Patio Farmers, Black Out and Squaw Valley

Santa Monica has a growing number of community gardens spread throughout the city. The most famous is on Main Street, south of downtown, and has been there since the 1970's. I remember staring at them as a kid and wondering how people got so lucky to get a garden in a pack of gardens in the middle of town. It didn't occur to me to call the city about getting one of them myself until a couple months ago. I applied for a plot, told them I'd take any size at any of the three locations. I'm 250th or so on the waiting list – that’s what the lady told me! It will take years. I can wait.

Mina and I drove past the Park Drive Gardens, the closest community garden to our house, last weekend. We walked all around the locked lots and tried to identify all the food coming into harvest; tomatoes, strawberries, basil, corn! They were fantastic. Some of the lots were tiny, maybe a 100 sq. feet, and it occurred to me that my back patio is only a little smaller than the smallest of these lots. I said, "Mina, these gardens are tiny, right? Don't they look the same size as our patio?" Her eyes lit up. "Yes!" And in that moment we decided to become patio farmers.

For the record, I know not a thing about the soil. In technical terms, I know not what makes it tick or what would move it to miraculously produce something so perfect as zucchini, let's say. Or a watermelon. I mean, that's nuts, right? A watermelon grows from a seed, y'all! So the thought that I could somehow coax the earth to do the same for me is a bit mindblowing. It's logical to believe that anything living needs nurturing, nutrients, love. I know that much, I suppose.

When I was 13, Mama lived in a trailer in Westlake with a bit of a yard. One spring she planted strawberries seeds in high, holey terracotta pots. We sat on the back trailer steps and waited for things to grow. Quail families ran through the yard with small bobbing head feathers. When jagged green leaves crawled out of the holes of the pots, I was impressed. But when small red berries exploded in bloom between the leaves I thought Mama was in on something godly. Of course she was, but I was not moved to try such miracles myself. I didn't think it was possible for me, in an apartment. Growing food was for people with land and with a calling.

I've been called now, or I self appointed a calling to myself. It's yet to be seen if I can lure food from the ground. I did successfully keep some herbs alive from existing plants last summer. That alone was chest-puffing for me.

Mina and I started our patio farm with some plastic planters that had been in storage or discarded.We spruced them up with good dirt, and seeds and some seedlings though these bell peppers are a bit more than seedlings.Hey, 'member I got this Envirocycle rolling composter a year ago?Yo, talk about miracles! Did you know -- and I'm really just talking to my city folks right now -- that scraps of food, over time and mixed right and rolled around in the above contraption, really turns into a dirt-like substance? It's crazy! Here's a cupful. Check it:Don't ask me how the worms got in there; I'm just a bystander in the natural ecology of things. We added our homemade compost to our soil and apparently our lil' plants are gonna eat it up and dig us for it. You know who else is diggin' the project? Patio Farmer Mina. Here's what we have so far: Tomatoes in the corner, herbs from existing plants, seedling bell peppers and sugar snap peas, and from seeds (hopefully) will come carrots, zucchini, pole beans and I have some eggplant getting started indoors. (I read the packets very carefully.) I'll keep you posted because, lord have mercy, when I see the first hint of an edible substance coming from our p. farm, I'll be snapping pictures like it was my first born.
In other news . . .Husband has been staging a bit of a silent protest. He is the production manager for a clothing line and he works really hard, too hard really. He works 11-12 hours days, every day. He works Saturday mornings most weeks and since they've added a factory in Mexico, he's had to make trips there twice a month. He is a machine. But it's too much. You know when the hardest working person just ends up taking on most of the work? He's that guy. And I tell him that they'll work him as hard as he'll let them, and he says I know I know, but still he works until the brink anyway. About a month ago, he unceremoniously started wearing only black to work; black t-shirts, black jeans, black sneakers. Every single day without fail, all black. I don’t want to worry, but I don't see an end in sight, and coworkers are starting to make comments. It's as much of a protest against the work load as Husband can muster. It's like he's telling his work, "I'm saying fuck you in my mind right now." Kinda. Poor Husband! I love him so much.

And in other other news, I got accepted to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Program this summer (!). I've attended this workshop before, a few years ago and many, many years before that. 'Member when I was Janet Finch's personal DJ last time? Oh man, she's great. Anyway, Squaw for me has been an amazing experience and the alumni and staff are intimidatingly impressive, but really the valley itself is magic for me. Squaw Valley in the summertime is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in person. I can't tell you what staring at the velvet valley does for me. For 7 days, I will get to geek out on writing with a good mix of budding brilliance, pretentious gas bags and straight lunatics. I love them all. I applied with my new story, which is the first I've written in a while and I'll get it workshopped during the program. In the past, I've held high expectations for myself when going to the workshop only to disappoint myself even more later. After the program, I have felt huge crashes; tumblings down after hoping to retain the hope and highs I felt at Squaw. Writing good fiction takes everything from me. It's the only thing that I do that takes complete silence and full concentration. That's a tall order in my house. Anyway, no expectations this year. I'm just gonna be myself and geek out and appreciate what I was able to churn out lately. I’ll ride my bike next to Lake Tahoe and of course stare at the valley. That's all I really want, is that valley to hold me still for a while.

