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.

I'm just sitting here watching the houseplants grow

the dining room group

Many loved ones stand on the front lines of Covid-19 and racial justice.
I sit at my desk next to these plants and make things-- Monetary contributions to organizations that I believe will change this f-ed up world; making zines, origami boxes, small handwritten books, hand bound journals, protest posters that will probably not go out into the street.

masu boxes with lids made of hand-marbled paper

While I completely understand that I don't know how to draw, I still like doing it. Go figure.  This is a slipcase for a collection of zines.

coptic binding in progress

I'm growing things on the balcony that I rarely used last year. This year it's an oasis (relative term) despite the noise from the a.c. units next door.

First tomato (and maybe jalapeños too) are on the way

So, the houseplants are doing fine. And for those of you who might wonder, I'm not actually drinking myself to death during quarantine. I know. I'm surprised too.

How are your houseplants (dogs, cats, kids, parents, hamsters, chickens) doing? How are you?

"Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive." Hafiz

 One of my yoga teachers ended a recent class with the quote above. My list is long, and by no means fully described by the photos below. A decade ago things did not feel so joyful in my personal life.

Pure white doves in flight

A beach full of birds and treasures

The roses in my own front yard

Trying to grow a lemon tree

Looking at art
This is from the exhibit, Rotari's Muses, at the Norton Simon

A visit from faraway friends

A sweet dessert from a beloved friend

A Room With a View

This is the view from my motel room in Fremont, Nebraska
That's a soybean field--and there in the distance, the curve of the Earth.

It's flat here and the eye travels easily to the horizon.

I spent the 30 years of my marriage visiting my in-laws here at least once or twice a year. It's surprisingly different from the countryside in Iowa where I grew up. But I've spent most of my life in big cities, so I can see the Nebraska countryside through city-dweller eyes too. It can look mysterious. Even a bit eerie.

It's a great place to contact aliens.
Or imagine animatronic dinosaurs or skeletal insects devouring the earth.

But I didn't come here this trip to write stories. I came to bid final farewell to my ex-mother-in-law. I made a terrible first impression in 1975. Braless and in short-shorts, I was wild girl with even wilder hair cavorting with the son that was meant for the seminary. 

She and I found common ground though and I treasured her. She was one of the most likable people I've ever met. 

Today after her funeral, after witnessing her ashes put into the ground in her husband's grave, I gave myself a tour of her yard. She gardened with both a reverent and a fanciful hand. She loved "garden junk,"especially and I do too, though most of my own treasures now come from the beach. 

 There's a row of towering evergreens that she planted as tiny saplings.

One summer she requested custom stepping stones with the handprints of her grandchildren.

She burned her trash--but only what could not be composted or recycled. 

Her hard work yielded much beauty. And while the yard certainly is not at the pinnacle of its glory years, her hand is still evident. I stood in front of her tool shed for a bit this afternoon, wanting to open it, but I didn't. She put me to work there during my first visit post divorce. I remember the smell of dirt and oil, but I can't remember what it was she had me do, only that I felt safe there in that small dark space that housed the tools she used to create her art.

Mildred was the most fervently religious person I've ever known. I may have been one of the most irreligious people she ever knew. Yet, somehow I believe that she resides now with her God, the angels and the saints. May she rest in peace. 

Yesterday's Beach Report/What the Yoga Teacher Said (yesterday)/and Stuff I'm Avoiding

Beach Report: 

After two days of Santa Ana winds (they blow from the east) all the sand is back where it belongs. I missed my beach walk on Tuesday and when I arrived there yesterday, there was no dune to scale in the parking lot and the beach bathrooms were on level ground. The beach itself looked like a movie set. A smattering of driftwood, some rocks, and some beach glass amidst the pebbles. Like nothing  dramatic had ever happened. It seems that's the way some things in this life are. You spend years detesting someone while turmoil swirls and then you just can't work up the interest anymore. In fact, you don't even think of them, or IT, or anything much to do with the giant mess that once was.

What the Yoga Teacher Said: 

Find love in the pose, the yoga teacher is fond of saying. It's a job sometimes, finding love. It's there but you have to look for it, work at it. And during the struggle, it's the looking for love that makes the struggle easier. Just the other day as I logged on to check my mom's bank balance online, I discovered it was time to change her password. Without thinking I changed it to il0veyoumom! 

