A Sort of Typical Morning or How to Embrace Your Inner ADD

Encouraged by the positive slant given to Attention Deficit Disorder pottering by Monty Don in Giles Wilson’s recent article at BBC online, I submit my own example from this morning. Note: times are approximate. Feel free to try your own.

3:00 am. Wake up. Decide it’s way too early to get up no matter what.
3:15 am. On the other hand, it’d be great to get a sketchbook made for our upcoming short trip to the Sierra.
3:30 am. It would be a pamphlet stitch with gray Canson paper outside, slightly larger than the text pages. Stitch: royal blue waxed linen (I don’t have any linen this color, would have to get some at the bead store). Text pages could be the Sundance Felt I already have, trimmed and folded, though Arches Hot Press would be great too. Except then I’d have to buy some, trim, and fold it. What time does the Bookstore open?
3:35 am. Not for a few hours at least, you dork.
3:36 am. Charlie can tell I’m awake and jumps on my belly. I have a full bladder. Okay. I’m getting up to bind this sketchbook.
3:45 am. Now I’m really getting up.
3:46 am. I gather up pillow cases on the pillows I can reach in the dark (that aren’t under Numenius’ head, at least) to throw in the laundry. I close the door behind me and turn on the washing machine.
3:47 am. I give the cats each a scoop of food and get the kettle on; wash their water bowls and fill with water. Thank God I washed out that bottle yesterday, the water was starting to taste disgusting.
3:48 am. Open the laptop, login on my side, start the dial-up connection. (We have no broadband at home.) Check email (there isn’t much; is there a problem?). Notice a reference to an article in Guardian Women by none other than the stupendous Natalie d’Arbeloff, blogger and God-interviewer extraordinaire. Read the article, a beguiling invitation to older women to Just Say No To Bingo and start blogging. Send her a congratulatory email.
4:20 am. Brush cats, both of whom are shedding outlandishly with the heat, producing jumbo turd-like hairballs. Hear the kingbirds singing already. I should draw one today when it gets light; lots of time to draw this morning.
4:25 am. Notice a book list on the counter given to me by a friend who teaches Comp Lit here. I really should read something grownup so when the next person asks me what I’ve read lately, I can say something other than Harry Potter. (I did finish Obama’s Dreams From My Father this week, though not without incurring an overdue library fine. That does qualify, though. Recommended.)
4:30-5:00 am. Read news, check Kos, to which I’ve developed a disturbing re-addiction, given that it’s an election year, do the rounds (this and this and this and most hilariously, this ). Yes. It really is only 5:00 o’clock.
5:00 am. Sweep patio of mulberries that have blown down in the fierce winds in order to hang laundry without tracking mulberries inside. Decide to hang laundry.
5:15 am. Before I get the laundry, I’ll just check on the garden; it’s light enough to see now.
5:20 am. It’s going to be hot today. I’d better mulch. Wish I’d bought mulch the other day. Oh well. I’ll just pile manure on instead, taking care to avoid the basil and parsley.
5:20-5:40 am. Pile on said manure.
5:45 am. Go to turn on hose but instead pick up two tomato cages left outside the front door by the landlady. Let the cats out.
6:10 am. Finish staking two tomato plants to which I’ve added some of the dried vetch for mulch. Realize the 2 bush tomatoes need to be staked too. Pull out one steel frame and reposition, rearranging the triffids volunteer grapevines in the process.
6:25 am. Turn on hose. Water beans, basil shoots, all the squashes, the miraculously surviving potatoes, lettuces, radishes. Water myself copiously (there are three major, and about five minor, leaks in this hose that is “lifetime guaranteed” — if they lasted even a bloody year, I’d be ecstatic). Avoid the tomatoes, whose watering day is Sunday.
6:45 am Check the cats are still in view (they are; both on the field, on gopher patrol). On the way to turn off the water, notice my irrigation barrier needs more dirt. (They have mowed the alfalfa and will be flooding the field within a week; I want some of that water!) Get the shovel and distribute gopher-tunnellings onto my barrier. Turn off water.
6:55 am. Notice only one cat. Damn.
6:56 am. Get Charlie inside.
7:01. Still no Diego. Wake Numenius. Diego turns out to be hiding in the garden, making google eyes.
7:06 Give Numenius a bear hug for finding Diego and as a quick “I’m sorry to get you up so early,” hoping he doesn’t think it’s way TOO early. This is a forlorn hope. It is, for him, WAY too early. (If he does this exercise, and I hope he will, it will be set at night.)
7:07. Finally hang laundry, ignoring the mulberries I missed in the dark. Tracked in they will be.
7:20. Make shopping list. It includes bread, cheese, a hose (lifetime guaranteed) and some mulch. Also some canola oil which I have run out of in traps for earwigs, which do, it turns out, seem to be working, though I never find earwigs in them (the crows, magpies, or mockingbirds are helping themselves, I think).
7:25. Decide to take a shower, which I announce to Numenius.
7:25. On the other hand, I say, wasn’t I going to make a sketchbook?
7:25. Burst out laughing.
7:25. Decide to write this down before it gets swept away in the random ADD potterings of the next five minutes.

