May 13, 2008

Nature has a sense of humor.

Is zucchini a weed? In the past I have only had this level of gardening success with weeds -- I have grown weeds that would make you cry with joy (or pain.) But I have never successfully grown many useful things -- case in point: all of my watermelon plants have died. AGAIN.

You may be wondering how they could die AGAIN, but this is just another year in the long sad cycle of me and dead watermelon seedlings. I try every year and still they die. Every year.

Look how dead they are, there is not even a sign that something green used to be planted here:

Obviously... I am growing dirt.

So I had two big empty patches of dirt where the watermelon plants were supposed to be happily growing and waiting for their squareness to begin. But no luck. I decided to go out back to the Back 40 and look at my raised bed garden to see how the one lone zucchini outrider -- that I did not plant -- and my two pumpkin plants were faring. I expected the zuke to be alive and the pumpkins to be dead.

The good news: The pumpkin vines are still hanging on! The bad news: There are five more seedlings just sprouting from the barren ground and they are suspiciously zucchini-like. One can safely assume that nature thinks this is hilariously funny and wants me to be afraid of my backyard.

Just to recap:

1) Sometime last fall the gardeners got tired of looking at the scary huge-ass zucchini plants that were taking over the back backyard and while I was away they cleaned the whole thing out including about two inches of my organic dirt.

2) There was nothing in the raised bed garden all winter.

3) Just dirt and probably bug poop.

4) Then one day I noticed a green thing growing in there. It was a zucchini plant.

5) I did not plant this zucchini. I did not plant any zucchini seeds. I did not water, fertilize or even look at the back backyard.

6) Now there are MORE mystery seedings!! Popping up from the dustbowl of barrenness and despair!!

I am a little afraid, because I have never in my life had wild zucchini sprouting up here and there, it is not normal for plantlike things to flourish in my presence. I have already lost a thyme plant and a whole marjoram that was eaten in one night by a fat neon green worm. Later I thought it was kind of sad that I don't live in a worm-eating culture because he was probably really tasty, having been seasoned from the inside out with pure organic marjoram.

ANYWAY, this coming weekend I will move the two zucchini seedlings (or at least I suspect that is what they are, they could be body-snatching plants WHO KNOWS, time will tell) into the watermelon patch on the sunny side of the yard and another seedling over to the shadier side of the yard. What I am saying here is that I am going to have a houseful of zucchini again, I have just resigned myself to the idea that I will have to learn how to cook. Or better yet, I should learn how to make biodiesel out of squash and then learn how to single-handedly convert my Jeep to run off zukediesel insted of gas and then I could have a neverending zuke-based economy!!! Or, you know, I could learn to cook.

OR, maybe they make good wine!! That would be a self-sustaining economy right there. Zucchini wine!!!

Posted by laurie at 11:14 AM | Comments (68)

April 14, 2008

Valley hoe!

It was exactly one zillion degrees in the valley this weekend. Spring lasted an entire week and then hello, summer! You are HERE.

This year I set a strict budget for my gardening efforts. I set aside a specific amount of money and threatened myself with a stern voice and a wagging finger if I went over it by even a penny. I didn't want a repeat of last year when I spent gajillions all told in gardening supplies (that is an exact amount, gajillions, and not tax deductible!) and yet I had nothing to show for it but some crazyass hot peppers and a field of mutant zucchini.

Most of my budget this year went to new bags of soil and compost and dirt-related stuff. Then there was the chunk of change I spent on my Meyer Lemon tree, still happy and blooming it's little dwarf-variety $24.99 self away:

I bought one small four-inch container of pumpkin seedlings which are hanging out with the renegade zuke in the raised bed out back along with a watermelon seedling that is struggling and in fact could be considered muerto. (The rest of the watermelon seedlings are strewn around the yard, but more on that later.) I found a big ziploc bag in the garage with old seed packets from God Knows When and I decided they just weren't getting any younger Beavis, so I spread them on every dirt patch in the yard and we'll see what comes up. I may have thyme in the watermelon and dill in the peppers or nothing at all, but it's a good experiment. And the price was right.

The pumpkins and zucchini are doing great. The seeds, not so much.

Saturday and Sunday were scorching. I was a little scared that getting a 97-degree day so soon after planting my few seedlings would dry everything up and kill the whole yard, but I think everything is doing pretty good this year so far. It's been a whole week and a day and things appear to still be alive! I believe my weeklong success is because I finally got the memo from the Universe that I live in a scorching hellhole of humanity's armpit and I stopped using all the small clay planters I have lying around -- I'm only planting stuff in my big plastic pots this year. They little clay containers are pretty and cheerful but they dry out in fifteen minutes flat during the summer, and since summer lasts until November that gives me a window of about four days to grow something.

Hey -- you! You there! The one about to write an impassioned comment or plea or admonition for my failure to investigate the MUCH BETTER option of a drip irrigation system, yes, you! You can stop typing, let me save you some advice-giving juice.

A drip irrigation system for my many cheerful clay pots and plastic containers would indeed be a delightful and transformative thing, one which I investigated myself at the hardware store and garden center and after I thought maybe I was reading the information all wrong I even got my gardeners to give me advice on it. But what most folks don't know is that I live in a magical and mysterious house built back in the 1940s by a lesser-known brother of the Three Stooges. His name was probably Ezra ... Ezra Stooge.

Ezra had likely been in possession of his contractor's license for a full four and a half minutes before he opened up a bag of quickcrete and laid the foundation for my magical and mysterious home. I have pipes that lead to nowhere, a giant hedge in the middle of the backyard, tiny doors to secret passages painted shut inside my cabinets and magical utilities that, when they need servicing, usually result in this: A utility services professional telling me, "Gee, lady, I've been with the gas company / DWP / phone company /whateverservice for fifteen years and this is the first time I've ever seen a house wired /set-up / situated this particular way! This is a real first for me!"

It is just a joy and adventure, I tell you what. Also now with the haunting, which is an excellent addition to my magical mystery house.

So anyway, Ezra made the non-standard outside electrical hookup thingamabob and the also non-standard outdoor water thingamajig located in such proximity to each other that they are in different zipcodes. My gardeners are excellent resources for pointing out all the ways the sprinklers or wiring or whathaveyou is out of whack on my house, and after some scrutinizing and measuring and using of tools they determined I would need to have a custom drip irrigation system built just for this hook-up and also have to get an electrician out to do the re-wiring and grounding and someone to cut through the siding and dig a trench for blah blah blah and .... ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Spending that kind of money would probably make sense for me if I owned this house and wanted to live here the next forty years. But I rent and I'm on a budget with the gardening so I took what I thought was the next best route: I pushed the big plastic planters I already owned closer to the sprinklers. Now they get watered every night with the lawn. Works for me! And didn't cost me a dime!

The cucumbers like being near the sprinklers.

