In Memoriam

For the past few months, I have been walking to the gym every day. It's 5.7 miles, round trip, down Hollywood Boulevard. At Hollywood and Edgemont, there is a nightclub, Club Guatelindo, with a big parking lot fronting the street. Next to the parking lot is a two story building with a store front clinic on the first floor and a row of small apartments on the second story, running back towards the nightclub. The apartments are very dilapidated looking and a balcony joins them all together. Every day, on my journey to health and fitness, I would see a very old woman sitting on the balcony, her arms resting on the railing as she surveyed the goings-on of the boulevard. She was very, very old, her face like a wrinkled dried apple. Her skin was brown - she could have been Mexican or Indian or Native American. I always wondered as I passed her, "Who is she? What is her life? Is she lonely? Is she happy? Is she all there?" Then one day, I looked up and realized she was looking at me. I thought that I should wave, since after all, she was a part of my daily life. Before I could execute the thought, she waved to me. I waved back and as I continued my walk, I was filled with pure Joy. She was aware, she was alive, she recognized me and I recognized her. I felt - not alone. I felt blessed and united with this stranger. Two solitary beings united as one. So every day we repeated the little ritual. Then one day, I thought that I would wave first. I did and she waved back, then blew me a kiss. I returned the gesture and again, Joy became my walking companion. I decided that one day, I would bring her a flowering plant, something she could take care of and love, so that she could experience the garden in herself. I told the story to a friend and she encouraged me to make the move. So the next day, a very hot day, I looked up on my walk and she was not there. Day after day, I have looked for her. Never there. Perhaps in the heat, she was inside, enjoying the air-conditioning? Today, on my walk, I looked up and she was not there. On the way back, I looked back over my shoulder and saw a man attaching a bouquet of white lilies to the balcony railng. I went over and asked him where the old lady was, if she was there. He said, "She went home to her daughter's house and died the day before, July 22." I said, "Oh....we waved to each other every day." He said, "Everybody loved her. She lived here for more than 20 years and blew kisses to people on the street." I thanked him and went home. Later, I brought some roses from my garden and left them below the balcony with a note to her daughter about how happy her mother had made me. I felt so sad and alone. And angry at God for taking her from me. I also realized that when one wants to express love for another, do it now. Do not wait. They may be gone tomorrow. At least we had both expressed the gardens within our hearts with simple gestures of recognition and unification. i know now that her garden was green and flowering and full of life. Now she is in the Garden of Eden and she is everywhere in the hearts of all of us mortal souls that she blew kisses to. I do not know her name, I call her Rosa, so "Rosa - Thank you. Thank you for seeing me and recognising me and blowing me kisses of love. I will never forget you." ROSA - JANUARY 14, 1918 - JULY 22, 2009 - REST IN PEACE

The Artist In You

A very long time ago, before I discovered gardens and long before I discovered my self, I read a book called Sassafras, Indigo & Cypress by Ntozake Shange. I remember nothing about the story or characters, but I remember this - Sassafras is a black woman with an abusive lover, an artist who teaches her one valuable lesson, "Make every moment in life an artistic one.". I never forgot that quote and have been striving for every moment to make every moment an artistic one. What does that mean? I believe it means being always aware of what is going on, what one is doing and how one is doing it., It means that when you tie a knot, you feel the twine, you calculate the length, you tie it so that it is the perfect tautness and the shape is an expression of symmetry and power. It means that when you cook a meal, you are aware of how your body moves in the kitchen, of how you hold the vegetables as you cut them, you never make a mess and you always use every thing you can with frugality and care. It means that you treat the people in your life with the same amount of awareness and sensitivity, that every exchange is alive and nourishing and nothing is taken for granted. It is how the Japanese conduct themselves in every moment, how the Italians see their world, how the Balinese envision their every waking moment. The garden is a perfect place to begin the process. When you are clearing debris, be aware of every dry branch and dead leaf. It is not just debris, it is an expression of the living process of decay and death. When you are positioning plants, be aware of the relationships that you create, in color and form and mass. Observe textures and scents, heights and widths, observe everything that is happening around you - the light, the air, the shadows, the sounds, the feelings within your heart and the thoughts within your mind. Be becoming an artist in the garden, we become more and more sensitive to the rhythms and nuances of life. We settle into the moment that meditation is meant for and we merge with God. We elevate ourselves from worry and fear and achieve Nirvana. I can hear my breathing now, I can feel my power and I can believe in something greater than my own self. That is why we must find the artist in ourselves and in our gardens. To elevate and enlighten ourselves and to bring that into the world for the better of all around us. Take your artist and your garden to the world.