Seeds Were Planted

When I was nine, my mother rented us a room out of an apartment in Santa Monica from a woman named Jean who was an ex-nun. Or a former nun as my grandfather would say because ex means they're dead, he had said. The apartment was a run-down, first-floor dingy two bedroom place cluttered with a million years of Jean's stuff, but the apartment sat across the street from a bluff that overlooked the ocean. Inside, the place was grey and heavy and dark, but the windows revealed brightness and a sense of the spectacular.

My mother and I shared the back room off the alley which was sunlit during the day. What fit in the room was my mother's full-sized bed that we shared, our dressers and a thirteen inch black and white TV complete with wire hangers shoved into the rabbit ears. My mother hung every piece of art she owned or had painted on the walls and they covered it floor to ceiling. Every night my mother would watch TV from her side of the bed after I was told to roll over and go to sleep. I caught many episodes of Fantasy Island or the Merv Griffin Show with one eye open.

At the time, my mother was part of a team that put together the ceramic Heritage Floor of Judy Chicago's brilliant and feminist iconic art piece, The Dinner Party. The Dinner Party is a huge installation piece of a triangular table set for thirty-nine famous or impactful women in history. Each place setting features a cloth banner depicting some of their story, a plate, a challis-like cup and flatware; all made of ceramic. The Heritage Floor contains the names of 999 more women that have made a mark. The piece is on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum and I highly recommend visiting it because when fully assembled it looks like God put the table together Herself. That entire summer, I hung out in and explored the massive warehouse-studio that was filled with the constant smell a fired-up kiln and freshly glazed ceramics. The plates were fashioned into the shape of colorful three-dimensional and flower-like vaginas. The glaze was often iridescent and without realizing exactly what they were -- though there was constant talk about the plates as vaginas -- I thought they were beautiful. Thirty or so women artists assembled the piece within the warehouse, all orchestrated by Judy's powerful vision and presence. I stayed clear of Judy as much as possible -- she scared me -- though I did get yelled at by her once when I knocked over some blueprints in a back concrete hall way. Of course I had bumped into them just as she was rounding the corner. The team of artists eventually taught me how to embroider a caterpillar for the Mary Wollstonecraft banner, which was terrifying. I did not know how to sew and my hands shook as I tried to make a perfect, shag-like caterpillar. During the process, I stared constantly at the scene embroidered on the main part of the banner which was of Wollstonecraft dying during childbirth. The satin crimson thread used for the pool of blood on the bed was a gorgeous color. It haunts me still a bit. Needless to say, this experience is a highlight of my life because the residual empowerment inherited to me locked into my young mind, and never left. Many of the women who worked on the project raged hard to reclaim this empowerment; they were boisterous and rebellious advocates of the ERA movement and of women's rights. They said things like "herstory" instead of history. They constantly sited how men were holding us down. My mother told me -- and they echoed -- that high heels were invented so women couldn't run from rapists. My mother also had a bumpersticker that read: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," which is sadly ironic coming from her. But that's the point; these woman, including my mother, had to exaggerate a sense of entitlement to their rights to reclaim them, to even recognize what they were. While assembling The Dinner Party, we all received a tremendous herstory lesson that many of the women, no matter how bra-less or how much armpit hair they grew, still might not have known excised. And I, as a kid, absorbed it, without having been too tainted by sexism just yet. I was able to build a strong base of my womanhood first.

Jean The Former Nun didn't talk about why she had left the church. This seems a heavy and personal decision that would not be easily discussed with a child. I spent enough time with Jean for her to have had the opportunity to tell me, and I was still attending Catholic school which made the topic even more accessible, but Jean never did fill me in. I wish I knew now, but back then it didn't matter to me. I loved Jean nun or no nun. She was in her fifties and shaped like a ball. A ball with a short steal-grey haircut. She had two Siamese cats; a mother named Katrina and a cross-eyed son named Ivan who often fell off the TV when he napped. Jean worked at what was then called The Museum of Science & Industry and I would often go with her on the weekends she had to work. As she worked I would wander the halls of the museum alone for hours, staring at the kinetic energy display and the neon exhibit. The dental exhibit was one of my favorites because the set of teeth on display filled an entire room. I pretended to get eaten a thousand times.

Jean was a champion for me. A champion in an even stronger sense than my grandmother Mama because Mama never confronted my mother in regards to me, especially not in front of me. But Jean did; Why had she hit me for that? Why did she leave me alone? I couldn't believe my ears the first time I heard her speak up.

Months before my mother and I moved out of Jean's place, Jean had cleared out the front hall closet and crammed in a small desk for me to use. She clicked on the overhead light and said I could work in there, for homework or whatever I wanted. I said, "I can do what I like in here?" She said, "Absolutely." I promptly painted a portrait of Susan B. Anthony on the wall. I don't think that's what Jean had in mind, but she wasn't too mad at me about it. In that tiny closet, I tried to close the door with a chair at the desk, but it wouldn't shut all the way. I pretended anyway that I was in my own private office, and I decided then that I was going be a writer. I had written one small composition for my fourth grade class and it was the only piece of school work that the had nuns complimented me on. My teacher even read it aloud to my class and I temporarily soared out of by body for those few minutes. I sat at the desk in my closet, staring at Susan B. Anthony botched in acrylics. I never did write anything else in there, but the dreaming about it was grand.