Last weekend, I did some maintenance in the garden, with the intention of preparing the ground for planting this weekend. As it turns out, we've had the first major storm of the season - the week before St. Patrick's Day no less (one can't help but think about climate change) - and the ground is way too wet to work. It's been raining for days, even though everyone admits we need the rain, no one is really quite into these long stretches of gloom and damp. It's especially chill-inducing and a bit depressing, here in the Bay area, just because we're always a little too cold and wet. We all yearn for sun.
But while I was digging around in our little garden plot (one-fourth of the backyard is garden; the other fourths are lawn, with herb garden; back semi-wild area; and one fourth we try and work but usually fail, plus it hosts the compost pile), I was amazed by the amount of trash and rocks we still encounter in this little square of earth. We've been working that garden, off and on, for over 10 years; in the beginning, as was to be expected (apparently, neighborhood mail couriers told us, a band used to live here. We think it may have been a well-known local crack house), we pulled out a lot of broken glass, plastic, bottle caps, etc. The cigarette butts must have long since decomposed, but the plasticy bits take far longer.
We have patiently picked these non-dirt items out over the years, my partner and I. But yet they persist. We've composted, mixed, turned soil over. We've had erosion. We've raked and shoveled, and yet, there's always glass. Every single time I garden, I pick out glass. Isn't that mad? How long does it take for a plot of land maybe 8 x 20 to give up all its broken glass and plastic shards? It made me think of the way that the human body will push foreign objects to the surface - splinters find their way out, and you hear stories of soldiers reporting shrapnel from decades ago working its way out, suddenly appearing. Is the earth doing that? How else is all that glass - which is heavier than dirt - coming to the surface?
I've also been finding oddities in there for years and years. Lots of marbles. Rusty cans at first. Old sprinkler parts no longer connected to anything. Someone at some point broke a large pale pink plastic something, because we found bits of THAT for a long time - large sections at first; now these days, mere fragments. I recognize the faded pink, year to year.
This year, I found the most bizarrely preserved (for being so flimsy and cheaply made object) tiny blue tea cup, from a child's doll or tea set, I imagine. I took a picture - you can really see the detail (click the pic to enlarge it, if you like):
It made me think, finding this cup. I started to consider the many years I have spent in this house, this house which is iconic in a very small but distinct community: the M______ House, as everyone calls it. As I've called it for a long time. And as I was showering - you get very, very dirty in the garden - I thought, wow, I've been showing in this tub for a looooong time. This same tub, too. I know everything that has been replaced - where the tile is new, where the carpet is "original," which faucets have been replaced and which walls have been painted since we moved in. And the upstairs tub has NOT been replaced. Some tile, yes, the faucet, yes. We've painted. Shower curtain has been changed a lot - from the famous Map of the New York Subway plastic shower curtain, to the jungle scene one that looked like the type of picture you do a jigsaw puzzle of, to our current whimsical nature-oriented 50's style simple line graphic forest, it's evolved. But the tub is the same.
And as I stood there, I wasn't sure if that fact - that I'd been showing, pretty much daily, on this few square feet of Formica or moulded plastic (some sort of polyurethane, not porcelain, anyway) - was something to be proud or alarmed by. Should I feel comforted or concerned? There's something very...well, uh... grounding about working the same garden for a long time. I like that earth. It's gotten used to me, as I've gotten used to it. I get the farmer thing - I see how that could be appealing. The tub, maybe not as much - not quite as rewarding to be connected to the tub as it is to be connected to the earth, but as you know, Itry and take my connections where I can find them.
Evole, Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, and let the chips fall where they may. I think of that often, sometimes involuntarily, because I am often saying connect, love, try, dream, do, etc and let the chips fall where they may. You have to get out there. You have to put yourself out there. You have to try. Even if it's just gardening in your backyard, you have to get out into the dirt, where something might happen. You might have a new emotion. You might have a new thought. You might find a treasure. You might realize what is a treasure.
The tulips I planted are starting to come up - it was my first experiment with bulbs. Why not, I thought? They might be nice. They might be stunning. They cost a little, but I sprung for the "mix and match" option at Sloat Garden Center, selecting the midnight blues and hot fuchias and blood reds. No wimpy Easter pastel pink or buttercup yellow or vanilla. Who the hell wants a white tulip? Too pure for my blood. But now that they've begun to spring up, they all seem to be - so far - this uniform mauvey pink. I keep waiting, every day checking, for the reds and purples and blues. I've been to the Amsterdam flower market. I know what's possible, and I'm hoping. But no, just pink.
