Thanks for the nectar

I didn't know that a peony bud and a black ant were the perfect couple. Thanks to a phenomenon called biological mutualism, the ant sips a tiny bit of nectar from the bud without disfiguring it, while the peony benefits from the ant's predatory nature as it wards off other insects that can harm the flowers.There are so many surprises in a garden. The biggest surprise will of course be actually harvesting fruits and vegetables.That's all some weeks away since the last frost in Minnesota is sometime around Mother's Day, and things are just getting started. A few weeks ago I didn't know what any of these things popping out of the ground were. I can name them all now, and I've learned not to believe everything I read about them. Dame's rocket and Solomon's seal are a weeds (a.k.a.wildflowers with a propensity for spreading) according to some, but I'm hoping they pop up again next year. My goal is to have a garden full of native plants, very loosely choreographed--a bit shaggy around the edges where it meets a lawn that, I hope, will be taken over by wild clover.

Going outside is the first thing I want to do in the mornings, or at least walk around looking out all of my windows. It's a kaleidescope out there. A turn of a calendar page changes blossons to leaves, or a blooming redbud to a blooming Japanese barberry. One day the pinkie-sized flowers of the false starry lily are replaced by lillies of the valley.In a week a dead looking stump transforms into a grape vine. Soon the ferns will be knocking on the windows asking to be let in.

Bob Dylan is 80, and in a couple months I'll be asking where all the flowers have gone.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Minneapolis!

Ruins--Did you know that flour dust is more explosive than gun powder? 

One of the reasons Minneapolis is know as the Mill City

Nature, co-exsiting with the city

The beautiful Hennepin Avenue Bridge

Many bridges--they say that if the river is calm at night the reflection of this bridge in the water looks like a giant cat's eye.

Fine food--there's a lot of it in Minneapolis.

Three one-eyed creatures at a tiki bar

And the food here at Psycho Suzi's was great!

Besides eating and drinking, I reconnected with friends, went to wonderful bookstores, saw a lot of art and some great theatre.

Of course I went out on the river and a lake.

View from the Mississippi Queen

Feeling like the queen of Lake Jane
(Photo taken by a friend who had her phone in a zip-lock bag for safekeeping)

 And for some reason, I did not cry on the plane ride home.

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Tears

This post comes to you from my condo in St. Paul, Mn.--a condo I bought back in 2008 pre-economic downturn against the advice of my trusty financial advisor. He was right.

But post-divorce, I was making all kinds of crazy plans. I would have taken out a jumbo loan and financed the Taj Mahal at an interest rate high enough to reach the moon if I'd thought it was the solution to how shitty I felt back then. Daughter M was not doing the best in those days either, and I think living here was some sort of balm--as much balm as a physical thing can be for a hurt that's not at all physical. She lived here for three years, and now the other daughter, C, is living here with her husband. With my mom in a nursing home in northeast Iowa, the Twin Cities are now a good gateway to visiting her.

The frozen rural place/a.k.a. Iowa--taken on the road trip with C and her husband to see my mom

Photo of my mom and me taken yesterday. 

It was -28 degrees today in St. Paul. I went out for a walk. The sidewalks were dry and clean. With my eyes watering from the cold and my frozen tears sticking my eyelashes together, I thought about  my complicated history with Minnesota. I came here for college in 1970 just weeks after signing the final paperwork relinquishing my son for adoption. The next year I had major surgery on my spine and a month later my father died suddenly of a heart attack. The following year there was another back surgery. Thirty years later I came here again and again post divorce. I've walked in every type of weather. I've walked in deep into the woods and on country roads in the pitch black winter night while the sky was ripped apart by shooting stars. I've walked ankle deep in the mud on a lakeshore, along the Mississippi River in driving rain, in downtown St. Paul bathed in Christmas lights. I've walked drunk. I've walked sober. I've walked wailing out loud, talking to myself, while plotting mayhem, and while plotting my own destruction. Today I just walked, glad to be out under the sky.

Today, walking in St. Paul

Walking is what I do. Sad, happy, mad, glad, tired, wired, here, there. 

And while I've shed plenty of tears in California, somehow I always feel happier there.

