From the files of: Here's What It's Like To Live Without A Man Around The House

I wish I had taken photos, but really, I was too shocked to even think of it. This morning, just after I brushed my teeth (in all innocence), I spied through the corner of my eye: my brand new outdoor umbrella go sailing across the yard.

I ran. I flung open (or should that be shoved, considering it's a slider?) the back door and raced to the Good Neighbor fence off to the left. There tottering teetering precariously about to pitch itself head first into my neighbor's yard was my unfurled umbrella. I grabbed it, hoping that I would not pull a Mary Poppins. The umbrella and I did the Texas Two Step for a couple of beats before I brought it to heel (aren't you excited by the wild mixing of my metaphors here?). I managed to find the crank and turned it as fast as I could. The umbrella furled. The crisis was averted.

Until I looked at the redwood table. Here it is. The umbrella fits into a hole in the center of the table and then extends down to a cast iron umbrella stand. I repeat, cast iron. I paid almost as much for the stand as I did for the umbrella because I'm smart and I know that these umbrellas require steady footing of some sort. Clever, aren't I.

So back to the table. It wasn't there. Not there at all. The chairs were there, but the table, she had gone elsewhere. Perhaps to Oz.

Ah, shit, I said, because I'm eloquent and articulate that way. I did a three eighty of my backyard and, oh yes, I see it now. The table has been tumbled this way and that and is now on its head over by the fountain. Because I'm clever, I got immediately what had happened: the Mary Poppins scenario had happened to my table.

Since I live alone, there's no one to share this mighty feat of nature with. But then my gardener, Bob arrives and despite the fact that I know this will extend his time doing my yard work from 5 minutes to 7, I take him around back and show him my table. He is most appreciative. And helpful. He gets down on the ground and shows me that there's this screw thingie on the cast iron umbrella stand. One is meant, he tells me, to put the umbrella in the stand and then tighten the screw thingie. That, he assures me, is what is necessary to keep the umbrella where it belongs.

He was right. The wind blew like a bitch all afternoon, but my umbrella, she stayed put and my outdoor scene is restored to normalcy. Except for the vinyl tablecloth. Which is probably in someone's yard a house or two down.

Symbols, Metaphors, Tropes of one kind or another

We moved into our house in August of 2005. The landscaping went in that fall, so it wasn't until the spring of 2006 that we made good on our plans to buy some sort of gazebo thingie to protect us, when we were doing the lazy, crazy things Americans do in their back yards, from the hot hot hot Sacramento sun. We found a tiki gazebo at Target. It was cute, without being twee, and if we avoided hanging fishnets and coconuts, it afforded our back yard a measure of sophistication. At least we thought so.

The gazebo came totally disassembled in a long, narrow carton. We assembled it. It took us all of a Sunday to figure out which pipe A went to which bamboo strut B, and so on and so on and so on. We raised the roof on the gazebo just before dinner, and I remember feeling tired and sore from humping pipe A, etc., but also so very very good. I was proud of the way we had worked together, D and I, to create this thing which would be a token of our finally having achieved something resembling The Good Life. This was the first time we had a GrownUps backyard, where everything fit and was finished and spoke to our taste and good fortune. I anticipated many, many evenings outside in the bamboo gazebo, with family who lived nearby and friends, who we would surely soon meet. I wish I had taken a picture of it that day, but this is the nearest I could find: a photo taken to put the redwood furniture on Craigslist. Imagine, if you will, a khaki pagoda style awning for a roof; add some bamboo shades on one side--there you have it.

I think we had company over once. Family didn't make it over as often as we'd hoped; friends, well, let's just say they were very hard to come by. This next photo is the gazebo in January after a hellish storm which uprooted trees all over the area.
Obviously, it had to go, and today D. came over and took it apart. By himself. He didn't want or need my help.

I don't usually write about the breakup of my marriage, and I'm not going to say much more than this: I cannot help but see that gazebo as a symbol or metaphor. It's raising and it's falling. The hopes and plans and dreams with which we moved to this house--and what remains today.

Nobody Goes Where My Rosemary Grows....

Stormy Weather, tra la....

