A Squid's Eye View From The Garden

She Let Go..

2012-01-29T17:25:00.000-08:00

I spent a few hours weeding in the garden today. It was a beautiful day for that kind of meditative work. The East Village was quiet and I was alone. The garden thinks it's spring, so as I worked peach blossoms floated on the wind into my hair. The flower bulbs have come up and the hyacinth I planted in memory of my grandfather is in full bloom.

The goal was to weed an area just outside my plot which had become overgrown with 'nut grass'. For those non-gardeners out there, this is a hardy weed connected by a nut-type root. It sends out underground branches which can continue on for forever, sending up grass and squeezing out anything else in its path. Inevitably, if it’s NEAR your garden it will be IN your garden momentarily.

There's been a lot of rain the past week and the ground was still soft, so these normally determined weeds were coming up easily. The grass, roots and nuts were just giving over to me. That got me thinking about something that keeps coming up in my new meditation practice: the reoccurring theme of ‘letting go’. Sometimes in the Dharma talks it's followed by the words, “of attachments”, but not always.

In all honesty, I’m not a good “let’er go’er”.

I’m the keeper of family history, belongings, traditions – even recipes! I’m sentimental and have long friendships. I'm loyal. I tend to stick by people, running alongside them, cheering them on at times - even when they can’t believe in themselves or us. I’ve done this in professional relationships, friendships, and love affairs. I’ve even, sometimes, been thanked for the belief and persistence - for being the one not willing to let go.

But, it gets confusing to me, this idea of 'letting go'. As I pulled up that nut grass this morning, the sweet smell of the hyacinth found its way to me bringing back memories of my grandfather. Does not letting go of sentimental feelings hold me back? I absolutely know people who are not "sentimental". Or at least claim they aren't. Are they better in mind, heart, and soul for that?

What does it really mean to LET GO? Or likewise, what does it mean to be let go? How do you let go of being let go? In particular, how do you let go of attachments to people without becoming heartless or sterile or robotic? That last part confounds me the most.

Where does the heart have a say or a place?

However, when it comes to releasing fear or pain or hurt, I get it. I'm not good at it yet, but I get it: the goal is to yield like that nut grass did today. As those weeds were giving over to me, I thought of something I'd read recently which feels like a sort of freedom:

"She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the 'right' reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go……Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go. There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was what it was, and it is just that. In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore." - Ernest Holmes

oops...

2012-01-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

...I hatched another Monarch in the loft.

I accidentally brought a chrysalis home on some rosemary the other day. Luckily I caught it before it found its way into a roasted chicken! I meant to return it to the garden, but days passed as those things do and this morning a beautiful Monarch greeted me in my closet, where I had ferreted the rosemary and her chrysalis away out of my kitten's grasp.

She has no spots on her wings, so this one is female. She clearly had time to stretch her wings, but had only moved a half a foot from her chrysalis - funnily enough clinging to a wooden plaque I have with the British wartime advice of "Keep Calm and Carry On". Still the poor thing must have been confused in the dark. I guided her into a jar and took her back to the garden where after a few minutes pondering the milkweed plant, she tried her wings out.

What a blessing to witness her very first flight... wobbles and all. She flew 25 yards and landed on some fern.

I think she'll be just fine.

Italian Girls Are Saucy

2011-08-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

What I learned in my garden so far this summer: I'm a Saucy Italian Girl. Let me explain...

I didn't start the garden for economic reasons. I don't continue to garden for economic reasons. I'm fortunate enough to not have to count on what I grow to feed myself. In fact, if there has been one theme of this blog, it's that for me the joy of garden is sharing it.

I also don't tend to keep track of the store value of what I grow like many other gardeners. However, today's early morning tomato haul seemed particularly HEAVY, so out of curiosity I put those puppies on a scale and lookie here: almost 4 pounds of tomatoes (some wouldn't fit on the plate!). And yes, that's not counting the plate. The scale was set back to zero, so that's all unadulterated red, juicy TO-MA-TERS.

I planted only heirloom varieties this year: three in total. Don't ask me what kind, I can't see the tags anymore - it's a JUNGLE out there! But, let's just say I went shopping at Whole Foods (which I rarely do, but let's just say...). Their heirlooms are somewhere in the range of 3.99 a pound, so I'm guessing I've got about $15 or so dollars worth of produce on that scale. At $2.99 a seedling and (who knows really, but let's guess) about 30 more pounds of tomatoes yet to ripen, I'm thinking I made good on my initial investment. If only my retirement portfolio had that kind of return!

Funny thing is... after three very elegant caprese salads in the past two weeks, all wonderful excuses to dine and wine with friends and colleagues, I've come to the conclusion that what I really want are some good old fashioned San Marzanos to make pasta sauce with. I'm already buckling under the pressure to showcase the heirlooms in meals! I just want to can or freeze some tomato sauce!

Turns out, in the end, I'm really just a simple, saucy Italian gal at heart.

A Garden's Story

2011-08-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

They say that transformative art is "the personal made universal".

I have just finished reading Joyce Carol Oate’s A WIDOW’S STORY, the tale of her first year of (sudden) widowhood after many decades of marriage. Despite never having had (thankfully) a dead husband, I was struck by how much her grief resonated with me. In truth, grief and despair, no matter the source or trigger, is grief and despair. Battling illness can mimic the same.

The descriptions of her journey through widowhood including having only energy enough to change television channels, juggling a public work persona which carries on but depletes one of all energy, the deep pain of loneliness that keeps one asking ‘why bother’ when whether one has had a good or bad day it's all the same once arriving back at an empty house, the sleeplessness and then the challenge (as she describes it) to slowly blow oneself up like a large balloon each morning, and mostly intensely, the sense of such delicate threads of family and friends that are holding one down, tethered to earth, rather than simply cutting them and flying free in all the forms that might mean, all hit close to home for me. Her personal had become universal.

Ray Smith, her husband, had been a gardener. The back yard was his domain. As that first Spring arrives and the garden awakens, she understands that her choice is to let it grow over with weeds or plant her own garden in its place.

She notes, “A gardener is one for whom the prospect of the future is not threatening, but happy”.

