Once upon a time, I became very sad. As is the common case with people I think, I was afflicted by too much to do, combined with lack of connection to myself and the Great Universe. In Hawaiian, this is called “holo holo”, running around in busy circles like a headless chicken. In my world, I had four young children, a full-time job, a big wander-lustful dog, and a love relationship. All these things needed feeding and care.

Innocently, I lived in a world of riches. What I didn’t understand, was that it was all precariously balanced by my own energy and emotions. Happiness, the Holy Grail of Life, occurs when we are in balance between our true selves and our environment. It’s not achieved by brute force, and it’s lost when we try to control either component. The only way to achieve happiness is by examining personal experiences and finding the logic in them, not the emotion.

Unfortunately, I panicked and threw an adult tantrum. Needing to find CONTROL somewhere in my life, I marched into my abandoned and overgrown garden in the late spring. It was full of life and looked like chaos! Seeing it as I saw myself, in desperate need of organization and simplification… I picked up my clippers. What followed has haunted me forever more 😦

I cut back everything! Weeded! Whacked off branches! Cut flowers! In one fell swoop, I “tidied up” everything, regardless and ignorant of the soul of the garden. The garden on the other hand, had just exploded with spring growth, spending all its energy putting out flowers and leaves, new stems and fresh roots. It’s energy was pouring outward toward the air and sun through its leaves and flowers. I imagine it was looking for me! To say “Look! Look at this beauty I have made for you!”  That’s what I cut off  😦

In a matter of hours the garden went into shock. In a few days it looked pitiful. Things died and things survived, but I have never completely recovered. The memory reminds me again and again I am blessed to be a visitor and a participant in my garden. I shouldn’t ever behave like an overlord.

 

But I was walking down a dark sidewalk on the way to the best Chicken Enchiladas in San Anselmo!  And there in the crack of the sidewalk was one of my favorite plants growing like a weed! The Pink Puffball Plant; a wonderful, drought tolerant creeping ground cover that you can walk on and ignore, and which keeps on living.

It has a variegated leaf, for extra appeal, staining the center of each leaf with purple. And the flowers emerge as tight pink clusters… little puffballs. I love them!

So I might have freed a handful, since it was growing in the concrete. I mean, eventually it would have broken down the sidewalk, creating a pedestrian hazard, right?

The stems are waiting in a pail of water for me. Tomorrow I’ll tuck them into the soil around the bird bath where the roses grow. There are other pink puffballs there. It’s a community now.

There is a world of birds in every garden. An ecosystem of birds. A social organization of birds where there is war, love, and an endless search for satisfaction. You only need to listen and observe to learn about it.

 

Yesterday I saw a hawk and two ravens fly overhead, heading south from the ocean cliffs to Golden Gate Park. Momentarily ignorant and having a “Disney moment” I hailed them as they passed. “H e l l o o o o    g o o o o d   F  R  I  E  N  D  S !!” I exclaimed. I figured they were as happy as I in that moment. When I opened my mind and my eyes a little bit more, I realized the ravens were attacking the hawk. Smart birds! They were ganging up in order to drive the hawk off, maybe from some eggs, or a good pile of garbage.. their birdy business, not mine. How important it is to remember I am a visitor here! This is their world. I need to watch what they do to comprehend it.

Once, the day we buried my dad, when some family had gathered at our house for a birthday (!) , we saw an owl in the tree outside the kitchen table. That’s basically the Hub of our family world, the kitchen table. We have never seen one there before. We have never seen one since. My sister-in-law called it a “God Wink.” I’d never heard of that before but I think it was a perfect example of one. The owl had a white face with big owl eyes. It was huge too.  Bigger that any other bird I’d seen in the garden, and regal. VV Cool.

