December 2005

Photo: Acer palmatum ‘Green Castle’

My research into XM Satellite Radio includes nine hours of driving over two days, plus a week or so around the home and garden, and I’m happy to report - no, make that ecstatic - that XM’s a WINNER.  For example, on the highway I didn’t have to listen to my out-of-date CDs or the execrable local radio stations.  Instead, I heard a long concert of Scottish folk music.  A complete Beethoven symphony.  The Al Franken Show.  A talk show on NPR.  Lots of bluegrass, which felt just right while driving through the mountains of Western Virginia.  A station called Progressive Country, which I thought was an oxymoron but turned out to mean Willie Nelson.  Even some excerpts from operas, something I haven’t willingly listened to in years.  Lord only knows what I’ll discover I like by the time I’ve checked out all 65 music stations, commercial-free.  Here at home I have the little XM receiver sitting in its cradle in the living room where it plays through the stereo speakers, and when I want to listen in the garden or during my neighborhood walks, it plays through headphones. 

Before buying XM, I’d read an animated discussion of satellite radio on one of my favorite political blogs, dailyKos, and discovered that whether customers chose XM or Sirius, its only competitor, they’re an incredibly happy bunch.  Some people choose Sirius in order to hear Howard Stern - puh-leez - while some choose between Sirius and XM according to which sports they carry.  Again, not a concern of mine.  But locally headquartered XM has just what I want - three channels of classical music and three of jazz, plenty of folk and bluegrass and Reggae, a huge selection of rock subgenres, several channels broadcasting in French, interesting stuff like "Latin jazz," and lots, lots more.

Maybe my music research project is finally over and I can turn to the next item on my to-do list - getting used to my new CoolPix camera and doing some serious photo organizing and archiving.  It feels kinda daunting and maybe lethargy has set in, it being winter and all.  I have to remind myself how cool it is to have climbed a learning curve and created something new and exciting, this blog being yet another example.  And it led to reading Sandy in B.C., who inspired me to try new things photographically. 

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Silly me, asking you what music you listen to in your gardens, only to be told that you’re all blissfully tuned into the sounds of nature.  Naturally I wonder why it is I need something more to occupy my mind and I figure it’s all those drugs I took in the ’60s and ’70s.  Allegedly. 

So here’s how it works for me.  Say it’s a cold December morning.  When I’ve done lots of stuff I need to do and it’s finally warmed up enough to go outside, I want to immerse myself in the garden, slow down and get all in-the-moment like we’re try to do these days.  So it’s just me, the birds, the squirrels and some far-off construction sounds.  I slowly walk the whole garden, noticing whatever there is to notice and fantasizing about changes I’ll make when it warms up.  I sit for a while and contemplate my favorite oak.  I’m starting to feel pretty mellow about now, and really grateful to be in my favorite place in the world. 

And here’s where apparently I’m unlike even other passionate gardeners, my people.  Right about now I want more, more, more, like nature and beauty and music, all at once. Yeah, if I just add some Brahms or some jazz or whatever I’m in the mood for, I can really bliss out.  Raking leaves becomes a musical opportunity.  After all, what better place to tune in to great music?  So the high lasts longer, at least for me, speaking as a potential addict, I suppose.  Do you think I need rehab?  Don’t answer that.

So, readers, let me ask the question I probably should have asked in the first place.  Do you have music in your life and if so, what, how and when?  Tomorrow I’ll report on my experimentation with satellite radio - is it a dream come true?

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Happy Winter Solstice! My little gift to you is a terrific site I just discovered, though it’s been loved by many for years.  It’s all about the solstice, with lots about its ancient and cross-cultural observance.  At Candlegrove I also found this basic science that blew me away.

"Today brings the Winter Solstice. The actual moment of the Sun’s lowest latitude in the sky is 10:35 am, PST. Welcome Yule!

"Solstice means "standing still sun." Daylight won’t begin to lengthen significantly for a few days. For example, here in San Francisco, at winter solstice we have 9 hours, 33 minutes of daylight. Our day will remain that length in minutes until Christmas, before gaining a minute more.

"In fact, even though winter solstice brings the shortest day of the year, it doesn’t feel like it to many people. That’s because more people experience sunsets than sunrises. At mid-northern latitudes, the earliest sunsets occur during the first week of December. Sunset actually occurs a little bit later each day as we move closer to the winter solstice. The days really are getting shorter, but it’s because the sun is rising later each morning. That’s why the days at the beginning of December usually feel the shortest. This tidbit from Jack Horkheimer of the PBS program, Stargazer."

