world wide word

Turning Into Carl Spackler

2012-01-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

Carl Who? Yeah, I had to look it up in the Internet Movie Database. The name of Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack.

There is one tenacious gopher in my yard.

At least, I think it's just one.

It refuses to eat any of the poisoned bait (yes, I have resorted to that) nor get trapped. Instead, it taunts me with new gopher mounds every day.

Big Dog's friend who does landscaping for wealthy clients visited us last week. When I told him of my plight, he suggested luring it/them with sliced apple.

"They can't resist it," he said. "After you get them used to eating the apple, then put the apple in the trap."

Fortunately, there was still one apple tree filled with apples. Unfortunately, my gophers are a lot smarter than his (or his rich clients.) They recognize bait for what it is.

They are driving me crazy. The whole ordeal is turning me into Carl Spackler. I am ready to blow up the entire yard.

Everyday is STILL Christmas

2012-01-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

You'd think I was stuck in Christmasland, there is so much red and green on our table. Dining table, that is.

Beets, chard, tomatoes. Hibiscus tea, bloody marys, pinot noir. Cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, zinfandel.
Collards, arugula, brussels sprouts. Avocado, jalapenos, nopales. Salsa verde, green tea, wasabi.

Sweet potato, butternut squash, kabocha. Carrots, oranges, screwdrivers. Guess there's enough orange for a nice dose of Halloween, too.

My canning and freezing frenzy last fall is now proving to be a Very Good Thing, as I supplement my garden harvest of greens and lettuces with the preserved produce from our summer harvest.

Michoacan on a Prayer

2011-12-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

Was it all that driving over rocks and rivers? Or was there a bit of subterfuge involved? Our exit out of the state of Guanajuato was delayed by a flat tire.

"There's a tire shop right up there," pointed out the window washer dude (who pointed out our flat tire after Big Dog laughingly brushed off the dude's offer to wash our car with an "It's a rent-a-car.")
"A little too convenient?" I wondered. "If I had a tire shop that wasn't doing much business, wouldn't it be great to find an out-of-state car parked all night just in front of my shop? And wouldn't it be great if in the morning it had a flat tire?"
"I don't think they're that devious," said Big Dog. He is always assuming the best in people. Some self-proclaimed misanthropist he is!

The tire shop being right there WAS convenient, though. 20 minutes later we were back on the road, on our way to "Don't Go There!" Michoacan.

"It's home of La Familia, one of the biggest drug cartels!"
"There are shoot outs all over Patzcuaro."
"They block the roads with buses and start shooting."
"The mountains are where they hang out."
"Driving the coast is equally dicey."
"It's as bad as Ciudad Juarez."

Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike had warned us from going through Michoacan. But it's our favorite state! The mountainous regions are gorgeous, the coast is desolate and serene, the colonial cities are massively impressive and the indigenous towns are too cool. All that talk of how dangerous it was kept us from going last time we were in Mexico, but this year we decided to risk it. It was the year of earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear disasters, after all, not to mention our own truck collision, and strange medical moments. There were risks everywhere. You could stay at home to avoid it, and then slip in your bathtub and break your neck.

Still, I gripped my little Mitra amulet while on the road and maybe it was my guardian deity's powers that kept things peaceful the entire time we were in Morelia, Patzcuaro and on the coast. We only encountered one strange incident.

"Look, there's Che," said Big Dog as we approached our first toll booth out of Patzcuaro.
Huh? Che?
I looked ahead and not only was there a giant banner with Che Guevara's iconic face draped across from one booth to the other, there were big trucks, masked people and cars jammed up. Uh-oh. I gripped my amulet harder.

As we approached the toll booth, we realized that this was not a narco roadblock but protesting students who had taken over the toll booth. (Some students had been killed, as well as arrested and harassed, in a demonstration that took place a year or two ago and this was one of the actions commemorating the victims.) One of the bandana-masked boys handed me a tiny flyer explaining their mission and waved us through. It was almost a party.

"They didn't take our toll. I would have donated the fare for their cause," I mentioned as we passed through. I am such a sucker for causes. "But I wonder what they did with the regular toll collectors?"

We'll never find out, nor will we find out the fate of the protestors. As we drove towards the coast, a convoy of heavily armed military trucks were heading back towards Patzcuaro and the hi-jacked toll booth. Mitra in my hand, I said a silent prayer for peace. Peace for the protestors, peace for Patzcuaro, for Michoacan, for Mexico and the world.

Let's Get Lost

2011-11-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

After days spent walking around San Miguel de Allende (and finding the Very Best Empanadas Ever at Empanadas di Loreto in front of the Oratorio) it was time to see what else was out there.

"We can drive to Atotonilco," I suggested, perusing my little guidebook. "We can take the Camino Viejo and the Route of Chapels..."

It looked pretty straightforward. Just head out of town on the main road in front of the main square and follow the signs...
Big Dog never trusts me or my judgement and made me ask the nice young man at the tourist office all the same.

"Is this where I make a right?" Big Dog asked me as we got out of town. "There's a sign pointing to Atotonilco..."
"I think that's the regular highway. The Old Road is the one up ahead, I'm sure," I answered. It was cobblestoned and certainly looked like The Old Road. The other road was just a regular asphalted highway.
"But didn't the guy at the tourist office tell us to make a right when we got out of town?"

I insisted we go straight. Big Dog did not share my confidence and so we asked several drivers and pedestrians along the way if this was the "camino viejo." "Yeah, sure," they all replied.

But the cobbled street soon became a rocky dirt road, and then a river crossing, and then no road at all. It was open countryside, with tracks in the pasture where wagons had been pulled. There were herds of cows and goats, a few horses, some cowboys on horseback, but no sign of anything suggesting a Ruta di Capillas, or Camino Viejo, or any chapel or church. Initially we followed the directions of the locals who pointed this way and that, until we finally realized: This was NOT El Camino Viejo for Atotonilco.

Road to Nowhere

Another Road to Nowhere

"I guess I should have asked them if it was EL Camino Viejo," I said sheepishly. "I was probably asking them if this was AN old road and they were all thinking, 'Well, duh, of course this is an old road!'"

We rattled all the way back to where Big Dog wanted to turn, way back when. Back over the no-road road, across the river (again), over the rocks, dirt and finally cobblestone street. The actual Camino Viejo which looked deceptively modern near San Miguel de Allende also quickly deteriorated into a dirt road, but it did take us by a collection of rather unimpressive chapels and tiny, sominiferous pueblos to Atotonilco, home of the Sanctuario.

A town along the Road to Somewhere...

...where we meet Rasta Dog.

"It's the Sistine Chapel of the Indigenos," enthused Mr. California. He had parked his big truck with a California license plate in front of us so we started chatting, finding out that he had exchanged his ranch in Atascadero, not too far from our ranch, for a place near this town.

Although the Sanctuario has interesting paintings on its walls, it really was no match for the real Sistine Chapel and in the end, Big Dog had to agree that the best part of the day was Getting Lost.

Not really the Sistine Chapel...

Was it all that driving along rocks? Or something more sinister? The next day, we discover our rental car has a flat tire.

Shock and Awe

2011-11-24T16:28:00.000-08:00

Most of Mexico's colonial past lies in the central highlands of the interior, from Oaxaca to Mexico City to Guadalajara.

Cobblestones, grand stone buildings, ironwork, pretty gardens and churches. Tons and tons of churches.

Big Dog is impressed with the speed at which the Spaniards built their impressive cities. Morelia was established less than 40 years after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. And now, here we were in San Miguel de Allende, in front of a church they had started building in 1511. That's less than 20 years after Columbus landed in Hispaniola!

I am impressed with the scale. The grandeur of many of the colonial cities has not diminished over the centuries. It's impossible to imagine just how these missionaries were able to build such huge churches, with soaring domes and elaborate detail -- so early on.

There are churches, cathedrals, temples, monasteries and convents all over San Miguel de Allende. Humonguous Baroque and Neo-classical structures rise from every street. There must be more Houses of God here per square mile than anywhere else, I thought.

Why would the Spaniards spend so much time and resources erecting so many churches? My theory is that the missionaries wanted to shock and awe the natives. Perhaps they felt challenged by the Aztec temples. "If these pyramids are what they're used to building for their gods, we better amp it up or we'll never get converts!" "Yeah, our God should have an even more impressive house!"

Interestingly, Jesus is not always "Top Dog" or, rather, Top God in these places. In many of the churches I've entered, it was the Virgin who had the "seat of honor." Just as curious is the realism of the statues -- compared to the monochromatic marble saints of many European churches, the figures in many Mexican places of worship are exceedingly realistic. Like, wax museum realistic. (And can be downright gory!)

Yes, it's a blurry shot but you sort of get my drift, right?

We weren't sure we'd like San Miguel de Allende because of its reputation as some sort of gringo retirement town. An Americanized Mexican town didn't sound too attractive to us. In reality, there weren't nearly as many North Americans as we had expected. Where had they all gone? ("First, it was swine flu, then the economy and now the narcos," mused the American owner of Pizza Pig, a pizza restaurant on the main highway from Dolores Hidalgo. "You'll see a lot of Texan women here in the summer, though. They leave their husbands behind to work in the Texas heat.") At any rate, we wound up loving the place. It was just as our new friend in Guadalajara, Maria Elena, told us: small, beautiful, arty, clean and with perfect temps.

Beautiful quiet streets...

...and lovely homes.

Plus, I found my all-time favorite church here: La Parroquia, a towering, airy, gay-wedding-cake of a cathedral. How can something so huge, feel so light? I loved it even more when I found out that the facade was constructed by an indigenous bricklayer and self-taught architect who had never been to Europe -- he based the design on postcards and lithographs, adding in his own touches. It's elaborate, pink and heartbreakingly pretty -- enough to make me want to...convert to Catholicism?!
My photos can't do it justice!

It even gets a fireworks show!

We thought they were rowdy tourists climbing up for a better view of the town. Turned out to be electricians adjusting the angle of the lights on the church. "Glad I didn't follow them up there," said Big Dog.

Chili-covered jicama popsicles!

Off to his gig...

Stairways to Heaven

2011-11-22T12:35:00.000-08:00

Steps. More steps. Slopes. More slopes. Steep slopes. Steep steps. Houses on top of houses, a riot of color.

Guanajuato is a crazy cubist city of colored blocks upon blocks, built in a narrow valley. The city name means "the place of frogs" but frogs were soon replaced by the Spanish after silver was discovered in the surrounding mountains. There wasn't much space for a whole lot of growth, but grow they did -- upwards. No level ground? No problem. Just build vertically. Need to add more space? Keep building up -- or out, into space no one has taken yet.

I had always wanted to visit Guanajuato. I had heard about the network of underground roads -- there wasn't enough space above ground for any major road system.

"If you take the wrong turn, you could really get lost. You could be stuck underground forever!" one elderly Canadian told us years ago.

Wow. I pictured some poor driver, driving endlessly underground until he ran out of gas. Cool. Way cooler than being stuck in a London roundabout.

It's also the "heart of Mexico" as I am reminded by slogans on buses and tourist information kiosks. The city prides itself on being at the geographic heart of Mexico, as well as the heart of its history and culture. There are majestic colonial buildings and churches, important sites in Mexico's struggle for independence from Spain, mines and mummies. Yes, mummies. Apparently, the climate of the area turns buried bodies into mummies instead of worm food and they are proudly displayed at the Mummy Museum, a must-see tourist spot. (So, of course, we avoided it!)

It is not a city for the timid. Streets and narrow alleyways, some only wide enough for walking single file, twist and turn seemingly haphazardly. It's a technicolor labyrinth, a maze. It must also be impossible to map because every map of the city looks different and none of them seem to actually match the actual terrain. Not even Google Maps can get it right. Are the maps even to scale? Who knows.

Maybe the best way to see Guanajuato is not to follow any maps at all, but just follow your nose. And work those thighs as you climb up up up and down down down, only to climb up again. But the locals must be used to all these stairs -- we watch in awe as little old abuelas trudge up seemingly endless flights of stairs to their casa, loaded down with groceries. They must have been doing it daily for close to a century, so how many stairs would that have been in a lifetime? For these grannies, maybe Heaven is a place without any stairs.

There are quite a few Mexican tourists here. It is where EL Pipila, a hero in Mexico's fight for independence, with only a stone slab on his back for armor, fought the Spanish and burned the granary where they were holed up. Luckily for the tourists, the city's one and only funicular leads straight to his giant statue high up on a hill, overlooking the city.

There are also a few European tourists and a handful of travelers from Japan, drawn to Guanajuato's culture, nightlife, art (Diego Rivera was born here) or youthful energy. The University of Guanajuato (you have to climb up stairs about four stories high to get to the main building) assures that there is a big population of young people and they seem far hipper here than elsewhere.

But you see very few North Americans. Not even the Canadians who populate the beach towns in the winter months. In Guanajuato, I didn't see a single Canadian flag. (As an aside, may I say that I find it one of the strangest habits of Canadians to fly their flag in foreign countries, and so casually.)

"All the walking you have to do to see the place probably keeps them away," says Big Dog.
"And the stairs," I add.

It's a shame, though, because it really is worth a visit. And I think it would be a fun place to live -- I kept eyeing pretty apartments with rooftop gardens. Sure, I'd be climbing a loooong (and winding) stairway to my haven, but imagine the workout I could get! I'd never need to pay for another gym as long as I lived here.

Up, up, up...

University of Guanajuato. Entrance is at the top of the stairs.

A pretty blue building in the distance caught my eye...

...and now I am finally, almost, there.

Stairs, stairs, everywhere.

And if the stairs collapsed...just put up a ladder.

Not very artistic papier mache renditions of Diego and Frida, at the Diego Rivera Museum.

Overview of a part of the city.

Narrow for the cars...

...and narrow for the pedestrians.

Unstable-looking additions, above and below.

The space above a street is good real estate in Guanajuato!

Best way to NOT walk these streets!

Minimal clearance! Not for the faint of heart. (Or a novice driver...)

Hard to tell if you're headed in the right direction, but maybe in this town, there is no WRONG direction.

Road Trips Past

2011-11-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

Readers of this blog will already know how much Big Dog and I love to be on the road. It's so easy to be in the moment when you are in motion. There is ONLY the here and now. I know that every day is a gift, but it's easier to feel that way all the time when everything is so new.

We're about to head out on another long-ish road trip -- we've only been out on short ones the last few times we were in Mexico. Before that, however, how about a few scenes from road trips past?

Bar in Zihuatlan

Crocodillo waiting for the unsuspecting tourist...

It's not the Spanish gazpacho but a chopped fruit concoction.

The Colima countryside is so verdant!

And Costa Alegre oceans so blue!

Basses (and mariachis) on standby.

In case you were wondering about adobe construction...

A wedding in Patzcuaro. Note the cute boy in the foreground all dressed up -- just like his father.

Michoacan has the best produce in Mexico.

A street in Morelia. Why is it always raining when we go there?

Cactus fence in Oaxaca.

Wall detail from an archeological site in Mitla, Oaxaca.

Desolate road near Las Canas, Michoacan.

My favorite dwelling in La Manzanilla. They hauled it away a few years ago. Bummer.

Once an exclusive resort in El Tecuan, now a beautiful ruin...

Need a new saddle? Go to La Huacana...

...or Jiquilpan for huaraches.

The village of Cocucho is quite a ways from nowhere...

...but it's famous for its pottery known as cocuchos.

What a surprise to find a familiar name in the village just south of the monarch butterfly sanctuary!

They love their cervezas...

...and dancing!

A carnival comes to town.

Twisted sense of humor?

Men at work. Who needs a whole lot of machinery? Certainly not these guys.

Seafood Heaven

2011-11-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

Dorado...sarangola...huachinango...sierra...pargo...mojarra...raya...

Camarones...pulpo...caracoles...langosta...ostiones...

Ahhhh, I am in seafood heaven! The quality of it all is superb. I tell the Japanese it's better than what you can get in Tsukiji, the famous fish market, because it is so much fresher. And the variety, while it may not match that of Tsukiji that gets its seafood from around the world, is quite good.

We can buy fish at the fisherman's coop on the beach, or...

...from the fishmongers in town.

Why can't I get this variety in the States? We live on the coast and yet all I ever see is the same cod/salmon/halibut/snapper you find everywhere. (Plus farmed catfish and tilapia, of course. I can stand to eat catfish, but there's something terribly unappealing about tilapia.) In West LA, we have the Santa Monica Seafood, an upscale fish market that has all sorts of beautiful seafood, but make sure you bring a wad of money. Same with Whole Foods.

Here on the Central Pacific Coast of Mexico, it's all incredibly affordable and unbelievably fresh. Which is why I always bring my own sashimi knife and wasabi!

If you're not into preparing your own seafood, you can get lots of tasty dishes at the local restaurants. Ceviche is ground up fish (sierra, a kind of mackerel, usually) "cooked" in lime juice and mixed with diced onion, carrot, tomato, peppers and cilantro. Trita is sliced fish that's lightly "cooked" in lime. Popular shrimp dishes include coctel de camarones (shrimp in a big parfait glass filled with a spicy tomato juice/soup, onions, peppers and avocado -- you can also get it with octopus, oysters or clams,) al diablo (spicy sauce), al mantequilla (butter sauce), al ajo (garlic), empanizado (breaded and fried) and aguachile (boiled or "cooked" in lime and mixed with peppers, onions and avocados, sometime tomato.) Fish is served in almost the same ways as shrimp but there's also a la veracruzana (green olives seem to be the key ingredient,) a la plancha (pan broiled,) dorado (a whole fish unbreaded and deep fried to a crisp, not to be confused with dorado, or mahi-mahi) and zarandeado (grilled.) I've tried them all and have not once been disappointed! (Something I cannot say about restaurant seafood in other countries...)

Local fishermen cleaning out their fishing net...

...and going out to sea.

Takes more than one to deal to a fishing net.

Our friends spearfished this batch.

It was the tastiest yellowfin tuna (and mahi-mahi) ever! We made fresh maguro sushi rolls, sashimi, tuna steaks...ahhhhhhh

In The Jungle

2011-11-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

My Strange Bout of Gastroenteritis lasted a long time. After being released from the hospital, I spent the first night in nearly as much pain as when I was first at the hospital. The pain slowly went away, but it took nearly 2 weeks. My taste buds had changed so much that nothing tasted "right" and I had lost so much weight I was weaker than I had ever been.

Somehow, even with all of that, we managed to wrap up for the season and make our way down to Mexico.