So where was I? OH YES! On a budget. So after I pushed my plastic pots near the sprinklers and worked on the raised bed garden in the back without disturbing the lone zucchini outrider, I decided to use my one big backyard blank space where the old geranium used to be for my new watermelon patch. But I kind of needed some edging material and I was maxed out on my gardening budget.

This was my solution:

Cute! And kind of kooky in the crazy-cat-lady-who-lives-in-a-haunted-house way. Sort of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle without the husband and the magic hat. Notice how I skillfully dumped the dirt in what I surmised a watermelon hill should look like. I am well and truly a scourge on the face of gardening. Then I think I sprinkled some seeds on it from 2002 and called it a day.

In other news, my mint is coming back nice and strong this year. It had practically withered away to nothing last fall since the valley was scorching and the poor thing was left in the sun while I ignored it. In my defense, the pot is a solid ceramic monster I got from an the old neighbors who used to live next door, and they gave me two of those big heavy behemoth pots before they left town. I never did anything with them, like move them, because they weigh seven hundred pounds each. This year I finally got them situated on little platforms with rolling wheels so I can wheel them around to the sun when they need it or back closer to the patio edge where the sprinklers are. I am really all about plant mobility this year, you see. Plants should have the freedom of wheels, too!

The basil which somehow never died last year is doing OK, I pruned it a little and added some basil seeds to the pot. And the peppers have bright green new leaves popping out amongst the old yellowed and tired leaves that are so 1007:

I mixed some portulaca in with everything (I love portulaca flowers, some folks call it "moss rose." All I know is that it's the only blooming pretty thing I can get to live in this heat.) I have my usual three pots of thyme which I grow every year because I LOVE the smell of fresh thyme, but I never seem to keep it alive very long. We'll see.

So that is my garden. A bunch of old seeds who may or may not emerge, some pumpkins, a lone zucchini, a big hill of watermelon seedlings and a bluejay in a lemon tree. And of course the same giant weird hedge in the middle of the backyard, surely planted there by ol' Ezra Stooge himself. What a character that guy must have been. If you ever bump into him will you please ask him where the secret trapdoor inside the kitchen cupboard leads to? Thanks, man.

Posted by laurie at 09:58 AM | Comments (70)

April 07, 2008

Where the wild things grow

After taking some time off to go gallivanting and so on, I found myself back home on Saturday with a cold beer in one hand and a garden hose in the other. That is what heralds the beginning of spring in my life, even if it does occur a few weeks after the arrival of said season. The cold beer is the tip-off.

With the new gardeners the yard is finally green and healthy-ish. They're stealthy, they come and leave and I never see them, but the hedge on the side of the house has come back to life and even the orange tree, which I never knew until this year was an orange tree because of the severe pruning skills of one Francisco, has big juicy oranges all over it and they're not half bad if I do say so myself.

It looks like a shrub from this angle, but it is indeed a tree.

Every year in a fit of hope and optimism I plant a few things and spend a whole weekend getting dirty and hauling bags of soil around and washing out my rather astonishing collection of containers (years of city life and renting has made me an excellent container gardener) (if by "excellent" you mean "has a lot of pots with dead stuff in them") and then I hope it all grows and that's pretty much the sum total of my gardening experience, year after year. Although this year it's different, this year I am far less ambitious than in the past mainly because I know from the outset that my time available for gardening comes down to about twelve minutes per month, and also because I live in the valley where it will soon be 118 degrees in the shade and all things green will shrivel and wither and become kindling. And out of all the money I spent in the past two years of gardening and making raised-beds and buying great soil and soil amending stuff and seedlings and tomato cages and fertilizer and SO ON, the only thing I managed to grow in two years time has been a bumper crop of my dad's chili pequin peppers, which are still alive and thriving and I even have all these seeds for replanting this year:

And, of course, the zucchini.

I planted two lousy seedlings last year in the raised bed out back and they took over the entire yard, producing over a hundred 20-pound zukes and filling the house, the office and darkening the neighbor's doorsteps. I got piles of email from kind readers with zucchini bread recipes and I didn't have the heart to tell them my oven hasn't been used since late 2005. The zucchini kept coming and eventually I stopped going into the back garden altogether for fear one had ensnared a small animal or was plotting a path to the main house. Finally, the gardeners must have gotten tired of the spindly long vines crawling across the back garden and one day last September I came home and the whole lot of zukes had been stripped and cleared and put out in the green can by the curb.

I was free, at last.

So this year I decided to be far more sensible about this whole gardening thing. I bought the one thing I've wanted forever, a small dwarf Meyer Lemon three, perfect for the giant empty pot that used to hold my pencil cactus, pre-2006 freeze:

I've got my pepper plants of course, pruned and trimmed and already sprouting new leaves. And I invested $2.49 in a little group of bush cucumber seedlings, we'll see how they do. One lousy cucumber at Whole Foods was the same cost as the cucumber plant at the nursery, so I took a chance. Bet big or go home! Right?

And then I went out back to survey the back 40, and see what I might grow in the raised bed where the zukes had taken over. I thought I might do a pumpkin this year, or try again with the watermelon project. And out there, in the arid unloved raised bed, I spied something popping up from the dirt.

Yes -- it's lone zucchini seedling, popping up in my raised garden bed.

It's going to be a long summer, I see.

Posted by laurie at 09:23 AM | Comments (76)

August 15, 2007

Only the good die young. Except for the peppers...

One of the things I am trying to work on right now is to stop worrying about events that have not even happened yet. This has nothing at all to do with gardening. But if you could play back the chatter that goes on in my mind on a tape recorder, it would sound like a continual rehashing of events that have not yet transpired. As if worry can stave off future evil.

I maybe am crazy.

In other news, these guys wanted to hop on the Karmic wheel sooner than I expected:

That's Rosemary and Oregano, deader than last year's tomato plants. They developed some weird infestation of flying bugs and the person in charge of watering these plants got grossed out because everytime she would water them the bugs would fly up. She is maybe fired from gardening.

Except she's done an awesome job on the plants that sit near the sprinklers and get regular waterings, such as ... marjoram?

It is dark at 5 a.m. and spooky.

Yes, that is the largest marjoram plant I have ever seen and I am growing it in my backyard. It's lovely and smells amazing. This little plant was a freebie last-minute grab (it was one of those "buy five herbs get the sixth seedling free" things) and it's grown and quadubiliionupled in size and I have no idea what do do with a bushel of marjoram so if you have any ideas ... please share!

My lone bell pepper is rockin' the Christmas colors:

And the other peppers, my Dad's Chili Pequin babies, are doing really great! I planted them in all areas of the yard, both in pots and in the ground. The ones in the shaded pots and the raised beds are doing great, the plants in full sun and even partial-plus-sun either died or shriveled up. California has really intense sun, it's not like other places I've lived. Maybe our protective coating of smog intensifies the sun's something-or-other.