This is--or was--the gazebo in the backyard. It was a nice little gazebo. It gave good shade in the summer. RIP, little gazebo.

Flotsam & Jetsam & Metaphors Galore

Last night I dreamt I got stuck in a steep ravine. I started to climb out and then stopped because I remembered how old I am. Too old to be climbing out of ravines, it would seem. In my dream, I found another way out, but when I awoke--now--I'm wondering if "too old" is a fact of life to be dealt with (as I did in the dream) or an excuse.

The brined chicken was not successful. Despite being all nicely browned, crispy even, on the outside, it was still pink--oh, yuck!--on the inside. I had to zap it in the microwave which, of course, left it dry. I'm wondering if brining does something to poultry that affects cooking time and temp. I find myself, in this current bout of cooking mania, very interested in the chemistry involved. It's as if--no, it is!--that I've suddenly discovered that cooking is really a chain of chemical reactions. Unfortunately chemistry was my worst, absolute worst subject in school...


The product of my weeding on Sunday: I chopped and trimmed and cut and eventually pulled out a dead bush . It was the sister to the bush below on the left. Why did one live and prosper while the other died? I'm not sure. Maybe it was the incredibly invasive vining weed that had wrapped itself around and through the bush. Or maybe it was just Its Time.

This is the clear space that's left, and now I get to decide what I want to put there. I'm thinking bulbs--I love hyacinths. And maybe herbs. I'm not sure.

When I typed that first sentence above, it came out as , "The product of my wedding on Sunday..." Today, actually, is the anniversary of my wedding nineteen years ago. Do I regret it? No. Do I regret its ending? In some ways, yes and in some ways, no. It is what it is and I am what I am, and today I'm happy with that.

G is for Garden...

This will not be a touchy feely post. I am not one of those souls who wanders 'round her garden being nurtured by the nurturing nature of things green and growing. For one, there are also things brown and gray and wiggly being nurtured. I once wrote an article about harvesting snails from one's garden. It was a how-to, written in the days when I took any writing gig that paid (okay, so those days have not ended). I researched the thing and as with my articles about things sexual, my readers benefited only from my research and not from my experience. So when I tell you that harvesting snails is no big deal as long as you put them in corn meal to eat and shit for some amount of time (which you can probably find out by googling, or I could dig up the article) before you actually eat the suckers. And I use that last word advisedly.

But back to my garden....self-analysis is a 24/7 thing with me, so over the years, I've learned this about myself via my garden.

1. I am a process person. I love the planning, the digging, the planting, the weeding. To actually harvest whatever, eh, not really. I no longer grow green beans because they get so big so fast that I could never keep up with them. One year I actually made green bean pesto, which was no small feat. And people ate it. Which just proves that garlic, basil, and a good olive oil will make a decent dish of any old thing.

2. I don't believe in watering. If those fuckers, whatever they are, can't grow on their own, they don't deserve to, is my motto. Consequently I have more and better and bigger tomatoes than anyone around. Because tomatoes don't like a lot of water. Which means they deserve to grow in my garden. Other vegetables, not so much, I confess. Like cucumbers. But chard--I once grew a magic potion of rainbow chard. Of course, at the time I didn't know what to do with it, so it just kinda bolted out in the ground, a blessing of red and yellow and green, until it became brown and moldy.

3. I am an organic gardener. Mainly because those chemicals scare me and I'm always sure I'll shoot them in my face--or in Molly's. So if there are pests in my garden, I take care of them naturally. I spray whiteflies with soapy water. I get whoever I can to pluck the tomato worms off the vines. I tried drowning snails in beer, but frankly, my heart broke for the poor unwitting snail, inching his way into that good smelling stuff, working so hard, covering so little ground in so long a time and then--splat, he falls into beer and can't swim and drowns and leaves all his poor snail children alone in the dark. The same with snails and salt. I couldn't bear to watch them writhe. Why not just crucify them? You'd only need one nail.

4. I love weeding. I may save this for W is for... because really, what I would reveal deserves its own post.

5. I rarely if ever sit in my garden. My excuse is that it's too hot, too cold, too wah wah wah, but really, I think it's a character issue. What I like about my garden is the making of it. It's the process, I tell you, not the product. My garden here in Elk Grove is beautiful. As well it should be since I paid Hugo some $10K (okay, that may be a bit high) to put it in. It's got a stone waterfall and a gazebo. Actually, the electronics on the waterfall have frozen, so this summer particularly it has threatened to be a little den of mosquito inequity. And the gazebo--well, it's not fastened down and on windy days, it walks. But the rest of the garden is gorgeous: rose bushes and Meyer lemons, peaches and sweet peas, and them there tomatoes that I mentioned above. And, oh, the grape vines. These were D's special request. I think he plucked one grape, and I got stuck with the rest. Typical. I cut them off the vine and thought I'd make wine, or jelly, but, eh! they ended up rotting. So now I've got huge vines and what the fuck am I supposed to do with them. I look at them and think--grape vine wreathes, esty--I should cut and twirl or twist them and then sell them. I should. I should. I should.

But I won't. Maybe I'll get Bob, who is the Fijian replacement for the Mexican Hugo, to cut them down. Maybe I will.

But probably I won't.

NaBloPoMo

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do....

This post has nothing to do with D. It's the other two guys in my life that I'm breaking up with. Hugo, the (erstwhile) gardener, and James, the (so-called)hair stylist. I have such a tale of woe, tales of woes, plural that is, so sit a spell and listen while I spill it.

Once upon a time, Hugo was the light of my life, or at the very least, of my yard. Hugo is the fellow who guided us through the landscaping of our front and back yards.
He was patient and funny and understanding of our horticultural quirks (D is an oak tree fanatic; I'm a lilac girl myself) and our quarrels over which plant, when and where (there is, I now regret, little that we couldn't find to argue about). But Hugo was loyal and noble, through it all, a proud emigrant from somewhere in Mexico and yes I believe he had a green card, although his Guys, as he called them, I believe do not. He was also cute, which doesn't hurt a bit, as far as I'm concerned. Even if he did wear a crucifix that would trip a nun. But still, Hugo is what the American dream is about, and he has built a thriving business doing landscaping and lawns all over the area. Perhaps that was the problem.

Hugo and his Guys would come every Friday to mow and weed and do whatever it is they had to do to make the back and front look good. I left it up to Hugo, since I really considered it His Garden. Since I think he considered it His Garden as well. Fertilizing? Let me do it, Senora. Just leave me the plants you want put in and my Guys will dig and plant what you want. You don't have to do nothing; I will do the garden. Don't worry. Just tell me what you want. So I didn't worry, and the first year or so, I left it all to Hugo, who was faithfully here every Friday with his Guys. He did whatever I asked, and then some.

Then, oh maybe seven or so months ago, Hugo started showing up only on the occasional Friday. His Guys still came, but there was no way for me to tell them what I wanted because I speak no Spanish (okay, I can ask for rolls and butter, which is another story entirely) and they spoke no English. None. Nada. We would try to communicate, but perhaps my gesticulations are confusing. We would approach each other with smiles and openness, lots of nods and buenos. But I could tell by the blank look on the Guy's face, his slack mouth and vacant eyes, that nothing, nada, had gotten through. Even though he was nodding and saying Yes, Missus (to show he knew we were speaking English after all).

So I would have to call Hugo at home, and he would have to come over after church on Sunday, tromp round my yard, noting the weeding the Guys had not done. Or the trimming and pruning. Not to mention, where was the fertilizer? And the grass seed he promised? And what happened to the grapes that D has asked him to tie up? Or the poles for the overburdened fruit trees? And what about the lights that didn't work on the $700 lighting system he had installed for us. When would these things happen? Yes, Missus, I'll get my Guys to do it. It's not good enough, Hugo, I told him. You've got to have someone on site who speaks English. I understand if you can't be here every time, but I have to be able to talk to your Guys. Yes, Missus.

He Yes, Missus-ed me for another six months or so. Meanwhile, more and more I took over the gardening chores. I bought tools and implements, and dug a bit and planted tomatoes. I figured out the electronic watering gizmo when the grass in the front started to look really, really, brown. And I bought fertilizer stakes and pounded them into the ground around the fruit trees. I deadheaded the roses, tied them up when the wind blew them over, and got down on my hands and knees and pulled out every weed that was encroaching on my property. Of which there were many, since where we live was once, in the not too distant past, farmland and cow pasture. The things that grow in such places are still in the earth here, waiting the slightest opportunity to return. Mother Nature will win out, you know.

Finally, about a month ago, I called Hugo. Your Guys are doing a terrible job, I told him. They are here for 5 minutes to cut the grass and nothing more. This can't go on. I'm going to have to find someone else. He was contrite. He apologized. He thanked me for telling him and he said mine was the third such phone call he had had recently. I will come out tomorrow and we will fix this as you want it. Please, senora.

Tomorrow never came. That is, a month or more of Fridays have come and gone since that phone call, but Hugo has never appeared. Instead, his Guys have come every Friday and ripped through the lawn mowing. They did do some weeding. And pulled up flowers I had planted. And deadheaded the roses when I wasn't looking. When I first looked at the bush, I thought the thing was dying, it was so sparse and spindly. That's when I saw what they had done. Chomp, chomp, chomp--cut the branches back wherever there had been flowers. Deadheading roses isn't exactly brain surgery, but any fool knows that you cut the stem just before the first five-leaf growth. No, the Guys hacked the roses, and it will be a long time before they recover their fullness and beauty.

Obviously I had to break up with Hugo. Despite my liking him, despite him being so cute (despite the crucifix), and despite all he had done to make my landscaping look so good. Two weeks before the end of the month, I told one of the Guys. This one claimed to speak English. Sort of. So I said. "Two more weeks, then no more. Tell Hugo." The Guy nodded mournfully.
The last Friday, I was sure Hugo would show up. I had his check for him, after all. But, no, he had foresaken me. This is the end, I told the Guy. What shall I do with Hugo's check? The Guy said I could give it to him, and he would give it to Hugo. Not in as many words, but that was the gist.

And then, the next Friday, I heard a familiar sound. The roar of the lawn mower; the whine of the gas (outlawed in LA) leaf blower. I look outside and there were the Guys. Doing their five minute number on the lawn. I was befuddled, not to mention pissed. Had I not made myself clear? I rushed outside, which took me just as long as it took them to finish mowing, and waved my hands, saying, "No, no more. I told you. No more. The end. Finito." Was the Guy's English that awful? Or, was it selective? Was Hugo involved any more in the whole thing, or had he given the Guys our account? I'm beginning to think that's what he did. Maybe he lost us in low stakes poker game. Or sold us to the highest bidder down at the gas station on Florin where all the Guys hang out every day. I'll never know. And I'll always wonder.

For now, I figure I have a couple of weeks to find someone to mow the lawn. When I walk Molly in the morning and I see a gardener, I yell, "Do you speak English?" If he can answer reasonably, I take his name and number. The rest of the gardening--I've been doing it myself for months, so I'll keep on. I like it, actually. I always have.

Part II--The breakup with James tomorrow soon.

The Stench of Spring

Wouldn't you just love to bury yourself in this bed of flowers? Just fling yourself headlong into the glories of spring? Or at the very least, bend down and take a gentle whiff?

No, you wouldn't. These beauties stink. Like a dead animal. Or the well-worn socks of an active teenager. Or, hey, that old guy down by the Shelter, the one who hasn't changed his trousers since '62.

I don't know what the bush is called--and yes, I did chose it, but only by pointing magisterially I'll have that at the nursery. I hadn't a clue what it was, or what it would do. Then, it started to come into bloom last week. And about that time, D. started whining that there was a dead frog in our shrubbery.

I--she of the Smells All/Knows All nose--went to examine. At first I couldn't smell anything. "You can't? You can't?" exclaimed D in one of his snider, I-can't-believe-this-since-you-could-smell-a-hangover-on-me-three-days-later tones. "Bend down."

I bent.

"Can you smell it now?"

"Oh, yes, I smell it now. Dirty socks."

We looked at each other. Dirty socks--in our shrubbery?

"What the f--waitaminnit, hold on. We had to bend down to smell it. It's this bush. Hey, it's the flowers. They stink."

It's Mother Nature in all her glory. This bush is at our front door. Don't you just wish you could come for a visit?