She dons his gloves and his clothes and begins to do the Spring errands she watched her husband do each year, but instead of vegetables which she has no appetite for, she plants things that will bring her some joy – perennials versus annuals. In doing so, “his” garden is now “their” garden.

She writes about working in the garden to create something in his memory and says, “… and I am working with my hands, and with my back, and my legs --- for working in the soil is working. And so, as I am working, I am thinking – but the kind of thinking I am doing isn’t anything like the kind of thinking I would do elsewhere, still less in bed, in the nest. This is a kind of thinking in tandem with working --- some part or parts of my brain is roused, alive".

Her husband’s garden is what finally begins to connect her back to her life. It places body and mind together. I suspect any gardener will say this is true no matter the reason they themselves happen to be digging in that dirt.

And so, like her tale of grief, she reveals the garden to be its own form of simple, transformative art. My personal becoming universal...

I Ate Tomatoes Over The Sink...

2011-08-03T23:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight I ate tomatoes over the sink. Well, just about over the sink. I did it because I could. There was no one here to stop me.

I ate them over the sink because they were ripe and juicy and so unexpectedly good after a Fall, Winter, Spring, and almost half a Summer worth of useless, tasteless, crappy, mealy, hot house-flown in, store bought tomatoes. I ate them over the sink because once I started I could not stop.

It began in this way…. You see, I’ve been hoarding the ripe tomatoes this week – the very first of the season for me. I’ve left them to go really ripe on the vine, not taken a moment sooner. I have a business lunch at the loft on Friday and wanted to impress and confound with some caprese. What could be more charming? But, tonight as I was searching for leftovers to brighten up some brown rice pasta with pesto I had brewing, I saw the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana would not be “technically” good by then. It couldn’t go to waste.

So, I sliced ONE small tomato, an heirloom variety that has grown so bushy and my gardening notes are so woefully scant that I can no longer see the tag and have no other reference at this point to put a name to it. On the same plant, the tomatoes themselves range from San Marzano-like to more delicate bell shaped drops of deep orange-red that gently fold and curve into themselves as if to be wearing their best Victorian skirt to the “ball of the year”.

I sliced it, sprinkled a tiny bit of salt and piled on a small slab of the mozz. Oh My. It wasn’t quite a Jersey Tomato from my youth, (with a capital J and a capital T), but the flesh was just the right amount of acidic and then a surprise, as the sweet, sweet juices came rushing in to make it right. It tasted – I kid you not - RED. You could feel each ray of sunshine that had brought it from green to red to plump and juicy dancing on your tongue. It tasted like SUMMER. It tasted like PLEASURE.

And so I had another. And another. And, yes, another. And shamefully, another.

“Slice, salt, mozz, groan with pleasure”.

I ate them over the sink to catch the juices and because I ate them so fast, one right after another, I couldn’t move from that place; the pesto pasta abandoned. Honestly, it would have been gluttonous, but for the size of the tomatoes!

I ate them over the sink because I could. There was no one to stop me. And, still, with each bite of such taste-flavor-juiciness, I wished someone, you, were here to moan and groan and hmmm and yummmm with delight in what I’ve grown and how good the earth and wind and sun and water were to me and these lovely little tomatoes.

I wished someone, you, were here to share in the sweet goodness that were once my bowl of tomatoes. And I wouldn't even be bothered if you ate them over the sink, too.

Sun Setting On The First Tomatoes

2011-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

2011-07-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow in the garden I'll be taking out the mystery squash, watering, and maybe planting something in the box with the strawberries.

Tonight, I'll dive further into my book AN EXTRAVAGANT HUNGER: the passionate years of M.F.K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman. M.F.K. was a woman who wrote about food and life and passion like no one else and I thought I should read about her with the hopes that it might be of some influence on me. Today, July 3rd, was her birthday, just over 100 years ago. She was a woman who only came into her own writing and voice later on in her life, so I have some hope!

Now, though, with the holiday just an hour away, I'll wish you a HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY with my VERY poorly styled shot of clams and fresh baked bread from a little road trip I took to Malibu this afternoon. I tried to place the flag artfully and then just decided on the Mount Everest approach and simply stabbed the bread. I just couldn't be bothered to make it nicer, you know, what with the fish and chips sitting just off to the side to devour and my belly crying out for some food!

Patience

2011-05-31T23:56:00.000-07:00

I'm obviously not the first person, writer, poet or farmer with a pipe to give this tidbit of wisdom... But, gardening takes PATIENCE. It takes patience because crops fail at any given point in the process, even after you've put months of time in. It takes patience because sometimes the seeds don't even sprout. It takes patience because sometimes you just have to take a deep breath when half your plant has been eaten by a critter or as I experienced today, it is very clear that a snail (or 5) has taken a slimy joy ride on your beautiful sage.

But, patient I was in my quest for dried fava beans.

My fava obsession started last year when I planted the variety of "Windsor Broad Beans" and ate them green in any number of varied ways and loved them. I loved them, in particular, with farmer's market raw fresh peas swirled up in the food processor with lemon and garlic and a really good parmigiana-reggiano and then set atop a garlic toast and topped with fresh pea sprouts and bufalo mozzarella.

But, after the incident of the mystery beans, I began to wonder if I could find myself this year with some dried fava beans in order to make Fuul. Fuul is what began each and every day of my Egyptian trip. It's favas, garlic, lemon, salt. All blended up like a hummous. And it's fresh and delicious and it brings me back to mornings at the eco lodge on the cool porch being served a boiled egg and fuul and mint tea before I would set out riding the fastest horse in the most glorious of Sea Sands.

But, I digress....

So, this year I went ahead and planted another crop of fava beans. The variety has long escaped me now. And they grew less and produced less, but they grew nonetheless. They grew and flowered and made pods and grew pods. And then I waited. I refrained from harvesting the plump green pods with their "fed ex" bubble wrap around each bean. I just waited. And waited. Eventually I stopped watering and then cursed the rain. But, slowly the pods turned black and wrinkled and the stalks died. And yesterday I did it. I took those wrinkled up old pods.

