Marian & Greg’s Wild Animal Park

Our house has more wildlife than I ever expected. The newcomer is a frog. A very loud frog. We haven’t seen him, but he croaks for a while every morning. 

Of course we have squirrels and they have been hiding walnuts and acorns in my vegetable beds, between the leaves of the strawberry patch and under bushes. I’m finding shells everywhere. And one of them has been enjoying the free salad bar;  I planted lettuce two weeks ago. 

Every morning I provide them with clean water in the bird bath, put out bread and fresh sunflower seeds.  The crows come and dip the bread in the water. Crows are very smart. They know and remember individuals. It’s a good idea to make friends with them. You really don’t want to ever make them mad because they will take revenge. Blue jays like the bread dry and the little birds (sparrows?) prefer the seeds and splash around in the bath. 

We have a couple of hummingbirds that come for the nectar on the red pineapple sage blossoms. I always thought they just eat and run, but now I see one of them hangs out on a branch very close to the sage, then like a thirsty cowboy hitting the bar, he dives and drains a few blossoms and takes off. But I think he's a local and lives nearby.

Those red sage flowers attract an army of bees. We have one sage by the front door and one in the back yard. I have left them bee drinking stations filled with marbles (so they won’t drown). I never thought I'd go from being terrified of bees to being so happy to see them and I never thought I'd have 100+ right by my front door!

The first butterfly came a couple of weeks after we planted the new sages out front in July. She must have recommended the neighborhood to friends and we now have several butterflies. 

We still have hot days – it was 90 yesterday – and there are a few lizards that enjoy laying on the hot paved areas. As soon as I open the door, they run into a crack.    

For a city girl like me, this is all very entertaining. It’s also gratifying. I like knowing that my garden has provided a nice safe home for the critters. And it means that the garden is healthy.  

Trying a REALLY BIG New Thing

How would you like to help me think of a name?

Oh now you’re curious!

No, not a dog or pet.  Not a boat….or an English country home. 

I have decided to leave employment in the corporate world and start my own business. 

I began taking on clients as a Professional Organizer.  I originally imagined mostly overcrowded kitchen cabinets and closets and people wishing to apply the Marie Kondo concepts to their home. 

While most people do have a space at home or an office that needs decluttering, so far I am finding that the biggest challenge for everyone is an overwhelming amount of paperwork. Whether catching up on a backlog or figuring out what to keep and purge, how to organize it in a better system, or just stay on top of it as more keeps piling up, everyone struggles with paperwork.  As much as I dislike my own paperwork, it’s much easier to objectively organize someone else’s.   

I’ll be working full time as an employee through August and revving up my business in September after I return from vacation. I’m starting to do all the start-up things one does to conduct business properly.  Top of the list:

Name the business!

A Butterfly and a Bee

When you’re planting a garden, how can you tell when you’ve got it right?  The obvious sign is that the plants don’t die. But what about achieving a higher purpose?  

The other morning I was overjoyed to see both a butterfly and a bee hovering at “Hot Lips”, one of my new flowering native sage plants. 

This has been a summer of transition for our garden.  We did the first stage of a landscaping plan. (Greg 80%, Marian 20%)  It was a very rainy, cold and cloudy spring well into June and it didn’t dry out long enough to get a job done. Then it got too hot. It seemed to take a very long time to accomplish a few things. Looking back, it was 3 months and we did a lot, but it happened in small increments with many days between tasks. 

Step 1:  Moving Mountains

We moved our two very large raised beds from the back yard to the front to get more sun. After a late start planting, I am now harvesting string beans, chard, beets, cherry tomatoes and Persian cucumbers.  The peppers are looking good and we’ll see if the eggplants make it to maturity.