Peppers en masse:

Look, little green pequins!

I haven't spent much time at all in the yard the past couple of weeks, it's been scorching on the weekends or I've been tied up with other things, and it's scary with all the zucchini. And of course I have had to attend to all my imaginary worrying about future events that have not even yet taken place.

But with Francisco gone, the yard is surprisingly lush and low-maintenance. I don't know how one man could make so much go wrong in one yard but Lord he did have a talent for killing things.

Perhaps he snuck in for one last go at those rosemary and the oregano? Perhaps?

Posted by laurie at 06:58 AM | Comments (94)

July 27, 2007

Finally, it's Friday. Time for The Artful Zucchini!

For Ellen Bloom's birthday recently I presented her with the gloriousness which is ... zucchini. (See, when phrased that way it almost seems like a gift of grandeur and not a gift of "Oh my God the squash are taking over my house, help!")

Ellen's husband Larry, an amazing photographer, was inspired by my gargantuan gadzukes and used them as recent subjects de arte.

Lovely, aren't they? They seem almost benign in such an artful pose. In fact, resting in their greenness, you can hardly tell at all that they are conspiring to overthrow a Valley, a city, a nation...

Posted by laurie at 09:19 AM | Comments (83)

July 06, 2007

Houston, we have an infestation.

It started out innocently enough. Everyone but everyone knows I cannot keep any garden plants alive unless they are cactus or cactus relations, or weeds, and anyway once it reaches the fiery temperature of hell in my backyard everything up and withers away, lost dreams for yet another gardening season.

If I am being completely honest here, that is always the best part of summer. I can shrug and blame all the dry crackling leaves on Nature, and just stop pretending I am gardening and instead lay in the inflatable kiddie pool on the weekends with a cold beer and read a book and occasionally look around at what used to be the garden.

This is my plan and has been my plan every year thus far EXCEPT THIS YEAR. This year no matter what I do (or more accurately, do NOT do, such as water, fertilize or even look their way) the zucchini KEEP GROWING. They are in fact growing as I write this, morphing into huge green phallic monsters and they are knocking on the back door and saying, "Let me in, lady!" and frankly ya'll, they scare me.

I think they are staging an insurrection. I think they are plotting with the appliances and the light switches and something untoward will be happening at any moment, demands from an angry and rather enormously fat army of overgrown squash zealots.

They are in the fridge:

They are in the toaster oven:

They are in my knitting bag:

They are in the bathroom sink:

They are in the cat baskets, so Frankie has nowhere to rest her very annoyed furry self:

They are in the chair Roy likes to nap in:

They are also in his crinkle cave, taking over all his soft napping spots:

They are in fact surrounding Roy at all times, since everyone loves Roy, including the creepy gadzukes:

They are in my sock drawer:

They are everywhere except the treadmill, because no one wants to exercise in this heat including even the garden vegetables.

Ya'll. I am only one woman. I cannot handle this amount of vegetation. Send help. Send wine. SEND A FRY DADDY AND SOME HUSH PUPPY MIX.

Your pal,
Infested By Gadzukes

P.S. Thank you for the concern, yes the peppers are still alive! They are small and have provided no peppers thus far but are indeed alive. They are probably getting an inferiority complex from the squash.

Posted by laurie at 10:27 AM | Comments (181)

June 13, 2007

Where The Big Things Grow

I wanted to title this, "Hey little girl come over and look at my big zucchini" but I am sensitive to the amount of perviness in that title and frankly I am actually trying to get rid of the kids in my neighborhood (shhhh, don't tell God) because they are loud and appear to have parents who just feed them sugar and caffeine all day and then set them loose right as I am getting home and trying to do such things as "relax quietly to myself."

Also I don't really want anyone looking at my zucchini without my prior consent.

Hello! Hi ya'll!

So, anyone who knows me at all in real life -- even with just five minutes of knowing me in their resume -- knows that I am completely crack-ass addicted to Self Help. I love to get my crazy on in the self-help aisle! I have always been this way, I swear to you I was the one five-year-old reading all the self-helpy children's books ("The Little Choo Choo That Could," anyone?) and I am particularly fond of the whole Psychology Of Happiness movement, which is basically just a fancypants way of saying that if you focus on the positive stuff, you won't so nearly as much want to sit in a corner eating your hair.

So, let us focus on the positives of this year's Grand Gardening Experimentation. There are many positives, the very biggest one of course being that anything at all has managed to grow since in my life I have about 2.8 minutes per month available to devote to the care and tending of a garden. I feel it is some weird Southern compulsion that makes me plant a garden vegetable or two or twenty each year, and then my more citified and also tired and lazy side thinks, "I planted your asses, now Darwinize! Survival of the fittest, baby!"

Here are the developments thus far in Bad Backyard Gardening 2007:

Somewhat Positive Slant On Bad Thing #1:
Victor the green-headed onion passed on. Yup, he's gone to meet the big Allium in the sky. He got brown and kind of crumbly, then he died. You may be asking yourself, What is positive about that? I did not know either. I in fact asked myself the same question. As you may recall, Victor appeared as a beacon of hope in my life when I was under a deadline that I was still keeping secret while also working full time, visiting the family, trying to stay sane and also find my pants. So I was a little sad when I discovered he had up and died on me just very recently. Then I realized I now had a nice, empty pot for the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PEPPER PLANTS springing forth from my patio region. And ya'll know I have to keep these special Texican chili pequin peppers alive because my dad planted them by hand, each seed lovingly put into the soil with TWEEZERS, and then put into a dome-like thingy and they all germinated and now I have peppers literally coming out of my hoohah. Well, not literally. I was maybe stretching the meaning of "literally." I do not for the record have plants in my hoohah. Anyway.

Baby's First Pepper Farm.

Somewhat Positive Slant On Bad Thing #2:
I have also managed to get two pots um... recently vacated by previous tenants, both of whom were of the family name "Thyme" and neither of whom liked my fickle watering strategy. See, I like to keep all the plants guessing as to when they might be drinking again, I find it keeps us all on our toes. Also, I work late and sometimes it is dark and spooky outside, and I'm not watering anything except a wineglass at that hour.

Somewhat Positive Slant On Bad Thing #3:
The cucumbers don't like me and frankly, it's mutual. So we're on the same wavelength, I guess. That's positive! Also, why is it that after two months of growing cucumbers my next door neighbor Mrs. Lee has literally bushels of shiny, green cukes and I have managed to grow one (1) spindly, bitter-tasting cucumber that gave me a splinter? Oh wait. We're being positive ... so, the good news is that before long I will have three new vacant pots for my ever-growing farm of peppers. I hope the peppers bloom soon and start producing something. My dad keeps asking if they've bloomed yet and I feel like the poor first-time mom whose kid isn't potty-trained yet and she feels like they're already falling behind in development and will never catch up with the cool kids.