Perfection

Ain't no such thing as perfection. No, sir. No, ma'am. No perfection here. Not on this earth.

Last week I achieved perfection in my little garden. I moved two sculptural pieces - a red plastic pony and a red wooden carving. Note the word in common - red. More on that, on another day. I had wanted to make these moves, these gestures for some time. I had thought and pondered the implications and nuances of this re-arrangement, this re-adjustment, this re-assignment of positions. In the garden it's a bit like playing chess, though I have never played chess and could very well have my head up my ass. It's the fluidity of the thing, the ever-changing, ever-moving flow from one physical appearance to another. The changes that we make in the physical disposition of the components of the garden - the plants, the rocks, the ornamentations, the water features, the furnishings, all of the objects that shape the place - these changes also affect our mental disposition, thus affecting our psychological, emotional, spiritual and finally, our own physical disposition. We change as our garden changes and the observation of that change is well worth making. The placing of consciousness within the garden, is the placement that is crucial in order for us to enhance our understanding of the events taking place around us and within us. Again, and not to beat a dead pansy, but we find ourselves in the garden and the garden within ourselves. One reflects and amplifies the other.
Back to perfection. Having re-placed the pony and the carving to new locations, locations that I had feared unsuitable and bound to fail; having made adjustment after adjustment in how the two pieces were hung; having done it again and again, into the night (I highly recommend night gardening), I laid back in my hammock. At the center point of my perspective, I could se that I had achieved perfection. My garden worked completely. Everything was in its proper place and the new arrangement created quite a lovely song. I dared to re-think and re-order and had brought myself to a better place. A perfect place. A garden of Eden. Nirvana. Bliss. Ecsatcy.

One week later, my landlord had the background to my garden removed, to make room for expansion of his house. The night before I could not sleep, worried about what was going to happen to my perfect place. How would it look, how could I cope with the change? How could God take away what I had perfected? Curses! So the gardeners came and took away the background to my world, hacking away all day, but respectful to my garden. After they left, I went outside to see the ruination. This is what I saw - a new open space, empty and full of potential. Something to be worked, something to be made perfect. I learned, again, that perfection is a fleeting thing and when it flies, say good-bye and get ready to create again. My garden has taught me, again and again, to let go of what was and grasp what can be. The garden is a work of art that ever changes and that is perfection.

Money

Dirty, dirty money. Filthy, dirty money.

Pessimists call it a depression. Optimists call it the Great Depression! It's a great line but it isn't mine, I must confess and I don't remember where I read it. Most likely it comes from Mr. Boffo. These are incrediblt tough times when it comes to money. For me and for almost everyone I know. We live in a world that is complex and difficult to grasp. In a sense, we are still hunters and gatherers, but berries and nuts and small animals have been replaced by dollars and cents. The smartest, or maybe the wiliest of us, have managed to rig the sytem so that they amass immense volumes of berries and nuts and we borrow from them, promising to pay them back at some future time. So where are the berries? How did they disappear? Where did all the food go?

I do not understand the sytem and never have - I'm a simple man with simple thoughts and usury does not compute. However, gardens do. Here is your opportunity to learn frugality in the garden and in your life. I remember Sophia Loren talking about her life after WWII - she lived with her mother and grandmother and they had little or no money. Her hrandmother, however, taught her how to cook with almost nothing. She could take the simplest ingredients, whatever she had and create a meal that was tasty and complete. She knew how to make the best of what she had. So in our gardens, in this post-economic war period, let's learn to make the best of what we have. You don't have to go to an expensive nursery to find your plant materials. Go to your neighbors and ask if you can take a snip of plants that you like and offer them the return favor. Succulents are great for this. You can easily take a snip off of almost any succulent and stick it in the ground. Water it and it will make roots and grow. The same can be done with geraniums and a lot of other plants. Instead of thowing out leaves and debris, leave it on the ground, smoosh it into the soil and your plants will feed themselves with their own decaying parts. Try to use plants that consume less water and save your water bill as well as the planet. Be frugal in your garden and be frugal in your life. While living and studying in Itakly two years ago, I observed how frugal the Italians are in their lives. And yet, their lives are rich, far beyond the average American's life. It's a lesson we all can learn - that buying and having more than your neighboe means nothing at the end. When we live like our ancient, hunting and gathering ancestors, making the best of what we have, we achieve real fulfillment and happiness. Less is more and more is less.