Then I didn't know WHAT to do. So, I googled. And I found Patrick. Patrick has a great blog called the Bifurcated Carrot. And despite an age old posting on favas as ground covering, he responded to my question in the comment section within a few hours. And then answered a second set of questions. So, a big thank you to him. I would have left them in the pods to dry further. And that would have been a sad ending to my game of patience.

And so here I am with a bowl full of dried fava beans (that still have more drying and then freezing to do apparently) and some fuul is within my reach! I suppose I should have waited to do this post until after I'd made some and posted a lovely photo for you dear reader to see, as well.

But, I didn't have the patience.....

A Run On The Garden

2011-05-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

I took a little (slow) run today. And when I say little, I mean it. But still, it was further than I've gone in very long time. I've had conflicting medical advice about whether running or anything more than yoga is okay for my poor adrenals. I've also been told by someone else that I'm running out of fear - you know, "fight or flight". That I'm flighting.... In some ways, I'm just starting to finally feel and look like myself again so someone else said, it was me exercising my strength and health. I was once a little sporty warrior. You know, back in the day.... Granted, the day was a looooooong time ago. I think it might be a little of all of that...All of it feels right and partially true depending on the day.

But, I ended my little run (and did I mention how little) at the garden which is always a peaceful, restful, restorative place. I got there before the sun had hit anything more than the bright yellow, white and orange ranunculus and I cooled down in the sweet shade.

The tomatoes have jumped in height so I guess they've taken well to things. Some of the dubious onions I got for a bargain actually came up. The late planted garlic seems to be thriving, as well. I even got a garlic scape today. One cucumber seedling has gone M.I.A. I suspect the racoon. But the other two are growing healthy broad leaves.

The big news is that after consulting the garden manager, I made the decision to stop watering the fava beans. It's getting too hot and it's their time to go. I'll let the pods dry out on the vines so I'll have dried beans to make fuul this winter. *does happy dance* The beans will feed me as the fava's fed that raised bed.

I gave the little plot a good soaking. It's going to be hot today. I came home with what I suspect will be the last cutting of flowers and some peaches from the community tree. I feel lucky to have that little place of heaven where my adrenals and I can rest and restore.

April Showers...

2011-04-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

I took a walk/run early today to try to beat the rain (I didn't), but stopped in my garden on the way back anyway to pick a few peaches and make sure that the seedlings I planted on Friday had made a nice transition. I wanted to know that I had watered deep enough when I transplanted them that the very light rain today would be enough (I did).

I have lots of gardening things I want to blog about: beets and the awesome way I found to plant them this year, a funny labeling story I read and what it brings to mind, and some interesting things that have resulted from joining the garden writers association (including offers of free loot...hmmm). But, I have things I want to shoot because the loft is like a gigantic softbox today.

So, I'll quickly share these two tidbits:

One is a chart of my little 12 x 5 garden, even though it's only an iphone shot from this morning and you can't see the beets or herbs. Excuse the typo in rosemary:

And the other is this contraption I built. When I moved into a different loft two months ago, I lost a lot of storage where I used to keep all my gardening things: seeds, seed starting trays, wellies, etc. Now, I don't even have an out of the way hallway where I can keep my garden sneakers without being seen by the neighbors like a did before and I have less storage inside the loft, too. Because of that, I settled on a space near the front door as the "garden center". But, all the cabinets that would fit there were either really ugly or really expensive. So, I took an old bookshelf and fashioned a fitted covering for it out of some cheap fabric I got at ikea. It's simple and looks fine next to the front door without calling too much attention to itself. Except for those buttons. What was I thinking? I'll find new and fun buttons for it when I have a chance... I don't have a sewing machine so it was all various forms of iron seams and velcro. Probably cost me about 12 bucks and a few hours of my time. Look at me all DIY.

A Gooder Friday Could Not Have Been Had

2011-04-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

You might recall my whimsy about a bouquet in this post a few weeks ago.... Well, I think this lovely thing today can go rosemary to rosemary with it. This time it's a bit more traditional, as I got to add some ranunculus from my very own plot. I also bundled up some rosemary, chives, and this time some lovely mint from my newly designated "herb" section. I think some mojitos are in order.

It is quite a thrill to have "cutting flowers" this summer. There are lots more buds so I'm looking forward to weeks of fresh flowers. I noticed in Trader Joe's a bunch about this big was priced at $5.99. I paid $4.98 for the entire packet of 18 bulbs which has already garnered me two cuttings for my vase.

In less economically favorable news, I didn't start any seeds this year. It fell under the keep it simple for myself category. So, I visited the nursery. I came back with new gloves (mine were stolen!), three tomato seedlings, two pepper plants (yellow and jalepeno), marigolds, sage, and a bag of red onions they gave me for a dollar because there were only a handful of viable onion bulbs in the bag this late in the season. Oh, and a terra cotta pot to plant one of the peppers in. So, $35.00 later, I'm sure (even accounting for a boom tomato season), I could buy the produce much cheaper. But, I got my hands in the dirt for three full hours and my garden looks full of promise!

So, a "Good"er Friday could not have been had....

April 15th

2011-04-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Some people call it Tax Day.

Some people call it the first day of Fishing Season in Pennsylvania.

I call it my Dad's Birthday.

Love you, Daddy-O.

Fight For Your Right...

2011-04-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is a conventional apple. See how shiny and perfect and fake it looks. Pesticides and chemicals you can't eat on their own will do that for you... And suck all the flavor out while they are at it! Oh YUM. I photographed this for a project I'd packed away awhile ago due to the cost of the complicated framing process. But, I've pulled it out, am "re-borrowing" the film camera I shot it with and when it's done, I'll "frame" it digitally now.

Last night Jamie Oliver's second season of THE FOOD REVOLUTION aired on ABC. As of the episode last night, he had been forbidden to come into the LA Unified School District to see what our kids are eating and how it might be improved. Shameful.

Here's the trailer for the show. TRAILER For those of you in Long Beach, you'll see a few glimpses of Chef Paul who is our own LB version of Jamie Oliver (bless his mutton side burns) THE FOOD REVOLUTION is fun to watch even as he exposes some pretty dare I say "icky" stuff.