Somewhat Positive Slant On Bad Thing #4:
I planted six okra seedlings and so far, after two months of growing, the tallest one is still less than a foot tall. On the plus side, I did harvest one perfect okra pod last night, and I think the clouds parted and I heard angels singing, "Aaaaaaah." Also after that the angels may have said, "Hey ya'll, that's real pretty ... but how the heck do you fry up just one okra?"

And finally, Somewhat Positive Slant On Bad Thing #5:
Each year I plant a tomato seedling or two and each year I watch with great hope and wonder as absolutely nothing happens at all, then the small spindly dwarfy things just burn to a crisp in late June. So for the rest of the summer I'll have this big giant pot with a huge tall tomato cage on it and hovering near the bottom half is a sad little hunched-over ten-inch tall plant in the dirt. It's kind of comical really. It's the embodiment of hope and failure all at the same time.

But we are not gardening with sadness and death today, we are gardening with selfhelpishedness! Which means that we look on the positive side, and that side is just around the hedge in the back 40 where I planted my okra in their raised bed with such care and precision, and then because I somehow had these two little zucchini seedlings and nowhere to put them, and they looked about half-dead anyway as soon as I got them, I just stuck one on each corner and called it a day.

Then night came, and more days passed, and while other things in the garden mysteriously mutated and died and passed on through the karmic vegetation loop, my backyard began sprouting forth with GIANT HUGE FORMIDABLE GADZUKES.

Those two little half-dead zucchini plants turned into a forest of squash. And they just keep coming! And nothing will stop them, not even my mysterious watering regimen. I left town for a few days and what had once been a teensy little four-inch zuke grew while I was gone and morphed into a Lock Ness Zucchinister!

So I do hereby declare I am pretty much not going to plant anything next year except zucchini! Seriously. I now know from first-hand experience that there is nothing to make you feel more triumphant and FEROCIOUS in the gardening world than growing an eleventy-ton squash. I swaggered around the patio and told the tomatoes to enjoy the ride this year, buckos, because next year it's nothing but squash all the way! That's right. Sayonara little piddlyass plum tomatoes! Forget all about you, dumb won't-grow-for-nothing cucumbers. And okra, much as I love you, one pod does not a dinner make. Next year I am going to plant nothing but squash and watch the whole yarn turn into a scary funhouse of funky big zucchini.

Plus if I have a surplus I can use them as rockets on the kids across the street. Oh hah hah! You know I am JUST KIDDING. I would never do that ... I wouldn't dare harm an innocent squash!

Posted by laurie at 09:46 AM | Comments (167)

April 17, 2007

The plants are still green -- this must be a gardening world record!

Well, it's a record for me, anyway.

Already, what? Two, three weeks and nothing has died except one lone okra seedling that got sat on by a big blue jay (to all the folks about to email me and remind me: Yes I remember you schooled me that it is a "Western Scrub Jay." I know, I know, but it's blue and I call them Blue Jays because I am rebellious that way.)

So one seedling died shortly after planting when it got sat on by a forty-ton Blue Jay, and everything else is actually alive and growing.

Even the tree out back has sensed the departure of Francisco and has started to grow leaves! After its terrifying near-death prune of 2006, I'm surpised to see it make the effort, but somehow nature has sensed the disappearance of Francisco and made a valiant effort to re-grow.

Dez assures me that Francisco has re-located to the New Orleans area and sent me this photographic proof:

Thanks, Dez. Looks like we have answered the "Where in the world is Franciso And His Mighty Pruning Shears Of Death" question once and for all. I think he's probably making the world tour of his fans... next week he might be in Wisconsin with Dale-Harriet, then he'll be in the southwest to visit Psychomom, and when the nor'easter clears out, I can only assume that Francisco will be standing in Maryse's yard in Boston, pruning shears in hand, waiting to hack something to pieces. (Ya'll give Maryse some love, her kitty Napoleaon passed on last night.)

The neighbor across the street from me uses Abel the able as her gardener but I didn't ask her for the number (I had his card somewhere, anyway, from that time I met him) and I specifically didn't have the landlord call him.

The very first gardener I had at this little house was really goodlooking and dark-haired and hardly ever spoke. It was so rainy that year, I moved in just before Christmas and I was alone with a mountain of boxes and it was A Bad Time for me, I sat on the patio all night long smoking and staring at fat raindrops, watching night slosh into morning.

The dark and silent gardener came once a week, first on weekdays but eventually timing it so he was there on weekends when I was home. He had that way of looking right through me like he could see I was lonely, so that when he was replaced with Francisco a few months later I was actually relieved. There was a time when I could have been had out of lonely and sorrow and that's never a good place for me to be, in the end.

And even now, now that I am all personal growthy and not stunk up with heartbreak and late-night cigarettes and forever-insomnia, I still think it is best not to have a very, very attractive young gardener.

I'm too practical, really.

The hedges and grass would still keep growing even if I grew tired of him, or he tired of me. Awkward wouldn't even begin to describe such a thing. And I'm no good at resisting temptation. I sure know messes, and I don't plan to volunteer for more if I can avoid it.

At least not messes that come to your house every week and have a key to the back gate.

Maybe that was too much information. Maybe all of this is, the whole diary. But I remember too clearly how it felt to be married and lonely and wearing too much makeup to the grocery store, looking for a little attention, maybe not even knowing it at the time.

Flirting with the gardener seems like a bad idea. It feels reminiscent of a time in my life I wish I could un-remember. I feel a little sad and humiliated to have been so married and yet so lonely that I just wanted a check-out clerk at the market to look at me like I was pretty.

Lord I am glad not to be back there anymore.

So the new gardener came by yesterday after work and I showed him the back forty and gave him the key to the gate. He is about 50, and tanned smooth brown from a job he spends outdoors, and he's very businesslike and gave a quick assessment of the trimming work Francisco had done.

"This guy was not knowing anything," he said very seriously. Gravely. He looked at the shrubs in front and sighed so deeply and morosely I knew he could feel those damn hedges hurting, in pain. I just thought they were funny, my little forest of stunted trees shaped by madness and half-dead from neglect.

His name is Juan and he brought his little boy Kenneth along for the walk-through and they admired my peppers but couldn't quite get the okra. I don't know the Spanish word for it, and anyway it's not a staple in Mexican food so I told him he'd just have to wait and see.

Then they watched as one of the fat, surprisingly large blue birds swooped down onto the patio and took a peanut from the bowl I fill each day, or when I remember to fill it. Those birds love peanuts. Sometimes they sit on the chairs and squawk at me until I fill their bowl.

"That is a BIG Blue Jay," said Kenneth.

"It's a Western Scrub Jay," I informed him. Just because.

* * *

P.S. I'm sorry the comments are being weird and slow and sometimes quadruple posting. I suspect the mystical comments machine thinks I am lonely and wants me to think I have a lot of friends. I deleted the messy duplicates where I could then I got tired and stared at my toes.