I still haven’t taken a shower, eaten breakfast, drawn a bird, or made a sketchbook, despite having been up for nearly four hours. But I do have a blog post ready for tonight, so I feel like I’m ahead.

Gardens Of The Rock

Nobody expects to find gardens when making a visit to Alcatraz Island. Yet the varied inhabitants of the island, starting with the military personnel when it became a fort in 1853, and then the prison officers and their families living on the island between 1934 and 1963 brought plants over to try to civilize the island. These gardens fell into neglect, until in 2003 the Garden Conservancy started restoring them in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Yesterday the island was quite crowded, a fine sunny day on San Francisco Bay, and well into the tourist season. (Alcatraz gets about 1.3 million visitors annually.) This is the season when the western gulls take over all bits of plant life — I think there are about 1500 nesting pairs on the island. And on the western slope of the island there is some fairly lush growth that hosts many nesting black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets.

Here are some historical photos of the gardens of Alcatraz.

Replantings

I lost many tomato plants in our freak freeze in April. I put in the remainders. They seem to be making it, as do many of the squashes.

But the beans: oh, the earwigs. (And pocket gophers.) The last one of the large Christmas beans was gone this morning, nibbled to death from above and below.

I’ve set out some tubs with oil and water, caught a bunch overnight, but the damage was done. I’ve redug the bean bed and lined it, quickly, against the gophers. I had six different varieties of beans planted; we’re down to three, one of which is simply a volunteer from last year and has a spectacular bright red flower, mostly ornamental.

To make up for all this loss I went and bought three new tomato plants today and flung carrot and radish seeds among the new bean bed: an act of defiance that will I’m sure come back to bite me somewhere, sometime. (Hoping that a teepee of beans will provide enough shade for these winter veggies.) More defiantly, I’m soaking flageolet beans and purple bush beans I intend to put into the parsnip/arugula bed, which is already rodent-lined. (The parsnips have proved remarkably impervious to any pests, but the spray I made with their leaves/peels has not done much to deter earwigs around the beans…)

Carrots Love Tomatoes, says author Louise Riotte. Sure. But they have different watering needs, different growing seasons. I’m encouraged to plant celery in among the beans. Hmm. Not here, not in summer, I don’t think.

Dear gardening gods, have pity… Otherwise, can someone recommend a gardening therapist??

Postscript: I just saw this. I think it’s the answer to everything. Potter away, everyone…

Acorns in the Laundry

For the past few years my officemate Jim has been raising valley oak seedlings from acorns in any place he has been able to find, including his own laundry room. The campus student paper the California Aggie reported today on his considerable efforts at native oak restoration.

Rediscoverng the Parsnip

My father loved parsnips. To me they were an unnecessary white vegetable at Christmas, competing with the brussels sprouts my mother had me peel and cut crosses in the base of, sweet potatoes or yams, white potatoes, gravy, and turkey. (We didn’t really do Thanksgiving in Madrid: it was a school night.)

I tried growing them this year, and a row of them sits outside. I pulled up a bunch this morning, and sautéed them with brussels sprouts (cut in half, not with a cross) in olive oil, till they both caramelized in the pan. It was delicious.