Stuff I'm Avoiding: 

I have three stacks of things on my kitchen island. The never-ending pile of paperwork for my mom. It took me months to get her on Medicaid (hooray!--she's on it!) and now there's a barrage of mail that I can't seem to comprehend on the first read through, so I stack it up. Stack #3 is the re-fi offers and my notes on how to negotiate a re-fi. I will have to gin up a certain mood to make those phone calls. Stack #3 is the alimony mediation stuff--those ducks are pretty much in a row.

And here's how I avoid the piles of stuff:

Rearranged Patio Stuff

It was warm and not windy today so I pulled up a couple of dead plants. I moved unhappy plants to places I think will make them happier. I swept. I weeded. And I decided to bring my big glass jar of beach glass inside and find a place for it since it's always misty with condensation and no one can see the beach glass.

My Entire Collection of Beach Glass--except for what we used to tile the fireplace

So I dumped all the beach glass out and washed it and laid it out on a towel to dry. Then I took the big glass jar into the laundry room to wash it. But I broke it. I had this beach ball sized jar for 20 years, and I've moved it to three different houses. It's funny how I always go into denial first when the bad thing happens. That just a bubble of dish soap, I said. I didn't break a big round piece out of that beautiful jar. But I did. Not salvageable. 

So the beach glass is now in a bowl that my mom gave me years ago. And it's very cool because the mirror let's you see the glass in the bottom of the bowl. So there you have it. The mess cleaned up. And the next time I move, I won't have to transport that huge jar. I'm finding love in that thought.

The Insult of Azaleas

I was prepared for ruin. Prepared for flower beds obliterated by neglect. This is what I would find, I feared, and knew how to cushions the blows.

I drove C and her husband to The Someone's house this morning to spare them hours of circling through L.A.s inefficient labyrinth of suburban mass transit. I pulled to the curb in front of the house next door, my view of the house where I once lived blocked by its garage. If I kept my gaze close, fixed on the people I was hugging good-bye, I wouldn't see rose bushes turned feral or thirsty trees beseeching the sky.

But what caught me off guard were clouds of white azaleas spreading over the once tidy walls, pure beauty, bright and startling, insulting me with how they've thrived in my absence.

Kuri Squash Tart

I'm something of a squash fanatic. One year I grew so much summer squash, my kids refused to eat it for years.

This fall there's been quite a bit of winter squash in my weekly CSA box. Squash is one of my mom's favorite veggies, and I don't think she's going to get tired of it. The varieties we've devoured so far include Delicata, Butternut, Acorn, Kabocha, Carnival, Kuri, and Spaghetti. The Kuri alone failed to live up to our expectations.

Last week there was another Kuri in my box of veggies, and on Saturday night I turned it into a tart.

I wanted it to be a little different from a pumpkin pie since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so I made the crust out of ground almonds. I dumped two cups of roasted almonds into the food processor, pulsed them until they were coarsely ground, and then added 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of butter. I pulsed it some more and then pressed it into the tart pan (9 ") and baked it for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

The Kuri squash was baked in the oven until very tender, cooled, and the innards scooped out and put into the food processor with 1/8 C brown sugar, 1/4 C white sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon,1/4 tsp ginger, 1/8 tsp allspice, and 1/8 tsp cloves. Once that was mixed, I added an egg that had been beaten into a cup of soy milk, pulsed until well blended, and poured the mixture into the crust. I think I baked it for about 30 minutes. Things were getting busy in the kitchen at that point, and the man who loves me and I were probably into our second glass of wine by then.

The tart was a delicious dessert. We topped it with vanilla ice cream. It made a fabulous breakfast, too.

Gluten free & dairy free--without the vanilla ice cream, that is.

Squirrel Underpants or Now I Understand Everything

My patio wall is "nut highway." Which is not to say it is populated by religious zealots holding signs predicting the end of the world, or that goofy sect of Catholics promulgating their theory that Galileo was wrong after all. Squirrels. I'm talking about squirrels. It's rush hour on my patio wall all day long. Acorns being ferried south. Pecans being transported north. Chattering and posturing, up the towering grevalia trees and down, through my scraggly hibiscus hedge, up my denuded apricot tree and into the neighbors' flowering pear. Complete fucking squirrely nuttiness, and I am contemplating mayhem.