Our little village was hit hard by a hurricane about three weeks ago. The torrential rains sent a flood of water down from the mountains and inundated the town, the homes, the farmlands, the military base.

"Well, I have good news and bad news," announced Mayor Dave, our resident gringo pal who was offering the second floor of his new residence for our stay this time. He had come to pick us up at the airport.
"What's the bad news?"
"You know how everything was flooded, right? All the cars, too. I got the van cleaned out but something's wrong with the transmission and I only have first and second gear."
"That's okay. We'll just baby her along back to town."
"I don't know," Mayor Dave said slowly. "She may not make it. I do have a call into my buddy who's on standby to tow us back if necessary..."
"So, what's the good news?"
"You're in Mexico, man!"

Dave's residence is in the jungle behind the military base. A 2-story castle amidst little palm-thatched huts. His friend built the house but he's only in Mexico a few times a year, so Dave has the whole place to himself the rest of the time.

"This is sort of a slum area," he told us as we coaxed his van through the swampy streets to his house. "The ones who can't afford to live in or near town are here. I guess Eric was able to buy his property dirt cheap. When the floods came, I invited all the neighbors to stay here and I had 19 people living upstairs.....and no running water!"
"Eeeewww." Big Dog and I imagined 20 people and a Rottweiler trapped without flushing toilets. We remembered the Philippines where everyone had a giant plastic bin filled with water. There, too, water was pumped up by electricity so they needed to be prepared for their many blackouts. No one does that here in Mexico. Are they that much more optimistic?

Neighbor cleaning up

The roads are swamps that invite herons and other birds in the afternoon. Frog songs, punctuated by gecko cries, lull me to sleep at night. In the morning, steam rises from the coconut groves outside my bedroom window, as goatherds walk their goats through the greenery. The sewage smell that was overpowering the first night has gotten better day by day. I'm beginning to like this life in the jungle.

The Other Lesson Learned

2011-11-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was getting too confident. During all the construction work this summer, I worked like I was a 16 year old speed freak. I felt stronger than ever, healthier than ever, absolutely invincible.

Hubris invites Nemesis. The Greeks knew it.
And now, so do I.

Don't get sick unless you're a multimillionaire

2011-10-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

$75,000. Actually $74,917.33. That's my hospital bill and both Big Dog and I are in shock.

It started last Friday, just around midnight. We had had a couple of intensely busy weeks renovating the duplex and now had our house packed with Big Dog's sister, her husband and their father. I was dead tired. My stomach felt strange. It's hard for me to eat much right after making dinner but Big Dog's family were used to eating early, so I was only able to have a few bites. At first I thought I was just hungry. But soon, it felt like indigestion. And a while later, something much worse. It felt like the pain of being kicked in the solar plexus -- except instead of being a brief kick, it was constant and lasting and getting worse all the time.

Pain makes you nauseous and it sure was doing that to me, so I quietly got up and tried to make my way to a bathroom. A sudden surge of pain made me stumble and fall at the top of the stairs. I crawled downstairs and into a bathroom. Nope, there's nothing to throw up. The little I ate was already digested. But the pain keeps making me retch and heave. I lie on the bathroom floor, hoping the pain will go away but it doesn't. It just gets worse. For a few hours, I go back and forth between the bathroom and the living room couch where I lie, curled up in pain, wondering what could be the problem. By 3am, the pain is unbearable. Should I call an ambulance? Should I wake Big Dog and make him take me to the hospital? Or should I just jump off our roof and end it all? When I started thinking that, I knew I had to get myself to a hospital one way or another. I woke up Big Dog.

I lay, curled up in the back seat of the truck, moaning in pain as he drove me to an emergency hospital in San Luis Obispo. The ride seemed like it took forever. Each turn, each bump made the pain that much worse. Then, it was another forever before they actually put me in a bed in the emergency room. During that eternity, I am writhing in pain, unable to remain seated in either the chair or the wheelchair, on the filthy hospital floor. Enough pain obliterates everything else: common sense, decency, inhibitions, etc. In my own delirium, nothing else mattered. So there I was, curled up like a ball on the linoleum floor, eyes closed, panting and moaning and kicking at the wall until they finally got a gurney to take me to the emergency room and, finally, a bed.

"What's your pain level?" they asked me in Admissions. "On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you say it was?"
I would have said "Twelve" if I had much consciousness, but I could barely think and groaned "Ten."

The first 4 ml morphine shot had no effect whatsoever. They had to give me another. And then another, and finally the pain subsided enough to let me breath a little slower, a little deeper. Shots to stop the nausea (and dry heaving) followed, as did an IV drip. I got an EKG, a CT scan and an ultrasound, then was left moaning in that room for 4 more hours before they got me into a hospital room. It was all pretty much a blur until later in the afternoon.

At one point, someone came by and asked what my pain level was now. It was so much better than when I came to the hospital -- I didn't feel like jumping in front of a moving truck to stop the pain -- that I told that person it was probably a 4 on the pain scale. Still bad, but not something I wanted to kill myself over.

Much later, I saw the Pain Scale on the wall. Zero was not simply "no pain" but a smiley face. A smiley face for me indicates more than just pain-free, it means you feel good. I was nowhere near that. I was nowhere near even Level 4. As much as things had improved, I realized that on their Pain Scale, even with the multiple morphine shots, it was perhaps at Level 8.

THEIR pain scale.
MY pain scale.

So, there I was. For days.

After about 3 days, the pain had moved further down my digestive system. It was no longer in my solar plexus but lower, around my belly button. I could now sip a little water. By Day 4, I could handle a little broth. I still needed my morphine shots every 4 hours and just when I thought things were improving, I would have a big setback. My roommates started with the tattooed mother with pneumonia who couldn't stop complaining and elderly lady also with pneumonia (they were on either side of me who insisted on my curtains being open so they could watch the tv which was right in front of my bed -- it was the World Series and Elderly Pneumonia Lady was a St. Louis fan -- and they yakked loudly all night long.) They both left on Day 3 and I had a night by myself (ahhhhh) in the room before they brought in Mrs. Dementia. By then, the pain had shifted all the way down to my lower abdomen, I could handle Very Soft Food (although I couldn't eat the hospital fare for taste reasons) and I knew I had to go home to get any better. None of the doctors could tell me what was wrong anyway, despite all the tests. The first doctor insisted it was food poisoning from the oysters I had eaten 2 days before The Pain. No matter what I said, all he could do was tell me about the time he got sicker than a dog after he ate Morro Bay oysters. It irritated me that a Man of Science was more a Prophet than a Skeptic. The second doctor, more sensibly, speculated that it was probably a virus since nothing showed up in the tests. Either way, neither of them knew, really.

I've never been sick before. Not enough to be hospitalized. Just being in that environment with all the Negative Energy was making it hard to get well. Not to mention the processed foods. But I think what really made me want to go home was knowing what the entire experience was costing.

When they brought the estimate to Big Dog, he howled "What?! Bring me a wheelchair! I think I'm going to pass out!" It was about $50,000 at that time. It was outrageous. Nowhere else in the world would they charge you that much for just a hospital bed and a few tests. Almost every country in the world takes care of the medical needs of its citizens, whether they are poor bankrupt nations or ones ruled by terrible despots. Even without insurance, medical costs are never as high as in the U.S. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with this country, but when you try to explain it to Americans, most of whom don't know how things are in other countries, they can't understand how broken their system is. No wonder there is so much resistance to a national healthcare policy!

Meanwhile, decent working folk are destroyed by medical costs and private insurers who won't pay up when the need arises. The indigent, the prisoners, the illegals, the ones who can't or won't contribute anything to society are the ones who get free medical care. Big Dog kept seeing prisoners from the nearby Men's Colony (a strange word for "prison") walking around the hospital, shackled and attended by 2 guards to each prisoner. And these guards are the highest paid in the nation, making six figure incomes!

So I guess the lesson learned (and a very expensive lesson at that) is: don't get sick in America unless you're a multimillionaire. If not, commit a crime, get incarcerated and get your free dental, medical, transgender hormone shots, whatever. Get it all!

Varmints

2011-10-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

The squirrels are the new gophers, wrecking havoc in J&R's summer garden. They've taken out cucumbers, lettuce, squash. Maybe they're going for their corn, too.

They're ground squirrels and although we used to see them in Los Osos Valley, we didn't have them in ours. Until now. There seems to be a giant colony of them under the orange shipping container next to the garden orchard. My garden has escaped their greedy paws since it's beyond J&R's much bigger and more productive garden. Why move beyond the gourmet buffet?

As if the squirrels and gophers weren't trouble enough, we now have a population explosion of mice and rats. They are all over the chicken coops, storage sheds, and now Oak House where the McC Family live. All of this has turned Big Dog into the X-Terminator.

Each afternoon, he goes around setting traps, baiting the mouse traps with peanut butter (it doesn't fall off the traps) and the live animal traps with whatever fruit or vegetable we have available. Each morning, he goes back around, dealing with the dead (and sometimes headless!) rodents in the traps, as well as the live animal traps (we release the live animals on the other side of the valley.) We might have trapped one squirrel but they seem to be smarter than we think. Most of the animals caught in the traps have been birds, tiny ping-pong ball sized field mice, big eared deer mice (they hop like kangaroos!) and one time, a too-curious-for-her-own-good Ellie (J&R's cat who let out plaintive yowls until I came and got her out. She seemed a little embarrassed as she slunk away.)

At first, we used our own organic peanut butter as bait -- it was surprisingly effective -- but Big Dog, thinking it was a waste of decent peanut butter, went and bought a jar of the cheapest peanut butter he could find. We have not caught a single rodent since then! Now, what does that tell you about store-bought factory-made peanut butter?! It's not even good enough for the rats!

"I think there's something dead in our laundry room," Mama McC told us a few days ago. "I can hardly stand to go in there because of the smell."

Why doesn't she do something about it, I wondered, but I had to go to Oak House to see if I could plug up any rodent entry points anyway, so I decided to have a look.

After plugging up some holes in the kitchen and hallway closets, I had to go into the laundry room -- it seemed that there were entry points in that room as well. The minute I opened the door -- OH MY GOD! There was definitely a dead thing somewhere and it was putrefying the air with that fetid smell of death and decay. At first, I couldn't tell where it was coming from -- the laundry room was a mess of lint and dust and piled up junk -- but the moment I opened the closet to the hot water heater, there was no doubt the Dead Thing was in there. I wanted to just run out of there and never come back. Instead, I held my breath and started sucking up the rodent feces with their shop vac. And that's when I found it. Dead and decomposing and, worst of all, writhing with maggots! It was the most disgusting thing I had ever had to deal with.

"Oh, I can deal with it later," I heard Mama McC saying from the bedroom, but she hadn't dealt with it in all these days and I had no confidence that she would do so any time soon, so I manned up and managed to pick up and discard the Dead Thing, dump bleach on the maggots to make them stop writhing, suck up everything from the water heater closet that wasn't supposed to be there, plug up entry points and run home. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And once home, I immediately ran into the shower where I stayed for at least the next half hour. I couldn't scrub enough, gargle enough, wash out my nostrils enough. I finally allowed myself to scream hysterically for a while, too. A scream worthy of the best horror films. A scream worthy of the famous shower scene from Psycho. A scream worthy of a young Jamie Lee Curtis. A scream worthy of "Scream."

Who needs Halloween after an experience like that!

Forbidden Fruit

2011-10-01T15:54:00.000-07:00

how was it that they chose
an apple hard crisp
to represent the forbidden fruit
seeds dried, black
-- impenetrable, inedible

i would have chosen
something like a tomato
warm, fleshy, moist
lover's thighs, mouth, breasts
ripe, red

don't you think it more apropos?
drinking of its wetness
dripping seeds vulnerable like the rest of us?

That's a poem I wrote when I was 18 or 19, but my love affair with the solanum lycopersicum, the "swelling fruit." the "golden apple," goes way back. In fact, I cannot remember a time when the tomato was NOT my favorite fruit and vegetable. (It is botanically a fruit, but "legally" a vegetable, at least in the United States. Leave it to Americans to have "legal" definitions for produce.)

I tried to grow a tomato when I was in grade school. Maybe fourth grade. I wasn't much good at taking care of things back then and had a long and terrible history of killing everything I looked after: turtles, canaries, goldfish..... But I managed to get one beautiful giant tomato out of the plant. It thrilled me to no end. I could not bear to eat it. I sniffed it endlessly. (I still think there's nothing better than the smell of a beautiful ripe tomato!) I tied it to a string on the end of a pole and swung the tomato around and around. My tying skills were crappy, too, and in no time at all, the tomato came loose and SPLAT! Onto the concrete patio it went. I cried. "I never got to taste it!"

My paternal grandmother, who lived in Kyushu during her last few decades, had a small farm around her house. She grew the most awesome white peaches -- big, juicy and sweeter than sweet -- but now that I think of it, everything she grew was awesome, including her tomatoes. We only visited her place a few times, and only for a few days each time, but I loved being in the garden with my grandmother. I loved eating the just-picked tomatoes right there in the garden with her. Not only was the taste unbelievably wonderful, but over the years, my memory has warped the taste into something mythical. My own homegrown tomatoes can never compare. But I try!

My grandmother was a tough old bird -- uncharacteristically direct for a Japanese, as well as completely independent. She didn't seem to have much of a maternal instinct and was never very affectionate, either with her children or theirs, but she must have poured love into her garden. Unlike my maternal grandmother, she never doted on me, never bought thoughtful little gifts, never played "house" or other silly kid games with me, but she gave me her love of growing things, her love of art and poetry, her connection with nature. It just took decades for these gifts to mature.

But back to the tomato.

"Cherry tomatoes are easy!" swore Big Dog, back when we lived in the middle of Tokyo. So I got a planter and once again tried my hand at growing my favorite fruit/vegetable. Tokyo summers are hot and humid and the plant grew and grew. It was quite an impressive plant, with lots of little yellow flowers. But the flower kept wilting and falling without producing that little swell, the embryo of a future tomato. Fall came and the plant died, without giving me a single fruit. It was a long disappointing summer.

Today, at the ranch, I am able to grow a number of different kinds of tomatoes and I await their season like an impatient lover. Ooo, the cherry toms have fruit! Ohhh, they're sweet -- like candy! Ohhh, here come the Romas. Mmmm, the Brandywines are almost ready... Ohhh, why don't we live in the Central Valley where it gets hotter faster?

Our tomatoes don't really get going til near the end of September, so by the time the major tomatoes arrive, I am almost sick with anticipation. But now, here they come and I am in heaven. Or should I say Eden? This Eve needs no temptress Snake. The Forbidden Fruit is seductive enough.
Canned Love!

Roots and Grassroots

2011-09-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

Here in the U.S., the news is all about 9-11, but for me, today is six months since the massive earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. Six months since the nuclear power plant at Fukushima Daiichi blew up.

The disasters had affected me far deeper than was apparent on a conscious level. This has been the least productive year for me in terms of anything creative. I've been happy to find comfort in watching things grow, but have done too little writing or drawing or any other kind of creating. I'm happy to just be doing ranch work. Much to Big Dog's delight, he hasn't had to listen to me complain about not having enough time for both ranch work and my own. To his slight annoyance, however, I am becoming more and more involved with our local anti-nuke group.

My little paradise here is an Eden, but just south of it lies the Canyon of the Devil -- the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Facility.

"Why did you decide to live there, so close to the nukes?" friends asked in disbelief.
Because it was the nicest ranch we looked at?
Because we thought it was better to fight the nuclear industry than to ignore it?
Because when you can't see something, you forget about it?
All of the above was true.

Of course, now, we know that whether you are 5 miles away or 50 or 150, you are just as vulnerable. There are hot spots all over Japan, some of them more than 200 miles away from Fukushima.

When I came back to the ranch in the spring, I knew I had to do something, so I contacted Mothers For Peace who was holding an anti-nuke rally in Avila in April. It was a smallish demonstration, but I got to meet and speak to a few of the members. My involvement has been gradual -- there's still a part of me that is uncomfortable being a part of any organization, and I am hesitant to be too conspicuous politically, being a guest of this country. At the same time, I have my connection to Japan as well as other skills that could be of use to MFP. Most of all, I can't bear to think our beautiful area could be destroyed in an instant. I want to wake everyone up from their complacency. I want the local farmers and ranchers, as well as the tourism industry, to join forces -- they are the ones who will be most affected should there be an accident at Diablo Canyon.

I am slowly becoming more and more of an activist and in the process, slowly being sucked back into my former life in media.

But something else is happening. While fighting the power (company) at the grassroots level, I find myself developing real roots in our community. I'm meeting people, getting involved with the community, spreading my wings, venturing out, facing new challenges (even if some of them seem small, like driving on the freeway, or at night, or in the fog.) The 3-11 triple disaster did a lot of shaking up, literally and figuratively. Has it shaken me out of my blissful solitude?

Ready for all of this to be turned into a giant Dead Zone? I'm not!

Hurricane Familia

2011-08-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

The hurricane has passed and all is calm at The Ranch. I'm talking about Hurricane Familia -- my brother, his wife and son. 3 furious days here and 2 more in transit. Whew.

I'd always wanted them to come to the ranch. Especially my nephew, the Pupster. The city is no place for a kid to spend his entire time and I wanted to share what I know and love about our world with this one.

It was a Family Vacation worthy of a Chevy Chase movie script. There was the angst back in Tokyo wondering if some work-related hiccup or another would make my brother have to cancel the entire vacation, the jacked-up airfare prices, getting to the wrong terminal, the thunderstorm that delayed their departure by two hours, the long wait for their luggage at San Francisco and missing their flight to San Luis Obispo...

"I know you'll think I'm an anti-eco pig, but I want to rent the biggest damn SUV there is," Bro emailed from Tokyo and sure enough, when they finally arrived at our tiny local airport, he had a Big Fat American SUV waiting for him.

"I'd never be able to drive something like this in Japan!" he laughed.
"It's too big for your driveway!" I laughed.
"It would take out guard rails and neighborhood walls down our street!" laughed Bro's Wife.
"It wouldn't even make it through the street we used to live on," laughed Big Dog.
"You couldn't afford the gasoline," my mother smirked.

Bro wanted to do every outrageous (for him) American thing there was to do. That meant, in addition to driving a humongous gas-guzzling vehicle, eating the biggest, heart-clogging quadruple stacked fast food burger he could find, renting a giant RV and camping at a National Park with the Biggest Rock/Tallest Tree/Emptiest Desert Ever, grilling the thickest steaks...you get the picture. Time limitations called the shots, so there was no National Park or RV or plane ride or mule pack tour of the Grand Canyon, but there was a mountain of meat -- and I mean a MOUNTAIN -- at every meal.