Our high temperatures over the past couple of days make me want to fill the garden with summer vegetables, but it can still get cold enough to make that a bad idea. The parsnips and snap peas will need to be eaten soon, though…

Shades of Gray with a Splash of Orange

When I first pulled out the freeway daisies in front of the house for a herb garden, I had this vague notion I wanted it to be predominantly gray. This doesn’t work very well if what you want are herbs that you use all the time, such as parsley, cilantro, or basil, but I thought I could hide them in among the lavenders and sages (and artichokes) and it would mostly be gray. (Note to self: never, ever can sorrel be hidden among gray; it perks up in its yellow green perkiness in pure defiance, but can’t bring myself to pull it out, so delicious is it…)

I made some mistakes — part of the gardening rite of passage — and it turns out that most of the items that have since been pulled out have tended to the yellow-green rather than blue-green/gray. The latest casualty was the lemon verbena that never really recovered from the frost.

What I didn’t plan for, though, was the delightful colonization by California poppies. They can, and do, take over, but who could mind it? And if they really do crowd out something, they’re easy to pull out (and will certainly come back next year).

The orange sets off the gray to perfection. I’m trying to focus on the rest of the flowers in this garden being bluish purple. I finally planted the olive tree Jennifer suggested a couple of years ago and though it will grow very slowly it will be the focal point.

Garden design is a difficult and serious art, but the good news is, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, most things will reward you anyway.

Carrots Love Tomatoes

Okay, so I’ve been gardening. I now have a pair of Rosie’s Coveralls since I’m sick to death of getting my nightie covered in mud every day (though now it’s more likely to be dust; we’ve moved from winter to almost summer in record time).

I have tomato seedlings going at work, and I’ve planted a bunch of coriander, butternut squash, eggplant, and pepper/chile seeds in my newspaper pots. It seems late. Everything catches up, though, here.

Today at the Coop I picked up a copy of Louise Riotte’s Carrots Love Tomatoes, a book I’ve seen referred to all over the place. It’s been updated since its first publication in 1975. It’s a bit like having your Aunt Nancy for tea. Consider: “By now I’m sure everybody knows that rue doesn’t like basil. But an authority as ancient as Pliny tells us that ‘rue and the fig tree are in great league and amitie together’.”

SO: No fennel near anything, basil, carrots and onions near most things, parsley near everything, radishes near squashes, okra near peppers and eggplant, avoid curcubits with potatoes (no problem there), be sure to double plant marigolds against nematodes.

This is a gardening entry and Illustration Friday’s topic of the week is garden. Have at it, gang.

Before it Rains Again

It’s predicted to start raining this afternoon or evening; I wanted to get one of the vegetable beds lined against gophers and filled before the whole place gets turned to mud again.

There’s always four times as much soil as you think. Then I wanted to incorporate a lot of horse manure into it to let the bed sit a while. That’s a lot of trips across the road (I caught a horse that had escaped and spent some time weeding with Mary on separate trips). Heavy barrow. I have blisters on my hands. I also loosened all the soil in the herb garden, where a gopher is busily working its way through my artichokes (and the latest victim, the yarrow). I’ve ordered more plant cages against the varmints…

This wooden gizmo at right is a fantastic tool for turning newspaper strips into small pots, which can then be planted straight into the ground without disturbing root systems. I may try to get the ones I filled to soak in rainwater this afternoon.

Baskets Of Basil

Pica decided to harvest her basil today; it’s now getting cold and the plants are starting to fare poorly. We separated the leaves from the stems, and ended up with enough of them to make pesto for the entire Italian national football team.

Late Getting the Peas In

I did have good intentions. I had planned to line all my raised beds against the pocket gophers that tunnel their way underneath the entire county. Basic rule of gardening: there’s always at least four times more soil than you think. I got so knackered putting in one of these jerryrigged cages (now happily sprouting mixed lettuces, arugula, tiny Japanese turnips, and parsnips) I lost heart for more.

But today I used the cages I’d had tomatoes and squashes in to at least try and keep the blighters at bay, and planted a full bed of peas. If they germinate, and if they survive our normally trivial frosts, they should give me a good head start in the spring.

If they don’t, so it goes.