Step 2:  But the Rose Came Back the Very Next Day

We removed all the boring old hedges and sickly roses along the front of the house. We replaced them with drought tolerant plants: a variety of sages which ought to flower at different times of the year and artichokes which are green and leafy all year.  But one stubborn rose bush came right back!  Rather than fight it, I am allowing it to try again. This time I am providing it with companion plants - plants that grow right around it that will help it stay healthy. I put in chives. The strong onion scent is supposed to confuse predators that are attracted to the sweet scent of the rose. I am now adding chopped chives to everything we eat!

Step 3:  Salad and Herbs

I planted several pineapple sages and Spanish lavenders near the “bath house” in the back by the rosemary. We sold the clawfoot tub so it’s not a bath house anymore. It makes a really nice seating and dining area, with its old brick floor and the partial shade. 

There are a few stepping stones beside this herbal collection and on the other side there is lettuce  and a colorful patch of nasturtiums. It was not intentional, but the area is nicely divided into salad on one side, herbs on the other. The strawberry patch is still there and thriving. I learned to buy a bundle of “uglies” - 25 bare root plants for $9 - and plant them in January.  

Step 4   Where the Sidewalk Ends

We had a plumbing disaster in January. The 1946 main sewer line collapsed and the only way to replace the pipe was to jackhammer the concrete walkway that had been built on top of it. We were left with a very expensive bill, no walkway and a jagged edge of broken concrete near our entryway. We also had a huge pile of rubble which my hero Greg hauled away. Until we decide on the rest of the front yard, we are stuck with this jagged cement eyesore just by the front door. We moved some stepping stones from the back to create a new path for now and I planted alyssum which is almost like ground cover and creeps well over the edges where the sidewalk ends. 

Step 5:  Where the Wild Things Are

There is a very large empty space in the back yard where the raised beds were located. The soil didn't look great to me but during the first heat wave, volunteer tomatoes sprang up at this abandoned spot - from last year’s seeds. I didn’t bother with cages - the vines are sprawling everywhere. I added pumpkins, melons and zucchini to cover the bare spots. It was a late start but everything is growing nicely with very little water. My neighbors already have enormous zucchini. But summer is long. So we'll have melon and squash in October!

All of this was a lot of work. There has been a lot of digging, hauling, moving gravel and piles of cement, delivering and spreading compost and mulch, pruning, planting and watering. We don’t need to join a gym. 

One can easily get caught up in the work and the fantastic salads and convenience of getting fresh food 5 feet from one’s doorstep. 

But when the bees and butterflies start coming, you know you’ve contributed to the greater cause of nature. 

Hot Lips - Butterfly and Bee Hangout

Lavender and Salad by the Bath House

Sungold 

Jagged Cement

Happy Birthday To Me

From this day on, I will always look back and wish I was this young again. 

This is what I tell myself when I feel sad about aging. The night before my birthday, I joke that tomorrow I will be another year older. 

Our society is very age oriented. There are so many occasions when that number brings a new right - ability to work, vote, drive, rent a car, get discounts, stop working, access money you’ve saved and so on. At any given time, we have an age we’d like to be and except for 18 and 21, it’s usually not our current age.

Age is one of the first questions we ask children and we are asked to enter on forms. We wonder how old others are. We even ask this about objects and food!  How old is that antique, that house, that bottle of wine, the container of milk. 

It’s OK to slow down by choice but not by biology. We do not value wrinkles. We have a million products to slow down aging or give the appearance of youth. We commend younger folks when they finally slow down to smell the roses. Older folks are perceived as less capable and there is less respect for being old fashioned. I don't like getting older. I reached the point where I'm facing a decline. 

So it takes a bit of self-convincing to remind myself that my birthday is a celebration of life.  I made it this far!  And I am lucky!  I have had a really excellent life so far with so much more to look forward to!

At 58, my health is pretty good.  My knees and back are fine, no aches or pains. My hair is thinner and slightly graying and I have a few wrinkles near my eyes and that frowny look due to sagging cheeks is setting in. The skin on my arms is getting papery. 

I was blessed with a very happy childhood and great parents. I have a loving mother, a wonderful husband and respectful kids that became the sort of people the world needs. I’ve had mostly positive experiences in my life with friends, hobbies and work that empower me to confidently want more of all of the above. 