I was prompted to do this bit of research after noticing the sun’s position in the sky this morning, when it looked exactly like this photo.  Actually, I’ve been noticing its progression up and down the latitudes all year - yet another reason to spend time in the garden.  Though it was only 30 degrees when I went out this morning (just below freezing for readers living in more science-friendly nations) it felt great.  That’s thanks to enough layers of clothes and being really active - collecting and hauling those leaves I keep talking about.  And that’s coming from a warmth-loving Southerner.

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Who is this crazy man, you ask? He’s aptly named himself the Renegade Gardener and is also known as Don Engebretson, a writer/designer in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve been checking him out and I’m liking his brand of craziness.  He opines on just about everything but let’s start with his declarations about music choices in the garden because it’s a subject I’ve been thinking about lately.

"Do not garden accompanied by an active Walkman, unless you happen to have secured a tape teaching you the Latin names of plants. In general, listening to most styles of music while gardening tends to lessen the beneficial elements gardening infuses into the soul. Playing rock music while gardening makes you ornery, while listening to modern country as you deadhead your Dianthus deltoides can lead to dizziness and gas. Classical music in the patio should be saved for after the watering is done and your guests have arrived; listening to classical while gardening makes you tire early. Only instrumental jazz, I have found, works pretty well alongside gardening, particularly pre-’65 Miles Davis.

"The sound nature makes in your yard is the most relaxing accompaniment to gardening, but if you must listen to something man-made, the best thing to listen to is baseball. Listening to baseball while you garden can be a smooth, sublime joy."

Reminds me of Henry Mitchell, the much-loved and missed garden writer for the Washington Post, whose equally strong and quirky opinions have been published in two wonderful volumes. You couldn’t pay me to listen to sports announcers in the garden or anywhere else, but I agree wholeheartedly about the deleterious effects of (most) rock music and (almost all) country. 

Which leads me a long-term project of mine - the quest to figure out what I really enjoy hearing in the garden and the logistics of delivering same to my ears.  All options and technologies have been on the table.  I’ve gone through books on tape, a portable CD player, a portable radio, a stationary radio in my tool shed, and most recently, an iPod.  Yeah, I was going to be one of those people we see on the subway attached by skinny white wires to their own worlds.  And all my attempts have failed because the local radio fare is so terrible and polluted with commercials, and I just don’t have enough music of my own to keep me interested.

Now I don’t have to tell my readers that hope springs eternal in the heart of a gardener.  And any day now my new XM2Go will arrive in the mail.  Translation: the hardware needed to listen to XM Satellite Radio, with its 160 channels, 60 of them all-music-no-commercials.  YES! The service costs $10 a month, which is about what I was prepared to spend on iTunes, but thank god I don’t have to do all the work of finding and downloading the stuff.  So I’ll let you know if this baby really makes all my dreams come true.  In the meantime, what do you guys do listening-wise in the garden?  Or are you all thinking such interesting thoughts that you don’t need a diversion? Go ahead; I can handle the truth.

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Note the attractive compost bins I bought years ago; they now function as hardscape/historic artifacts in my "woodland garden."  Now remember those 35 deciduous trees I told you about on my property?  I’m thinking it would take at least 15 of these little structures to actually hold all their leaves.  Then there’s the work involved in turning them every month or so, an effort certain to make my physical therapist a little richer. Taking care of a garden, especially a large one, is enough work without putting myself through the torture of turning compost contents, so no thanks.  Likewise, you won’t see me watering the damn things, either.

So here’s the answer.  Can’t see anything?  That’s the point.  It’s just a large pile of leaves slowly compressing and composting.  Every fall I fold over last year’s leaves into one pile and use the freed-up space for the current year’s batch.  The smaller, older pile is then ready to be used as compost the following spring or fall.

Now like me, you’ve probably read 15-20 articles - seriously - listing the proper ingredients of compost.  So I earnestly include grass clippings in the pile throughout the summer and whatever herbaceous discards my garden may produce, but considering the sheer volume of dead leaves, it doesn’t amount to much. You can bet I don’t schlep down into the woods to dump my kitchen scraps, which in the case of my "cooking" style amounts to nothing more than the occasional banana peel.

