants were so deprived....

And so at 11am, a full three hours - and according to my iphone app 823 calories later - I headed home;  late enough, dirty enough, and hungry enough that I could not make the "Introduction to Meditation" class I'd wanted to attend today.  "You failed at your list of things to do again," I thought.

But, then I realized that I'd spent three hours meditating.  No thoughts - good or bad - had entered my mind while snipping, digging, pruning, picking.  No fears.  No worries.  No lists of all that awaited me at home yet to do today.  No heartbreak.  Nothing.  Just silence.  Me and God in the garden with only empty mind space of meditative work in front of me.  And I know I still need to get to the class and learn to empty my mind and center my body and soul for when I'm not at the garden.  But, at least for today, I will check it off my 'to do' list:  Meditate: CHECK

And yes,  as predicted in yesterday's post, my manicure is ruined. 

My Grandmother's Hands...

This is not a picture of my grandmother's hands.  It is, in fact, a photo of my hand today taken with my iphone after a manicure because holding my "big girl" camera up with a heavy lens by just one hand seemed more challenging than I was up for today.

I work in a business where "coiffed" is a write off on your taxes. Yet, I've never managed to get the time (or inclination) to make weekly appointments at the nail salon.  I scramble before a big event, occasionally.  Or I go more often when I'm being urged by friends or therapists or loved ones to "take more time" for myself, wincing at the $12 bucks (yes, Vietnamese salon is the fanciest I enter!).  I think, "what a waste".  I'll end up washing or cleaning or buttoning my jeans in an hour and the polish will be ruined.  I'll wash my hair once or twice (there is a lot of it) and the manicure will be a brief memory and I'll be back to hiding my hands under the table at meetings. 

But, really, as I sit there being pampered I think:  here's what has to happen in the garden tomorrow:

- the coriander needs to be moved to a shadier spot because it's bolting
- the japanese eggplant needs to just be turned over - it ain't happening this summer
- the zucchini needs to have the leaves cut back
- the tomatoes need to be tied
- the nutgrass needs to be weeded
- the blue stone pavers need to be lifted up and the ground graded....

You get the picture.  I berate myself for not planning the manicure better.  But, honestly, there is never a good time when you are a gardener.  Maybe if you just grow roses.  I don't know.  Inform me, Dear Readers.  But, when you are generally just eager to get your hands in the dirt, a manicure is not long for the world.  

I'm generally of the mind that my hands, by today's beauty standards, leave much to be desired.  They aren't elegant or feminine.  I struggle to keep long nails.  And they certainly don't have the appearance as to be some extension of a beautiful sculpture made flesh.  In fact, I doubt any artist in his right mind would ever WANT to sculpt them or paint them or, truthfully, photograph them (see Exhibit A above).  They are for a lack of a more poetic description:  chubby, short, sausage fingered hands.  They are "peasant" hands.  The are gardener's hands.

And, as I have begun to recognize as I'm aging, they are also my grandmother's hands.  They are the hands of my Italian grandmother:  Mary.  Maria.  Nana.  She was worker that one.  Worked from the time she was 16 until the day she died.  She cleaned, cooked, raised children, cut wood, and buffed that kitchen floor every night of her adult life and - while most of the gardening fell to her brother - yes, she gardened, too. 

So, there it is.  Love me.  Love my hands.  They are worker hands.  They are gardener's hands.  They are Mary's hands.

Daisies for Simon

I have grieved a child.  Really, I have grieved children.  Ones I did not have.  I know the depth of loss "that never was".   It's impossible to explain this kind of grief to someone who has not felt the deep, deep desire for motherhood - to feel the stir of a child within - but has been denied it.  The children I did not have were dreamed of and prayed for and deftly tried to be made manifest with science and money.   They were named in the secret places of my mother heart and kept from everyone - even from the man who was mysteriously and simultaneously winning my lover heart.  Telling him there were no names for these babies of which I dreamed was the only lie I ever told him.   But, as time marched on and no children arrived to claim these names, I reluctantly or graciously or excitedly pulled them out of my heart's secret compartment for others to use for their children and even, secretly, a tiny ginger colored cat that I love.

Arriving at crossroads,  I chose to let go of that dream and give my heart over to another dream of equal desire - to share a life with someone I loved.   So, at the crossroads, I chose a partnership of adventure and desire and companionship.   But, as with every loss - even with such wonderful other things on the horizon and a partner I believed loved me - it needed to be grieved.  And this loss was and is profound.  It rumbles the depths of my soul some days.  And even more so now that the other dream has also washed ashore and I'm left alone....

But, no matter how deep that grief for the children that did not come to me,  I can't imagine the loss of a child actually placed in your arms by God.  A child who laughs and plays and cries and loves you as only a child can love a parent.  A child you committed to be the protector of even when, in the dark truth of reality, that is impossible by any measure.  I can't imagine what that would be each day of ones life to grieve ones child.

What does this have to do with gardening you ask?

Well, a garden is about birth and death and renewal.  It was for me the place I poured my grief into when it had become the elephant in the room and I could not grieve openly at home.  But, how that revelation came to me is for another time.  Now is about a post by my friend Ilaria which can be read here.  She has written beautifully about the loss of a friend's 10 year old son.   A boy who claimed the name Simon.

I did not know him, but my heart sunk for his parents and then lifted again when Ilaria wrote that his parents and his sister would be traveling to places around the world that he had delighted in - even in his short time on earth.  And in each of these ten places, they would plant one tree.  Ten trees for Simon.  One for each year he gave them joy and happiness.  One for each year he was uniquely him on this earth. 