I am more curious about everything now than when I was younger, thanks to life experience. The internet came in my middle aged years and now I learn about new things every few hours and I can look up anything I want to know. So many things are within reach. 

There is something good about every age.  

My mother said this when, as a child, I asked her “how does it feel to grow old”?  Of course I was 6 at the time and she was in her 30’s, but it was a fair question. 

I'd say she was right. There is something good about every age.  

Winter Garden - Could Be Better

Only yesterday I was crowing about growing the best tomatoes ever and donating 40 lbs. of cucumbers to our local food bank. That was ages ago.

Now there is nothing to brag about. There is very little to eat from my winter garden.  Maybe this is normal, I don’t know. I’m relatively new to winter gardening. I just know that right now, I have cauliflower envy. My neighbor, whose raised beds I can see all day in the front of the house, got her winter crop planted in early September. Her cauliflower is gorgeous and ready to be harvested. Mine are finally the size of a quarter.

Back in early September if I had wanted to get my winter vegetables in that early, I would have had to harvest and clear out all my summer vegetables. It’s a very hard choice to make and it's a lot of work just when we have all the Jewish High Holidays. Could we please move Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot to November?  

Here’s what else is going on out back:

Our raised beds were built in a bad place. In the winter, they are in the shade half the day which slows down growth. Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, beets and peas are hardly growing. I finally got the first pea pods and they are completely tasteless. The chard is half inedible because it keeps getting leaf miner. And I accidentally planted broccoli rabe instead of broccoli and not knowing anything about it or what to do with it, I let it go past its prime and now I yanked it all out. 

The little seedlings I started indoors did not continue to bring me happiness. Once they were moved into outdoor soil, they either died or have remained almost the same size. I also wasn’t sure where to find room for them all, and as I transplanted them in a hurry, I stuck things here and there and in a few rogue places. Now I don’t know what’s what or where. I might find a surprise kohlrabi one day near a weed patch. 

The one great success for which I cannot take credit, is the fig tree, which produced tons of great figs for the past few weeks. “We all want some figgy pudding".  Little did I know that figs are ripe just before Christmas (at least in Northern California) and do make very nice desserts. They also are expensive in the shops and giving away figs is an easy way to make new friends. I have the kind that start out green and soft and not too sweet and go well in salads or with cheese. As they get riper, they turn purple and get much sweeter. 

The fig tree is very lovely and kept its leaves until recently. One morning I woke up and almost all the leaves had dropped. Fig leaves are beautiful but have a weird sticky prickly texture and you don’t want to scoop them up with bare hands. 

Then I couldn't resist and got caught up for 3 hours in the  zen of revitalizing the strawberry patch, which has a few strawberries in December. There are June-bearing and Ever-bearing and the Evers are still producing. They look like the poison apple that the Wicked Queen prepared for Snow White - half white, half red. But they are very sweet! 

The previous owners built a lovely mound and covered it with strawberries. What I’m finding is that as all the water runs downhill, the top plants dry out quickly and die while everything else erodes to the bottom and the base is a dense little forest with strawberries fighting for space with the crabgrass. After the rains, it’s all mush and slugs under the top leaves. I trimmed each one back to the mother plant. I can now recognize runners and mother plants! I plan to move the entire patch near the artichokes where it’s flat. 

As I did all this work, I found little “gifts’. Walnuts!  There are walnut trees in the neighborhood and in the fall, squirrels brought some nuts over and hid them all over the place. I found the first ones a few weeks ago, buried in the straw on the raised bed. I was clearing out the old straw and I worried that if I move the nuts, the squirrels won’t find their food. Greg assured me that they have very poor memories and never come back. Today I left 5 walnuts out in the open for them to find. 