 

Our favorite bird situation is “Blue Jays and the Bees” (to the tune of Beauty and the Beast) On the top of our garage, a flat roof, live two bee hives which we tend for honey. There is a fun interaction to watch between a blue jay and the bees. The jay sits on the lip of the rooftop a few yards from the hive entrance. After considering the timing and such energy or vitality as a particular bee might have, he swoops up into the air, rockets toward the hive, and plucks one out of the air! In one motion he returns to his perch a few yards away, swallows the bee, and prepares to repeat the cycle in 10-12 seconds! And he continues until he’s full. Sometimes he crosses into the lower garden to rest in a tree, have some water, or sharpen his beak on a branch. It’s super entertaining!

 

After a lot of thought during my life, I’ve decided I’m not a fan of feeding the birds with food you buy for them in a store, like seeds or fat, or other treats, which distract their natural foraging instincts. Survival in a natural environment creates the strength and resilience an organism needs to continue living there. Birds have enough to worry about with house cats.

I am a huge fan of creating an environment which birds like and use. I have kept an unproductive dying tree around just because the hummingbirds like to perch and conduct mysterious hummingbird business there. I have also learned to grow branchy undergrowth in which they can hop and hide, to keep a birdbath cleaned and filled as much as possible, and to grow flowers whose nectar they like. Most of all, I’ve learned to hear and see birds during different seasons and different times of the day, here, in this urban garden classroom.

 

The Lovely Oxalis! Dripcoin SAVINGS PLAN 🙂

Oxalis is a plant to which I’m deeply attached. ‘Sour Grass” we used to call it when walking home from school. We would pick a handful of its flowers, pulling with a gentle but firm grip, low down on each stem, until it would “pop” off at the base. We folded the stems in half, and in half again, said “one… two.. three go!” and munched on it like a carrot. We believe it caused us to run home faster than lightning. It does, actually. Go ahead and try it yourself.

 

Many people don’t like oxalis because its tiny bulbs naturalize and spread underground. This makes it hard to eradicate for lazy people. They either have to sift through the soil and remove bulbs (4-6″ deep), or hand pluck individual plants, which grow from a central stem. Either way works, AND.. is a nice, quiet activity 🙂

I love Oxalis! It sprouts up for a few weeks each year, and never seems injure or annoy neighboring plants. It forms a beautiful carpet of three-leaf-clover-style-foliage, 8″ tall, which looks lush and beautiful. Before the rains come, it provides shade for thirsty, sun-weary plants in dry soil. When fog is present, moisture gets trapped in the dense foliage of each plant and “rains” down to the soil instead of evaporating. In this way, Oxalis has rescued my ground covers year after year. A Dripcoin savings plan!

Best of all, Oxalis plants send up beautiful, yellow-green flowers, multiple ones, from each plant. They rise above the their leaves, clean, strong, bright yellow-green trumpet shapes!

AND they are diurnal! This means, their flower heads or flower faces follow the sun as it moves in the sky like a sunflower, AND, they close up at night and go to sleep! If you pick handfuls of Oxalis flowers and put them on your kitchen table, they will open with the morning sun, spread a fresh, spring-like yellow into the room, and then close and go to sleep in the night. And don’t throw them out! They will last for more than a week! Just stick them in water, in a cute jar. Try it!

I realize the majority of people don’t like Oxalis the way I do. That doesn’t change my mind for a second. It and I have a relationship which has been going all my life. So, whenever I’m digging I am sure to pick up any loose bulbs and scatter them haphazardly into the areas I most want them to grow. Very successful!

 

Dripcoin is water you “spend” to grow a garden.

• If you never water your garden, inside or out, then you spend zero Dripcoin. If you keep a full garden with plants of all varieties and have a beautiful grass lawn, you spend a lot.
• If you are clever and have chosen drought tolerant plants to grow, you are spending your Dripcoin wisely.
• If you have planted well and harvested rainwater, then you are NAILING IT! You will not spend a nickel on water used in your garden. FREE WATER!

 

The subject of this series is the effective capture and use of rainwater in the San Francisco Outer Richmond District, in order to sustain a lovely garden filled with flowers, trees, edibles and wildlife.