I have eaten exactly one apricot from my tree in the four years I've lived here. True, I travel a lot.  And I've done some STUPID THINGS. If I stayed home more often, I could tend things better. Next spring when the apricots appear, I hope to be here installing robotic owls or motion sensitive barking devices. Maybe I'll coat every branch of the tree with vaseline or chili pepper or encase each little green precursor of golden fruit into its own tiny wire cage.
                                                                          

Or maybe I'll buy a gross of these and wrestle the furry-tailed little shits into some tighty whiteys and hope for a reduced squirrel sperm count.

I know there are people who love squirrels. I apologize. But I love my paltry and petite urban garden. I want to pick bowls of blueberries and strawberries and stir them into my yogurt. I want apricots heaped into the fruit bowl on my kitchen counter. I want a handful of kumquats every damn day that they're in season. I don't want squirrels.




I used to eat squirrel when I was a kid. My dad hunted them and my mom served them up with gravy. My dad helped me tie the fluffy tails to my tricycle handles. I don't own a bike now, and I'm a vegetarian or maybe I could more actively solve this problem, you know what I mean?

My patio is also home to two kinds of geraniums, three rose bushes, two colors of kalanchoe, camellias, hydrangeas, impatiens, jasmine, bougainvillea, calla lilies, and several varieties of hibiscus. Can we talk about the hibiscus for a minute? The flowers are pretty enough although there's no scent, and they're not good for cutting. Which means that the only reason to keep battling the white fly that so dearly loves them is the flowers in situ. But I don't have a lot of flowers. Which, as I've said, is the whole point of hibiscus-ness. I should feed them more, I thought. Do a better job of keeping the whitefly off them. I should prune more--or prune less.

Today I understood everything.

If you see a squirrel in underpants, I'm responsible.

photo credit for "Squirrel Underpants": www.squirrelunderpants.com/ "Protect the world from squirrel nudity!"

Wanna come over for a beer?

I fret about my lack of social life--or L.A.'s version of a social life anyway which usually requires one to get in a car and race down the freeway, planning around rush hour traffic whenever possible.  I'm spoiled by writer's residencies, I guess, and maybe my long-ago life in a small town where familiar faces are close by and eating dinner alone would be just plain weird. I do have friends in L.A. It's just that I seldom do what's required to see them. I'm not sure why.

But yesterday I actually had two social encounters: Lunch with two writer friends at a Silver Lake restaurant called Forage--which in my head I kept wanting to call Rampage, which is what I wanted to do when I saw the food. In a good way. All fresh and delicious and healthy with plenty of inventive veggie options. Goat cheese and date jam, with a crumble of hazelnuts and diced mint on toast. It's all in the garnish.
I should garnish more.

A little later it was Mythos beer and pistachios on my patio with a poet I met in Greece. Somehow it seems to me that all these fabulous women writers I know should be getting together more often and making our own mini-residencies where we write all day and get together for dinner. We should trade houses or apartments from time to time, too. Shake out our brains in different surroundings and see what ends up on the page.

It's a revealing encounter--getting together with friends you haven't seen in months. You have to get caught up, explain where you've been and what you've been up to, what you've written or what you're working on. I realized that  since the BIG DIVORCE NEWS  in July (that was practically a month ago,) I  haven't done much writing. I've been reading short things--poems, and New Yorker stories, and blog posts. My attention span is telling me that it spent four years spinning through nastiness and absurdity. It doesn't want sustained anything now.

And I want to be outside on my little citified patio. Who's going to win--me or the white fly? Will the blueberries get off their twiggy little butts and bear some fruit? Is it the same damn squirrel who keeps stalking my apricot tree. Or is it a hybrid squirrel-rat (squat--you pronounce that with an A like in apple,) and can a squirrel really breed with a rat and is the neighborhood overrun with these skinny-tailed beasts? Do I have room for another flowering plant--or should I see if I can get some tomatoes going this late. What about an olallieberry? This is what I've been thinking about.