My lunch today was that little bit of broccoli rabe sautéed with a few chard leaves and 4 pea pods, which made a warm salad bed upon which I put a medallion of Laura Chenel’s fine-herbed goat cheese and a slice of toasted sourdough, two figs and two strawberries. And yes, using foodie language to describe my meal is showing off. 

Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll have the fish, please!

Growing up in New York in the 1960’s and 1970’s, my family did not exactly celebrate Thanksgiving. We weren’t part of a big family dinner and my mother did not shop days in advance for turkey, swap recipes for stuffing, or bake pies. As a Jewish child of European born parents, it was normal not to follow the traditions of an American holiday. But as can be expected, we unintentionally developed our own tradition. 

When I asked my mother how we came to ignore the customary family feast, she said that my father thought it was a shame for my mother, who worked a full time job and did all that was expected for the many Jewish holidays, to spend a precious day off slaving in the kitchen. It was a rare day without any obligations, just relax.

And so it came to pass that we would go to a nice restaurant for dinner. “We” was the four of us: my parents, my grandmother and me. The only prep work involved was deciding which restaurant and then calling ahead to find out if they were open and serving fish on Thanksgiving and make a reservation. We kept kosher and we only ate fish in non-kosher restaurants. 

On Thanksgiving afternoon, we would get dressed up, bundle up, and take a taxi to the restaurant. If we got lucky, it was a taxi with those little extra fold-down seats that were phased out by the mid ’70’s.  These were 2 little stools between the rear bench and the driver’s front seat, that folded down onto the floor in the back of the cab. When you had more than 3 passengers, you popped up the stool and had a real adventure. The smallest passenger crouched on the little seat and as the taxi hit every pot hole and you got to bounce along like riding a bucking bronco. When the driver hit the brakes and you were propelled forward, the stool went into collapse mode and you could easily land on the floor. It took skill to keep yourself and the seat upright. It was as good as any amusement park ride but it lasted much longer!

When we arrived at the restaurant, we got the usual warm welcome, a huffy “Do you have a reservation” which was code for “You better have a reservation because we are completely full tonight and there’s no way you’re getting a table if you didn’t call ahead”. Then we performed the initial intake: did the first impression live up to the restaurant’s reputation?  This set the mood for either a good experience or more disappointment. 

We were never given menus. After a brisk walk to our table to get rid of us quickly, we were handed off to a waiter would rush to our table and verify,  “You’re having the Thanksgiving special, right?” 

Could we see the menu please?

That’s when the fun started. 

Let me pause and say: For the first few years the I was young, I was embarrassed and secretly wished we could have the special like everyone else. The room smelled like the special. Those warm creamy mashed potatoes, gravy and whatever else was on the plate, looked really good. I had never had that. I had most of the dishes separately. We often had turkey, usually with a noodle kugel from Meal Mart’s kosher take-out. My mother made parve mashed potatoes with margarine on holidays (no dairy ingredients with our meat dish). We had cans of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce all the time. We had Birdseye frozen green beans regularly. But I had never had it all on one plate at the same time, drowning in that magical brown gravy. 

As I got older, I looked forward to the dramatic moment when we shocked the waiter. No one said “no” to the Thanksgiving special!  We were the first! Rebels! 

Could we see the menu please?

We have completely derailed the waiter. Now he has to fetch menus and then come back and take our order for four specials away…such a waste of time on a busy night. 

The waiter returns and pencil poised, says, ”So…four specials?”

No. We’ll have the fish, please.

The fish? 

Yes, the fish. For all four of us.

I don’t think we have the fish today. It’s Thanksgiving. We have a special menu. It has tur….

Yes, you have filet of sole. 

I'm not sure. I have to ask. 

I called ahead and asked. 

You did?  I’m not sure the chef can make the fish tonight.

I called this afternoon and spoke to Robert. He said we can have the fish. 

Robert is not here for the dinner shift. 

Robert said it won’t be a problem. 

Are you sure you don’t want the special?  It’s got our homemade…

No!  We can’t eat that. We’d like the filet of sole. 