* * *

Posted by laurie at 09:54 AM | Comments (132)

April 03, 2007

Hot in Los Angeles

There is one smell I can identify immediately and I will forever associate it with Los Angeles, and that is the smell of a California wildfire.

Reporters and the people on TV describe the smoke as "acrid," which I guess it is, but to me a California wildfire smells like desert sage and a hint of dry eucalyptus and brown earth and heat and fear.

Apparently two dumbaii teenage boys from Illinois were playing with matches out near Universal Studios and the whole mountain caught on fire. They should be glad they are not my children or I would have paid the nice policemen to keep them in jail. Of course, I guess if you aren't from here you have no idea how easy it is to set the whole city on fire. Then again, as a teenager, you should have already passed the "play with matches" stage and be developing into the "sneak porno off the innernet" stage. I MEAN REALLY NOW.

You could see the smoke all the way downtown, a thick blanket of it settling down around the skyline. On the bus ride home we approached the 101/134 split and we had to shut all the windows because smoke was filling the bus. I got one not-very-good picture of the backside of the mountain where the fire was mostly out, just smoldering:

And most importantly, I got a sneaky profile shot of the Hot Bus Driver:

Bad picture but you'll have to trust me, HE HOT.

According to weather news, this is the longest dry spell Los Angeles has experienced in 130 years. I'm wary of the fire season, last year and the year before were too close for comfort out in Encino Adjacent. This year I have even more to protect from the scorching heat and fire danger, however.

THIS YEAR I HAVE OKRA.

Now, if you are right this very minute shriveling your petite, well-bred nose in disgust -- Okra! The horror! -- let me inform you that Southern Fried Okra (click for recipe) is the finest dish on earth. Served with a cold beer, some sliced tomatoes from the garden and maybe a whole ham, you will be the fattest and happiest human being around and your blood will flow finely through your veins, lubed up with oil and love.

I do not know if ya'll remember my raised bed garden I built last year, part of the Failed Square Watermelon Project of 2006. Anyway, it just sat there all year sad and empty after my tiny watermelon seedlings burned up in solid week of 118 degree Valley weather. It is now home to TWELVE little okra seedlings, because okra is a warm weather plant and allegedly LOVES the sun. The wildfire, not so much. But sun is supposed to be good for okra. There are also zucchinni in the corners of the garden bed and some marigolds because that is how I roll.

Having been a renter for five thousand years, I have always been a container gardener, and I usually have pretty good success in the containers. Check out the tomatoes and marigolds:

Cucumbers (six plants because yes, I ARE CRAZY):

I've had some of these pots for ten, twelve years now, most of them held giant cactus and succulents. But back in January we had a crazy hard frost and it was 26 degrees for several nights in a row. (That has never happened in the hundred years I've lived here!) Almost everything died. I was sad at first, but then it felt kind of good to make a clean start. I often forget that things and posessions and even plants carry energy and memories. Now I don't look out on the patio and see plants I had in a married house from way back when, I see a whole bunch of happy new little faces and just one or two old friends.

Over the weekend Faith and I wandered the aisles of the Green Thumb nursery in Canoga Park looking at their lovely herb selection and picking up each happily potted plant and smelling them, touching the leaves, and at some point I believe I even hugged a culinary-grade French rosemary. I bought Apple Mint, three varieties of Thyme, the aforementioned Rosemary, Greek Oregano, Cilantro and Basil:

[click for bigger pics]

That last pic is catnip ... in a hanging basket. I learned my lesson last year, you neighborhood alley cats who roll nekkid in planted catnip!!

I also got one red bell pepper, one yellow pepper and one purple (!) pepper, and lined them up like plant-art:

Most of my plants sit on little wheeled plant stands so I can move them into the shade this year when the Big Heat Wave arrives. I did not install a drip irrigation system because it was too expensive and I had already spent my entire budget on plants and potting soil and so on. But I cleaned the patio and arranged everything so that I can just buy one of those special nozzles for the garden hose that simulate rainwater and I'm going to hose the patio down at night when I water the plants, which (I hope) will have the added benefit of keeping Spider City at a more manageable level (the amount of dust and leaves and dirt and cobwebs on the patio was rather startling. Apparently I was very busy last year and did not have time for such pursuits as "sweeping" and "noticing the debris.")

While I would like to end this column with something involving smoke and fire and heat and me and the hot bus driver (as if I would tell ya'll anyway! Because, and Also: Hi Dad! Just sitting over here doing some Bible Study!) instead I'll tell you I spent the weekend gardening my little heart out and it was one of the most relaxing weekends I have had in ages. I used muscles I did not know I had, I got to see Faith, and I got to visit the Korean Market with my neighbor Mrs. Lee (I felt weird taking pictures, it seemed rude)(but it was fun!)

And now I have a little garden, and my hope, and a sturdy hose for the hotspots. I even found a home for Victor:

Posted by laurie at 10:25 AM | Comments (195)

November 24, 2006

I do not speak your language.

After work, I came home and knew immediately that Francisco had been at the house. For one thing, the backyard tree which had fought back all summer from last year's disastrous pruning had once again been pruned to within a shaggy inch of its life.

The weeds, however, carefully cultivated and thriving all throughout the yard were as big and strong as ever.

The general operating philosophy of the gardener is that no weed shall be harmed, no blade of grass or actual planned shrub shall be left standing. It's an interesting take on backyard management. We learn as we go.

However, the most startling discovery was ... well, I have no explanation for it. You see, I have several hanging potted plants around the back patio. They're all reposing in various shades of deadness, because I haven't had a lot of time for garden maintenance these days. But the pots hang there anyway in their little macrame swings and sway sweetly in the breeze, rustling their dead little leaves.

All except... one. Which I discovered sitting out on the middle of the concrete patio floor, surrounded by nothing, not broken, no apparent reason whatsoever for it to be there. It wasn't there before Francisco came. It was hanging and happy when I left it. What was the significance of this? Was it a sign? A secret language, a symbol meant to be decoded? Like a crop circle for urban backyards? What on earth could be the meaning behind this single solitary hanging plant now artfully arranged in code on my patio floor?

Posted by laurie at 12:57 PM | Comments (100)

November 13, 2006

A Tale Of Two Gardeners

I had a dream, I had an awesome dream. That one day I would see square watermelons sitting side-by-side with round ones, that actual vegetables would spring forth from my garden, that visible panty lines could be abolished forever which has nothing to do with gardening but is, alas, still a dream.

And then you know, I kind of woke up and I was like, "Holy crap! It's hot outside and there are ants!" So I had a cocktail and sat indoors and watched Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, which frankly is about as close as I got to gardening all year. Whoops.