Jamie Oliver is not against burgers and fries. He's not one of THOSE guys. He just wants it to be the healthiest and best quality and tasting burger and fries you can get for your money.

Cutting Flowers

2011-04-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

I wanted cutting flowers this year from my garden.

Just like the ladies in the books and the movies and the poems.

Today, I cut my very first ones. They please me so.

A walk...

2011-03-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

I don't imagine at this point in my life I'll ever walk down an aisle or the equivalent stretch of beach, but this would have been the perfect bouquet, which I gathered in my garden this morning. Who wouldn't want to walk towards the person they love embraced by the sweet smells of rosemary, mint and chive? Oh and just a little bit of baby beet leaves for whimsy!

Well, for today most of it will go in a roasted chicken. Which is just fine, too.

Valentines Come in All Shapes and Sizes...

2011-02-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

She Isabelle of the garden...

Spring, Sprang, Sprung

2011-01-29T20:07:00.000-08:00

After a wasted Saturday spent at my office in LA waiting for a Federal Express package that didn't come, I decided on an easy stroll around the neighborhood to work out some aches and pains from a hard yoga class I took last night. So, me, my achy core, and my camera set off to explore. It was late afternoon with moody skies and dramatic light hitting the buildings, making them seem like works of art. Eventually, at dusk, I ended up in the garden. And Spring has most definitely Sprung...


Apples

Fava

Raspberry

More peach blossoms

And even more peach blossoms

Most of the monarchs have burst free of their chrysalis', but this little guy is still holding on. I hope he's coming soon because I need to take that covering off my beets!

I also photographed the flower bulbs I planted this year which miraculously are coming up beautifully, as well as my hyacinth which has just started peaking its head above ground, again. But, I'll share those another day. In the meantime, enjoy the blossoms. I did.

Leaving Home

2011-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in my garden, I found this gorgeous monarch on my parsley and his empty chrysalis nearby.

I need to leave my home this month, too.

I'm losing my view and he's getting one.

We are both having to find courage to stretch our wings elsewhere.

And have faith we'll find our way home.

New seeds....

2011-01-04T02:11:00.000-08:00

So, check out this seed I just planted.

I wonder what kinds of things it will grow in my life?

A poem....

2010-12-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-29T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-10-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-30T00:25:00.000-07:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

A Secret Garden

2010-10-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

PART TWO interrupted

2010-10-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

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!)

2010-08-26T09:24:00.000-07:00


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

2010-08-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-08-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-08-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

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....

2010-06-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Hilary MacGregor and Alice Waters and some rose colored glasses...

2010-05-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

My funny, smart, beautiful friend Hilary MacGregor wrote this Los Angeles Magazine article about the experience of helping to start Alice Water's "Edible School-Yard" program into her sons' school. It wasn't easy to make it work (and still isn't), but the journey there is a great yarn.

http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=24614

Enjoy.

Springtime for me....

2010-05-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Not this sunflower

Today I wrestled to the ground a 15 foot sunflower with probably about 20 flowers on it. Not this one. It was the last of one of four or five volunteers that grew over the winter and, because it wasn't an heirloom, surprised me with the abundance of blooms. Its ancestor had only one. But, it was leaning and the blooms were dying. These volunteers had been - at one point - the only thing that seemed to flourish over the Fall and Winter. I wasn't sure if they were mocking me about summers of love gone by or offering me hope for summers of love someday to come.

Not these carrots

And I picked some carrots. Not these. A few straggles that managed to grow over the winter. Random seeds that took root wherever they were washed to or dropped by birds to... There were less than this bounty from last year, but in fact they are sweeter. Much, much sweeter. They weren't grown in rows like these, they took root where they decided to take root, but rewarded me for their stubborness and defiance with the sweetest carrots I've grown yet.

I'm sorry these photographs are from last year. I haven't taken my camera much with me to the garden. Through the Fall and Winter I had such mixed feelings about the garden and didn't feel like documenting anything. And this Spring has been filled with travel (Boston, Arizona, and soon Portland) and company (if you haven't come, do) and events (I got a pretty medal today for riding 31 miles for the Miller Children's Hospital) and dinner parties (the 45 year old wine had turned for anyone following along) and photo shoots (look for some cool pictures of my friend Adriana in VegNews Magazine soon) and zombies (just plain long story). So, lately I always seem to need to GO there rather than just BE there. I'm always behind on watering or planting.... The Summer, I hope, will be just for me, the Garden, my camera, and my adrenals to simply chill.

In the meantime, today I stood back and realized that maybe my failures of the Fall and Winter are giving way to some successes this Spring. Stay tuned.....

Look at me, Ma. I'm on TV

2010-04-09T15:34:00.000-07:00

Ovation TV has a new travel show. I'm on it. Well, mostly I'm digging holes in the background and making sure that people with actual gardening websites to promote, promoted: (www.anarchyinthegarden.com) But, I am one of the "citizen vigilantes" so mentioned below. So tune in and see what the SoCal Guerilla Gardening Organization is all about. It sure was a fun day and you can read my experiences here and read about the show below:

http://www.ovationtv.com/programs/851-scenic-route

Travel and design writer David Keeps hosts as he delves into America's nooks and crannies to find the oft-overlooked wonders that lie far away from our busy freeways and out on the open road. David Keeps meets with Kerry Clasby, a 'food forager', who's been sought after by California's most renowned chefs. Kerry knows which farms have the freshest, most beautiful produce, and ensures their delivery to California's hottest eateries. Then, we follow citizen vigilantes who garden at night with the simple purpose of beautifying the city with landscape art.

Monday, April 12, 2010

10:00PM

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

02:00AM

Thursday, April 15, 2010

08:00PM

Friday, April 16, 2010

12:00AM

Sunday, April 18, 2010

01:00AM

05:00PM

09:00PM

Born Free.... Or at least set free pretty soon thereafter.