At this point, the waiter is clearly thinking: Are you nuts? Who CAN’T eat turkey and mashed potatoes?  

The wrangling sometimes dragged on, the waiter trying to persuade us to give in to temptation and make his evening easier, but in the end, we always got the fish. We also got an angry frazzled waiter, who sometimes, as he cleared our main course plates, sarcastically asked, “Ready for some pumpkin pie?” with a tone implying that for some crazy reason his difficult diners might be resistant to the special, but no one says no to pumpkin pie! A triumphant finale!

Of course not. Like most Europeans, we don’t like pumpkin pie at all. In fact, even if we did like it, we probably can’t eat that. Pie crust might be made with lard.  

Do you have a nice seven layer cake?

Red Buds

The smallest things me extremely happy. 

Literally - the smallest things. No...not diamonds!  

I fell in love with a plant at the community garden called Pineapple Sage. There are many types of sage and they all thrive in our Northern California climate. They are drought tolerant and a really good choice for the garden. Supposedly, they are easy to grow...or hard to kill, as they say. 

Pineapple sage has beautiful bright green leaves that smell like pineapple. It's subtle when you're near it, intense when you touch the leaves. In the fall, they develop beautiful red flowers which usually attract hummingbirds. The plant looks great all year round. 

I've taken cuttings from someone else's plant several times to grow a plant of my own. Each time it first thrived and then died. I couldn't figure out what went wrong. Did I overwater it? Underwater it? Too much sun? Not enough? 

When we moved into our new house, I tried again. I planted a cutting in April in a very large plastic pot in a mostly-sunny spot. Again, it thrived and my little cutting was a lovely 2 foot tall hearty plant by July. By August, it was not looking so great and I tried moving it to a sunnier spot. It got worse. It got yellow leaves and looked kind of droopy. I was very sad. I was killing the un-killable plant. 

One day during the Kavanaugh hearings, I was pulling crabgrass and I realized my sage was trying to tell me "Mom, my shoes are too tight!". I was pretty sure it didn't like the plastic pot. It had outgrown it. So Greg helped me dig a hole in the ground and transplant it. He prepared me for the worst: this is risky, your sage might not make it. 

Six days later, I saw RED BUDS. 

This is a wonderful surprise!  Usually plants go into shock after you move them. Although Greg pointed out that the move may have shocked the sage into producing the red buds and the sage might still fail. I tempered my joy and I ran out 3 times a day to check, coo and admire it. 

Meanwhile, I also planted seeds indoors. I kept meaning to not spend $4 on vegetable starters at the nursery and to stagger the growth and not have all the veggies mature at the same time. That's when we eat the same vegetable every day for a month and then it's gone. 

I finally went to the dollar store, bought a thin foil cookie sheet and set it up at the sunniest spot in the house with a flat surface - on my desk by the big living room window. I planted spinach, lettuce, beets, chard and kohlrabi. In this little hot-house environment, the seeds sprouted in the first 2 days. 

It makes me insanely happy to see these little tiny vegetable plants growing on my desk. They are barely half an inch and I feel more pride and attachment than a normal person should. 

Full disclosure - I'm also very pleased that this endeavor cost me one dollar and that my brain found a solution to finding space. The six-packs are recycled, the seeds were free, the soil is from the garden. All I needed was a cheap tray to catch the excess water and to find a good surface in the sun. Don't ask me why it too me so long to figure out that I had room on my desk and yes, it's OK to grow vegetables next to my laptop and bills. Now it seems like it was the most obvious thing!  I would have put a plant on my desk. I just didn't think of it as a place to grow vegetables. Duh!

It was only in the past couple of weeks that I dug up the last of the summer garden. It was hard. I felt very destructive tearing out so many green things for which I felt such pride. The garden is an emotional rollercoaster. One day I'm ecstatic growing tomatoes and a few weeks later, I have to rip the vines out. 

But then (cliche coming...) one door closes and another opens. I see new red buds and forget the loss of rotting tomatoes.