Music of the Spheres

Now that my entertainment system is back up and running again, thanks to my son-in-law, Tyler, I have been thinking about adding to it. It is pretty neat to be able to stream movies, listen to my i-pod through some really decent speakers and enjoy all of the bells and whistles I now have. However, for several years I have been thinking about setting up exterior speakers, so that I can enjoy music while I'm working in the garden.

Of course, this brings up the subject of the type of music I will play through those exterior speakers. After all, I'm not the only one listening to the music when it is playing out doors. There are my neighbors, who are all too close, but to tell the truth, I could care less about their preferences in music. I refuse to play Onward Christian Soldiers. I'm more concerned with the wildlife and plants and their reaction to the tunes. Sounds crazy, right? I guess the potential impact on wildlife might be obvious. I am working hard to try to attract wildlife into our yard, or at least some types of wildlife. I would prefer not to have visits from coyotes, although Joyce saw one a couple of weeks ago out back. It's the birds that I don't want to scare away. We've set up feeders and bird baths and have been enjoying an increase in avian traffic ever since. I doubt that hard rock would be appreciated by the chickadees and juncos that flock to the feeders. Any type of loud noise generally scares them off.

However, the plants are a whole other question. Ever since 1966 when a guy in Britain named Clive Backster hooked up a dracena plant to a lie detector, there has been a segment of gardeners who believe that plants are capable of tuning into human emotion. It seems that Backster originally hooked the plants up to monitor the effect of water consumption, but instead found something totally different. He discovered that like humans, who react on a lie detector when they perceive a threat to their well being, plants also reacted. According to his notes, while he was doing his experiement the thought came to him "What if I burn the leaf of the plant" Now, he didn't verbalize this or touch the plant, he merely thought about burning the leaf. When he had the thought, the needle jumped right off the chart! His experiment has been replicated in labs around the world in the years since.

One of the things that came out of that experiment was the discovery that plants respond to music. Apparently, they hate death metal and hard rock, but they love classical music. Of course, this limits my choice quite a bit. What if they are OK with singer songwriters such as James Taylor, but can't stand Ben Harper? What if they like show tunes? You can see the problem. I guess I'll have to do more research into this before I set the speakers up. If I feel like rocking, I may have to use my ipod with headphones. I'd hate to go to all the work of nurturing and pampering my favorite plants only to kill them with the wrong tunes.

Eye in the Sky

Last Thursday when I was driving home I noticed something had been added up at the corner of the road we live on and the highway. The county had erected cameras next to the stop lights at the intersection. Now it took years before they decided to put traffic lights at the corner and a number of people were seriously injured or died because there wasn't a signal for way too long.

I must admit, the light is not a bad idea, but the cameras are something else. It seems like more and more we're being observed, watched, spied upon wherever we go. It's standard in stores, the ferry dock is under observation, you can check out the traffic on all of the surrounding highways on line. After they finished the new Narrows bridge they announced that the cameras at the toll plaza would keep your image for something like a year or two, just in case they needed to prove something against you in court.

We seem to take this erosion of our privacy in stride and of course it's all for our own good. After all, we might catch a terrorist! Except that when y0u receive the ticket in the mail showing you running a red light, or speeding through the intersection, terrorism seems like it may not be the top priority.

So I resolved I would warn Joyce as soon as she got home in case she hadn't noticed the cameras, which had not been there in the morning. Imagine my surprise when the first thing she said when she got out of the car was , "I think I just ran the red light up at the corner. I was looking at the oncoming cars and the left turn arrow was flashing yellow when it suddenly changed to red when I entered the intersection." "I guess it's too late to warn you about the camera, then." I said.

I thought I would try to put a good spin on it however and said "Well at least they aren't supposed to put it on your driving record even if they give you a ticket. They can't prove who was driving the car since they take a picture of the back of the car and not the front."

'It seems there were a lot of complaints when they took pictures of the the front of the car and mailed the photo to the driver's address. I guess someone's wife opened the letter and discovered their husband with another woman. Bet it was some politician who got caught and changed the policy!
So, now, we're watching the mail for the ticket. I suppose the cameras are an in-expensive way to try to close the county's budget deficit. They aren't doing a whole lot to help our budget though.