2010-03-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

Milkweed in the 1st and Elm Garden

Resilience is a funny thing.... You learn that lesson in gardening and it shows up in the strangest of places. Sometimes I feel that much of my adult life has been lived in survival mode - that I have had to be (exhaustively so...) resilient. And, I don't really think of it as a pretty thing. It feels from the inside just a brutal, dark, and lonely thing.

Of course, most of your garden is set up for survival mode. Even the way seeds are designed enables them to grow in the harshest of conditions. But, in our garden it isn't just the plants that have a singular goal and the potential to have it tough.... We are a "Monarch Way-Station". What that means is that we are officially a garden which contains what is needed for Monarch butterflies to set down, eat, and reproduce. The biggest element of that is milkweed, which, as I understand it, is the ONLY thing Monarch butterflies eat. Boring, but at least pretty! So, at certain times a year, we gardeners are delighted to see a gorgeous little chysalis hanging from one of our plants or attached randomly to some garden decoration. We always hope that means eventually we'll encounter a butterfly crawling across the garden stretching its bent wings before it can fly. And one always hopes they make it to that place before the cats find them - the Monarch's version of survival mode. Occasionally, however, we harvest the plant first and then see the chrysalis. So, with fingers crossed, we hang the chrysalis in a safe place and hope...

It can be brutal business for these butterflies: there are cats and heat and the aforementioned gardeners. Including me.

Last week I cut some celery from the garden and brought it home for lunch. It wasn't until later that I realized on the underside of one of the huge celery leaves, there was a beautiful green chrysalis. Like all of them, it had what appeared to be a gold thread woven through it - like some kind of delicate ancient talisman. I felt terrible. I placed it on the windowsill and committed to taking it to the garden the next day. But, I've been sick the past few weeks and day after day I would forget to bring it with me or not have the energy to visit the garden. After a week, I gave it up for dead and thought I'd spend some time just photographing it with the macro lense. Maybe its little Monarch life would have been sacrificed, at least, for some art piece...

On Thursday, the most amazing thing happened. My business associate was here for what was the first meeting of a new venture for me. It was a little nerve wracking and a little exciting. As we prepared for the meeting, I suddenly heard her exclaim, "You've got a butterfly on your floor!" My little chrysalis had hatched! I mean, right there on my windowsill. She must have been in our world for a little bit of time because she had already pumped enough blood to her wings that they were flat and free of wrinkles. I knew she wouldn't be ready to just fly out of our seventh floor window and I wasn't sure, but I thought she was probably hungry and needed some milkweed! We looked at the clock and decided to make a run for it to the garden. Held gently in a paper towel, we walk-ran with the Monarch hoping we could give her a chance at survival. When we got to the garden, we placed her directly on some milkweed and wished her well in her life. I hoped that her determination to survive would give her a life of delicious milkweed, sweet breezes, and her own chrysalis entombed offspring. I hoped she was one of the ones that got to migrate and fly free.

A monarch from my garden in the past. This one a male, notice the spot on his wings...

It made me think about where in my life my reward has happened for the survival mode I've been in... the people that have picked me up and placed me on my own version of milkweed...who fed me and nourished me with their love and companionship and made it just a little easier to face the challenges. I thought of the cool breezes that have connected me to a higher power, the tasty food I've eaten and the beauty, health, and wealth (all kinds) which I am lucky enough to have around me. I reflected on my own thought process about my life... I don't know that I can change my fears around the lonely and challenging parts of my life. I had worked hard over the past few years to be more accepting of where I am and to try to be satisfied with each day. I had come to love a good portion of my life. - the home portion. That didn't mean my mind and soul didn't stray to what I had wished my life had been or could be, but I did love who I was with and where I was. I found joy in it. But, I admit that I have a tendency to let the survival mode get me down. So, maybe I need to take a lesson from my butterfly friend... Maybe I must savor the milkweed a little more intensely and be grateful that it is possible for a beautiful ending to the survival story. That on the other side of it, you can be born free.

Organic Food is for Snobs

2010-03-04T00:30:00.000-08:00

Yak Cheese and Yak Drink - Bhutan

Lately I've been reading a lot of articles and op-eds written by some folks who are actually and incredulously saying that organic vegetable and the slow food movement are the domain of the "politically correct" or rich snobs. They mock Michelle Obama's organic garden as a political ploy. They call Chez Panisse owner, Alice Waters, a crackpot and accuse her of wasting money and time in the schools teaching children how to garden and call it "socialist" to make the children help prepare the fresh food they have grown and will eat family style with their peers for lunch.

One man wrote, unbelievably, that the East Coast storms prove that the slow food movement, which for the non-initiated means eating only foods that are in season and locally grown as to get the most nutrition, flavor, and to avoid the calories/environmental impact of shipping strawberries from Chile in January, will starve a nation. What? Our ancestors got along just fine as short as 50 years ago eating only what they could produce from their gardens or at least a local farmer's garden. During the winter months, they ate what could grow in the cold temperatures and they spent some time in the summer and fall "putting up" what they'd need otherwise. And 30 years ago after the invention of Spam and Jello, this same man was probably the one writing op-eds about how eating organic foods is for hippies. So, first it was ridiculous and hippy-like and now it's only for rich snobs? Help me, I'm confused.

Around this same time, I was going through negatives to scan for my photo website. I noticed that even during my adventure trips, I take shots of food. And I marveled at the versions of farmer's markets I had photographed. Only these aren't just one day a week events which also sell tamales and cut flowers. This is how they eat. This is how the average person in Bhutan or Tibet or Egypt shops and eats - locally grown food that is bought and prepared fresh.

Market in Bhutan. Chiles and more chiles, the national food!

I've learned from growing just a little bit of my own food, that it makes you happy. The doing makes you happy, the taste makes you happy, the satisfaction of knowing where you food was grown, how it was picked, and that it was prepared with nutrition intact simply makes you happy. I mean look at this sweet girl from the market in Bhutan...