Somewhere between the great flood and the great drought and the great pruning, and oh, more pruning, and a tree falling on my yard, well. I guess the square watermelon dream of '06 died. Nice knowing you, seedlings! Sorry about the 118-degree summer! Blame it on all the hole in the ozone, probably from the hairspray I used in my formative teenage years, much-needed to achieve the inpenetrable Wall O' Bangs.

So, the backyard had been looking kind of sad. And so did the front yard, because Francisco had maybe stopped coming so frequently. I saw him in August and he said, "Ah, no really need to cut the back today, it's all dead anyway." That sentiment grew into his over-arching philosophy, I suppose. Prune and hack and remove, ergo making the job of gardener almost totally work-free! Fabuloso!

Francisco thought he had the situation ar Chez Brown Yard pretty well tied up. Nice loco white lady with her organic dirt (Ha! Ha! organic dirt!) and her crazytalk of watermelon with squares. Who knows! Beer! Things were good for Francisco.

But then things changed. An interloper tried to steal the crazylady away, and Franceeeesco get very mad.

It all happened innocently enough. I was coming home from visiting Grandma in Orange County one Sunday afternoon, piling out of my Jeep and generally trying to sherpa my way to the house with all my bags when from out of nowhere, literally, where did he come from? A very cute guy offered to help me carry things up to my porch.

Normal people would say "No!" This is Los Angeles, after all. We have crazy psychoticness roaming the streets at all times. But I handed him three more bags of stuff and he helped me lug it all to the patio. He did not, it turns out, mystically appear out of nowhere. He and his father have a landscaping service and tree-trimming business and would I be looking for the services of a very good gardener?

"Because your yard, it is not so much pretty."

"Thank you," I said. "My gardener has a strategy, I think. He's really into conserving water, maybe?"

"Ah," said the serious young man with the very nice dimple. He was quiet for a minute. He looked at my garden, then looked at me. "Todo esta muerto."

"Si," I said. "Todo esta muerto." Cue the sad music, and pass the tequila.

Somehow, somewhere, the United Gardener Interpersonal Communication system must have been triggered. Just the mere presence of another gardener -- a rival, at that -- standing on my front lawn and chitchatting about crabgrass sparked a psychic flurry of competition, or something, because Francisco WHO I HAD NOT SEEN IN THREE WEEKS instantly showed up in his truck with his leafblower at the ready.

He eyed the interloper.

"Quien es this guy?" said Francisco.

"Oh, I didn't get his name," I said. Then I turned to Mystery Landscape Guy. "So, what is your name?"

"I am Abel." (Confession time. Ok, ya'll, I admit it took me a minute. I was like, "You're able? Able to do what?" because... LISTEN. I am not so fast sometimes. You know?)

So there was a pause. And then it sunk in, his name was Abel, and he was... able!!! HAHAHAHA. This is how I think, and it amused me. So I giggled, which didn't do much to break the tension at Chez Muerto Yard.

Francisco eyed Abel. Abel eyed me.

I eyed my cuticles with great interest. Then I looked at Francisco, and he looked so sad. Like that time in fifth grade when I broke up with Kevin Anderson for not holding my hand on the bus. So I turned to Abel and said, "Well, nice to meet you! This is Francisco, my gardener. I gotta go!" Francisco smiled with what was either relief or indigestion, and ... coward that I am, I fled the scene of the showdown. Locked myself inside with a nice adult beverage and four cats and nothing that even vaguely resembled the great outdoors.

But since then, Francisco has been coming every week and my yard is only a little bit muerto. I guess some healthy competition is good for all men. Even those who really, really prefer to cut and run.

This picture has nothing to do with the story.

Posted by laurie at 10:15 AM | Comments (69)

July 31, 2006

Day 11,877: Dante's Seventh Circle Of Hell is actually kind of brown and twiggy

It's not enough that everything died during the heatwave ... the watermelons, the peppers, the basil, everything died and it wasn't from lack of water (I watered as often as I could without drowning everything) but the plants simply burned. The leaves had actual burn marks from the scorching sun. Nothing could take twenty straight days of 112, 118, 109, 110 degrees except the succulents and desert plants.

It was fine, ya'll. I made my peace with it and said, "Woo hoo, look at how big that cactus has gotten!" My cactus loves the heat, and so I love it. From afar, of course.

With the weather cooling down, however, I was sure the worst was over. Marine layer! Temps in the high eighties! Maybe stuff will grow again where once there was grass. Life regains a glimmer of hope. And with hope returns the will to shop, since I can safely enter the no-A/C hellhole also knows as "my Jeep" to run errands and go to the pet store and Target and get gas and life! is! grand!

Unless you are the hedges. More specifically, my hedges. Which were left unguarded as I threw caution to the wind and ran errands instead of holding fast and firm as the protector of all that remains green and alive in my yard.

Image taken a while back, when my sprinklers flooded the backyard.

The view yesterday afternoon, post-megaprune.

Posted by laurie at 08:58 AM | Comments (106)

May 31, 2006

The Garden of Constant Sorrow; or "Hello, welcome to my backyard lake!"

Hi! Want to go for a swim?

Maybe start a trout farm? Grow some rice in a water-drenched paddy? Begin your very own West Nile Mosquito breeding farm? Do some pre-election muckraking with REAL CALIFORNIA muck? (kind of like real California cheese, only... muckier! Ya'll. I should copyright that.)

Well, if any or all of these activities sound fetching to you, please stop by my house after work. We'll drink some beer and watch the mosquitoes breed. It will be like one of those old Southern novels that ends with someone yelling out for Sounder. Or was it roll of thunder? I do not know. Maybe my neighbor down the street will set something on fire again, but we will be protected by the moat, because my backyard is fully flooded.

Let us flash back to the past, to ... yesterday. At 7 a.m.:

Me, slightly hysterical: Francisco? It's Laurie, please can you come over today because... there is a swimming pool in my backyard.

Francisco: Ah Miss you know I do not swim. I am Francisco.

Me, to myself, also keep in mind I have not had coffee: [You are Francisco ...? Is that like, a declarative sentence in which you state the reason for your actions in life is 'I Am Francisco'? I HAVE GOT TO TRY THIS. Would you like sour cream on that? No! Because I am Laurie! Would you help me with this power point presentation? No! I am Laurie!]

Me, out loud: Francisco. It's ... a lake. The sprinklers are... broken? Or maybe really really overactive? Because there is water all over the backyard.

Francisco: I see.

Me: ...!!!!!!!

Francisco: Yes. I will come and save save the sprinklers.

Me: Because you are Francisco.

Francisco: huh?

Indeed, I had discovered really exciting lake-front property in Encino, which was in fact very new and rather alarming as it is Summer (and Summer in the valley means Never Rains Everything Dries Up Dies Is Dessicated Catches On Fire) and I myself had quite the tropical paradise happening out back. There was a chair floating near the pumpkin plant. I believe I saw a squirrel jet-skiing in the back forty. Rather than join the assorted bugs and wildlife partaking in the watery goodness, however, I had to haul ass to downtown because apparently I don't have the cajones to tell my boss, No, I cannot come to work today! I am Laurie! Also, I pay the water bill for this lake!