All this rain I hope is not bad for tulips. I really don't know. When it stops and dries out a bit, I'll go back out to clear out the fuzz of weeds that I know will have sprouted seemingly overnight, and I'll toss the glass and rocks in the bucket, and, if all goes well, stick some seeds in the ground and watch them grow. And bulbs - the beauty of bulbs is that they supposedly come up year after year. We'll see.
But while I was digging around in our little garden plot (one-fourth of the backyard is garden; the other fourths are lawn, with herb garden; back semi-wild area; and one fourth we try and work but usually fail, plus it hosts the compost pile), I was amazed by the amount of trash and rocks we still encounter in this little square of earth. We've been working that garden, off and on, for over 10 years; in the beginning, as was to be expected (apparently, neighborhood mail couriers told us, a band used to live here. We think it may have been a well-known local crack house), we pulled out a lot of broken glass, plastic, bottle caps, etc. The cigarette butts must have long since decomposed, but the plasticy bits take far longer.
We have patiently picked these non-dirt items out over the years, my partner and I. But yet they persist. We've composted, mixed, turned soil over. We've had erosion. We've raked and shoveled, and yet, there's always glass. Every single time I garden, I pick out glass. Isn't that mad? How long does it take for a plot of land maybe 8 x 20 to give up all its broken glass and plastic shards? It made me think of the way that the human body will push foreign objects to the surface - splinters find their way out, and you hear stories of soldiers reporting shrapnel from decades ago working its way out, suddenly appearing. Is the earth doing that? How else is all that glass - which is heavier than dirt - coming to the surface?
I've also been finding oddities in there for years and years. Lots of marbles. Rusty cans at first. Old sprinkler parts no longer connected to anything. Someone at some point broke a large pale pink plastic something, because we found bits of THAT for a long time - large sections at first; now these days, mere fragments. I recognize the faded pink, year to year.
This year, I found the most bizarrely preserved (for being so flimsy and cheaply made object) tiny blue tea cup, from a child's doll or tea set, I imagine. I took a picture - you can really see the detail (click the pic to enlarge it, if you like):
It made me think, finding this cup. I started to consider the many years I have spent in this house, this house which is iconic in a very small but distinct community: the M______ House, as everyone calls it. As I've called it for a long time. And as I was showering - you get very, very dirty in the garden - I thought, wow, I've been showing in this tub for a looooong time. This same tub, too. I know everything that has been replaced - where the tile is new, where the carpet is "original," which faucets have been replaced and which walls have been painted since we moved in. And the upstairs tub has NOT been replaced. Some tile, yes, the faucet, yes. We've painted. Shower curtain has been changed a lot - from the famous Map of the New York Subway plastic shower curtain, to the jungle scene one that looked like the type of picture you do a jigsaw puzzle of, to our current whimsical nature-oriented 50's style simple line graphic forest, it's evolved. But the tub is the same.
And as I stood there, I wasn't sure if that fact - that I'd been showing, pretty much daily, on this few square feet of Formica or moulded plastic (some sort of polyurethane, not porcelain, anyway) - was something to be proud or alarmed by. Should I feel comforted or concerned? There's something very...well, uh... grounding about working the same garden for a long time. I like that earth. It's gotten used to me, as I've gotten used to it. I get the farmer thing - I see how that could be appealing. The tub, maybe not as much - not quite as rewarding to be connected to the tub as it is to be connected to the earth, but as you know, Itry and take my connections where I can find them.
Evole, Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, and let the chips fall where they may. I think of that often, sometimes involuntarily, because I am often saying connect, love, try, dream, do, etc and let the chips fall where they may. You have to get out there. You have to put yourself out there. You have to try. Even if it's just gardening in your backyard, you have to get out into the dirt, where something might happen. You might have a new emotion. You might have a new thought. You might find a treasure. You might realize what is a treasure.
The tulips I planted are starting to come up - it was my first experiment with bulbs. Why not, I thought? They might be nice. They might be stunning. They cost a little, but I sprung for the "mix and match" option at Sloat Garden Center, selecting the midnight blues and hot fuchias and blood reds. No wimpy Easter pastel pink or buttercup yellow or vanilla. Who the hell wants a white tulip? Too pure for my blood. But now that they've begun to spring up, they all seem to be - so far - this uniform mauvey pink. I keep waiting, every day checking, for the reds and purples and blues. I've been to the Amsterdam flower market. I know what's possible, and I'm hoping. But no, just pink.
All this rain I hope is not bad for tulips. I really don't know. When it stops and dries out a bit, I'll go back out to clear out the fuzz of weeds that I know will have sprouted seemingly overnight, and I'll toss the glass and rocks in the bucket, and, if all goes well, stick some seeds in the ground and watch them grow. And bulbs - the beauty of bulbs is that they supposedly come up year after year. We'll see.
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