After three days of touring the area, going to an aircraft museum, seeing sea lions and pelicans and otters and elephant seals, hanging out at the ranch, climbing our mountain, strolling downtown, paying 75 yen to the dollar and buying up a pile of clothes that actually fit him (unlike me, Bro is "American" size) they poured back onto a plane, loaded down with bulging bags (one of them concealing a package of Real American Bacon) and memories.

Meat!

MEAT!

And more meat... (and this is only a small portion of the meat mountains...)

Bad Dog & The Giant Peach

2011-07-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

I love how my garden is doing this year! For the first time since coming to The Ranch, I feel like I am doing something right. There are beans and tomatoes, squash and peas, corn and cucumbers, buckwheat and amaranth and even broom sorghum growing.

NOW I understand why people grow their own corn!

The orchards, on the other hand, have been behaving strangely this year. Things are ripening at odd times. The plums, peaches and nectarines came all at once and we have the fewest peaches and nectarines ever. Oh, but they are bigggggggg! And, oh so tasty!
Peach Girl with Friends

Bliss.....

Che Guevara

2011-07-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

What was I thinking, posting a picture of my poison oak blisters?!

Are you nuts? Like, anyone would want to see that? Big Dog would surely say if he had seen it.
He has not. At least not to my knowledge. I think I have successfully trained him not to be very interested in what I do.

I assure you, no more dumbass photos. Unless, of course, the blisters look like the Thousand Armed Goddess of Mercy -- or at least Che Guevara.

Hawaii on My Arm

2011-07-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

"Leaves of three, leave them be." So they say about poison ivy and poison oak.

There is a lot of poison oak in these areas and it's easy to leave the ones up in the hills alone, but when they start appearing around your house or driveway... Big Dog was just getting over a giant rash on his chest so I volunteered to be the eradicator. I had long sleeves, long pants and heavy duty gloves but they still managed to get me.

But, hey! Don't the blisters look just like the Hawaiian Islands? Could this be a new alternative to tattoos?
Molokai, Lanai and Maui have sort of fused together on this "map."

My Jungle Garden

2011-07-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

The others have their gardens so nicely organized. Mama McCain's is tidy, weed-free and nicely labeled with the different varieties of lettuces, onions, squashes and tomatoes. J&R have a huge sprawling garden divided into sections for straight rows of tomatoes, corn, legumes, greens and so on.

My gardens are scattered haphazardly around the ranch, with the biggest one turning into one happy jungle. Nothing is labeled. There is no real plan. But I think it's doing alright.

Because of last year's disappointments with store-bought starters, I started everything from seed this year and it was definitely worth it! We only have to go into town to buy dairy products. Maybe next year, I'll get a goat for milk and cheese!

Sometimes, drunk on pollen, the bees will fall asleep inside the squash blossoms.

Short, stubby and sweet!

Buckwheat for my buckwheat noodles.

Season of The Visitors

2011-07-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

Here they come!! Apricots! Peaches! People! When it's Stone Fruit Season at The Ranch, it is also the season of visitors here at The Ranch.....and the Central Coast in general. (We can always spot the out-of-towners at our local markets. They're too happy, or too loud, or too clean.)

We're also getting the furry or feathered visitors, too. Deer are coming back down from the hills (guess our New Age Redneck didn't get them all!), several quail families have taken up residence, the wild turkeys sometimes come through. An owl couple love to perch on our fence post, as does a juvenile hawk. There's a bunny living in one of our gardens and I am praying he/she never finds a mate. If it stays dry enough, the big cats will also start coming down to the creek.

Pretty Wild Things

2011-07-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

I wish I knew the names of all the pretty wild things growing on our ranch...

Wild Thing 1

Wild Thing 2

Wild Thing 3

Oh, I know this one. It's a monkeyflower.

Heart of the (Artichoke) Matter

2011-07-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

It's artichoke season at The Ranch.

J&R have a pretty nice artichoke patch in one of our orchards and the McC's have some nice plants growing in their zone. So why aren't there any artichokes on my plants? And why don't the others pick and eat theirs?

It can be a little discouraging when others have harvestable fruit and you have none, but I have plenty of wild artichokes and they can be a handful to deal with.

Most of mine grow in the front pasture, on the other side of the creek. It's an uncultivated pasture filled with wild things -- fennel, bristly ox-tongue, yellow mustard, tall grasses, things I know not the names of. You want to be in long pants -- I am sure there are ticks that would just love to pounce on you at the slightest hint of butric acid. Wild artichokes are way thornier than domesticated ones, so sturdy gloves are good, too.

It's a pain harvesting, but that's the easy part. Then, you have to cut away the thorny tips of the leaves, then boil them, then strip them down to the heart. The center is mostly gnarly choke. The tiny leaves have a small nib at the bottom that is so very tasty -- much nuttier than domesticated artichokes -- but you only get a tiny nibble out of each leaf. I guess you could set them out like beer nuts to nibble on while drinking, but it's the heart that you really want.

Last year, I froze the hearts but once frozen, they seem to lose their tastiness, so this year, I decided to marinate the hearts. It was a whole day affair, cleaning, boiling, stripping, paring and getting down to the heart of each tiny artichoke.

Are these wild artichokes really wild cardoons? I have no idea, but being the ever-curious Bad Dog, I also tried boiling the big spiny outer leaves to see if they were edible. Aaaaaagh! They are the most bitter thing in the world! (Now I read that you don't eat cardoon leaves but the ribs of the leaves and the inner stalks.)

The leaves of the artichoke, I sent through a blender and strained, for use in my wild artichoke soup (so green! so nutty! so creamy!) I think I really put my poor blender to the test -- she was starting to complain and I thought she'd quit on me before the last of the artichokes were processed. But at the end of the day, I had a nice tub of marinating artichoke hearts, unlike anything you have ever tasted, and a beautiful soup for dinner.

Getting Back to Me

2011-07-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Has the situation in Japan affected me that much? I seem to have lost the urge to write, draw, create. Maybe it was seeing all that destruction. I thought my trip to Japan would cure this weird ennui. I thought I would encounter a changed (for the better) nation, ready to shed its old ways and come together to face this immense challenge. Instead, of course, we found out just how much TEPCO was covering up the extent of the nuclear disaster. Bureaucrats were more concerned about "not causing a panic" than disseminating proper information, while politicians merely sought to use the crisis as political leverage in their own factional or partisan struggles.

What's the point?

To add to my listlessness, there was an interminable wait for our vehicle to be repaired in Los Angeles, delaying my return to The Garden...then more matters to attend to in LA. It wasn't until a couple of days ago that we finally got back.

"Everything will be dead," I moaned to Big Dog nearly every day in LA. He was so sick of hearing me whine about how I needed to get back.
"They're just plants."
"And we weren't there for the major gopher action -- I'm sure they've taken over the entire place." OK, so Big Dog cares naught about plants, but maybe talk of gophers will make him want to get back, too.
"There's nothing we can do about it, so stop complaining. I've been holed up here in LA all during the time you were in Japan!"
"I should have stayed longer," I frowned.
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"
We were testy, testy, testy. I could have told him that he could have 1) rented a vehicle! or 2) taken the train back! or 3) borrowed a vehicle from his family -- everyone seems to have more cars than they need. But I was too...listless.

But here on The Ranch, it seems like life carried on without us. A few seedlings did die. The greenhouse seems infested with ants and aphids. There are surprisingly few strawberries and not a single cherry left. Much has bolted either from the heat or water-stress. And there are gopher mounds everywhere, but amazingly they have not taken over the place. Many plants are still alive. Some are actually thriving! My summer garden is a jungle of haphazardly planted things, weeds, volunteer arugula and chard.

I was wrong to think I could find strength in any society. Nature is where my power source lies. Maybe I can finally get back to Me.

Last Day in Japan

2011-06-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

Plutonium is leaking from the Fukushima nuclear power plant... Politicians who were bought out by TEPCO are madly trying to get rid of Prime Minister Kan... Commercial media (also bought out) makes it seem like he is being brought down by his ineffectualness during the crisis... People who rely only on TV for information are swayed... Soon, another politician bribed by TEPCO will be in power and Kan's promise of shutting down Fukushima by January (including getting rid of all radioactive materials -- not sure how, but there have been many discussions of methods to do so) will disappear like so many homes in the tsunami... Tokyoites are forgetting the lessons of only a few weeks ago, tired of being in post-disaster mode... It's starting to heat up here and those who swore to reduce their air con use are now saying "shoganai yo ne (can't be helped), we can't possibly get through the summer without it"...

Only a little while ago, I thought the Japanese were on the right track. The population is highly educated, hard working -- we can get through this and make the country even better, I thought. My optimism is crumbling.

I want to go back to the hills and the fields, the forests and my garden, the life I love. But I am also torn. I feel like I need to stay and be a part of the solution. It's making me crazy on my last day in Japan.

Urgent!!

2011-05-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

Email from Tokyo:

Dear Friends,
I do not normally bombard my friends and family with petitions, but this is critical. We live on a ranch in Central California -- an area that is breathtakingly beautiful -- AND only a few miles from the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

I am in Japan right now where the nuclear disaster is an on-going nightmare. It is the beginning of rainy season and damaged facilities at Fukushima Daiichi are now being flooded with rain water -- the new threat of radioactive contamination. We wait anxiously to see what else may happen, as the radioactive materials seep into groundwater.

There's only been a trickle of new news about Fukushima in the US/World media, but here, it is a daily reality. The newspapers are filled with new information, as are the tv shows. Daily regional radiation counts appear in the newspaper like weather forecasts, or sports scores. It is surreal.

The anti-nuclear movement has been put on hyperspeed in Japan. One good thing to come out of the Fukushima disaster. People who have been working hard, despite opposition from pro-nuke neighbors and government, are finally beginning to feel like their decades-long struggle has not been in vain. The other day, there was a news item on tv about a lady who lives 300 meters from a nuclear plant they had just started to construct. She was the only one who refused to sell her land to the power company!! It was a tiny house (a small log house she built herself for her mother!) but equipped with solar panels and wind turbines. In a conformist country, you can imagine the kind of struggles she's had to go through. But she was feeling optimistic, at last. The plant's construction has been put on hold for the moment and she hopes it will be canceled. She was saying how glad she was that things have started to change before they had brought in any radioactive materials.

Another news item was about rural areas trying to do small-scale hydroelectric, using the abundant streams and rivers without damaging the environment. Everyone is thinking of renewable energy. I believe a non-nuclear future IS possible -- if we all work together.

It is raining today, too. Back on the ranch, I can go outside, spread my arms and enjoy a downpour. Here, I will be covered from head to toe. I am reminded of the line from Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi. "You don't know what you've got til it's gone." PLEASE click here. PLEASE forward this to as many people as possible.

With gratitude and respect,
Bad-Dog

Wings of Joy

2011-05-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

"I think they've hatched," my brother writes me from Tokyo last week. "I saw the male taking bugs back to the birdhouse over and over."

During the first week of April, he noticed a shijukara building a nest in the birdhouse his son made last summer. (I looked up the bird. It's called a "Japanese great tit" in English but there's something so oxymoronic about "Japanese great tit" that I prefer to use the Japanese name.) Back and forth it went, for about a week, carrying bits of string and fluff. And then, they stopped seeing the bird. He went online to find out more and read that it takes about 2 weeks for a shijukara egg to hatch. "So I think the due date is around the end of April," he wrote a while earlier.

"It was raining all day yesterday and so there wasn't much bird action, but the chicks must be starving because the male was real busy today. He flies out, gets a whole bunch of food in his beak, and then perches on a branch to the left of the birdhouse. He looks around to make sure no predators are watching, then darts into the house. About 30 seconds later, he pokes his head out of the house, looks around cautiously, and then he's off again looking for more food." Bro's emails are all bird reports.

Thousands of Japanese are still living in shelters. Tens of thousands will have a long year of rebuilding. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will be affected by the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster for months to come. No one knows where Japan is headed or what the future holds. I'm glad the shijukara couple and their brand new chicks are giving hope and peace and strength (not to mention hours of entertainment) for my brother and his family.

Gardening Life, Planting Hope

2011-05-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Two months.
That's how long it's been since the Triple Disasters in Japan.

Two months of chaos, pain, despair, anger. Two months of love, generosity, pride, hope.
Two months of an emotional roller coaster ride.

For me, it's been a month in Hawaii and a month at the ranch. My month at the ranch must have been especially healing because I am a little calmer, a little more hopeful. You can't help but be affected by the miracle of nature. A frantic month of planting, planting, planting and getting my gardens ready for the summer has given me an inner peace I could not have hoped for anywhere else. Little seeds a fraction of a millimeter have germinated into nice, healthy plants. Even my asparagus seeds that weren't doing anything for weeks have all germinated, sending the tiniest of stalks up above the soil. Just when I thought my eggplant seeds were duds, here they come! The tea plants haven't germinated yet but they could take a couple of months so I'm still waiting, patiently. Gardening is not for the impatient.

When humans, or the things they create, destroy, there is only destruction. But while nature destroys, she also rebuilds.

Lettuces sparkling in the afternoon sun...

Chamomile growing on all our driveways!

Not from The Ranch but the butterfly sanctuary in Angangueo, Mexico. I am praying that the narco violence does not destroy their habitat.

Still Speechless

2011-04-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

Not Dead Yet

2011-02-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

I had to tell you that I ate the oyster mushroom. It was the topping for my pizza today.

I'm still alive, so I guess it really was an oyster mushroom, but it did not taste very good. Not everything edible is good to eat. In fact, sometimes the chasm between the two is VERY wide.

Winter Harvest (Part 3)

2011-02-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

The rains came back last week, and with it, the mushrooms.

When we first got back to the ranch in January, we had plenty of mushrooms, but with the warm dry weather, they'd all dried up. I had been watering the chanterelle patch near the oak swing, but something was nibbling them away, too.

"Prices are way down this year," our neighbor from down the valley told us earlier. His son had made a nice little bundle last year, but they say there's a glut of chanterelles bringing down wholesale prices. Knowing what a good mushroom hunter the son is, I got them to come look for the fungi on our ranch, promising them that I'd give them half of their haul after I dried them.

That was last month and those mushrooms are all dried and shriveled up, ready to use like dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms. (If you are interested in drying your mushrooms, it's real easy. Just wash, then spread out on a towel until they are less soggy, then onto a paper towel. Leave them out until every bit of moisture is gone before you put them away. Patience is the key. I've ruined several batches by putting them away too soon. Better if you can just forget about them for a few months.)

Now we've had several days of torrential rain and the mykos are back. A short walk through our back woods gave me a bucketful of chanterelles and a handful of what I think are oyster mushrooms.

Chanterelles are best in simple dishes, I think. You want to be able to enjoy their flavor. People around here say they saute them with garlic and butter, but I like them with just a little sprinkle of salt and pepper and a little drizzle of cream and/or a splash of white wine. If I have time, I'll make chanterelle ravioli. Serve them tossed in olive oil with freshly grated parmesan. Mmm.

Now, do I try the oyster mushroom or not???

Winter Harvest (Part 2)

2011-02-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing a lot of bees these days and the hummingbirds are starting to come out. It's as if none of us can wait for the longer days of spring. The sun's out, it's warm, so let's get busy!

And so we have. Cleaning up the mess from pruning, doing a winter burn, re-staking posts, fixing fences... While doing so, I found a patch of miner's lettuce, between the garrya (silktassel) tree and Outsider Peach (named only for its location outside the orchards, not social status.) How could I have missed it all these years?

Even now, in the winter, nature keeps giving. I've been collecting and drying early spring oregano, yerba buena, mint..... Nature's such a generous lover. Will YOU be my Valentine?

The heart-shaped leaves of miner's lettuce make it the perfect Valentine's Day salad!

Winter Harvest (Part 1)

2011-02-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

There's not a whole lot of food growing on the ranch this time of year. Last year's chard is still going strong, but my new lettuces seem not to be growing at all. Other residents have a few things growing, but nothing ready to harvest, either. One exception is the riot of arugula in the middle of the Kinu Orchard where my vegetable garden used to be two summers ago. Over the months, they've self-seeded and established themselves next to the wild oregano. There's also baby chard and collards popping up, too. Nothing's been tilled, or worked, or watered. Just nature having its way. Accidental permaculture. I love it!

In fact, knowing how much arugula seems to like our land, I've been tossing arugula seeds all over the place, hoping they'll keep out some of the nastier weeds (the ones we seem to be allergic to, for example.)

Some people don't like the spiciness of arugula (also called "rocket" or "roquette") but both Big Dog and I love it. It gets mixed in with salads, sprinkled on top of pizzas, stuffed into calzones. Big Dog loves thin slices of steak on a mountain of arugula, with a simple vinaigrette and bits of shaved parmesan. Now, with the seemingly endless supply, I've been parboiling them for an o-hitashi side dish, sauteing them with garlic and olive oil, adding them to my miso soups and pastas (nice with pine nuts!) I think I'll salt-pickle them into next, after we go through our hakusai (nappa cabbage) tsukemono.

Arugula gone wild.

And for today's work, you get...a potato

2011-02-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

Remember Harley? He's back at The Ranch.

"Hey, can I come over and help you guys with any work you have in return for some food?" Harley emailed Big Dog a week or so ago. Harley is now on social security, but he's trying to save up for a car. It's hard to live in Southern California with only a bicycle for transportation. He still has no water or electricity in his house and still spends his entire day at the library, but with his small income, he can stay at a motel every so often to shower. Which was why when we picked him up at the San Luis Obispo train station Friday afternoon, he smelled better than the last time he was here.

But I realize now what it is about Harley that drives me crazy. He is too starved for company, for someone to talk to. And because, normally, his entire social life is a series of casual conversations with strangers, he is the King of Small Talk.

What really gets me about Harley is not that he's too used to not working and a few hours is the most he can put in. It's not even that at 3pm, he's done for the day and into his first beer. Nor that he's already gone through our entire stash of beer. Nor that he won't pick up after himself one bit.

"It's his constant yakking about nothing and sucking up all the thoughts out of my mind that tires me out!" I explained to Big Dog last night. And that brings out the worst in me. It's impossible for me to feel charitable and I wind up disliking him more for making me this way. For making me want to tell him that if we are feeding him in return for labor, then today's pay will be a potato.