Happy Bhutanese Market Girl

I know shopping at farmer's markets and preparing fresh food isn't always possible. I know the world is busy and everything is more complicated than 50 years ago or maybe in Bhutan. I get it. But, to mock the people who are striving to get EVERYONE access to fresh, non-pesticide laden, reasonably priced food or to encourage the growing of our own seems, well, small. Small minded, small visioned, just small. To not desire that inner city kids get to taste a freshly picked apple that could lead them to not ever want to settle for something that was picked four months earlier is just downright cruel. SOME organic food IS expensive, but not all of it and not at every store. You know which one I'm talking about (Yes, Whole Paycheck, I mean you). And there are fixes for that, too, once you start working on a political and socio-economic scale.

Various barks used for cooking - Bhutan

So, while the gentleman who wrote the op-ed piece munches on his twinkies during the storm, I know that if the same storm hits out here, he need not worry about me: I've been taking the fruits of the season: citrus and pears and I have been canning. If the big one hits (and my glass jars don't break), I can feast on blood orange marmalade and pear/ginger preserves. I'll just need to find a spoon.

Definition

2010-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

Seed

Heart

Love

seed: (n) - such parts collectively

heart: (n) - the center of the total personality, especially. with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion and the vital or essential part; core

love: (n) - a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | Video on TED.com

2010-02-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food | Video on TED.com

Johnny Appleseed Doesn't Live Here Anymore

2010-01-29T00:33:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about fruit trees. The untangling of belongings in the loft has left some gaping holes around the place. I began to think how wonderful to take advantage of so much sunlight and what it might be like to have a fruit tree to fill out the odd little corner in front of one of the 12 foot windows. I imagined sweet smelling blossoms and pungent zest for cooking. I'm not quite sure how this idea came into my head, but there it stuck. I googled miniature fruit trees and the best fruit trees to grow in pots. I began to dream of marmalade and fruit salads....

We aren't allowed to plant trees in our tiny plots at the garden, but there are plenty of them in the common areas and come Spring and Summer there is an abundance of fruit to share: peaches, apples, pomegranates, plums etc But, still, something about waking up to the smell of, say, orange blossoms filling the loft moved me. Just about then, Fern over at Life on the Balcony posted about fruit trees. It was a really instructive post about how, really, you can't grow fruit trees from seed. It's complicated and, well, you should be reading Fern's blog anyway, so head over there and learn. Like a good gardening student, I asked her about container fruit trees. And she wrote back the most obvious of obvious answers: you can't grow a fruit tree indoors and still get fruit. You need pollination to get fruit. You need bees to get fruit.

In other words: You can't bear fruit alone.

And by fruit I mean just about anything you want to accomplish. Ideas, support, incentives, praise, constructive criticism - these are all things that go into pollinating our own versions of fruit. We require to be sparked and supported by those around us. They pollinate us. Even the most solitary of artists must eventually have an audience. And if I'd thought for just one second about this instead of having sugar plums dancing in my head, I would have realized that.

You can't bear fruit in a vacuum.

You can't bear fruit without pollination. (Too much, too painful to consider)

You can't bear fruit without other fruit trees.

So... with the facts in front of me, I must consider that isolating myself with my little unpollinated tree would not be, well, fruitful for me - as safe as it might feel in the wake of the recent storm.

Long Beach Is My Garden

2010-01-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

This morning, in order to follow through on "believing the impossible" of yesterday's post and to earn the silver medallion my friends Anne and Kirk gave me as a result of said post, I got up early and rode my bike along the LA River to a SoCal Guerrilla Gardening spot under the Anaheim Bridge. Scott Bunnell who IS SoCal Guerrilla Gardening arranges legal and illegal plantings ala Raves in abandoned bits of dirt all over Long Beach. So, along with 15 or so folks and a film crew (figures he would be getting filmed for a travel show this particular day), we took his lovingly propagated natives and turned this into that:

As one of the volunteers, George, said: "I live in an apartment and don't have a garden, so why not do this. Then Long Beach is my garden". I just loved that! The volunteers were old and young, gardeners and not, apartment dwellers and house dwellers and veterans to SoCal Guerrilla along with total newbies like me.

I think one of the unexpected gifts of my garden has been the circle of fellowship around gardening and greening. I've got a web of cyber-blog people I rely on for advice and encouragement and some have even become friends in the flesh like Adriana of Anarchy In The Garden. I did what I do best and had pimped her to the film crew before she even got there... She gives good interview.

Today's guerrilla planting was another step in my adventures in gardening. It reaffirmed for me that I can and will find community because of my garden. Scott gave aloe vera to anyone who wanted some. And as I set out for the bicycle path again, I passed this scooter and smiled at the adventure this particular plant was about to go on:

What if a peach tree could grow bananas?

2010-01-23T15:41:00.000-08:00

Today I checked on the garden after a week straight of rain, wind, and flooding. It was like falling down the Rabbit Hole. Everything was larger, stranger, upside down. But, it felt sort of good. Today, maybe, I should dream the impossible.

Rain, Rain Go Away....

2010-01-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's been pouring rain for days in Long Beach. There has been flooding, destruction, a tornado and, most strangely of all, surfing on our shores. You can't actually surf in the still waters of Long Beach, so that should tell you something.

The rain has fit my mood. It started raining when my Squeeze moved out and it hasn't stopped since. At least I think its rain on the windows and not just the view from my own eyes.

At first I was grateful for it. My garden had been neglected by me lately and I couldn't really remember the last time I'd watered it. I've been busy rearranging a life, but still... Maybe I'd neglected it in part because of frustration that nothing seemed to be growing except three broad bean plants, some lettuce varieties, and a few volunteer sunflowers or maybe because I'm just not sure what will become of me, the garden, and Long Beach. Maybe I was pulling away from it so it won't hurt so much.

Nonetheless, as this wave of relentless rain and wind continued to batter us, I began to worry about what I did have growing there... Would it hold up against the storm? Would I lose the small stronghold I had in the garden? Would it drown and destroy whatever seeds remained dormant underground?

During a brief moment of strange and hopeful sunlight, I ran over to the garden to see what the damage was.... Sure enough, my broad beans were a tangled mess on the ground and my sunflowers were flattened over. I related. It's much how I'm feeling in this storm of my own.

I cut some lettuce, pulled the broad beans tall against the string guides quietly wishing them to stay, and then I thanked the sunflowers for their service - truthfully, they have no business growing this time of year.