Work was very happy as you can imagine, with me trying to decide if the house would flood, or maybe begin sinking, or that otters would swim up and start building a dam with what used to be the patio chairs and before long the opening sequence of CSI: Miami would be filmed right in my own backyard, complete with airboats and alligators and one David Caruso, who takes off his sunglasses and surveys Waterworld Encino, and then as he slides his dark glasses back on, he punctuates it with a quippy line such as, "It's murder ... Miami-Encino style. I Am David Caruso!"

Anyway. All's well that ends well and also ends with no otters on my doorstep, and I left work and Francisco came over and stopped the River Encino from growing into a canal and he did manage to SAVE THE SPRINKLERS. The yard is another story all together. Mucky is the new chic, yes? The drought-tolerant ice plant is now floating like so many waterlilies out on the bayou. If I find any crawfish swimming back there, I'll invite ya'll for dinner. You will need to utter the secret phrase for entry into the pond, though:

I Am Francisco!

I couldn't get any further than the sidewalk to take muckier, more bayou-like pictures, because I was not wearing my waders, and Lord knows what could be swimming back there, revived from the primordial ooze. Hey, want to come over? Primordial ooze! Fun!

Posted by laurie at 09:30 AM | Comments (75)

May 15, 2006

Gardening probably burns calories, right?

I am maybe slightly hobbled over and also, limping. You may be asking, "What exciting sport/date-gone-wild/hijinks and toomfoolery did you tangle with to be hunched over on a Monday morning?"

And your excitement would be wasted on me, me who is the apex of boringness, me who has apparently suffered a gardening-related injury. Or not-injury, really, more like "I am so pitiful out of shape that hauling a few bags of dirt around has crippled me."

I should maybe use my treadmill more often? Do some sport besides knitting?

And ya'll, I am embarrassed to tell you, I did not even haul around that much garden-related stuff. In fact, I maybe carried one or two bags of Gromulch, and the rest of the lifting and "put it here... no... over there... let's move this, too!" was carried out by two very nice men who had the dire misfortune to be working on a house directly next to me, one Scarlett Wishful O'Hara.

The house next door to me, previously rented by Mark and Sherri, a very nice couple, is now being put up for sale and for the past couple of weeks all sort of hammering and drilling and painting has been going on over there. I have just been ignoring it, since I know that with my luck the folks who buy that house will be either: A) Loud talkers/yellers/all-night partiers B) Super quiet people who despise my breathing noise c) Satan-worshippers who make live pigeon sacrfices in the backyard D) Drug dealers. So, I have just ignored the whole house-is-for-sale-to-possible-Satanists aspect. However, on Saturday morning I was introduced to Octavio and Julio, both of whom were very sorry to bother me but could I please come outside please?

Not a good sign, usually.

They had apparently been sawing down the tree that sits between my yard and the neighbor's yard when a large chunk of said tree crashed into my back patio. One would think that I would have heard this madness and carrying on just a mere fifteen feet from me, but I was locked in a bathroom with a cat who was determined not to be poisoned (medicated) and had grown ten biting heads and forty-eleven claws and frankly ya'll I was just not monitoring the logging operations going on in the back yard.

So I went outside with Octavio and Julio and we looked at my backyard and the large tree which was covering much of my patio.

"Shady!" I said.
"Accidental!" they said.
"Is it too early for a beer?" asked guess-who.
"Never too early!" said Octavio.

And after much chitchatting and scrutinizing of the downed soldier, everyone decided perhaps the best thing to do would be to push it back over the fence to the other side. Mind you, I had nothing to do with this flash of brilliance, as I was doing the thing that all good Southerners do when faced with a tree spontaneously committing suicide over their back porch: I was opening up cold beers and hostessing. Because this is what I do, people. I can't chainsaw a tree or haul it off to the... tree place, or whatever people do with giant pieces of greenery. No, I make jokes and kick back a cold one.

Of course, after 20 minutes of trying to push a giant tree back into the yard from whence it came, everyone was ready for another round and Octavio and Julio decided perhaps, with my OK, they would just saw it here and carry it off piece by piece?

And as day turned into evening turned into six-pack, the tree left little by little, I realized that the Almighty himself had send me these two new best buddies, and they felt so bad about a tree landing on my porch that they would agree to do anything, and also they were maybe a little intoxicated. And I had eleventeen hundred pounds of potting soil in giant bags that I had purchased way back in... April? that had been delivered... to my garage. And I had procrastinated for about as long as one can procrastinate when they are on a square watermeloning craze, and the dirt needed to make it to the back 40 for the transplanting, and I had found two poor schmoes to help me haul eleventeen hundred pounds of potting soil on Sunday. If a tree falls in Encino, will Scarlett O'Hara think about her garden the next day? Indeed!

On Sunday, both Octavio and Julio came 'round in the afternoon, and helped me with the Great Dirt Distribution Project of 2006. As previously mentioned and worth stating once again, I carried at least two whole bags of Gromulch (ha!) and I transplanted most of my seedlings and I took pictures of none of this, because it was 500 degrees in the valley all weekend and I was sweaty and dirty and also, 500 degrees. This story has no excellent conclusion, unless you find it excellent that I lied to everyone at work just now and said I was hunched over and crippled from a weekend of extreme hanky-panky, which I am sure they really believed, especially after one person suggested I downgrade to a "battery-operated model." Heh.

C'est Monday. Hobble hobble.

Pictures that also have nothing to do with this story.

Posted by laurie at 10:04 AM | Comments (80)

April 25, 2006

Day 17: An Intervention, or perhaps Prozac , is necessary

One wonders what the gardener's own yard must look like. A barren wasteland of stubby shrubs and hacked-up trees? One tries not to envision it. One drinks a glass of wine the size of one's own head and mourns the loss of the pretty flowers.

Finally, I call Landlord Bob. "I love Francisco, but he needs medication."

The landlord said, "I'll see what I can do. He seems to be on a mission doesn't he?" and I agreed. Then I said, "Perhaps he's missed his calling as a lumberjack. Or butcher. Axe-weilding maniac?"

My landlord tells me, voice lowered, "My wife almost fainted when she saw the bouganvilla at the back of our house. It has about four leaves left on it."

Pause. Take a sip. It has become quite clear: Between myself and Ladlord Bob, neither of us has any balls. "Why are you and I such pushovers, Landlord Bob? Why do we let Francisco run our lives?"

"He's the one with the electric shears, that's my guess." Then we grumble, toast to nature in its bounty, with its amazing ability to grow back.

We hope.