Oh god, I am such a mean-spirited bitch. But maybe I will be feeling more charitable at the end of this day, after a few hours to myself while The Boys go off to T's house for Super Bowl and bowls of pozole.

New Age Redneck

2011-02-01T16:22:00.000-08:00

Dee, the caretaker of the ranch in the hills just beyond us, came over last week to help Big Dog rebuild the greenhouse. They put in steel bars to reinforce the flimsy aluminum and turned the thrashed sliding doors into regular hinged doors. We still haven't figured out a way to latch them together, but bungees work fine for now.

"Look, Dee's brought you some venison!" Big Dog shouted out to me from the greenhouse.
"Wow!"
"Yeah, it was a good deer season. I think we have our meat supply for a while," grinned Dee.
I cringed a little inside, wondering if he had gotten The Sisters, as I had been calling our frequent cervine visitors, but graciously accepted his vacuum sealed offering.

"My wife found a dead bear in a ravine the other day. I saw her walking up, carrying something that looked like a wadded up blanket or something and it was this bear!"
"I had no idea there were any bears left in these parts. Didn't they kill all the osos in Los Osos long ago?"
"It was the first one I'd seen around here, dead or alive."

Dee must have cut off the bear's paw because later on, over an end-of-the-day beer, he proudly brought out three bear claws from a tin can. They were giant. He told us his wife's got the rest of the bear "cooking" in a drum so she can use the bear hide. We talked about the other wild animals around here: the wild boar our nursery neighbors caught and how violent it was, the mountain lions and bobcats all the ranchers shoot around here.

"It's terrible how they'll just kill for sport. It's not even for food," Dee shook his head.

Yes, Dee is a New Age Redneck. He doesn't have much formal education, but he knows so much more than we do about the sun and moon and stars. He fells trees and chases trespassers with a loaded gun, and then the next week, he'll go and gather jade in Big Sur and craft them into delicate jewelry. He kills animals, but only for food and, like the original inhabitants of these lands, he will use every bit of his kill. I am fascinated by him and all that he knows and am plotting to be his newest good friend.

Almost Spring?

2011-01-26T15:55:00.000-08:00

Everything is budding.

Our lone pear tree inside the Kinu Orchard, Pomona, ever the impatient girl, keeps flowering at odd times anyway, but you can almost hear the hum of vibrating energy from the others, too.

Daffodils are starting to swell...grasses are growing ("Means it's time to mow," groans Big Dog. "And gophers are getting busy," I follow)... Is spring already here?

Beware of Gifts

2011-01-23T11:10:00.000-08:00

Our third week of pruning and our achy-breaky bods are complaining big time. It's hard not to keep at it, though, since we've been blessed with beautiful weather during the day. The area's gotten more than 15 inches of rain this year, but not a drop after the first week. Mushrooms which were so prolific have all dried up, as has much of the ground that was so wet and muddy earlier.

This year, the residents at the back of our property, the McCs who have much more experience at these things (he's a groundskeepers, she's a horticulturist) helped us out a few days. I guess they know what they're doing, though it takes some effort for me not to yowl in pain as giant limbs come off.

"See how the crotch has some kind of fungus?" Mama McC points out to me. Fungus in crotches is NOT appealing, I agree, but...

Their fearlessness has completely emboldened Big Dog who is going chain-saw happy.

"I'm taking you down!" he announces to the giant apple tree. If this were a cartoon, the apple tree would be rearing up, I know.
"I'm sure it's going to be a lot happier now, with more light and air," I say, more to placate myself. If Mama McC is a surgeon, Big Dog sometimes looks like The Butcher of the Orchards.

That's why it's so nice when I have the whole orchard to myself. Like today, when the others were working other orchards and I got to spend the entire day picking up the prunings in peace, disturbed only by the antics of the chickens.

"Well, Freddie, whacha got there?" I chat to the rooster who's a little Freddie Mercury. He's got a worm in his mouth and he's giving it to Two Tone, the black and white hen. I am touched.
"Aren't you a little gentleman!"

Is there chivalry in the animal kingdom? I wonder, but even before I can pick up more branches and twigs, there's a loud squawk as Freddie tries to mount Two Tone.

"Get off me, you creep!" She goes running into the bushes, wings a-flutter.

"So, you buy her dinner and immediately expect her to put out? You're just like the rest of them." I laugh. But Two Tone wasn't about to be bought off with a little morsel, which makes her a lot tougher and smarter than SOME women I know.

Perfect Days Continue

2011-01-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

Not a drop of rain since the New Year's storm.
The T-shirt weather continues.
Sweet sap is running out of our apple trees.
Are we supposed to be pruning in this kind of weather?

These Boots Were Made For...

2011-01-07T11:06:00.001-08:00

...SPLASHING!

The December storm at the ranch had turned my uggs into mud-caked messes so it was time to go and find some rubber boots. Shall it be long waders? Or heavy duty utilitarian boots? Or something cute and fun?

Economics determined the choice for me: a pair of really inexpensive rain boots. Made in China, natch. But I'm hoping they'll at least last me the season.

I don't know why I haven't had/worn any rain boots-galoshes-wellingtons-wellies-rubbers in four-plus decades. They're too much fun, I thought, splashing through the rain-darkened streets of West Los Angeles. In Tokyo, the only people I've seen in rubber boots were school children, fishmongers, ancient farm women carrying massive basketloads of produce into the city on the early morning train... The rest of us walked in soggy misery. I wished I had ignored convention and gotten some boots for all those rainy seasons, winter storms, summer typhoons. Japan is a wet country!

Now back at the ranch, I find that these boots were also made for sloshing and sliding around in the mud. Unlike El Rojo, our little electric car that I promptly got stuck in fine, slick, clayish mud in front of our busted up greenhouse.

Yes, the same New Year's storm system that had me wading through West LA tore apart our little greenhouse. The plastic panels had been blown all over the place and the aluminum frame was wrenched apart in places. Plants were dead or dying. What a mess. And now an electric car stuck up to its axle in muck.

But my boots, muddied as they are, look completely unperturbed. Yay for elastic hydrocarbon polymer!

One-One-One-One

2011-01-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

The ONES are in alignment today, this first day of 2011!And my blog is not so anonymous anymore!

The Lightness of Being On The Road

2010-12-07T13:51:00.000-08:00

So many writers have already written about it, I don't know if I can add anything new, but I've noticed that Big Dog and I are happiest, and happiest with each other, when we are on the road.

There's a certain kind of "lightness of being" that comes with extended travel. When on the road, we are able to accept whatever comes our way, to really just be in the moment. In fact, isn't that why we travel? For the unknown and the unexpected? There's also a physical "lightness" in which all we have is what we can carry. Both of us have way less baggage, actual and metaphorical. On the road, you can let go of "self." A traveler has no room inside for ego.

When you don't have anything, you don't have anything between each other either.

Aside from all of that, I love being in an unfamiliar culture. Just shopping for something as mundane as toilet paper can be a major adventure. (A little language always goes the wrong way!)

Big Dog and I were sitting on a bench in the town square of Tonala a few days ago, enjoying our nieve de garrafa (tasty homemade, handcranked ice cream that's a lot like gelato.) Big Dog got strawberry and I had vanilla (I would have had chocolate or nut but the vendor was out.)

"Did you know that straight men aren't supposed to be eating strawberry ice cream?"
"That's ridiculous."
"At least in Cuba." I continued to tell him about the Cuban movie "Fresa y Chocolate" but I could see he was more interested in the wood chopping fellow across the plaza.

"What IS he doing?"

The man was sitting on the ground, hacking away at a log placed between his knees. Chop, chop, chop. We were mesmerized by the swing of his machete. Then, along comes another man in a cowboy hat who stands in front of the wood chipper dude. The wood chipper starts pantomiming something that looks like...an aftershave ad! (He shakes an imaginary bottle onto the palm of his other hand, rubs his hands together and slaps his face a couple of times. You tell me the answer to this charade isn't "aftershave"!)

Before we can walk over to them, the cowboy has disappeared and wood chipper dude is finished with his chipping for the day. He's picking up his log and his machete and walking away, too, into the Sunday afternoon crowd.

"What was that all about?"

Guess we'll never know. Out here on the road, for now, it was simply a man chipping away at a log and an aftershave charade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Natural Born Driver and Jedi Navigator in The City

2010-11-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

The last few times we were in Mexico, we stayed close to home, but last week, we rented a car and headed up towards Guadalajara.

Big Dog does not like Big Cities and I have yet to step inside DF Mexico. However, just south of Guadalajara is an area called Tlaquepaque and Tonala and it was here that we found dealers and makers of the most incredible furnishings when we traveled around the country 5 years ago.

"Yeah, we're finally getting new furniture for our ranch house," I emailed my best friend in Tokyo. "After an entire life of hand-me-downs and other people's trash, I feel kind of guilty actually buying something new. It's so not eco."

Previously, we had driven down Mex 80, a steep, curvy, sometimes scary road. This time, Big Dog wanted to try the cuota (toll road) that goes through Colima.

"I'm not sure why. We've never been on toll roads before," he started muttering as we approached the second of 3 toll gates. Then, as we got stuck in road construction delays, the muttering became louder.

"This totally sucks! I thought the cuota was going to be a multi-lane highway! I can't believe we're stuck behind this exhaust belching truck!"

We could see other cars whizzing by on the libre, the free road just parallel to us. It made no sense. But not much does on Mexican roads and once you approach cities, it only gets worse. Thank god Big Dog was used to deadlocked traffic in Tokyo.

One clever thing they have done in Guadalajara, an innermost "express" lane and many overpasses, became my bane.

"Crap. I think we were supposed to turn there. OK. Let's see if we can move into the outer lane and turn onto Lazaro Cardenas." It was my turn to start swearing under my breath.

Just as much as Big Dog is a Natural Born Driver, I think of myself as a Natural Born Navigator. I've prided myself in being able to navigate us everywhere. (Betcha I can take you to hell and back, too!) But with only the most rudimentary of maps showing us only the very biggest of Guadalajara's roads, it required more than Natural Born Navigation. It required Jedi Knight Navigation!

City roads tend to change names. One side of the town square is one name, the other is another. Many of the streets are named after people with incredibly long names and these name are abbreviated. (There are also many streets named after commemorative dates, so many towns have an Avenida or Calle Cinco de Mayo, 18 de Marzo, 16 de Septiembre, etc.) Street signs may or may not be there. Many streets are one way. And very narrow. And there are people all over them. Or you think you're on one road but you find out 10 dusty miles later that it's the wrong road and there's nowhere to turn back. You really DO need The Force. But sometimes The Force fails you.

"Oh, #$%^&! This is turning into the highway for Mexico City!!" I panic as we drive through an intersection...right onto an on-ramp.
"What do you want me to do?" asks Big Dog who, thankfully, doesn't wait for an answer but quickly executes a dramatic U-turn (actually a Y-turn) right in the middle of this on/off ramp with cars speeding up to us from both directions. I was impressed.

There were many hairy moments like this, but it is always entertaining. In crowded traffic, you can buy newspapers, candy, individual cigarettes, sunglasses, religious icons... You can get your windshields washed. One night, we were entertained by a pair of fire twirlers! (That one earned my pesos!) There are topes (speed bumps) everywhere and sometimes in the most unlikely places.

Next time, though, I will probably print out a detailed map beforehand. A GPS? Nah. Not for a Jedi Navigator.

Land o' Smiles

2010-11-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

I feel so at home here in Mexico, despite my inability to communicate with anyone very well. Up north, the media keeps filling the airwaves with reports on narco violence, scaring everyone with scenes from the "growing tidal wave of crime." Here on the coast, though, it is muy tranquilo.

"You need to go back and tell everyone not to believe all those fearmongers," pleaded D., our resident gringo friend. "So many people here now depend on the touristas but we're seeing fewer of them than ever before!"
"We could talk ourselves blue in the face, but I doubt people who've never come to Mexico before will do so now."

Which is a shame because this country is one of the most welcoming countries in the whole world. Everyone talks about Southeast Asia being a "land of smiles" but while they smile, they also have an eye on your tourist dollars. What I absolutely love about Mexico and what I think makes it unique is that capitalism just doesn't have that big of a grip on the place. At least not yet.

Yes, in the bigger picture, the country is as capitalist as the north. And with fewer restrictions, corporations can probably get away with a whole lot more. It absolutely disheartens me to travel around the country and see Big Ag's fingers everywhere: Corn, cane, avocado and mango plantations surrounded with picket signs advertising (or warning of!) seed and plant brands. GMO? Highly likely.

But the average person seems to value many other things over making a buck.

Family is one, for sure. Faith is another. And most of all, FUN! Those with money tend to share with those who don't have much, even as they complain how having to help out so-and-so strains their finances and they'll never get too far ahead. There is an air of contentment here. (Which is strange because in North America people have so much and yet there is a huge cloud of discontentment over everybody. Or so it seems.)

(Japanese people are pretty content people, as well, though in any survey, they always score as the "least happy/satisfied people." I think it's just Japanese humility, making us put down our own lives in front of strangers.)

You would think that with all the drug trafficking activities, there would be a huge drug problem, too, but there just isn't. Oh, sure, there are people with drug problems -- they are everywhere -- but it's not the kind of epidemic that will destroy the fabric of Mexican society. My theory for it is, once again, the Holy Trinity of Family-Faith-Fun.

So come on down and see for yourself. You may never want to leave.

Melting Time

2010-11-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

Seconds, minutes, hours, days melt away
Not as Dali's lethargic clocks
But as ice on sizzling sidewalk
Gone in an instant

What day?
What month?

Nice to be back home
in La Bahia

Wrapping Up the Season

2010-10-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

Guess summer finally made it to the ranch while I was in Tokyo. I came back to severely heat-stressed plants.

"You let them all die!" I wailed to Big Dog.

That comment pissed him off completely.

"I was slaving all day, every day in the 90 degree heat!"

He claimed he needed to cut back the trees from the edge of our pasture and the oaks around our house. I suspect he couldn't leave his new pole saw alone. Either way, he managed to ignore the plants. ("You're always so protective of them and don't want me to do anything. Now you're upset because I didn't. Weren't they on auto-water?" "Yeah, auto-water for the kind of temps we'd had all summer. NOT for a heatwave!" We bickered for days.)

So my much-anticipated tomato season was pitiful indeed, but the few that actually made it were fantastic. If only I didn't have to wait another year for great tomatoes! But wait! Maybe I don't. Because......

We now have a greenhouse!

"If only we'd opened the kit and read the assembly instructions earlier," Big Dog laughed, explaining our project to the DogFather. "We got the road guys to come and build a level pad for the thing, and THEN we opened the box only to find that we were supposed to EXCAVATE an area for the base of the house."

Yes, always read instruction first. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble.

We weren't about to excavate anything out of the pad. All we could do was shored up the base with the sandbags from last winter and hope the entire house doesn't blow away.

The house plants and other cold-sensitive guys have been moved into the greenhouse, I've set up auto-watering there, and we are getting ready to fly south. It's wrap-up time here at the ranch.

Full Circle

2010-09-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

I think it was earlier this year. I came across Alicia Bay-Laurel's website.

If you grew up during the 70's you might be familiar with her book "Living on the Earth." Or maybe "Being of the Sun." Alicia lived on a commune and wrote beautifully hand-scripted, illustrated manuals.

Reading how Alicia wanted to one day learn Japanese compelled me to write to her. I told her that her books became a sort of inner guide as I navigated through the time and space of Tokyo. During the following decades, as I worked in the World of Media, that guide faded into the background, but one day, as I was cleaning out my mother's attic, I found my old, beat-up copies of her books. How crazy, I thought. Look at me now. Trying to "live on the earth" much as I had dreamed all those years ago. "I feel like I've come full circle," I emailed her. And that I would be happy to assist in any language related matters.

It read like a dumb fan letter. Ready to be ignored. But, no! I got a lovely, warm reply and we started exchanging emails. She made me feel like I had known her for ages. (Actually I HAD! I just had to wait more than 3 decades for her to know me!)

And then the synchronicities started flooding in. We had mutual friends! And now we were going to be in Japan at the same time!

We met in Japan for the first time, although for me it was like reconnecting with an old friend, as the synchronicities kept adding up. Not only had I come full circle, but the circle (en) of connections (en) kept growing. Keeps growing.

But, why should I be surprised? We are ALL connected...really...in the en(d).

(Indigo plant from Alisha and my new friend, B.'s yard. He uses it to dye his silk, made the traditional way.)

Viagra from Beyond

2010-09-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

While clearing out SPAM from an email account I rarely use I come across an email from my poet friend who passed away last year. I think it's just SPAM disguised as Roberto through some kind of computer virus, but the thought of him trying to sell Viagra from beyond made me smile.

My Personal Lava Lamp

2010-09-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

The floater is still there, like a lava lamp blob today. My own personal lava lamp!

I've always believed that physical problems are merely symptoms of inner problems so I tend to look at them metaphorically. My current eye condition is driving me crazy as I wonder what I could possibly be "turning a blind eye to" or what truth am I trying not to see?

I just can't figure it out. All I can do is zone out and enjoy my floating blob.

Beware the Floater!

2010-09-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

And I'm not talking about the kind that you find in your toilet bowl. (Not everything I talk about is scatological, Big Dog, despite what you may think.)

I first noticed it on Saturday. A little black floater in my left eye. It was like a pesky fruit fly -- I kept swatting at the air, trying to get it to fly away.
"If it weren't in my dominant eye, it wouldn't bother me as much, but this sucks," I complained to Big Dog's sister who was staying at the ranch with her husband.

The next day, it had shifted shape and location, but it was still there. By Wednesday, it was joined by several buddies, some of whom were like shreds of pretty black lace. That was when I also noticed that my left eye was looking through a ProMist filter. (That's what we used to use on our video cameras to give the picture a film grain.) AND neutral density filter.

Actually, it was more like a piece of really dirty 8mm film. Life through an unwashed windscreen (whoops, that's "windshield" for you Americans.)

So I started doing a little research and found out that the medical term for floaters is "posterior vitreous detachment" and is normally caused by bits of vitreous gel coming loose inside your eye. "A normal aging phenomenon" the article said, depressing me somewhat. I actually LIKE the idea of getting older because I don't necessarily equate added years with added wear and tear. Now it looked like what I had was a sign of premature aging! Wearing out too soon! Rusting away from misuse! But the article also added that in a small percentage of cases, it was also a symptom of retinal tear or retinal detachment that, if left untreated, could cause blindness.