And now I'm left wondering, as the news tells me that this storm will only get stronger and fiercer: Will the garden be able to pick itself up again? Will my plants be strong enough to ever stand tall again? Or will this particular storm have simply been too much for me and the garden to weather?

Why Garden?

2009-12-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

I am wondering tonight as cats and man sleep about the WHY?

I've been reading various books on gardening lately. They range from literary memoir to "how to" non-fiction. Some of the writers write about their gardens as a way to create a healthy connection to food and the world for their children, some tell of making a connection to their ancestors with memories of the garden of a beloved grandmother or father. Some are political: growing your own food is some small attack on the big food growing corporations. Some are environmental: by committing to slow food, you can cut down the environmental impact of the petroleum it takes to get out of season food to your table. I know people who garden out of financial necessity and people who garden for the meditative nature of it.

I'm not sure why I started gardening. I had to write a letter to get that 5x12 piece of dirt I now call my garden. And I wrote my heart out to get it. I let flow lots of flowery things about the environment, organic food, being a country girl etc. I knew that it rivaled the best of my English major BS of years gone by....

But, I left out one thing - too personal to share - although, I'm not sure I still feel the same now which is: Nature is where I find God. I haven't had a lot of luck in churches or religious organizations. I don't really hold the bible up to be much more than a literary recipe about how one, in general, might live ones life. Yet, I believe in God. And sometimes when the breeze is just the right temperature and blowing in just the right direction along the skin of your arm, it feels like an embrace from some Higher Power. So, secretly, this was the reason I wanted that garden plot.

And in those first few weeks, as I sat in the garden by myself watching the miracles of it in front of me, I thought it was all that I needed.

But, as I planted and harvested, failed and succeeded, battled insects both good and bad, I reported each event to my Squeeze. He urged me to take pictures, he tried foods he didn't really like just to please me, exclaimed "wow" when I would bring home a haul no matter how big or small - always with that pitch of his voice that makes me weak. And he didn't laugh at my potatoes the size of a penny which we ate with shrimp forks. Or at least he laughed with me rather than at me. Generally, he made me feel proud that each day I cared for and nurtured this little garden plot.

For me, the garden had become about SHARING. It was my garden for sure, but love had led me to it, to Long Beach. The Squeeze would visit occasionally to give his bike a hose down or to take an evening walk with me hand-in-hand, to picnic, or just to answer the question for himself, "how does your garden grow?"

What gave me the pleasure, as it turned out, was to share the garden with him; or rather the fruits of my labor. It had gone from a solitary endeavor between me and God, to one that was about me and him. I grew things I knew he liked. I felt proud to share with him the bounty whether in a pie, a stir fry, or included in a Sunday dinner while we watched football in the winter. I grew vegetables to make him his childhood favorite: stuffed cabbage. I tracked down his sister-in-law to pass along his Mom's recipe. I was feeding my family with the things I had grown.

But, somewhere a crack has formed and my Squeeze no longer wants to be my Squeeze. The heartache is beyond words. In the wake of this announcement, I found myself staring at my garden wondering "why bother". The joy of sharing the play-by-play had suddenly been stolen from me. I looked at what was already growing there and felt a loneliness at the thought of harvesting and eating these things by myself.

And at this very moment I have 8 very, very small cabbages that I have grown from seed begging for life on my windowsill. I water them, for it would be cruel not to, but they have stunted on me. They have stopped growing. I fear they know my hesitation of what I will feel when they are fully grown and ready to be harvested.

Now, in the middle of a heartache, in the middle of the loss of love that I followed to this garden, I don't feel God. I feel lost.

There are many decisions to make and the garden will be, no doubt, a piece of it. What piece, I don't know. For the moment I am trying to find the lesson in this:

Is it that the garden has taught me that I want to nourish a family? My family, in whatever form that takes: one man, two cats.

Or maybe what this is illustrating is that I am so pathetic that I need others to validate me: that I must still learn that growing a cabbage just to grow a cabbage for myself should be satisfying enough. Can it be both?

Perhaps it is neither. But, my beet seeds are soaking tonight so the garden still tugs at me either way.

Mulch

2009-12-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

(One of my fava bean seedling mulched with straw and peach tree leaves after the rainstorm)

Until I started gardening, I only knew mulch as those ugly cedar chips that suburbanites used in their landscaping around their no-stress bushes. No offense, of course, meant to any suburbanites who may currently have said cedar chips in their landscaping.

What I've learned about mulch since I got my 5x12 plot of organic dirt is that it is a BIG topic. The "types" of mulch cover a broad spectrum, there are websites devoted to it, and it's apparently important enough that you can find "mulch calculators" ala mortgage, bank loan, and currency exchange calculators. So you KNOW it's important when it gets its own calculator.

Generally speaking, mulch is (usually) some sort of organic material that is used around plants to keep the moisture in, protect the roots from the cold (and critters), keep weeds at bay, and regulate ground temperature. But, mulch can also be used to keep a garden bed stable and warm in between plantings, too. It is a noun (as in the material) and a verb (as in "to mulch" your garden).

Now, mulch also can be non-organic: a plastic covering, chemically treated "wood chips", or the latest HGTV craze - recycled tires that have been ground up into strange looking black, rubbery chips. I'm all for the green makeover, but this just feels, well, not very green. Ironic, even.

When I first started gardening, I was afraid of the mulch. I was afraid if I used the straw provided for us by the garden that I would smother the seeds and they wouldn't germinate. Or, gasp, it would look ugly! In my fear and vanity, I left my garden open and vulnerable to not only the elements but to the wild animals.

I've come a long way since then. Ugly be damned if it gives me good nourishing cabbage! Ugly be damned if it keeps the local cats from using my garden like a big litter box or if it deters the raccoons (okay, nothing deters the raccoons). Ugly be damned if it gives my garden a fighting chance in weather like we've had the past week: almost freezing nights, cold hard rain, and WindWindWind.