The Lizard In The Fountain

It is an exquisite Sunday morning - the best time of any week, to be alive. I stepped out of my door, immediately sensing the presence of something different. I looked to the fountain that greets my guests and myself upon arrival and departure. The fountain is hand built from a high -glazed pot, lined with low-grade jade stones and little trinkets from my past - three irredescent marbles that Mindy gave me in college, a polished piece of jadite that I obtained in Thermopolis with my Mother and Aunt Mary, a small, squarish piece of blue polished glass that I swiped from the Oz Garden, and pieces of white quartz, from the days when I collected crystals. There amid memories in stone, a brown lizard was taking a sip. We both froze upon recognition, surmizing the situation, surprised and wary. Back into my office I dashed, to seize my camera. He moved a bit when I steppped back onto the porch. So I held still, so as not to provoke his flight. I think of it as a he, though it could be a she. My camera poised in front of me, focused to shoot, I waited. He waited. Neither moved or trembled. I snapped picture after picture, never moving, as he moved back towards the water, not hearing my camera and having forgotten my presence. I was just another tree by now. He sipped, he moved his head towards the plants and flicked his tongue out to have a little bug nosh. Bye, bye bug. I thought of the crow that I had seen on the fence the day before and how happy the crow would be to have a little lizard nosh. A small white plane flew high overhead and I thought of the people on that plane, looking for bugs to fill their belly, in that abstracted human way of living and surviving on this Earth. We are all the same - the lizard, the bugs,the crow, the people. We are all connected by simply being alive and living. That's what you can learn in the garden. That everything we are and everything that we do is the same process as the lizard's process of life. There is great assurance in that. There is great forgiveness in that. There is great strength in that. If a lizard is not guilty for living, why should we be? I've never seen a bitter hummingbird or an angry butterfly. I've never seen a lizard lost in the throws of depressive musings or a blue jay pissed off. Wait, I have seen a blue jay pissed off. That's their nature when they're protecting their territory. A kind of avian road rage. In fact, there is a blue jay that comes by everyday around 4 in the afternoon, to take a sip from the fountain. I imagine the blue jay and the lizard run into each other, now and then.
"Hey guy, how's it going?"
"It's cool, just hangin' and sippin'."
"Cool. Cool. You know, if you were a smaller lizard, I would probably eat you."
"Yeah and if you were an egg, I would probably eat you."
"Right on. Right on. Have a good one, bud. Later."
(Aside) "Fucking crow."
Or so I imagine the conversation would go.

Weeds

Today, there are weeds in the garden. The exhilaration that I have felt from planting my blog-garden, the joy that I have received from responses to that garden, has given way to something unwanted and unplanned. Doubt, despair and darkness have taken over. To tell the truth, I never use the word "weeds" when I speak of a garden. "Weeds" are just uninvited plants that have wandered into the space that is intended for only desirable plants. We want plants that fulfill our aesthetic agenda, our plan for creating beauty and controlling our environment. "Weeds" assault our safety and the safety of our garden. I have adapted this strategy for weeds that enter my garden - let them grow. They are just as much a part of the natural world that I revere as the plants that I have chosen. They are nomads and gypsies, wandering from place to place, looking for good soil and light and water. They have no desire to destroy. The have no need to ruin our gardens. They just are. In some cases, the "weeds" can supplement our original design, bringing a sense of wildness and relaxation. The wild grass that grows between the cracks in the pavement is soft and green and presents a pastoral quality that my garden might lack. It's springtime now and over the winter, I allowed the grass to grow in, the bright green of its slender blades lending a sweetness that the winter garden lacks. Eventually, however, the grass began to block the beauty of the garden. The form that I had so carefully laid out was distorted, the plants that I had placed so carefully were losing root space and beginning to suffer. So two weeks ago, I started pulling the grass out. Respectfully and without using weed killer, I grasped the clumps of grass close to the base and pulled them out, root systems and all. It is cathartic pulling "weeds", a way of cleaning the garden, inside and out. As the clumps of formerly beautiful grass came out, so did my fears of the future and regrets of the past. Locked in the present of tending my garden, I freed myself of all that blocked my creative spark. Now, my garden has returned to order and design. So too will my thoughts and feelings, as I allow the negativity of my internal "weeds" to exist for a little while. Long enough for me to appreciate the humanity of those "weeds", the necessity of their presence and the naturalness of their existence. We tend to fight our internal "weeds" too much, by either denying their existence, to the point of self-delusion and self-destruction or by using our own weed-killers, such as alcohol or drugs, both legal and illegal. I have seen in myself and others, an inability to accept the fact that we are not perfection, we are human. We feel anger, sadness, frustration and then hate ourselves for having those feelings. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of loss and sorrow. The more we fight, the more we lose. So tomorrow, I will pull my "weeds" out, from the base, root systems and all, and return to the order I need to progress through my life, growing gardens and giving them to the world. Bless the weeds, then get the hell rid of them!