Being a very visual person, the idea of losing my sight scared me into making an appointment with an ophthalmologist immediately and so off I went to see Dr. O.

Dr. O was as gentle as could be, but I was still gripping the armrests as he poked and prodded me in the eye.

This is what I felt like:

And -- surprise, surprise -- it turned out that my condition was not a "normal aging phenomenon" but a result of retinal tear! It should have made me pleased ("Oh, so these wrinkles AREN'T a sign of aging but a terrible skin condition? Great!") but the thought of going through more "Clockwork Orange" kept elation at bay.

It didn't take long and here I am, back home again with my retina welded back into place, vision a little blurry but at least still there. With the pupil dilated to the max, my left eye looks very trippy! I should go and fashion myself a pirate's eye patch. Yaarrrr.

Every Day is Iron Chef Day

2010-08-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

"And today's ingredient is... ZUCCHINI!"
Again. And again. And again.

Summer squash and peaches.

I feel like the hapless challenger on Iron Chef, having to create meal after meal with these two ingredients.

It's challenging, frustrating, exasperating, and still fulfilling, trying to live off what you grow. When you have a glut of peaches and plums, the only way to really use them up is to can them (to use later, of course) but I take the challenge daily and see what else I can do with them.

Fried, baked, stuffed, spiced, pickled, pureed. Bread, pies, creams, jellies, candy, gelatos, sorbets... did I mention pies? I sneak summer squash into nearly everything. Tacos, pastas, tofu patties, soups, salads... Come to think of it, I sneak peaches and plums into nearly everything, too.

"Can we have some broccoli?" asks Big Dog.
"No. You'll get more than enough broccoli in the winter."

But even as I haul in another tub of peaches from the garden, I know that peach season will soon be over and I will miss it dearly... as I come face to face with a deluge of apples.

One Fine Day

2010-08-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ranch residents J & R got married in a charming little beach ceremony last Saturday, Cayucos waves framing their vows.

I love American weddings! Each one so reflects the individuality of the couple tying the knot, unlike most cookie-cutter Japanese weddings. J & R's was no exception: it was as charming and homespun and as earthy as the two newlyweds (who are now off on a ten-day camping honeymoon!)

R grew almost all of the flowers for the event and J made a huge batch of his own beer, using hops grown on our very ranch. (The hops also featured in the male attendants' corsages!) R's dad welded together a cute cake server and her mom made the wedding cakes, all decorated with home-grown Johnny-jump-ups.

Kids ran wild, a gypsy jazz band played on and guests had a boot-stomping, flip-flop shuffling good time at the barn reception.

Bummed Out

2010-07-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's wrong. I don't feel like making anything, writing anything, sharing much. I used to tell myself that I'm just moving away from internet, but that has nothing to do with having not written much in the last couple of months.... wait, I take that back. I've actually written some poetry in the last few week and in a different kind of style, so that's something... AND I've actually started two new sculptures from a concept that's been in my head for years.

Okay, so I AM doing something other than fighting the ant/aphid infestation on our fruit trees; something other than trapping gophers; something other than taking care of our many guests (yes, it's BB&D -- bed, breakfast & dinner -- season at The Ranch.) But I am in LA overnight and went online to browse some of the blogs I've enjoyed in the past and everyone else has been soooo productive.

I am bummed.

On the Road.....Again

2010-06-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

There's something so right about being on the road. It's not just because I have an insatiable curiosity and love seeing/experiencing anything new or different. It's really the freedom of not having anything, including control.

No schedule, no obligations, no illusions, no limits.

After a few years of nomadic life, we've started to feel "settled" somewhat at the ranch and I am seeing my Control Freak self starting to take over. But the lessons from those nomadic years are still with me and I am still good at letting go when we travel. You have to in order to be open to the unexpected. And the Unexpected IS the payoff, at least for me. Even the bad things -- like getting everything stolen in Costa Rica -- turn out to be amazing adventures.

A few scenes from the road:

M, who used to be in a rock band with Big Dog, lives on the Colorado River and escorted us to Oatman, on the Old Route 66. You can't see them in this photo, but the wild donkeys that live in the hills nearby come down to get handouts from the tourists.

Ahhh, open space! No sign of civilization!

I don't know why I expected more out of Sedona. Guess I was just disappointed with all the homes built right up to these amazing red rock monuments. Plus all the tourist amenities. If there was any spiritual energy vortex here, I am sure the commercialism has sucked most of it out. Too bad it wasn't designated a National Park.

My point-and-click photos are pretty sucky, but just had to share this one with you. The cactus flowers look so...JUICY!

It's quite a trick, framing out man-made junk.

Don't you just love what you run into out here? Somewhere near the border of Nevada and California is this Sign Guy. We stopped, thinking it was a shop. The old dude told us it was his workshop and we apologized for the intrusion. "Did you see that helicopter he was working on?" marveled Big Dog as we drove away. "What's he gonna do with it?" Maybe just see if he can rehabilitate an old helicopter, perhaps?

Viva Lost Vegas

2010-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

It's been about 20 years since we were last in Las Vegas. Which was also about 20 years from when I was there last. Seems I get to see Sin City every two decades. And yet, the last two seem to have changed the place far more. Sure, Vegas in the 90's was different from that of the 60's, but not like this!

Vegas is a place I've avoided. Definitely not my scene. But hard to be too negative about something based on secondhand information.

So, here we are. In a city that's become Bladerunner-in-the-desert: High-tech, tacky, international but unsophisticated, Disneyesque replicas substituting for culture. Not being gamblers (I tell people I use up my luck in real life) we wandered the Strip, dodging Southeast Asian touts flipping girlie ads in your face ("This place is turning into Ermita!" "From the 80's!") dress-alike boys (baseball caps, baggy long shorts, "tribal" tattoos and piercings) holding ridiculously tall cocktails, families from the Mid-West, Middle East, Northeast, South Asia, East Asia...

The worst change, though, was the city itself. 20 years ago, you could drive five miles and be completely isolated in the desert. Today, that desert is paved and jammed with quickly built houses, strip malls -- a giant urban sprawl that goes on forever. It was heartbreaking. People who had homes in the desert decades ago, far away from the neon, found that the city had rushed toward them and enveloped their isolation and open spaces. Viva LOST Vegas.

"It'll all turn into a ghost town when the water's gone," predicts Big Dog. "All of the southwest will become a harsh, inhabitable desert."
"Sooner than later, the way they've let the population explode," I add.

A friend who's retired in this town gave us her personal tour when we arrived and showed us what I consider to be the coolest thing in Vegas: this building which houses the Brain Institute. I loved the irony of having such an institute here.

Two nights in this town is more than enough. I am longing for the open vista of the desert. The kind that makes me want to sing "Calling You" from the movie Baghdad Cafe. It's out there, but a lot farther away.

Hard to Believe

2010-05-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Remember that Instant Family that turned me into an Instant Grandma? (Does this look like a transparent ploy to get you to read some of my earlier entries? I always feel better about my writing/drawing/creations/whatever as more time passes. Why is that?)

Well, go on. Read it.

Because now I'm a GREAT-grandma! (Only by association...but, still!)

Tunnel of Love

2010-05-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

How about some nice pictures for a change?

Original Sin

2010-05-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

The gophers got almost all of R's potatoes and she fears the garlic is next.
"And I spent nearly twenty dollars on those!" she cries.
Her fiancee, J drives up with dozens of new starters -- squash, peas, beans joining their 40 tomato plants already in the ground -- and we talk gophers for a while. They're thinking of the chewing gum ploy so I tell them to be careful not to get human scent on the gum. I am beginning to think that was my problem last year. (Our house painter told us about her friend who uses empty aluminum cans, buried every three feet, around his vegetable plot. The gophers hit them when they burrow and the sound of their little nails against the metal freaks them out. Or so she says.)

They've gotten all my hollyhocks and many of my cosmos. (I'm hoping that the cages protect my food plants.) I've gotten 3 gophers so far this year. It sickens me each time I kill a gopher.

All this carnage makes me think of Original Sin. I don't think it has anything to do with our knowledge of right and wrong, but our need to kill life to sustain our own. The gopher situation has thrown it in my face, but every one of us, and in fact, every animal, is a Creature of Sin.

"That's why I'm a vegan," you might say. But as long as you are killing plants for food, you also have The Mark. A purist would only eat fruit.

I believe the real Garden of Eden would only have plants and a few insects, like bees and worms. No taking of one life for another.

Today, my snails go back into the wild. We're leaving The Ranch tomorrow and I haven't built up the nerve to cook them. I am sure BD is thrilled not to be witness to another part of my weirdness and I'm just as happy to get away from the Killing Fields for a while.

May Day and Midnight Express

2010-05-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

"...it's one of the few countries that actually celebrate May Day..."
Huh?

That was our reaction to one CNN reporter who was talking about Cuba a few years ago. Didn't she know that there are many, many countries that celebrate May Day? I remember the labor organization festivities all around Tokyo every May first. Sometimes they were harassed by right wing fanatics AND police. I remember one very tiny protest -- maybe 25 people? -- surrounded by an army of cops. Earlier the same day, there was a demonstration by the militant right, in front of the Russian Embassy, with giant vans blaring old war songs and propaganda. In between the songs and shouts, they also taunted the handful of police. Sadly, an all too typical scene.

So. Happy May Day to you.

But it was a "mayday" -- which comes from "venez m'aider" or "Come save me!" so if you're ever in a desperate situation in a French-speaking area, you'll be fine -- in the kitchen last night. The snails made a break for it under cover of the night.

By morning, the little mollusks were crawling all over the kitchen. Under the cupboards, inside the sink, all over the walls... Thank god they don't move very fast. I think I was able to foil their midnight express attempt. I HOPE I was successful or Big Dog will be in for a big surprise when he steps on a snail in his bare feet.

Just Eat It

2010-04-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

"You should see the way my brother eats crab," I tell anyone who is listening. "He's so patient, he'll spend hours picking every bit of shell clean of crab meat."

The truth is, we are strange that way. Both Bowser and I have always hated to see food thrown out, and I mean every bit of it has to get eaten. Bowser is quite the angler, but he will clean his fish meticulously so that all he has to throw out are a few fins, tails and some parts of the entrails. He will use the rest. Including bones and some of the organs.

I'm afraid he may be the only one who will understand my current "challenge."

The wet winter has created a population explosion of snails and slugs here but while Big Dog hurls his snail catch at rocks, I gently take them into my Snail Zoo. It's a plastic container with cornmeal mush. If you've ever tried to raise snails for food, you know what this means. My snails are headed for Escargotville.

"You have no idea how gross that is," grimaces Big Dog.
"Of course I do!"
Who does he think I am? Snails are slimy, crawly, disgusting looking things. (Okay, on real close inspection, they are actually quite beautiful. But a tub of them IS pretty gross.) And I have yet to work up the courage to plunge them into boiling water, pull them out of their shell, cut away the gall, cook them up with tons of garlic butter and stuff them back into their shell, but...that is the plan.

Meanwhile, I find out that those smelly plants that keep growing all over the place (and for some reason, near the wild fennel) are hemlock. Yup. The stuff that killed Socrates.

"I had no idea! I actually tried one of the leaves at one time! How come it didn't kill me?" I asked Big Dog who was on a wild fennel/hemlock eradication program.
"Because you're no Socrates?"
Well, duh.

Magic's in the Motion

2010-04-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

When I began this blog, in 2006, I was in my third year as a mostly unemployed vagabond. I loved it. I loved that there was something novel every day. "The magic's in the motion," I gloated.

Much has changed since then.

Each year, I spend more and more time at the ranch and I no longer describe myself as "homeless." I'm still not sure if this is "home" but I am happy here even as circumstances beyond my control have limited my time on the road. There is not much motion these days and my entire concept of time has shifted.

I think it's being so connected with nature here that's changed me. My sense of time has...elongated? It makes me chuckle to think that there was a time when my life was ruled by "seconds." 120 second promo videos. 60 second voice-overs. 30 second tv spots. 18 second song intros. These days, I see time in terms of "seasons." I rarely know what day it is and I hardly care what week. I peruse seed catalogs and plan for NEXT YEAR! My god, I could hardly plan TOMORROW a few years ago!

Staying so still makes me a bit nervous -- a holdover from my years living in Warp Speed -- but then I look at my tiny seedlings and know that even though they also appear to be standing still, they keep moving ever so slowly and most of that movement is in their growth. That encourages me. There's real magic in that kind of motion.

Super Slow Food

2010-04-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

I couldn't believe we actually bought some strawberry starters this year! Two six packs of berry starters at the local Big Box Home Improvement Store. And then, a few weeks later, some vegetable starters. Every year, I've had to struggle from seed while the other tenants on The Ranch were putting in sizable starters into their summer gardens.

Just when I was feeling good about getting a bit of a head-start on this season's production, J&R, the young couple who live on The Ranch, put in their summer garden and, oh my, their starters are giant! It will be weeks before my tiny starters reach that size! And months before my seedlings get going. Talk about the ultimate in slow food. No wonder I can't remove the Swiss chard and collard plants that are still alive and providing us with much nourishment.

(Damn. Just checked. Three of the four lemon cucumber starters are nearly dead. That's what I get for buying plants at a Big Box Home Improvement Store.)

"The others take out their old plants and put in new ones!" Big Dog exclaims in disgust. My overgrown, weedy, jungly mess from last season disturbs him at some primordial level.
"I'll get around to it!" I yell back from my strawberry patch, but I spy him pulling at some tall grasses. "Stop mucking with my plot!"
He would flip out if he knew, but I am thinking of gathering and cooking the grains. Maybe mixed with acorns and dandelion greens. At least until my conventional vegetables are ready for harvest.

The Frugal Gardeners

2010-03-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Big Dog and I finally made our way back to The Ranch a few days ago. Just in the nick of time, I'd say! Potted plants were gasping for water, while happy and vigorous weeds were taking over everywhere else.

"Is it Clip-a-thon Night?" Big Dog kept asking as we were getting ready to leave SoCal. In his ever-frugal mode, Big Dog does not want to BUY plants and I guess I add fire to his horticultural kleptomania when I successfully propagate from tiny clippings, chunks of cactus and succulents that have fallen off the mother plant and rescued bits of other people's trash.
"You go do it. It makes me feel too criminal, clipping other people's plants," I would always reply. "I'm too far from my criminal past, man."

It wasn't so much the act of snipping off a bit of a plant that bothered me, but the way Big Dog made it too "organized" that bothered me. Though, in fact, does it make any difference to go into a store knowing you are about to shoplift candy or to do it, unplanned? So maybe it was Big Dog's egging me on to do his dirty work that bugged me more. Either way, I never go on these dubious missions and without his trusted sidekick, neither does Big Dog.

Still, I somehow managed to get a little stash of material to play with. A little nub of bamboo root, a bit of pruning from a famous rose garden, snips of bougainvillea from our condo, bits of pelargonium, an orphan succulent.....

Apologies

2010-03-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

This is turning out to be quite a non-blogging year! To tell you the truth, I've been drifting away from the internet in general...as well as writing about myself. On the other hand, I've been a bit more creative visually, so I guess it's part of the balance.

Then, there's the fact that the internet, while being a great source of information, is also a big source of MISinformation. I know. There's a whole lot of not-quite-right information about me in cyberspace. Even when it is right, it's still in past tense. For someone whose whole life has been about change, the past has no meaning.

Maybe I am simply getting ready for another reinvention.

But apologies to all who keep coming here, only to find nothing new.

Apres le deluge...

2010-02-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

When the rains stop, we are blinded.

I had never thought of green as a "blinding" or "firey" color until I came to the Central Coast. The winter green of this area is a hot, neon green. After an afternoon of working outside, your eyes hurt and you beat yourself up for not having worn shades. You close your eyes and everything is red and still hurts. Seeing green, seeing red. Only there is no envy or anger. Only the flashy diva dance of nature.

The hills are ablaze in this blinding green light and raindrops glitter, jewels on the wire mesh of fences, dried grasses, leaves, last season's wild fennel. Into this fairy feast, a new bobcat appears, rambling up the hill to our house, and sniffs around. At first, you think it's Ellie, our resident huntress, until you see its flared cheek fur, a bit of Bozo facial hair.

Today, you miss Mick (as you have started calling the newcomer) and Toni and all the others terribly. You miss walking outside with your morning coffee and chuckling at yet another new mound of bobcat poo on your makeshift weedblock. You miss the blinding green and sparkle of the ranch, here in grey, wet West Los Angeles.

Season Premier

2010-01-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

Nature's drama was never as interesting in the cities. Rain meant umbrellas, wet pants, sloshy streets and having to use something other than my bike to get around. Typhoons meant delayed trains and subways, traffic jams, billboards falling on unwary pedestrians.

Out in the countryside, weather is an event rivaling even the County Fair and for the last couple of weeks, there's been talk of nothing but.
"There's going to be several storms, one after the other..."
"It gets worse on Thursday..."
"They say there'll be maybe 12 inches of rain..."

All last week, while Big Dog and I were pruning, I could hear chainsaws around the valley as ranchers cut away dead limbs and other potential hazards. Our neighbors were at our common creek with a backhoe, lifting out fallen tree stumps and other debris from the October Storm. (City people never name their weather events. I can only remember one summer drought in Japan that got a nickname. It was bad enough to cause a major rice shortage and the government had to allow rice imports for the first time. That became known as The Summer of Imported Rice.)

By the end of the week, we were also infected with Storm Watch Fever. Big Dog was forever dashing to the fire station to get more sandbags (and why it had to be 10 or 20 bags at a time, instead of, say, 50 all at once, I'll never know) and lugging them around the ranch to place in strategic and sometime mysterious locations. I wasn't much help, I'm afraid. After stocking up our food supply, in case we got trapped on the ranch, and bringing in the seedlings, I was merely one of those who excitedly waited for the rain.

We're five days into it, now, and I'm still strolling around the place during lulls to check out how swollen the river is, where pastures have turned into lakes, if our neighbors were able to clear the culvert enough to keep the easement road from becoming another creek. It's a watery world out there and everything smells clean, clean, clean.

I am sure the Season Premier of the Storm Series gets a less than open-armed welcome further south. As much as they need the rain, the summer's rash of wildfires means danger of major landslides.

Is there more rain coming? Will the pasture flood completely? Can we keep the road from being washed away? Will the price of chanterelle mushrooms plummet like it's rumored? Don't touch that dial.