Now, you can over-mulch, too. There are lists of ugly named fungus' that can fester in your mulch if you've over-protected your seedlings. Not only are they capable of infecting your plants, but they can attack the roots and fruit of the plant. They can, in short, suffocate your plant. I realized today as I found the most beautiful form of mushroom growing near my volunteer sunflowers that when I had transplanted them along the garden edge, I had over mulched them. I believe I can save the situation, but I feel bad that these lovely sunflowers that had decided to grow of their own accord were at risk before they could reach the 10 or 12 feet their ancestors had before them this summer.

In fact, what I've learned is that with mulch, it is a matter of balance.

Just like a healthy garden, we humans need a bit of mulch, too. We need to protect our roots, maintain a stable internal temperature reading, and keep at bay those things or people who will try to impede on our growth and steal our nutrients. We need mulch in the form of discernment about what comes in close to us and when we may need to lay fallow and rejuvenate. We need some amount of this to protect ourselves so that we can flourish, grow, create - and in turn give nourishment to others - just like my lovely and giving vegetable plantings.

In the past, I've had a tendency to over-mulch myself or surround myself with the equivalent of ground up tires. I felt compelled to protect my heart, my ego, my erroneous visions of myself. In over-protecting myself, I suffocated and denied my roots what they needed to take a firm hold of the earth so I could reach for the sun like my gigantic, graceful sunflowers. I've had a hard time learning the difference between laying fallow to restore and smothering myself in withdrawl.

Yet, in trying to correct myself from over-mulching, I fear at times I have not mulched enough. I find myself often giving up my own nutrients to others rather than protecting them so that I can flourish and bear fruit like my endlessly producing zucchini plant this summer. Sigh. Maybe I need to invest in a mulch calculator.

This is a balance we must all reach to have a healthy and fruitful life. I know my journey into mulching, both in my garden and for myself, will be a long and winding one. I will make mistakes, over-correct, and hopefully occasionally get it right.

My plants are counting on it....

Gardening takes some faith....

2009-12-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (Matthew 12:20)

Okay, these are beet seeds, but you get the idea. Maybe mustard seeds are even smaller. I don't know, I haven't grown mustard yet.

Nevertheless, it takes a tremendous amount of faith to grow a garden. It takes a tremendous amount of faith to plant a mustard seed and believe that it will grow to be a large tree upon which birds will alight and sing among its branches. Although, as I understand it, a mustard tree is actually an enormous bush. Oh well, the birds would look lovely singing among the yellow buds, too.

This season I tried to grow most everything from seed. I sowed cabbage, broccoli, watercress, beets, spinach, various lettuces, bok choy, onions, garlic, carrots, and fava beans as well as ome flowers including Chinese lanterns. But, this is risky. there is no guarantee that I will be rewarded for my faith in these seeds. For instance, while my cabbage seeds appear to be going gangbusters, my celery simply won't cooperate.

Some days I don't have a lot of confidence in myself - and as gardening is my newest attempt to grow as a human being, I'm particularly uncertain in this arena. For instance, I don't know which kind of onions I planted: long day or short day. I don't even know what kind of day I live in. Some days seem REALLY long, but I'm not sure that the onions would feel the same way. I don't know if I amended my soil correctly with the "green manure", otherwise known as white clover. Even though I turned it back into the dirt, it seems to be growing where my carrots are supposed to be starting to pop their little green tops up now.

Not unlike the seeds I planted, I know that without a nutrient rich environment, the correct amount of light, and some companion plants, I won't flourish. I know I'm not of the cactus variety - able to grow with the least of it - little water, little food, and no companions within my needled reach.

Or maybe I'm more like the broccoli seeds I potted carefully over a month ago. I lamented to my "Squeeze" that these seeds had not popped their little heads through after a week. He told me to have some patience. And after much worrying, I read the package and realized that there was nothing wrong with them other than they had a long germination period of 5-17 days. Right, so me and the broccoli seeds have that going for us. I seem to be long germinating, too. And every time I get close to being ready to greet the world as a fully formed broccoli plant, I mean human, I seem to have a set back and have to start all over again. Just like my broccoli seeds when I left them to their own devices during a business trip. They died from a lack of water and it's now round two on the windowsill. Maybe the seeds don't have a lot of faith in me.

So, on I go each day with faith that is just about as small as a mustard seed. Eh, maybe even smaller like the celery seeds that won't come up. But, the promise (at least of the garden) is that it will be all I need if I'm patient enough, attentive enough, and loving enough.

The beginning...

2009-12-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

I moved to Long Beach a year and a half ago to follow love... only 25 miles from where I'd been for 17 years, but a world apart. I worried that while my jazz musician "squeeze" was out playing gigs, I'd be left a little lost in our vast loft without local friends. But, as fate would have it we moved into a fantastic building with very "social" folks (read there is a lot of wine drinking happening in the building!). And within a month my neighbor Kristin had introduced me to our community garden just three blocks away. I had a hobby! I had a friend! I had a 5x12 plot of dirt!

I'm a country girl. My friend's families were farmers and while my family wasn't, I had two horses of my own. Being near nature is essential to my well being. I hadn't realized after years of city living, though, how essential until I started to dig in the dirt.

Being a country girl, however, doesn't mean I know how to grow anything. All attempts at our home to have a garden during my childhood only resulted in well fed deer! But, memories of my Uncle Al's home garden began to take shape as I explored the various plantings: the taste of fresh peas right out of the pod, red juicy tomatoes off the vine and the smell of marigolds surrounding them came flooding back.

What I didn't expect as I wandered through the other gardeners' plots was that I was being thrust into a full on existential crisis: who was I? Was I someone that wanted order: a practical garden with well marked, straight lines of vegetables organized by size and planted as directed for depth and space? Was I someone that wanted fancy: things thrown together more for the eye than the table, fanciful plants and flowers pushed willingly or not willingly into a 5x12 plot of dirt? Was I someone that wanted ease: cactus that could just be enjoyed on a rest after a bike ride to the garden but no digging or continual planting involved?

Don't ask me the answer... I'm trying to find out.

So, before I begin this blog in earnest, it seems I should get you up to date on the two seasons of "crops" I planted and the changes along the way: