2000 miles plus
Gardeners sometimes take vacations. That means leaving gardens in a vulnerable situation. Not all gardens can sustain themselves without heartfelt intervention, so the gardener finds help. We acknowledge the vulnerability and rally the resources. Being a gardener intent on a brief vacation, I found excellent help for my squashes and tomatoes, and the point for me is there is strength to be found in acknowledging vulnerability.
So, sitting not far from the Pacific Ocean on a brisk morning in the middle of an apple orchard, I feel confident my squashes are being cared for, and the irony is, besides being on vacation and having fun, my responsibility here is to care for someone else’s plants while they are on vacation so they can feel as invulnerable as I do. Strength in numbers.
The Sonoma County plants I am caring for are fenced in because, believe it are not, not all the deer in the world live in Carroll County. Truncated sweet pea vines that sneaked through their cages are evidence, and I intend to adopt this approach for my Ozark flowerbeds. You can learn things everywhere if you want to.
On the first day, my extended family took me to visit their friends who created a gardener’s paradise on a hillside west of Sebastopol. The first thought for me was, “I want this to happen on my hillside… if I only had the time.”
Crowded pathways wind through natural settings with a panoply of colors and smells… a mugwort bigger than a boxwood, a line of pineapple guavas beginning to set fruit (the flower petals are delicious), mint family well-represented, healthy comfrey run amok, an orange tree with fruit big as grapefruit, apple trees here and there, tomatillos sprouting among the peppers… and the grandest spectacle of all was a cage of blackberry varieties all trellised and in rows.
How could this happen? Time, imagination, devotion and unlimited horse poop.
Thursday, a friend flew me in her Cessna 172 to Clear Lake, possibly the oldest lake on the continent. No TSA agent inspected my pockets or intentions as I entered the restricted zone because my friend knew the gate code, so in we went for the pre-flight inspection for the three-seater plane.
After the inspection, “Delta Garbanzo Hopscotch niner niner calling tower ready to rocket northeast pronto.”
“Tower Foxtrot Virginia Forty Twelve calling Garbanzo Barry Bonds et cetera… go get ‘em and thanks for the apples.”
We could have been cropdusters, smugglers of obstreperous intent, or aliens from Jupiter like Marjorie Taylor Greene, but, no, we simply flew 2600 feet above a patchwork of grapevine matrices called vineyards. Grapes have flourished in this area for decades, but during the ‘90s, new vineyards began moving to the neighborhood.
“Out of the way, apples and homesteads! Pears be gone!” Turn a corner on a country road and you’d have found new vines well-fed and pampered, so they texted far-off cousins and encouraged them to move over. There is hardly a grape variety on earth not represented in a vineyard nearby, and consequently an entire aisle of the Whole Foods in Sebastopol is dedicated to selling the bottled fruits of their heritage. Salut!
On Friday, I made my annual Hegira to the restaurant at the Lagunitas brewery in Petaluma where I was joined by three folks who spent their careers providing services for folks who otherwise would have been disenfranchised. We laughed our way through three hours recounting anecdotes and sentimental memories we were fortunate enough to have been a part of. Back in the day, we succeeded in changing the way the citizens in this county viewed persons with developmental disabilities, which, of course, changed us as well. And I should acknowledge the Lagunitas brewmeisters and crew for their excellent conversation stimulators.
The gardener on vacation must rebut the gentleman who said, “Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone” by suggesting he get out of his small town because inspiration thrives if you are lucky enough to allow it. Wonders are waiting.