I Love My Jika-Tabi!

2010-01-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

So, I've been a Bad Blogger Dog, again. I got a bit internet-phobic about exposing so much of my life to total strangers and decided to give it a break for a while. In fact, I was going to post a notice here about a leave of absence. Guess I changed my mind. For now.

After a truly enjoyable visit to Tokyo for the holidays, I am back on the ol' homestead for our annual tree pruning. What's making it incredibly fun this year are...MY JIKA-TABI! These are rubber-soled, split-toed "tabi" socks worn by Japanese construction workers, landscapers, Edo Period firemen and others who had "climbing" in their job description.

I love the design of all tabi. (There are no plurals in Japanese, so please don't say kimonos. It's "one kimono, many kimono.") The "hooks" aren't really hooks but little metal "fingernails" that slide into slots on the fabric. Jika-tabi go up a ways higher than normal tabi, and around your pant legs. No flapping pant legs to trip you up and the thin rubber soles are perfect for climbing trees and balancing on narrow limbs. I feel like I could walk a tightrope in them!

"If they had better arch support, I'd wear them instead of shoes," I wrote to a friend, but perhaps that would hamper the effectiveness of jika-tabi. I've seen funky jika-tabi-inspired split-toed sneakers (I think it was Steven Tyler of Aerosmith that showed them to me) but the real deal is cheap and totally utilitarian. Go to any of the workmen's clothes and supply shops in Nishi Shinjuku, just beyond the gleaming high rises and luxury hotels. Not only will you find tons of cool work clothes, but you'll get a little glimpse of what Shinjuku once was.

Final Harvest of the Year

2009-12-18T20:48:00.000-08:00

We're usually far south by now but this year has been a rather stationary year for us dogs and I'm enjoying the harvests of the late fall.

Like persimmons. They were the only fruit I never cared for. Past tense, because after tasting these guys, I've had to change my mind. They're quite different from the crunchy persimmons we had in Japan. You have to wait 'til they get really soft and then they're like this exotic, almost tropical jelly. Very interesting flavor! The small ones are about 2-3 inches in diameter, but the big ones are HUGE.

It's going to be a good season for mushrooms, too, with all this rain. Too bad I know next to nothing about them because some of them are downright yummy looking. Apparently our valley is famous for the variety and volume of mushrooms -- it's considered one of the mushroom "hot spots" of California! Neighbors keep warning us about trespassing poachers during mushroom season, but we've got rabid mushroomers on our ranch so it's doubtful there will be much left for the poachers. Here's a small collection of the different kinds I caught (on camera) during a brief stroll.

There are a few I can't even imagine picking up...but others look like they would be great in a cream of mushroom soup...like these that are sprouting all around our house.

And finally, chanterelles.
Actually the mushrooms in the photo above were a gift from the caretaker of a neighboring ranch and look a little different from regular chanterelles. They smelled and tasted the same...and we're still alive. For your reference, here's a USDA picture of a more typical chanterelle.

Wild and Wet

2009-12-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

J & R's black lab, Jade, has been sick and they called us last night to see if perhaps we'd been putting out poison for the gophers.

"No..... They're back big time with everything getting green again, but we don't want to go that route. Probably for this very reason."
"I don't know what it is, but she's drooling like crazy," said R. "I'm sure it's nothing, but we may take her to the vet and we thought that if there was poison out there, that would be something to go on."

"I wonder if it was a mushroom," I mentioned to J when we crossed paths at the turn-off to Los Osos Valley Road. I'd been thinking about it all night because there are so many kinds of mushrooms sprouting everywhere. As a fungi lover, I have to poke at each one, look it over, sniff it and wonder if I could take just the tiniest of bites. Some of them are puffy and purple, like a nasty bruise. Others are big and smooth, with lovely curves. Some look like psilocybin mushrooms. I take pictures and send them to horticulturist friends, hoping to find an answer, but to no avail. How can Nature tempt me like this?

"I don't know. She seems fine now, but if it was a mushroom, she must be having a helluva trip," he laughed. "She's still just drooling all over the place."

Maybe it was. I saw her in the afternoon and she wasn't drooling any more. In fact, she came up to me in an uncharacteristically friendly way. Hmmm. 'Shrooms?

After the rains, I'll go into the woods and see if I can find some chanterelles. At least I know what they look and smell like! (I can hear the mushroom experts gasping, "but xyz that's terribly deadly looks just like a chanterelle!") Until then, we're busy filling burlap bags with sand and hauling those puppies around the ranch. It's going to be a wild and wet winter, for sure.

Back on the Ranch

2009-11-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Whew. Seems like I got back to the ranch in the nick of time. Being down south was really starting to make me crazy. I missed the air, I missed the water, I missed the solitude. In the past, it was easier to put her out of my mind when we were gone, but not any more. I miss her smell, I miss her touch. I miss running my fingers through the earth, the grasses.

"Hi, Orgy Tree!" I hug the giant oak in front of our house.
"Hi, crazy flowering pear trees! Don't you know it's nearly winter?"
"Hey Lizard Gang, I missed you guys."
"Oh, Ellie, I missed you, too." Ellie, the cat, rolls around in delight. Or so I'd like to believe.

Big Dog woke up in the middle of the night, as he often does, and noticed a bright light on our porch.
"There's a light on out there."
"You mean the solar light?"
"No. That one's broken. No, it's a new light!"
He is totally mystified and puts his clothes on to investigate.

He comes back moments later.
"It's the moon."
"What do you mean, the moon?"
"The light I thought was some strange new light on our porch was just the moon."

That made me laugh. Yes, the moon is as bright as a high beam in the darkness of the country night. And, yes, we've been gone too long.

My Two Cents Worth

2009-11-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

So, over here in the U.S of A., there's a flap going on about Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor. Some saw it as a sign of weakness! (I say making a Giant Deal out of it is a sure sign of weakness. Mental weakness, that is. And Amnesia. Obama was not the first to bow to a Japanese emperor. Clinton did. So did Nixon -- and he bowed not to the current emperor but to his father, Hirohito. Eisenhower bowed to DeGualle. And so on.)

It was an elegant bow and, I think, totally appropriate. A bow in Japan is like a handshake in the U.S. It is not a sign of subservience, but of respect. The way people greet each other differs from culture to culture.

I, for one, am happy to see a president who is so international and so global that he can greet others in their style, naturally and beautifully. I am sure it comes from having grown up in the Aloha State, as well as in cultures and countries beyond his own. One day, I hope the Japanese get a prime minister who can, say, kiss the cheek of the French prime minister. Or touch noses with Inuits... or Moaris.

Some claim Obama does not represent the American people. I guess these people don't think Graciousness or Tolerance or Understanding of Differences are representative American values. That's too bad.

Two cents ain't worth much these days, but there it was.

A Medal for the Meddler

2009-11-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

"Hi," I smile to the elderly guy holding a sign in front of a novelty shop. I see him there every time I'm back in West LA. Sometimes he's in costume -- like a Spiderman outfit -- but it never looks quite right on him. Maybe it's the fact that he's a pudgy, older Hispanic guy.

"Hi," says an old man, crashed out on the sidewalk near the local supermarket as I walk by.
"Hi," I mumble back.

I notice that the guy's pillow is a backpack. Although he reeks of alcohol, I feel sorry for him -- it's starting to get cold here, especially at night. Perhaps I can get him a fleece blanket or something in the supermarket.

The store didn't carry any blankets, but it was a good thing I didn't buy anything for the old man, because by the time I stepped out of the supermarket, canvas tote weighing me down, there was an ambulance and a fire truck near the sidewalk and they were taking the old man away on a stretcher. Someone must have called 911.

This is what I love and dislike about Life in America. I love that people are concerned enough about their fellow man to act. Sometimes, though, it's a nuisance. For example, I bruise very easily. I probably have at least one bruise somewhere on my body at any given moment. When at the ranch, in addition to the usual furniture and household appliances, I am constantly being attacked by limbs and branches, ranch equipment, hardware, etc. and I live in fear that one day, someone will assume I'm a victim of domestic violence and call the authorities.

It's so different in Japan. People think that getting involved is a Bad Thing. "Don't meddle in other people's business," we're taught. Even if it looks like they might need help. Try panhandling in Japan. People will look away in embarrassment. Or, conversely, try giving a homeless guy some money. You'll be embarrassing him. (Now, busking is a different matter.....especially if you are non-Japanese.) When a young man fell from the platform at a train station, a Korean man jumped down to try to save him (and was killed in the process.) When my mother was unintentionally pushed onto the tracks by some rowdy drunks she could have been run over if another train conductor hadn't spotted her, passed out on the train tracks. (Later, she received a bill from the railway company for causing a delay in their schedule!) Maybe it's the human density. Maybe over there, we have to live with a private mental space since we have no real space. You never let on that you heard your neighbor's loud argument last night, or that you can hear every sigh and moan of the next door couple's lovemaking.

I wish there were a happy middle ground in all of this, but today I'm glad that whoever it was called someone to help that old man. He'll be warm and safe somewhere, even if it's only for one night.

My SoCal stay keeps getting longer and longer and I am beyond withdrawal, I miss the ranch so much. Unlike the ranch, however, there's a lot of human drama here to keep me and my mind occupied.

Turning Japanese

2009-11-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

Sawtelle is a great neighborhood in West LA for fans of Japanese food and culture. It's also a great neighborhood for homesick Japanese. I love the tiny Nijiya Supermarket which is so much like the neighborhood supermarkets all over Tokyo. Even the shopping baskets are the same!

The area is also a magnet for Americans infatuated with all things Japanese.

In Tokyo, you'll see Japanese kids trying to look like home boys, low riders, Rastafarians, new-age hippies, etc. so I was totally charmed by a young man in Sawtelle who had the Japanese Urban Youth look down to a T. I wish I had been able to talk to him, but I lost him when I turned to Big Dog to point him out. ("You mean he not Japanese?!")

I think the young man was inspired by manga or music idols. Like these?

Springing Back

2009-10-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

I know California has the wackiest seasons -- summer days in the middle of winter, freeze-outs in the summer, hail at any time of year -- but this is nuts. After the storm, our valley thinks it's spring again.

Irises are blooming, daffodils are trying to come up, and the hills are turning neon green again. At the same time, the leaves are changing color, the farms are orange with pumpkins and our maple tree is ablaze. It's spring AND autumn at the same time! It's so crazy, I would have loved to have spent the next several weeks here.

Not Big Dog. He's been moaning about the shorter days ever since the end of September and now he's moaning about the end of daylight-saving time.

"Don't we need to save it more, now that we have less?"

This is traditionally our time to head south, but this year there are family matters delaying our departure. So while we leave the ranch today, we will not be gone too long. Wonder what season it will be when we return.

These photos were taken in the winter, up in the hills above (and a little beyond) our ranch. During the summer and fall, the hills turn gold, but right now, it's a medley of gold and green.

Toni, the Bobcat

2009-10-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

2 days after the storm, our little valley was experiencing a major heatwave.

"Come here, quick!" Big Dog whispered.

I put down my paintbrush and went to the kitchen to look out the window. There's the most gorgeous giant cat I have ever seen. She's not very big -- more like a house cat on steroids -- but obviously she is not your average kitty.

We follow her from inside the house, window to window, trying to snap a photo. I think she sees us but she doesn't seem too concerned, so we step outside. She's a mere feet away from the house.

"Uh-oh. She's eyeballing the chickens..."

Big Dog gets a long broom handle and we tiptoe closer. This time, she walks away. Back around the house, the way she came, slithering under the deer fence and back into the hills.

I laugh at Big Dog's broomstick.
"Were you going to protect me with that thing?"
"Look at you! You're barefoot! Now that wasn't very smart, was it."

He's right. Toni (as I have been calling her) was deceptively cute. She looked like a big, overgrown cat that I could "hey, kitty-kitty-kitty" and pet. Of course I resisted the urge, but I have to admit, the urge was certainly there.

After the Storm

2009-10-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

What was I thinking? I have to laugh when I read my last entry. "Enjoy a different kind of music?" Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

I ought to know better. Nature's got a mighty twisted sense of humor.

Instead of curling up in front of a nice fire, listening to the raging storm, we soon found ourselves becoming the punch line to Nature's Big Joke.

"What's that?"

The sound of falling H2O sounded too close...like it was coming from...oh, my god, is that water on the INSIDE of the windows? There was a waterfall coursing down the giant cathedral windows on the east side of the main room. We quickly laid all the towels we could find and put little containers all along the sill, but we had to find a real solution quick.

"Go online and see if you can find a caulk or something we can use underwater," Big Dog yelled as I ran up to the "office" to log on. There's not much you can find out when you are on a 28800 baud rate dial-up. The local hardware store didn't know of anything (except tar) either, so putting on our raincoats, we drove to Home Depot to see if we could pick out something. Anything.

The wind that usually blows from west to east down Los Osos Valley, was howling from the other direction. Maybe the trees were happy.
"They're getting their kinks out. Sort of like going to a chiropractor," I mused.

There really wasn't anything at Home Depot either (except tar!) but we picked out the one caulk that didn't tell you to make sure the surfaces were completely dry and went back to the ranch.

"Watch out! There's a tree!"

During the brief time we were in town, a tree had fallen and had turned our local road into a one-laner. Rocks had tumbled from above and provided further obstacles.

"Peligro! Derrumbes!" I shouted. I've become quite fluent in Road Sign Spanish.

Well, I don't know how we did it, but we managed to seal the window casing with the strange goop we picked up. The goop didn't really stick to anything, but from the very top of our rickety ladder, I was able to push enough of it into the hairline cracks. Encouraged, we sealed the window casing to the bedroom window which was also starting to leak.

"I'm so glad we were here for this. Imagine if we were away!" We kept telling ourselves how fortunate we were, despite being drenched from head to toe. Big Dog had lit a fire, so once inside the house, it really wasn't so bad. Until we came across another leak, that is.

"Okay, I'm going out again!" I put on my cheap plastic raincoat (second of the plastic raincoats I bought at a particularly stormy Fuji Rock Festival -- Ryan Adams drew a cute picture on my first plastic raincoat) and went out, caulk gun swinging. This time, the goop didn't work and the rain kept coming inside. We had to rig a plastic sheet onto the top of the door so that the rain could come down it and into a bucket.

"4 inches already!" Big Dog kept his eye on the rain gauge and would announce the rainfall every few hours.

By the evening, the rain gauge was completely full, so I know we got more than 5 and a half inches of rain. Maybe we got 6. Maybe 7. Seems like we got an entire year's worth of rain in one 24 hour period.

And just when we thought the day was finally over, the phone rang.

"It's J here. Sorry to wake you but we just got back home and the drain outside JD's place is clogged or something. Water's rising up and nearly to his door!"

We got them a wide broom to try to push the water away from the door. It was around midnight, too dark to see anything and still raining like crazy. You'd think that with all the excitement, insomniacs like us would stay awake for hours, but maybe we were too exhausted. The water music lulled me right to sleep.

About 6 hours later, another phone call woke me up. It was our neighbor, D., letting us know that a car was blocking the easement road. Apparently it was the McC's car, abandoned on one side of the creek. It looked like the car had made it across the creek and stalled on the other side.

The dead car is now gone. So are some trees and lots of limbs. The creek is still roaring ("Like, I'm a river, man!") and it's still drizzling (how can there be so much moisture up there?) but it's calm and windless again. The storm has passed.

First Storm

2009-10-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

The sound of a toilet being flushed woke me up this morning. I peered over my shoulder but Big Dog was still in bed, motionless for a change.
"Huh?"
The gurgling sound was not from any indoor plumbing, but rain, lots of hard and heavy rain, coursing down from the roof. And howling winds from the northeast.

It's our first storm of the season.

"Aren't you glad I picked everything up?" Big Dog gloated over coffee. He had been spending the last several days "winterizing." I thought it was premature since we are right in the middle of a beautiful harvest, but I'm glad the wind chimes got put away before this storm.

My chrysanthemums have already been blown over and I am wondering how many apples and pears will survive the gusts, how many will lose a few branches. Will my tomatoes still be on the vine tomorrow? How much damage will our ranch sustain? How much cleaning up will I have to do?

But for now, I am enjoying a different kind of ranch music. Concerto in wind and water, accompanied by the oaks.

Harvest Moon

2009-10-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

"Fall's coming," Big Dog announced the other afternoon. There was a new kind of wind blowing through our tiny valley. Crisper.
We both frowned. We don't like the cold, but we like short days even less.
"So what was T talking about when he said October was the hottest month of the year in Los Osos?"

The next day, the heat was back, but even the hotter days don't feel much like summer anymore. Down the bigger Los Osos Valley, the farms are all orange polka dots from curing pumpkins, fields of sugar peas, peppers and squash. Our vegetable plots are full of massive juicy tomatoes, leafy green things. J&R have more pumpkins and gianormous spaghetti squash than they could possibly use but maybe they have other ways to use them that I don't know about.

Ants are everywhere, bees are as busy as can beeeee. A fox came and took one of our chickens (the shyest one who was at the bottom of the pecking order) and I see deer everywhere now. We're all enjoying the harvests of the season at The Ranch and tonight's soundtrack will be Neil Young.

Karma Hits the Fan

2009-09-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

"The plumbing's backed up and flooded my apartment," JD emailed us from the ranch last Wednesday. He had just gotten back from a 10 day business trip to Japan. We were wrapping up our prolonged LA stay, having finished supporting LA's medical profession (nothing serious, thank you) and getting ready to return, too.

JD could hardly wait to give us the whole blow-by-blow, chunk-by-chunk.

"So, I get back from Tokyo 2 days ago and I'm driving back from LAX, but I'm so burnt out from the flight -- you know how it is -- that I get as far as Pismo and I'm too tired to keep driving so I spend the night at K's. I'm jet-lagged so I get up at 5 the next morning and head home and that's when I notice there's water or something on the kitchen floor. That's strange, I think, but get my new mop and mop it up. I'm on the computer for a while before I notice there's a funky smell...where's it coming from? That's when I step into the small bedroom. My feet sink into this gushy mess, it smells like Calcutta on a really bad day, I notice this brown sludge everywhere... It's gotten on everything on the floor and moved up from there...The bathroom! Shit! Literally. Everywhere. I think the sewage had exploded from the shower drain and toilet. I had to throw away the toilet lid and shower curtain..." JD was exploding with the force of the story.