Styrofoam Cups in a Window

My life began in 200 Styrofoam cups in the picture window of my parent's home in Wyoming. The year was 1995. I had returned to Wyoming the previous year, after I found out that the purple growths on my left leg were Kaposi's Sarcoma, an AIDS related cancer. I did not know that I had been infected by HIV until the aggressive lesions appeared. They came in daily and after a year of no restraint, the cancer had made it impossible for me to work any longer and I had to go onto disability, so that I could qualify for Medicare, so that I could begin radiation treatments. My previous life had ended. There was no hope at the time that I could survive. There were no effective HIV medications on the market. My doctor's best prognosis was that I wouldn't have to feel excessive pain when I died. Woo hoo! No pain! No life, but no pain! I knew that traditional medicine was essentially useless for me. I also knew that I wanted to live and live well, despite the disastrous condition of my internal garden. It was riddled with invasive, non-native plants that had taken over and had no respect or regard for the host. I wanted them out, I wanted them gone. So unable to depend upon my physical being, I concentrated on my non-physical being, my spirit and my mind. That I could purify and nurture. At the very least, if I did have to leave this Earth, I would leave free of fear and anger. At the very most, I would stay on this Earth, free of fear and anger. I went holistic and adapted many strategies - exercise, eating well, meditation, laughing, dancing, loving, carrying on as if all was well. And gardening. I come from a family of gardeners and farmers and even miners. People who live on, from and in the Earth. I had a history to draw upon. I went to it, with devotion and dedication. So in April of 1995, when there was still snow on the ground, I started planting in Wyoming, where the growing season extends from June to September. Woohoo! Three months to grow! To get a head start, I bought seed packets and planting mix and Styrofoam cups. I don't remember the exact seeds - probably dianthus, marigold, pansy, black-eyed Susan, snap dragon, annuals all. I planted those little seeds in those little Styrofoam cups and set them on the windowsills of the big picture window of the house that I had been brought home to the day after I was born. The window that I had looked out of as snow cancelled school days, as rain made floods in the street, as the setting sun colored the Wyoming sky golden red. My parents looked on, as bemused and tolerant as they had looked on when a little boy made snowmen in the front yard. Out of those 200 Styrofoam cups, maybe twenty percent of them produced seedlings. I knew nothing about plants and how to grow them. I did not realize that, although the window received Western sunlight, it was cold at night and not the right temperature for growing seeds into living plants. That did not matter. The point was that I believed in the future of those little plants and I believed in my future as well. I made many mistakes from that point on. I planted tomatoes in the shade, I planted fuchsia in full sunlight. I used the wrong soil, I watered too much, I didn't water enough. I knew nothing but I learned. Like any venture in this life, gardening is a process of intention, investigation and invention. We are human beings and we make mistakes, no matter our age or education or station. The point is, do we attempt to reach the heights, fall, get up, figure out why we fell and try to fly again? If you can fail without bitterness and regret, if you can learn without hesitation or pride, if you can stay on the path with insane hope in your heart and sane thought in your head, you will attain your highest, maddest dream. Just learn - learn the right plant for the right soil, in the right light at the right time. It's just like trying to have a relationship with the wrong person - no matter how hard you try to make it work, tomatoes can't grow in the shade. It's like trying to have a career in the wrong business - no matter how hard you try to make it work, fuchsia withers in the heat of a full day of sun. Learning this lesson is easy with plants - they don't have brains or hearts, so if they die, dig them up, chop them up and turn them into mulch. Don't mourn them, don't miss them, use them to make other plants grow. Use your mistakes in the same way. Use all the disasters and catastrophes of your life to fertilize your future. Your garden will be healthy and productive and a source for your happiness and prosperity.