Agony of De feet

Like most men as they grow older I have to be nagged to do the right thing about my health. This may be one of the main reasons men don't live as long as women. I happened to mention to my wife, Joyce, the other day that I had noticed that when I my blood pressure was tested the past few times at the doctor that the readings had gone up. The thing about my wife is that she does not nag. She simply makes me an appointment with the doctor and tells me I need to be there. So of course I found myself at the doctor being told that I was now a diabetic and that I had hypertension. So the doctor tells me that I need to lose 30 pounds and to basically get moving.

Now, while I am a passionate gardener and get exercise in the garden, I am also arthritic and find that I have to pace myself, or I will have to pay the price the next day or even for a few days if I am particularly ambitious. Ever since I first had to attend PE class in junior high school I have hated calisthetics. To voluntarily do sit ups or God forbid pushups is not high on my list of priorities. So I had to look around for some kind of exercise that I will do because I do not hate it. Joyce suggested walking on a treadmill. Now this to me is in the same realm as doing squat thrusts. It is deadly boring and there just isn't any way you can jazz it up enough to make me want to get on a treadmill and walk like a donkey grinding corn.

Of course the solution is to walk outdoors. While I like Port Orchard, it does not offer lots of options for safe walking. Seattle has walking trails all over the city and even out in the country in places like Orting there are walking and biking trails on abandoned railroad right of ways. However, Port Orchard is on a penninsula and was never a manufacturing base, nor did the train ever run here. People got to Port Orchard in the old days by boat, not the train. Consequently, there is not much land dedicated to walking. The road we live on has narrow shoulders and people routinely drive 15 to 20 miles over the speed limit, so it's not really a good option.

Fortunately, downtown Port Orchard offers a decent alternative. This weekend we initiated our walking program. On Saturday morning we got up early and prepared to take a walk along the marina and back up through bustling downtown Port Orchard. This began with a debate between Joyce and I. I watch as she is getting ready and I notice that she is reaching into the basket where we store the dog leashes. "No" I say. "We're not bringing Max!" "But he needs the exercise too" "I don't want this to be about walking the dog!" "It's not. He'll be fine, you'll see." Now, I know this debate could go on and on and we'll never get to the walk, so I say, "Fine, but I'm not walking him or cleaning up after him if he decides to take a dump in the middle of the sidewalk."

So, it's settled, and we proceed to the marina, where Max does surprizingly well. We make the circuit in about twenty minutes and guess what! I feel better afterwards (other than the knee, which is throbbing) On the way home I said to Joyce. "Remember when we came back from Spain last year? We had done so much walking that a little jaunt like this would have been a breeze." At that time I had made a resolution that I would continue to walk and try to get in better shape. And I even followed through briefly, walking at lunch time in Lincoln park. However, like most resolutions it soon became easier to take a nap at lunch time, especially during the holiday season, than to get out and walk in the rain.

This time is different. I would like to be healthier at age 65 than I was at age 55. I spoke to my brother last week and was telling him about the doctor's ultimatim. My brother started exercising when he began to gain weight twenty years ago. He said that he walks 40 minutes a day on week days and 80 minutes on weekends and on a treadmill at that. I told him that I think the secret is staying active in the first place. It's much easier to stay active than to try to start from less than zero and get up to speed 20 years later. For one thing, your body is very busy falling apart. It's amazing what you can be injured by once you pass sixty. I had to have a cortizone shot in my elbow because I used the leaf blower a little too long. That is just sad! At any rate, we took our second walk today (Max came along too, of course) and the knee isn't hurting today. Oh, and Joyce had to clean up Max's doo doo when he decided the flower beds in the marina would be a great toilet. Who knows, maybe there is hope, if not for Max, at least for me!