"I can't really spray everything clean, because the plumbing's backed up, so I get all my towels and start mopping it up but I realize then I have no cleaners so I go to the store for some rubber gloves and Lysol or something. When I come back, I find out that while I was in town, R. had taken a shower and there was new shit all over the place!!"
"You mean, you didn't run upstairs and tell J & R about the plumbing as soon as you found out?"
"I told you, I was jet-lagged!"
We nodded, because we knew how that could be.

By the time we got back to the ranch, though, the plumber had already been there to fix the problem and the carpet people had re-carpeted the bedroom, so there was mostly just the mess in the bathroom to have to deal with. Big Dog and I, in our rubber gloves, were armed with bottles of bleach and other cleansers.

"I'll bet there are a few women who would say JD had this coming to him," I had to laugh. "Karmic payback time!"
"Yeah, I'm sure [his most recent ex-wife] would definitely be happy to hear he had so much shit in his life."
"The one before her, too, as well as all those on-line dating site women he's already gone through."

JD goes through relationships at a frightening pace. 4 marriages (or 3 depending on whether or not you counted the second "marriage" which was annulled) and god knows how many girlfriends... There's bound to be a bit of sewage back-up.

But why were we cleaning up the crap, too? What did we do to deserve this? (well...Big Dog, maybe. But not me!!)

Growing Up

2009-09-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

"So, are you going out for a birthday dinner?" asked Big Dog's sister, day before yesterday. I couldn't tell her that there aren't many restaurants I want to go to here. Tokyo really has spoiled me!

"Well, you can't be cooking on your own birthday!" she said, so I had to (somewhat sheepishly) tell her that no, I wasn't cooking. We were having leftovers instead.

I'm sure she was thinking "Leftovers! On your birthday?" but the truth of the matter is I've already had way more than my share of lavish celebrations. Today, it all feels a bit unreal when I try to remember aspects of my past life. Mountains of gifts from people I never met, didn't know...giant bouquets and lavish presents from staff...decadent dinners with friends... If I am eating leftovers on my birthday, it's only because my life needs the balance more.

So, there was no cake, no candles, no gifts this year but I am still filled with joy and wonder at growing up. I think that's pretty good!

In Withdrawal

2009-08-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

After about a week away from the ranch, my body goes through withdrawal. It really needs the air and water that we have up there. In the beginning, it wasn't too bad. We could come and go and while I got a bit depressed at the idea of "going," I'm such an "out of sight, out of mind" person that the farther I got, the less I thought about the place.

Now in our fourth year, that's no longer the case. Each time I leave, it gets worse, and it doesn't help that I go to places with terrible water.

On top of it all, I took my first pharmaceutical yesterday.

Earlier this year, a bone density scan showed that I have exceedingly LOW bone density. As in the dreaded osteoporosis. Not just osteopenia (I am getting all too familiar with these terms now. Ugh.) Five years ago, my bone density was off the charts, it was so dense. What happened? (They measure it differently now, so perhaps my bones were never as dense as the former numbers indicated...)

"Since you're still so young," said Dr. M "we should get you on bisphosphonates. They've had very good results..."

I detest the idea of pumping pharmaceuticals into my body, but I decided to try it for a while and see, since taking calcium, vitamin D and living a very active lifestyle weren't doing anything. The Doc also assured me that this particular drug did not damage the liver. (Ha! EVERYTHING damages the liver!) But most of all, I didn't want to shrink as I age. I'm small enough as it is. My grandmother was a tiny, tiny woman by the time she passed away in her late-90's. The last time I was in Japan, I was shocked to see how mother who had always been a larger woman than me was now a teeny little thing. My grandmother never had a single fracture and my mother has only had one broken bone in her whole life. I realize that Vanity is at the core of my decision to go with the drug and I don't like that, either. Nature has probably designed me to shrink as I age. (I am picturing myself literally disappearing as I grow old.) Is it good to go against nature? Should I become a tiny old woman or a dead not-so-old-but-normal-sized woman?

Plus now, I am feeling the pain of millions of uninsured Americans. These drugs are expensive!! You'd think I was buying street drugs! No, I bet street drugs are cheaper.

Some (most?) people are so casual about pharmaceuticals but for someone who's avoided them all her life, taking that little (and oh-so-expensive) pill yesterday was a very major step for me. I held it in my hand, wandering around the condo like a goofy Hamlet, wondering "to take, or not to take." In the end, economics won out.

"Well, you've already paid for it. You might as well."

Would I use the same argument if I had gotten a cyanide tablet during a moment of intense depression? I scare myself sometimes.

Not Eating (Much) in LA

2009-08-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

"I'm never going to do this again," huffed Big Dog, pulling out another box of produce from the truck.

We had just gotten to LA and were unloading what we had brought from the ranch, which in my case is always boxes and boxes of produce. (Big Dog's haul was his giant tripod, a rolled up sheet of foam we use for bedding when we "camp" in the Victorian and laptop.) Most of the produce he had given away to his family during our one-night stopover in Antelope Valley, but I still had a bag of peaches and nectarines and a box of vegetables. It always irritates him when I bring my own food supply from the ranch. I have no idea why. For me, it's produce that's NOT rotting away at the ranch and it gives me a few extra days before I have to start buying produce in Los Angeles.

"Just take your own stuff! Leave my junk alone!"
"We can't be dragging all this food around all the time!"
"Well, then, next time I'll stay at the ranch and you can come here on your own!"

We were getting testy. We were in LA.

Big Dog has no idea just how much I miss going out to the garden at the end of the day, picking what's ready and making dinner from whatever we have. (This year, we have really nice lemon cucumbers, too. Great for cold summer soups. Wish there were more ready when we were leaving. The few we had, we gave to his family since they are so delish.) He has no idea how much I dislike going to a supermarket for produce. (I must get my bike up and running again so I can to the Santa Monica farmer's market.)

I can think up all sorts of yummy things when I'm at the ranch. The last Sunday Night Ranch Dinner (a semi-regular event) turned into a spontaneous mini-chutney festival with my mint-ginger-chili chutney and peach chutney (for tandoori chicken) and T's plum sauce (for roasted pork.) We dipped garden-fresh veggies in the chutneys and when it came time for dessert, T put the leftover peach chutney into his plum sauce and we poured that over cheesecake for the most outrageously spectacular dessert sauce ever. It was sweet and sour and spicy and gingery and the perfect complement to the rich, creaminess of the cheesecake.

"I normally don't like cheesecake, but this sauce makes the whole thing completely different and really good!" Even Big Dog voiced a rare compliment.
"We should definitely market this!" enthused JD, the Master of Spin.
"But to an upscale market..." interjected JF, Master of Style from her tv craft show days.

But here in the condo, my drive to create has disappeared with my appetite. Am I like the painter who can't be inspired unless he has all of his paints in front of him? I sit in front of my laptop, instead, feeding my head with other people's creations, other people's dining experiences.

Here are a few of my favorite culinary bloggers. I don't know any of them personally, but they inspire and entertain me.
The Kitchen Wench is a hip, funny Korean-Australian lady. She's also an inspiration for all us non-professional photo buffs for the cool shots she takes with a little point-and-click cam.

I love blogs with great photos and Lucy is a professional photographer, but it's more than just pretty pictures. She's able to capture everything I love about France. Ooh lala!

I was impressed with Teenage Glutster's hunger for knowledge. He reminded me of a friend's young son who was a fan of the Food Network. When we got together, he'd ask me all sorts of food questions and would tell me what he was dying to try. (At 11, his #1 was caviar, I think.) I am sure it's my own strange bias, but I think many male food writers are too full of themselves. It's so refreshing to hear from one who is so honest and down-to-earth.

Ms. Oishii (who I am assuming is Asian-American) has great photos and seems to be part of an LA foodblogger's circle. (Is Teenage Glutster, too?) Her blog's about food AND travel.

Alice makes me homesick for Japanese food, but then I finally get off my butt and make myself a zaru soba. If only I could find a bit of yuzu... (My konbu dashi is good so the dipping sauce is tasty, but I am still craving real handmade soba noodles. Not the dried stuff that come in bundles. Ahh, my next challenge?)

SoCal fine dining?
Now... and then...

In Case You Were Wondering.....

2009-08-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

The gophers still appear to be winning. Almost all of the pretty yellow marigolds Daddy McC gave us in the spring have been munched. The Chattering Stakes in which I had so much faith have turned out to be expensive, noisy (and ugly) garden ornaments.

"I heard Juicy Fruit works," K, JD's latest "friend" told us a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, the gum clogs their system. I suppose they prefer the Juicy Fruit smell. So, we got a couple packs of the stuff and I began stuffing them down the gopher holes.

"There're gonna be a whole bunch of gophers sitting out here cracking gum," laughed Harley as I angrily rolled another wad of gum and looked for a point of entry.

Does the gum really clog their system? Do they really eat the stuff? Wouldn't they prefer Double Mint?

The bats can no longer get into our house (I believe) but were still roosting under the peaked corners of our highest eaves, resting, peeing and pooping between feedings. And since I'll try anything to get them to stop using our house as a public restroom, I latched onto the idea that fiber glass insulation is an effective repellent. As we tacked up bits of the stuff in the eaves, I thought about what irony it would be to fall from the roof and kill ourselves trying to get rid of bats.

As the summer wears on, more and more of the wild is coming down to our ranch. The creek is drying up, but the springs and pools draw the deer, big cats and foxes. Time to keep your eyes open!

Shelter

2009-08-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

Big Dog's a strange one. He can sound totally heartless when talking about "people." ("There're too many of us in this world, no one's going to end poverty or hunger until they do something about the population!" "I don't care if they're from Mexico or Minnesota, go home. California's got too many people already!") He can sound like he only cares about the animals and trees. And yet he's got a mysterious soft spot for his low-life friends.

These are the kinds of people everyone's already given up on. People who have seemingly let their lives turn into shambles through their own laziness, bad decisions (the obviously bad ones,) lack of discipline or fiscal responsibility. When they are friends of Big Dog, they will anger him to no end ("How can they be so stupid!" "Don't they care about themselves?!") but in the end, he will be there to help them out. When no one they know gives a crap anymore.

And thus, we welcomed Harley into our home.

Fact. Harley (not his real name) is five feet nothing and looked like a troll (until he no longer even had money for food.) He's been a bachelor all his life.
Fact. In what could be a scene from a movie, Harley's good-looking and popular older brother entrusts him with his '55 Chevy and goes off to Vietnam. The brother never comes back. The Chevy sits exactly where the brother left it -- for decades -- until earlier this year when Harley finally sells it for food money.
Fact. Harley's mother died in the late 70's or early 80's. Nothing in Harley's house has moved since then. Things come in, but nothing ever goes out. And when I say "hasn't moved" I mean it, literally. No vacuum has sucked up any dust, no broom has swept out any grub. Magazines and books grew like columns of trees in his living room. I've seen his couch slowly disintegrate.
Fact. When things break down, they stay broken. Harley's toilet started leaking one year. He stopped using the toilet. (Don't make me imagine what he used instead!!) Then he had to shut off water to the house entirely when something went wrong in the kitchen. (Now I really don't want to imagine what's going on -- or not!) He never took up Big Dog's offer to help him fix the problem.
Fact. Harley got fired a few years ago and never really bothered to find a new job (and back then he probably could have.) Earlier this year, his car got repo'd. Then they shut off his electricity. In the last few months, he has really struggled to scrounge up enough cash to feed himself, has lost so much weight he's as small as I am, but he still refuses to sell any of the books, CDs, records or unopened gifts stuffing his house.

"I'll start getting my pension at the end of September, so if I can just hang on til then..." Harley mentioned a while back, so Big Dog sent him an email telling him he was welcome to stay with us and maybe help with the ranch work. As soon as he was able to borrow money from another friend, Harley took the train and bus to San Luis Obispo.

"OK, Harley, I want you to shove all your clothes into the washer," Big Dog insisted when we got home. "The clothes you are wearing, too. You stink."
"Really? You know, I'm blessed with a really dull sense of smell," he laughed.
Big Dog and I looked at each other.
"I wouldn't call it a blessing," quipped BD.
"I wonder if that's why I couldn't find anyone to talk to on the way over."
I had to run from the laundry room. It seemed the odor coming out of Harley's duffle bag had an evil mind of its own.

Big Dog washed Harley's clothes three times. Then, the seat covers in our truck. Then he sprayed Fabreze into the truck and left the windows open.

"It still smells," we grimaced four days later.
"I don't know what else to do!" BD was exasperated.
"It's like that episode in Seinfeld!!"

After a week of twice daily showers, a working toilet and wholesome ranch food, Harley's smelling alright but friends and family still can't believe BD has brought him into our home. It's always easier to help out the poor and needy when they are far away.

A few of my friends are very involved with Tibetan refugees and make visits to refugee camps, have audiences with the Dalai Lama, etc. Others help build homes in El Salvador. One is with a group of middle aged tech guys, doing whatever they do, in Nigeria. I would much rather be there with them -- it's so glamorous, like jet-setting with Bono or something. But until I can learn about real compassion, joining them would be as hypocritical as spending a few dollars on a "stop poverty/hunger/infant mortality/etc." bracelet and walking by the old man with the "Homeless and Hungry" sign. Instead, we have taken him home. Here, he will be treated like the Dalai Lama. Even while we ask him to shovel a few piles of mulch around the ranch.

Not So Cocky

2009-08-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

One of the hens had gone broody, sitting on her eggs and fiercely resisting any attempt at relocation.

"We'd like to bring over a rooster," J said last week. "Snowflake's so determined to set anyway, and we thought we might as well increase our chicken population."
"My mom has a rooster and we're thinking of borrowing it," added J's now-fiancee (it's official!) R.

So Rooster Man arrived mid-week, in a little cage. He's a little pint-sized Casanova, too!

In Japan, we have an expression for someone who is uncharacteristically timid. We say she or he is "like a borrowed cat." Did Japanese have a habit of borrowing their neighbor's cats? And why? I have no idea, but a borrowed rooster is just as timid.

Will he get the job done? Will the girls like his company? (So far, they couldn't care less, it seems.) Will he ever make a sound? Once again, stay tuned.I think he's a hottie, but not being a hen..... There he is, in the back, looking a little lost. Or intimidated?

Hell Week...

2009-08-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

...wasn't so much hell week as it was Hell Weekend.

The early part of the week was spent taking care of our neglected land. Mowing, weeding, transplanting, tweeking... Dealing with the bats that still roost on our eaves, catching a couple of gophers (not at all a dent in the gopher problem, but I leave the dead gophers out as a macabre, if useless, warning) and dealing with the ants.

Ants are amazing creatures. They are organized and intelligent. They will "farm" aphids and scale bugs for the sweet sticky stuff they excrete. Some colonies are miles long. (Just found out about this. I also found out this summer that they smell like turpentine when squished. "What? You didn't know that?" asked Big Dog incredulously. "No. Who goes around smelling squished ants?") A few of our fruit trees were infested with these bug farms that made the leaves curl up and die.

"We have this, here." The helpful lady at Farm Supply showed us the ant poison you could spread around the trees. "But it IS poisonous. If you can find the nest, pouring boiling water into it works well. Or you could use Tanglefoot."

We opted for the sticky ant barrier. It's sticky and goopy and very messy, but at least we aren't putting poisons in the ground.

Then came Hell Weekend, otherwise known as Wood Chipping Weekend.

We had mountains of twigs and branches out in our pasture, collected over the last 3 years of pruning and general maintenance. They had been piled up against a hill until the late spring when a neighbor offered to bring his backhoe over so we could pull it away from the hillside for a burn. Well, we missed burn season (and I never wanted to burn those piles anyway -- too much smoke) and the piles were still all over the pasture, so we decided to rent a wood chipper. But first there were guests, and family visiting. Or getting the irrigation system in. Or packing for our trip north. Then, the trip itself. Funny, though, how you eventually run out of excuses.

"Just bring it back by 9am on Monday," the rental guys said as we rattled away with the chipper towed behind our truck. It was a one-day rental for the weekend, but 8 hours of operation for the one-day rate.

"Can we chip all the wood in 8 hours?" I wondered.
"It's going to take what it takes," sighed Big Dog.

I know now why most people don't do this at home. An industrial wood chipper is a very efficient machine, but the work is dirty and potentially dangerous.

"I look like I've been fighting with a wild cat," laughed Big Dog at the end of the second day, looking at the scratches all over his arms. At least he still had his arms!

Every time we stopped to take a break, we'd have to shower off the layers of wood dust. BLACK wood dust because some of the piles were already decomposting.

"I hate to think what's in my lung," I grimaced as I coughed, again. Somehow, that was much worse than all the scratches from the branches and bruises from bashing my arm against the machine as I chucked the piles of debris in.

The noise was horrific, too, and by the second day, I had added earplugs to my workman's outfit (shades, doo-rag, long, baggy pants.)

And then, there was the pressure of the eight hours. We worked with a rabid single-mindedness, chucking in load after load of debris as fast as we could, pushing them in with armloads of branches.

3 days later, with 8 hours and 10 minutes on the chipper, the 8 hills of branches and twigs have turned into 5 hills of mulch. Not the clean, even-sized mulch you buy at nurseries, but "mulch" the size of dust to long, stringy shreds to branch chunks 3 inches long. Will we shovel those mounds into the barn? Or will we just scatter the mulch over the pasture? Stay tuned.

Slice of Heaven

2009-07-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Loved the town, loved the landscape, loved the people...but, man, the weather!

Big Dog and I finally left Arcata on Thursday after boring each other with constant reminders that this was July, despite the freaking cold.

"It's the coldest summer on record!" locals told us, but locals are used to the cold and wet. By the time we drove out of there, we were ready for some warm, dry summer weather. (San Francisco, which is always my favorite place to spend the night, was also too cold and wet to fully enjoy.)

Back in Central California, I am blissing out on the stunning weather, the apricots that are still happening, the peaches, plums and nectarines that are coming into season... Enjoying a slice of heaven before Hell Week begins.

They're Here!

2009-07-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Just love the colors...

Oh, and we are just wrapping up Mirabelle Season. These amazingly tasty yellow plums ripen all at once. A very short season makes them even more delectable!

Picture Show

2009-07-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

A few visuals while I have my fast(er) internet connection...

Love the greeeeeeen!

The Periwinkle House (not so periwinkle in this photo)

Victorian Ladies...

Wildlife...small...

...and big...

A most cooperative model!