But in the end, the product of this humble pile looks like black gold to me and the plants seem happy to get it, so I’m at peace.  And peace be with you, too.

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Outside my door it feels like this.  So for a change of weather I browse the gardening blogs of my Aussie friends and Victoria Val gives me the fix I need.  Not only is she boating around in a T-shirt but she transports me to Waikiki.  Let’s go there now.

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No, blows weren’t actually struck but the police really were called and two years after the incident, it’s still a story worth telling.

It started with the decades-old tradition of my beloved Takoma Horticulture Club selling wholesale bulbs to its members and also at higher prices to the public as a fundraiser.  In 2003 the bulb distribution center was my basement - a big mistake never to be repeated, lessons learned and all that.  One afternoon in the middle of the long ordeal a member came to pick up the bulbs she’d ordered and asked to buy some of the extras we’d purchased for resale to the public.  The trouble came when she insisted we sell her these extras - not even for her but for her neighbor - at the wholesale price. The member, whom I’d never seen before in my life (she’d maintained her membership for the sole purpose of getting cheap bulbs for herself and her friends and neighbors) refused to leave my house.

Okay, now what do you do?  Some of you may have bended the rules and given the woman what she wanted - $10 savings on some damn bulbs.  Call me an inflexible tight-ass, but I really hate giving in to bullies, so I stood my ground.  A half hour passed like this, with the woman still in my house, refusing to leave until she got her way.  Unbelievable.

So I called the local police and you can imagine the disbelief on their part when I told them what the confrontation was about, and with whom.  The member, who listened passively while I described her to the police, even giving them her name and address, finally left just before the police arrived.  And yes, the police looked amused and you can bet they had fun recounting the incident back at the station.  I was just grateful they didn’t report it to the local newspapers for an amusing but thoroughly embarassing little story.  I imagined a headline much like the one for this post.

The immediate follow-up was that I stopped sending this member her club newsletters and fortunately never saw or heard from her again.  I once told the story to a friend of hers, who speculated that she’d been "off her meds."  Sounds about right.

After one more year of selling bulbs, the club finally ended the tradition altogether when no one volunteered to be in charge.  As much as I loved having extra money for the club to spend and donate, this huge operation had caused more arguments and tears and breakdowns over the years than it was worth.  So these days we’re a poorer but happier bunch. 

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Boyoboy, it’s great having a big chunk of time for reading - and enough great books to fill it.  Which, thankfully, I did over the Thanksgiving holiday, so here’s the scoop.

First up is a really fun read about psychoanalysts by Irvin Yalom, who teaches psychiatry at Stanford and became an eminent writer in his field before turning to fiction.  Here’s Irvin.  If he doesn’t look the part of a shrink - or a Communist revolutionary - I don’t know what.  His Lying on the Couch was a hit with my book group, including this member, and I’ll be reading more of him the next chance I get.

Next is a recent Oprah pick, so you may have already heard of it.  It’s A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, who’s more my type. Very Springsteenian, don’t ya think?  This is Frey’s fascinating and gut-wrenching memoir of his three-month rehab at the Hazelton Institute. Unlike most rehab stories, this one totally rejects a Higher Power, AA, and its Twelve Steps, so it has the added appeal for me of being controversial.  Soon to be released in movie form, it may even shake up the drug and alcohol recovery field, which is now totally wedded to AA as the only alternative to certain death.

And last and actually least is the book I expected to like the most - Ian McEwan’s much-praised Saturday.  Heck, I’m a huge fan of McEwan and I even went to a local reading, so I was primed, probably too primed.  To this humble reader, his account of a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon just prior to the invasion of Iraq would have made a better short story.  I may be exaggerating but it seemed like it took 20 pages to get the guy out of bed, then another 30 to feed him breakfast.  Sad to say, if you read the excerpt in The New Yorker, that’s probably enough.

SO, I’m back home now and life interferes with reading but I’m hoping to get to the fourth book I shlepped to Arizona - A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.  I loved his High Fidelity and About a Boy, both made into pretty good movies, and hated his next effort, How to Be Good, so it could go either way. This is about four people who meet on the roof of a building from which they all intend to jump, which is a pretty intriguing premise. [Update:  Since I drafted this post I started reading the book and realized immediately that it was too close to home.  I know someone who actually jumped, so why I thought I'd enjoy the "intriguing premise" is beyond me.]

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