Posted by laurie at 12:26 PM | Comments (105)

April 17, 2006

Day 9: The Gardener wants a divorce

Francisco and I are standing in the back yard, neither of us has said a word to the other for a full five minutes. He is leaning on his shovel, staring at me, and he is angry, or frustrated, or both. I had planned to tell him all about my exciting Square Watermelon patch, but now we aren't speaking. We need therapy, or couples counseling. I suspect he wants to divorce me on the grounds of insanity.

Aside from the fact that we do not live under the same roof, and I don't do his dirty laundry, Francisco and I are in a marriage. We don't talk much, we both share the responsibility for the upkeep of the yard, sometimes we don't listen to each other, or understand each other. Sometimes we laugh, or have a beer, but we never have s-e-x.

Sounds like marriage to me.

Francisco wants to trim the big hedges, and I am trying to convince him otherwise. He has a vision for the shrubs which I do not share, every time he stops by it seems something has been removed, or cut to within an inch of its life. I used to have big box shrubs in front of the house. One day I came home to find them carved into trees. Now I make jokes to my friends, "Ya'll come over! Look at the shrubs! You can't see the forest because of the tiny, stubby trees!"

On this particular day, however, I have mortally offended Francisco. Our relationship is on the rocks. I have made the egregious error of implying that he killed the big back yard oak tree when he completely chopped it to pieces, or "pruned" it a few months ago.

"Francisco, I'm sorry, I'm sure you didn't kill the tree, it just died coincidentally around the same time, maybe?"

"It's not dead."

"But it has no branches and no leaves."

"Look! Right here, es verde, ok?"

"Ok. But this one green leaf bud will not shade me for the whole summer. If you cut down the hedges, I'll bake over here."

"Bake?"

It occurs to me that maybe the only way to appeal to Francisco on this issue is to make him understand that while his idea is REALLY GREAT, and I was WRONG to imply he killed the tree, I have special needs, and they are girly and silly but I would be so happy if he would oblige me. (Being married taught me a thing or two about the fragile male ego.)

I change my tone.

"Francisco, I know you're right about the bushes. I do! But this is a little embarrassing, you know? Me da verguenza. But ... I'm ... you know. Muy guera. Very very pale colored. And without any shade, I'll get sunburned and I'll be bright red and super fea. And you know. I just don't want to be red and ugly. I need some shade, that's all, even though you are completely right about the hedges..."

He hesitates.

He looks at the hedge. Looks back at me. As if for the first time discovering that I really do glow in the dark, probably, and while he doesn't find the shade of a giant hedge very pleasant, perhaps this crazy white lady has challenges he had not considered.

"Well," he says slowly. Taking his time.
"OK. No hedges today."

"Thank you Francisco!" I hug the gardener. We're both relieved. Neither of us really want to divorce each other. Yet.

Francisco finishes with the grass, and I sweep the patio, and then we have a beer and I decide that today is maybe not the best day to tell him about the square watermelons after all. It would just lead to more misunderstanding, more distance between us. And Lord knows I cannot afford couples counseling for me and the gardener.

Posted by laurie at 11:16 AM | Comments (58)

April 10, 2006

The Garden Of Eatin' ... Day 1: How Green Is Your Valley?

My little house in the Valley has two backyards. There is the normal back yard that stretches off the patio about seven feet deep, with some grass and a couple of trees and an overgrown geranium bush in the corner. At the back of this backyard is a giant hedge that reaches over nine feet tall and spreads out about twelve feet wide, and behind this hedge lies what I fondly call The Back 40. It is the back-backyard.

I have no idea what kind of loopy person back in 1942 decided it would be a great idea to grow a hedge in the middle of the yard, separating it into two. Ellen and her husband Larry suggested it may have been a way for the original homowners to disguise "untidy" yard things, or maybe laundry, or both. But apparently 1940s-era loopy found its 2000-era perfect match, because I love the hedge divider. It gives me a secret garden in the Back 40, plus provides a much cozier atmosphere in the front-backyard.

Before I decided to embark upon my new path of Growing Square Fruit, my back-backyard was a vast empty wasteland of nothingness. The soil is hard and mostly clay and I shut off the Back 40 sprinklers some time back in December, so the few weeds shriveled up or wandered off to someone else's better-maintained Real Yard. The goal here was to kill off the weeds and remaining straggly grass so it would be easier to dig up come planting time. I planned to create two raised beds (shallow, but still raised), fill them with dirt and let the magic begin.

On Saturday, I began my Great Gardening Adventure by heading to the Back 40 to size up potential placement for the raised beds.

It was not the same back backyard. It was suddenly a lush den of weed iniquity, full of wildlife and mayhem, if by "wildlife and mayhem" you mean one blue jay and all the ants in the known universe.

Clearly I needed a hoe for this job, so of course I went to Wal-Mart in Panorama City. (heh) (Oh, I love you, Ghetto Mart de Wal!) While I was there pimpin' for hoes, I also picked up a packet of okra seeds and some extra starter medium. I'm starting most of my plants from seed because I am a glutton for punishment, and also because seeds. Fun to grow!

Next stop, Home Depot on a Saturday for raised bed materials. Home Depot. On a Saturday afternoon. Not even a hoe can help me. Luckily, as I wandered around the lumber area looking like a lost puppy in platform flip-flops, I met Lumber Man, possibly the most patient guy on the planet, who took pity on me and listened patiently as I described my great gardening ideas.

I should interject here that I had no actual building plans, sketches, measurements or details for my raised garden beds. My dream of a square watermelon patch was self-sustaining; dreamers like me can't be bothered with little details like "how long is this thing" and also "what is it made of."

Me: You know, I just want a box thing. To hold dirt, which I have been told to call "soil" and in this dirtsoil I'm going to plant a garden.

Lumber Man: Do you know about how big you want it to be?

Me: Oh, you know. Big-ish?

Lumber Man: Like ten feet? Twelve feet?

Me: You're cute. I'm going to make a square watermelon.

Lumber Man: ...? Why?

Me: Because I feel it might be my true calling.

Lumber Man: Well, maybe five feet by five feet then.

Wise Lumber Man suggested I buy supplies to build one box, just in case I needed to "adjust measurements" or perhaps "discovered I do not know shit about building anything." (He did not say it so much as, perhaps, it was implied when he asked "Do you have any tools for building this?" and I replied, "Tools schmoolz!")

I purchased my supplies and went home, determined to have a nice glass of cabernet and build The Beginning Of The Greatest Ant Hill Ever Made. In just a few quick ... hours, I created the masterpiece:

So, in conclusion, the Great Watermelon Patch has the following:

• One garden box sitting on the patio, bereft of dirtsoil.
• One package of okra seeds germinating away in a Jiffy greenhouse.
• One hoe, still unpimped.
• One Back 40, full of weeds.
• One OCD blue jay.
• One bazillion ants.

Excellent beginning! Gardening is fun. Especially when it involves wine and power tools!

Posted by laurie at 09:56 AM | Comments (100)