Last month walking on the beach in Cambria, CA

And tomorrow, I'll be back in Margaritaville (a.k.a. Ventura County)

Though I have to disclose that this photo was actually taken in a Mexican Restaurant in Dubuque, IA

Another road trip photo--just because.

The Weather Saints

Main Street store: West Point, NE

Going back to the Midwest always evokes a mix of emotions for me. I hate the heat and the humidity, the infernal buzz of biting insects, the endless array of fried foods, and the jello weirdness of salad bars. But C and I drove through postcard prettiness yesterday from Minnesota to Nebraska. Billowing clouds over fields of perfect corn, the silver-green waver of soybeans, the greener-than-green glow of alfalfa. We stopped in a roadside antiques store to browse, and when we got to where we were going, we walked into the little town in search of a dinner. I want a steak in a dark bar or supper club, I told C. She was game. We almost had to settle for the golden arches, but at the far end of Main St., I got my wish.

I don't usually eat meat. I'm a pescatarian--in other words a vegetarian who eats some fish. But I had a steak last night. You gotta eat the good thing that's local, right? And there was no jello at the salad bar. Pea salad, carrot salad, and cole slaw instead. They were all delicious. We returned to our motel without a single mosquito bite and woke this morning to a day of unbelievably pleasant weather. We're here for a wedding, and my ex-mother-in-law has a routine of imploring the appropriate saints for perfect wedding weather. This is her 10th grandchild wedding, and she is currently 10 for 10.

Dear California

I miss you, California. Your cool nights with the scent of jasmine in the air. Waking to wild parrots, the tapping of the woodpecker in my grevalia tree. I miss my patio, my barbecue, my juicer, and my own bed.
Oh, things are good enough here in the land of 10,000 lakes. Pairs of finches on the telephone wire outside my kitchen window. Pristine skies and flower boxes dripping with humid color.
What would it be like, I wonder, to have the people I love most live in the same place--across the street or down the road? What if there could be no future parting?

My Life in the Land of 10,000 Lakes

I consider it a gift when I am seized by a surprise surge of emotion. It happened this morning at the airport in the Twin Cities. There was Native American chant piping from an airport store that sells things made by Native Americans (and probably some cheesy touristy stuff too.)Right next door was a store called "The North Woods" or something like that. A lake-y vibe. Canoes and snowshoes and moose. Minnesota, I thought, and suddenly my eyes were like lakes. I meant to spend my life in The Land of 10,000 Lakes. That had been the plan Mr. Ex and I had made. Have our So Cal fun in the sun, and if we started a family, we'd move back to Minnesota when the kid was ready to start school. "We" started a law firm instead. Our daughters are California girls.

There was a high winds advisory in the Twin Cities last night. The old windows in my condo rattled all night long. I was alone in the house, and spent the night with my iPad next to my bed with the a local weather website open and one ear cocked for the tornado sirens. The weather is still gusty with turbulence at high altitudes, and the airplane I am on as I write this post is practically skimming the ground at 15,000 feet instead of its customary 30 or 35 thousand. It's like a giant-screen interactive video game with no clouds obstructing the view of the ground on this sunny clear day. The lakes in the Twin Cities look like silver-gray silk and the terrain is so so green that the roads slicing through it seem to be tinted yellow. The green in Minnesota always makes me feel as though we Californians are being deluded. Minnesota is genuine green, it seems, while the hues of California green are some kind of tinsel-town fakery. Seen from the air, Minnesota is a marvel of lakes set into an emerald carpet, and it positively swept me off my feet this morning.

I've joked that I've been trying to repatriate my daughters to the Midwest. M. says, that in her case, the mission is accomplished. I heard her say "pop" instead of "soda" just a day or two ago, so I think if she learns to fish, she might be able to pass. C. detested her one year of college in Wisconsin, but now she's working on Lake Michigan in Chicago, and has nothing but praise for the boat, The Windy, and The Windy City itself.

As for me, California still has me on my knees--um...quoting a Joni Mitchell song, but yeah, I'm comin' home.









vintage photo of St. Paul: Lakesnwoods.com
current photo of L.A. is my own