But I did realize while talking to my friends, that though my brain is in neutral, my life seems garnished with spoonfuls of sweetness these days.

10,000 Tasks in the Land of 10,000 Lakes

Yesterday was patching day. Today was sanding-vacuuming-washing-and-priming day. I dragged the vacuum cleaner, a mop and a bucket, and can of primer from one end of my St. Paul condo to the other this afternoon. Tomorrow will be painting day in preparation for the new closet "systems" that will be installed in my bedroom closets and in my tiny kitchen pantry. The kicker is that I actually enjoy this sort of thing. With two walks to the hardware store plus the actual work, I got some exercise and saved myself at least several hundred dollars. How could that not be fun. I have always loved improving the places I've lived-- even as a renter.
I'm a sucker for pretty.

Right after Mr. Ex graduated from law school, he got an offer for a temporary job in Denver. We lived in a 450-square-foot apartment in the middle of L.A. then, and I stayed there while he went to Denver. While he was away, I pulled up the filthy carpet and hand-waxed the beautiful old wood floor. I custom blended paint colors tinting and mixing the almost-free paint I'd gotten at a flea market until it was a pale sandy rose and painted our living room.  Everyone looked gorgeous in that room.

I was both stricken and furious when he left me. By then we lived in a big house with a pool and a jacuzzi, a playground, a built-in barbeque big enough to cook a side of beef. We had a gorgeous patio next to a waterfall and a billion other things we didn't have when our life together was smaller.

I made this list sometime after he left me, pissed as hell that all my sweat equity was washed away, and that he let me work as his general contractor and as a laborer on a house that he wanted for himself and the Little Missus.

What I Did or Hired to be Done from Jan. '07 to Jul. '07 ( I chose to focus on this narrow period of time because after studying his cellphone records, it was pretty obvious to me that he knew he was leaving me by January.)

Haulers for misc. junk

Xmas lights down

Winterized Shade-Tree canopy system for patio

Solved drainage issues in driveway and front flower beds

Pond repair

Organized Mr. Ex's pile of papers in garage

Tree trimmers

New garage doors

Painted garage

Cleaned and organized garage top to bottom

Free-cycled the stuff we don't want

More shelves from CA closets for garage & repair of bin in back hall closet

Maintenance of AC & heating

Researched TVs

Carpet & rug cleaning

Direct TV installation

Garage floor installation

Set up garage as M's party room

Fed roses

Researched and bought new fridge

Got rid of old fridge

New shower head

Termite control

Plumber

Sprayed roses

Pond guy again

Landscaping tune-up

More work on Pond

Constant yard work and gardening

I'm pretty sure I would feel like I was living in a mausoleum if I'd been the one to keep the house.  I don't miss it--except for what I grew there.

Apricots, Blueberries, and Stories

This morning I finally wrestled the remnants of  last year's bird netting out of my apricot tree.  The widow's veil has been cast off, and

the first blossom has opened.

The blueberries are flowering too

and tonight I teach a memoir workshop.

Let there be apricots, blueberries, and stories.

What I Will Tack to Mr. Ex's Front Door This Weekend.

Dear Mr. Ex,

On this weekend of Labor Day it is fitting, I think, to remind you that I labored to bring our daughters into the world. And once they joined us on this earth, I continued to labor. Hearth. Heart. Home. Strawberry fields--or at least a small rectangle of sweet red fruit in our front yard. Every day for weeks a mixing bowl full I served to us, and to family, friends, and the attorneys you occasionally brought home and propped at our dining room table. Then came grapefruits and oranges. Plums and pomegranates. Loquats and guavas. But you'd tired of our eden by then. Still--I marinated chickens, squeezed lemonade, and with the same hope, I pressed the juice from our our lives. Let it be sweet, I prayed. Not saccharine. For us--only the real.
I planted roses. I planted trees. I planted hope, and I watered it. Kept it alive--in drought years, with carefully rationed tears.  Kept us alive as long as I could.
But you've let so many things die.
My pension was in those plums. My retirement in roses.  My 401-K wrapped round and round a sun that, at present, shines only on the bright planet of you.
What I ask of you is this: Divide what bounty remains.  As the sun tires of its labors this holiday weekend, promise me half of the fools' gold that glitters in the night sky of our lives.