They will be pouring their grief into a garden.  They will plant something that will grow and grow and grow as their son will no longer be able to do.   What courage they have.

And while I can't know their deepest of deepest grief, I know enough from my own desires and loss to know they will water these trees with their own tears.

I can't plant a tree in my 5x12 plot.  I signed a paper saying so.  But, I have already planted Violets for my Nana and Hyacinth for my Poppop.  And tomorrow I will plant orange Gerber Daisies for a boy I did not know named Simon.  I'll do this because my heart breaks for his mother and father and sister.   And for my friend Ilaria who must be holding her own sons that much tighter today.

And with luck and love these playful bright daisies will come up again every year.  And, maybe, in some secret way known only to the Universe, this will help comfort a grieving family who are planting trees around the world in the name of their son.

I'm not a vegan, but I photograph ones that will be on TV

My portrait of Master Gardener Adriana Martinez is in this months VegNews Magazine which focuses on a vegan lifestyle.  So, while this post isn't about my garden per se,  I met Adriana through her blog when I was starting to plant my little 5x12 plot of dirt.  She's creating an empire through her Anarchy In The Garden  -  "keeping it punk by growing her own" (and helping others to do the same).  Mark my words:  You'll see her in a bookstore and on a cable channel near you soon.  In the meantime, look for my portrait of Adriana (and my microscopic credit!) in the July/August issue of VegNews Magazine at a Borders, Albertson's, or Whole Foods.  Here's a low res preview for you:

For every season....

I was at a birthday party in Portland on Saturday.  The first person I met happened to be a really great woman who grew up in Long Beach.  Immediately she asked me what had brought me to my adopted town.  I hesitated, as I am apt to do lately, and said, "I followed love".   And then quickly,  "Silly, I know".  After reassuring me it wasn't and telling her own tale of love followed, she asked if I was still with my Love.  Choking back emotion, I had to admit that, "No, he left me".  She waxed poetic about opportunities and new beginnings and what's bad can be good again.  And maybe she's right, but I'm not there yet.   So, she turned instead to asking me what I've been doing to help soldier on.  Canning I told her.  "I've been canning".

And I have.  I started in February, right after my Squeeze left.  I began with Blood Orange Marmalade.  It was my first attempt and it went okay, although the blood orange caramels I found on another Long Beach resident and photographer's site Matt Bites were an even bigger hit.  But, when Blood Oranges moved out of season I searched for what to do with the abundance of organic pears at Trader Joes and fell into a Ginger Pear Preserve courtesy of Emeril.  And for me, given my current ginger obsession, these little jars of ginger colored goodness were spoonfuls of happiness and a delight to give away.  But then with Spring deeply sprung and summer waiting anxiously around the corner,  you couldn't walk two feet at the farmers' market without being knocked down by sweet, sweet strawberries.  So, I turned to my new canning crush's website: Kevin West's Saving The Season.  There I was challenged to make Strawberry Preserves with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper.  And, I did - gel testing with my antique plates and spoons which made it all the more sacred somehow.

Truthfully, other than a lick of the bowl at clean up, I haven't even tried it.  With the battle of my adrenals, thyroid, and sinus raging this summer,  I'm supposed to be off sugar.  So, there it sits in my pantry.   One jar got sent to Portland as a hostess gift along with a jar of each of the others and some zucchini bread with crystallized ginger and curry.   But, eating it isn't why I'm doing it.  Canning keeps me busy at night or on a weekend.  It forces me to focus on something that quite frankly requires, well, focus.  One mind-drift to days of old and you are looking at burnt sugar or shattered jars.  It requires me to be present.  Not thinking about a past that I miss or the future I fear or the fact that I'm alone in a big loft with only a new kitten to keep me company.   It keeps me productive and challenged and connected somehow because these jars of beautiful preserves and jams (and maybe as the summer creeps along veggies and tomatoes) are meant to be shared and gifted.  And they will be. 

Until then I'll mark the healing of my heart by the contents of the jars I've put up.  Time and seasons and heartache all move along.  And good will come of bad.  And maybe by Blood Orange Marmalade season next year I'll have more joy and surprises in my life than I can ever imagine.

Garden Work

R

Recently someone accused me of wasting time in my garden.  They said it wasn't hard work, that it was a place to hide out from problems and didn't have any component of exercising, this gardening stuff.  Essentially,  this person was saying that it wasn't a "productive" endeavor.  And I've been thinking about this statement a lot recently.

I have lifted heavy stones, dug trenches, laid bricks, carried 25 pound bags of dirt, after 25 pound bags of dirt blocks from a parking space to the garden, pounded trellises into the ground, dug deep holes, walked the length of the garden 10 times to get the water pressure right, graded a plot, built boxes and cubby holes, bent, twisted, and sweated all the while doing a crazy dance to shoo away bees and shake off ants.  A silly little app on my iphone says that 2 hours in the garden can burn almost 600 calories;   Two hundred less than moderate hiking and half as much as bicycling at a moderate rate. But more than 2 hours of golfing or guitar playing.  Or so says the app. 

And yes, I have lost four hours at a time there working, watering, and talking to gardeners and wanna be gardeners who stroll through the gates asking questions.  And sometimes being there gives me the space away from others and sometimes it gives people I love space away from me.  Sometimes the four hours spent there is on purpose for just that reason.  And sometimes it is because I am gloriously covered in dirt and sweat and lost in the work....

And maybe this isn't exactly a "productive" result - a small pitcher of violets, for instance.  But, it pleases me and that should be reason enough to support the gardener in your life.