Garden at the Edge

In the movie Being There is a scene in which Chauncey Gardener is asked about his outlook on the economy by the tycoon who has taken him in. Gardener has no idea what the tycoon is talking about, so he talks instead about his garden. He says that in the garden you have seasons to plant and to grow and to harvest and to rest and the tycoon is convinced that he has said something profound about the nation. This blog is about my garden at the edge of America out here on the left coast. My garden is my art. It is my refuge and my passion. But I am convinced that my garden is a metaphor for so much more. It teaches me lessons about life and death and rebirth. It convinces me that something strange is going on with the climate. It provides an oasis for wildlife sometimes welcome and sometimes not. It reminds me that no matter how a man plans and organizes, sometimes nature takes charge and what results is better than anything you can imagine. It connects me with creation and it is a prototype of an ancient memory buried deep within the collective unconscious. It makes it possible to endure the drudgery of a 3 hour commute day in and day out year after year.

Some of my earliest memories are of my father in his garden digging trenches to irrigate his vegetables in the Yakima valley. I remember that my favorite flower at age 4 was the humble pansy. I loved the little faces I could see and called them Andy pansies. I can recall my father gathering lava rocks to create a rock garden at our first house. As a child I loved to dig in the dirt. I could be content for hours at a time if my mother gave me a spoon and set me down by a pile of dirt. I loved the smell of the earth, the feel of mud squished between my toes and of course I tasted it (what kid doesn't?) I was fascinated by the life I discovered as I dug in the earth, earth worms, sow bugs, ear wigs, ants... I even went through a phase of ant farming when I was about 7. But I never really had my own garden until I was an adult.

Like many men I started out growing vegetables and had very little interest in ornamentals other than trees. I built a large garden on Vashon Island and grew every vegetable that will grow in this maritime climate and tried some that will not. I grew a beautiful crop of corn only to lose the entire lot to maurading racoons. I tried to grow vegetables during the winter, which they claim is possible in this climate, with a little success. I planted perennial crops such as asparagus, rhubarb and horseradish. My goal was to grow as much of our food as possible. After a few years I gave it up as too much work for too little gain. Somehow, I've come full circle and have begun growing vegetables again for another reason. Then it was an attempt at self sufficiency, now it's a matter of food safety, good taste and variety. Along the way I learned lessons that continue to be of value.

Why are some of us drawn to the land the way we are? I have a theory that it is ingrained deep in our psyche and genepool. Two hundred years ago 90 percent of Americans lived on farms. Millions of Americans were drawn to the new world with the hope of owning a piece of land of their own. My own mother's family were farmers and parts of my father's family lived on a farm. I can recall visiting my aunt and uncle in Southern California in the 50s and 60s where they lived amid lemon groves. My uncle worked for a wealthy family and basically ran their farm for them. Every year when we would visit he would talk ab0ut how much of the land had been sold the previous year. Every year the subdivisions crept closer and closer as the avocados, lemons and oranges disappeared. Finally, there only remained four or five acres of the original land. Today the area is unrecognizable. We drove through my father's hometown, Oxnard, a few years ago and I couldn't tell where it began and where it ended. It was solid sprawl from Santa Barbara to LA.

In the Yakima valley where my mother's family settled there still remain farms and some of her family still has apple and cherry orchards, but we have lost touch with them. It was not all that long ago that Americans still had roots on the land, but today we have been displaced. We have lost any sense that we once had about where food comes from and what is good. There are children today who think vegetables come from the supermarket. They don't know if carrots grow in the ground or on a tree. Each generation is less healthy as they lose touch with the land. They are fatter on average and less fit as they sit engrossed in television and video games. Instead of climbing trees, building forts, using their imaginations to create their world, children are told what to think by the media they are attached to and in the process they have absorbed the toxic American culture that we have created. What is worse is that we are exporting our toxic lifestyle to the rest of the world.

It is not totally hopeless, however. As the economy tanks, more Americans are turning to the garden as a means of saving money. As the taste of food becomes less important to corporate farmers, it has become more important to the home gardener. As food is transported longer and longer distances, small local growers are selling produce in farmers markets across the country and people are beginning to learn to eat in season. More and more gardeners are putting away the toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers and trying alternatives. Is it enough? Can Americans regain some of the freedom of choice that they have lost over the past three decades? I hope so, for the sake of my children and grandchildren.