Funky Humboldt

Don't ask Big Dog

Ten Reasons to Love This Town

2009-07-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

I'd been to Arcata several times in my last incarnation (figurative, not literal.) Coming from Big Bad Tokyo, it seemed like the cutest, quaintest, teeniest town I ever visited. Now that I am spending so much of the year at The Ranch, where the nearest town is even smaller (but not nearly as cute or quaint) this place is bustling!

Aside from the fact that we have actual internet connectivity at a 21st century level, there are many reasons why I still love this place.

* It will always be Hippie Central
While some of the original flower children have "grown up" ("And a few have become thorns! Ha ha ha!" cackles Big Dog with glee) there is always an influx of newer, younger bohemians looking for that Utopia, keeping Arcata the most left-wing town in the U.S. (as far as I know.)

* Big Business (note capital letters) is not welcome here
"That's why the area remains depressed," bitch the old-timers who may have once been happy to panhandle for food money. "It's too anti-business here!" Yes, they burned down every McDonald's that tried to open shop in town until Mickey D finally got it. "You don't deserve a McDonald's!" they said in a huff on their way out. There IS a McDonald's out on the edge of town, but if you want burgers, you can get great ones at V&N's or Stars, so who needs terrible fast food? There are no Starbucks, no Barnes & Nobles, no Bed, Bath & Beyond, no Sears, no WalMart... I think the only franchise/chain outfits are Safeway, Longs, and a gas station or two.

* Everyone is Community Minded
Actually, the town is very supportive of its businesses. Everyone makes an effort to buy local. So if you have a unique product or service (or even a not-so-unique product or service) this is a great place to start. On our first night back, we met a young man in a local bar who told us about his upcoming mead business. "Mead? You mean like the beverage?" I asked. Sure, I read about it in old novels, but... He told us about how he's already gotten his honey sourced and his label designed. "It's going to be a honeycomb between two redwoods with a bee on top!" Sweet!

* Creativity Abounds
And they never put on that "I'm an artiste..." attitude. The first time I came here, I met a big group of artists. They were awesomely good, but many had day jobs as car stereo installers, sales clerks, etc. "I can't believe this!" I told Big Dog back then. "If these people lived in Tokyo, they would be the biggest sensation! They'd actually be rich, I think." Every small town has its group of artists, but the people here are really, really good. It must be the long, dark winters. Central California is just too nice most of the year to be sitting inside making art (as I am finding out very quickly!)

* Economically it's depressed, or is it?
"Any big business that set up shop here would be able to employ thousands!" bitch the pro-business minority. True. The small mom-and-pop businesses just can't compete that way. (Nor would they be able to compete in any way if some big box store came this way and actually made it, though that is highly unlikely.) There aren't a whole lot of jobs. No wonder so many people get involved in growing/selling pot. It's relatively easy to start up such a business, you will have lots of experienced people to help you, there's a very good market for the product, and, best of all, until it is decriminalized, the 420 business is tax-free! So, on the record, the median income here is pretty low, but in actuality, who knows. Students pay their way through college, couples buy nice homes with plenty of cash, etc. all without having to sell your soul. And most of them probably have prescriptions that allow them to grow their own anyway, so until they sell to non-prescription holders, it's all legal. ...Right?

* Materialism is the scourge
You won't know that there are any wealthy people here because no one wants to be perceived as materialistic. There are tons of junker cars, junker bikes, thrift stores. Everyone looks like they are wearing 30 year old clothing. (In my case, I really am!) Here, Big Dog and I are not the eccentric weirdos we are elsewhere.

* It's GREEEEEN
In every way. From the Green Party (Arcata elected the first-ever Green party city council majority in 1996 and was the first city in the nation to pass a law nullifying the USA PATRIOT Act) to its eco-consciousness to the land around, everything is green, green, green. It has the most amazing wastewater treatment system in the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, was the first municipality to ban the growth of any type of Genetically Modified Organism within city limits (with exceptions for research and education,) and has more hydroponic supply stores per capita than anywhere else (needs fact checking.) And there's been an on-going campaign to preserve the Headwaters Forest from logging for years.

* It's Young
More than 30% of the population are between 18 and 24, and the median age is around 26 years. The City Council, and at times even the mayor, is sometimes composed in part by college students. (There's a college student in the Council right now.) But more than actual chronological age, it's a youthful town. Or maybe I should say, ageless. My mother who came to visit a few years ago couldn't stop giggling over all the grey-haired "youngsters" skateboarding around town. We all think we're 18 here.

* It's got a Heart
And I don't mean compassion for the homeless, but a geographical heart. Most American towns no longer have a center. Arcata still has its Plaza and what an active plaza it is! From the weekly Farmer's Markets to the start of the annual Kinetic Sculpture Race to the Oyster Festival to the weekly protests to all the "freegans" just hanging out or sleeping, it is a plaza much like the zocalos of Mexico.

* The Local Baseball Team is named after one of my favorite foods
Arcata is home to the Humboldt Crabs, the nation's longest continuously operated semi-pro baseball team that's played every season since 1945! And they serve soy dogs at the ball park.

Okay. Now, here is one reason why I may not love this town as much in the years to come:
I see more and more people here who seem to have come only because of Arcata's cannabis reputation. They have no social or ecological awareness. They are disrespectful of others. They come here, live in the shrubbery by the freeway or in the Community Forest and leave behind tons of trash. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, grungy blankets. Their use-and-discard mentality has no place here. Somehow they think they belong because they don't work and don't own property. They should have stayed in Idaho...or Utah...or wherever.

The other reason why not to love this town? It's that four letter word that starts with R......

Behind the Redwood Curtain

2009-07-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

After a long, frantic week of socializing, visitors and tidying up the ranch, we escaped gorgeous, sunny Central California to arrive in misty, magical Humboldt.

Not only are we behind the Redwood Curtain, but shrouded in fog. We're very hidden here in Arcata, a pretty little town of fanciful Victorian architecture, colorful denizens and majestic redwoods.

I remember the greeting we got a few years ago, as we just arrived and were driving through downtown Arcata. At a stop sign, an old hippie stood in front of our truck and "flew" his glass pipe over the hood of our car. It was like a benediction.

"We're back in Arcata!" Big Dog and I laughed.

No such welcome this time, but I'm impressed with the creative men's fashions. Men in long, flowing black skirts, men in kilts and leathers, a guy with dots tattooed over his eyebrows... it used to be just flannel and dreadlocks.

Aside from the fun of being in a town that's sort of trapped in the 60's, it was also good to get away from the ranch. As much as I love it there and as much as I think it IS paradise, I've recently found myself becoming more...what? bourgeois?...when I stay there too long, much to my disgust. I'm getting way too protective of everything there. ("Don't hang your exercise equipment on the fruit trees, JD! We already lost one apple tree!" "The kids are leaving too much crap all over the place!" "Daddy McC shouldn't have called the sheriff on our neighbor! No one in this valley wants the law to show up on their property!") The Road to Satori takes a backslide.

So it's good to be here, in a completely empty house, sleeping on foam mats, having only an odd assortment of stuff left over from Big Dog's student days. Old T-shirts work well as pillowcases. Empty pie tins make decent plates.

"You guys are way minimal!" commented Big Dog's high school buddy, J., when we met him and his wife for dinner in San Francisco on our way up here.
"You guys are zen!" laughed his wife.
True, we don't have much at the ranch, at least not stuff, but I get really possessive about the trees, the hills, the land. When in fact, in this life, ownership is only an illusion. Nobody really owns anything and so thinking that you do only makes for unhappiness.

Like slack key wonder Makana said in Hawaii, "Access trumps ownership." You understand that when you let go.

Furry Friends

2009-06-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Gopher Wars still continue, though I think the gophers are winning right now. They have gotten several roses, geraniums, gazania clusters... We have not gotten a single gopher. Meanwhile, there are other battles with other critters: the little furry something chewing through the walls of Oak House in the back where the McCs live; the deer sisters who are coming into the pasture now that the horses are gone (more about that in a moment); the Terrible Seven chicken thugs tearing up the vegetable gardens, compost heap and anything else that catches their attention, the blue jays that eat the handful of cherries before we can get to them... We don't do anything about the big cats in heat, obviously (though it is one of the worst sounds ever -- like children being killed!) nor do I do anything about the lizards that keep eating my strawberries. Spiders and snakes, we like and leave alone. Best of all, the bats have found a new home, it seems.

Win some, lose some. Nature has a way of keeping you grounded. (No pun intended.)

Speaking of losing... We are losing some good friends from our valley.

Horse Girl (and her mom) who used to live on this ranch moved deeper into the valley last year, but they had kept their horses here. Now, Horse Girl's graduated from high school, spending the summer in Iceland with her father's family, then off to college in San Francisco in the fall. With all these changes, Mom decided to move to Lassen County. Her animals have already been sent to their new ranch, while Girl's horse, Miracle, is up for sale.

"It's not a good time to sell any horse," Mom complained several weeks ago when Miracle was still here. She was penned up in a tiny corral and we had been wondering what was up. "But that one has an eating disorder! She can't stop eating and now she's five hundred pounds overweight!"
"FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS!?" We laughed.
"Yeah, so we have her on a special diet of nasty pellets."
"Must be torture to be surrounded by all that yummy looking grass. If it were me, I'd risk possible electrocution on the fence to get at it." What's a little shock for a tasty treat?

But then, again, I'm BAD Dog. Good Girl Miracle hung in there and a few weeks later, she was back down to her old hefty self. But as of last week, still no takers.

"We found a farm for her. It's a farm for Haflingers," Mom mentioned to us the other day. "Guess it's our last resort if we can't sell her. She'll be happy there, surrounded by other Haflingers..."

We imagined something between a retirement farm and a half-way house for Overeaters Anonymous types.

Horse Girl and Mom still have a couple of weeks before they leave this valley for good, but they've taken Miracle to their place until then. I miss her and the way she'd nudge into me for another apple. I miss Mom's brown horse, the goofy Tanzer who would dance with me in the pasture, Pooka the Chihuahua who got eaten by a Big Cat, butt-wagging Magique, big fluffy (and sometimes dreadlocked) Patches and the rather scruffy Scruffy. And I'll miss Horse Girl who is off to a Big World with Big Adventures and Mom, the Natural Born Caregiver.

Magic Show

2009-06-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

Life's mysteries and miracles are often deceptively simple.

A sperm and an egg.
A seed and a bit of water.

I am fascinated by what you can create out of the most basic ingredients. Take the lowly soybean for example. The Japanese have been able to take that bean and turn it into completely new products, with the addition of only one or two other elements. Soy sauce and miso (which are completely different) only have soy and salt. Tofu and all of its variants all come from soy and nigari.

In the West, we have the Magic of Bread.

My Great Bread Making Challenge began last summer, during my Hooked on Fermentation days. I wanted to recreate those beautiful baguettes and rolls and batards from the streets of Paris. I wanted to delve into the mysteries of the levain batard. But last year was kindergarten compared to this year. I attempted a sourdough starter that never really started up and all of my breads were made with commercial baker's yeast. Then, I found Nancy Silverton's "Breads From the La Brea Bakery" book at a thrift shop.

This is serious magic. If you follow her instructions for a 14-day sourdough starter, you will be using a truckload of flour, most of which you throw out. I have never been able to throw out food ("Yeah. I know. I've eaten stuff that's gone bad more than once," grumbles Big Dog.) Nor can I ever follow instructions to a T. I read her instructions and then, with her instructions in mind, did what I wanted to.

While waiting on my starter, I tried my friend J's No-Knead Bread. It uses commercial yeast, but you mix up the yeast and water and flour, then let it rest overnight. I let mine sleep all night and then most of the next day, waking it up to bake as boules in the evening. They came out better than any bread I had ever made!

Was that it for my Challenge? No way! I wanted to see how my sourdough starter breads would turn out and I've been baking every other day since then. Maybe if I followed Ms. Silverton's instructions, I would have awesome bread without all of this experimenting, but that's just not me. (I would also make a terrible cookbook author because I never measure and never write anything down.) I just take some starter, add water, flour and salt. Sometimes I'd knead it, sometimes not. Sometimes the dough sits in the fridge overnight, other times not. Lately, I'm able to get pretty consistently good results no matter what I do. In fact, I think it's better than any bread you can buy in our area. (Even the DogFather, who stayed with us for a while, was disappointed in the farmer's market bread after days of eating mine!)

Tasting the end product is only part of the appeal for me. In fact, wanting decent bread to eat was merely the launching point. What's really gotten under my skin is the magic of it all. It's not the "Presto!" magic of magic tricks, but the Very Real Magic of nature and it holds me captive every time.

Maybe when I master this, I'll take on the Cheese Making Challenge. Let's see, I'll need a couple of goats and...

Sleeping with Linda Blair

2009-05-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

That's what it's like sometimes. Big Dog has such restless body syndrome that sharing a bed with The Dog is like sleeping with Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

"The power of Christ compels you!" I feel like shouting at the twitching, flailing, jumping, levitating, restless form. Especially if it's been spinning around like that for hours.

Sometimes the flailing arms will hit me in the head. Sometimes the twitching legs will kick me.
Maybe I need some Holy Water. Maybe I need to stab him with a crucifix.

Maybe we need to find separate beds. Or better yet, bedrooms.

Plotting and Planting

2009-05-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they garden.

J&R (that's "Glass Guy and his Girlfriend") have expanded their vegetable garden by almost 100% this year and it is giant. They labored for days in the planning and preparation -- digging, raising, installing gopher barriers (and more traps), planting and mulching with hay. Everything is labeled and looks very pretty. This year, they also have their extensive irrigation on timers.

They're quite academic about it all and seem to have done a lot of reading on "How to Grow Big and Tasty Vegetables."

The McC's, on the other hand, have little plots scattered throughout different parts of their zone. A bed of strawberries here, a forest of artichokes there, an L of berries, a plot of tomatoes and squash. Different stuff growing in different spots. Daddy McC fenced off this formerly untamed field for their garden and built a cute wooden gate with cut-out hearts. (At first, it even had a lovely stained glass circle in the middle but it kept falling out and breaking.)

Mine is even more scattered. It's looks like I have no idea what I'm doing. There are tomatoes, squash, peppers, peas and an assortment of greens in the regular vegetable plot but there are also more of them in the fringes of my strawberry bed. And this year, there are several containers growing vegetables around the house. It's a Hedge Fund of sorts.

"It's an experiment to see where the veggies grow best," I tell the curious.

The chickens are quite a nuisance. The Original Three weren't interested in pecking at the vegetables, but the Voracious Seven who are here now are tearing the place apart! They've made a total mess of the compost pile, pecked all of Mommy McC's spinach, lettuce and my chard. J&R already have their garden fenced. I haven't gotten around to fencing mine yet and have upside down gopher cages protecting my babies from the Terrible Peckers but wonder how long it will take before they figure out a way to lift those cages off...

Eyeful of Iris

2009-05-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

Irises are a-bloomin' all over the ranch, in every size and color.

Flowers are so erotic. And why shouldn't they be? They're the sex organs of a plant, after all.

I laugh at Big Dog (and my nephew, the Pupster, and our old friend RB, and....half a dozen other guys...) and their love of trains. "It's so Freudian! Guys are attracted to phallic shapes! And don't you just love to watch those trains go through tunnels? Ha ha ha!" But women are drawn to the vulval, like these gorgeous flowers. Whether you realize it or not, we're all gay.

News from the Front

2009-05-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

I may not be winning the Gopher War, but I think I am making headway in holding my own. The Solar Powered Gopher Repeller, a plastic stake about a foot long that makes this strange high-pitched giggling sound (like those laughing gophers in Caddyshack) seems to be working!

We put it in just before leaving the ranch for several weeks and when we came back, all the new gopher holes were on the perimeter. You could almost see the active area for this Repeller! For a while, though, I think the Mama Gophers were actually drawn to the noise and I was able to trap a couple more right by the device. Now, I have a new type of Solar Powered Repeller (different sound -- more like an electronic beep) in my rose bed which was just out of range of the other.

Which is all great news because Big Dog managed to pick up a shotgun from his dad's house and I really didn't want him using it. The rifle was bad enough.

"We have gophers in our yard, too! For the first time!" exclaimed T, wife of Big Dog's high school buddy, B, who made a surprise visit last weekend. She winced when we talked of trapping and shooting and I knew she was in her First Year of Gophers.

"Wait til the third year or so. You'll be shooting them, too!" we laughed.

T&B live in a nice residential neighborhood in San Diego and they never had gophers before.
"Now everyone's got them!"
"Was there a new development outside of town that destroyed their natural habitat?"
"I don't think so. We think maybe it's the water shortage."

All over Southern California, there is major water rationing. A bit late, we'd add. All the new residents, with all their water needs, plus the traditional lawn yard has sucked up all the ground water and then some. Limiting watering to the evenings isn't going to solve the problem. And now, it seems, it's driving the gophers to where there IS water. Where there's water, there's yummy green food.

"I heard that you can kill them with saltine crackers," T shared. "They can't drink water so that extra salt dehydrates them."
Sounds cruel...but effective?

But the best Gopher Extermination Plan was the one my friend told me about:
"I saw a clip about a year ago where some guys were getting rid of gophers using a high powered vacuum thing. They stick the hose in the hole and vacuum the bastards. The clip showed an amazing amount of them being whacked into the gadget," she e-mailed.

Now, where do you find this Gopher Vacuum? And once the vacuum is full, then what?

Dispatches from the 20th Century

2009-05-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

Life on The Ranch is often an 18th century experience, but regarding communication and information, we are definitely 20th century. We get radio, some cell phone connectivity and dial-up internet -- at the amazing speed of 28800 baud! Kids today probably don't know what a baud is. Or maybe even dial-up. We have 2 barely watchable terrestrial tv channels, but they'll soon disappear, too.

It's too easy to make my lack of a real internet environment an excuse for not blogging, but in reality, I just didn't feel like writing much the last month. After a couple of sleepless nights, though, I am feeling like updating this thing. Finally.

Just Make It!

2009-04-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Spending time away from The Ranch... Semana Santa with the DogFamily...
(Actually, the DogFather is recuperating from surgery so Big Dog and I were there for the initial post-op home care.)

"Wow! Look at this!" I squealed as I opened an ad from the local Hispanic supermarket. "Pasilla peppers at 3lbs for a dollar! We should go get a bunch and make chile rellenos for Easter!"
The DogFamily's roots are in the Deep South, not Mexico. I don't think they ever had chile rellenos for Easter and I have never heard of it being a particularly Easter-ish dish in Mexico, either, but why not! After all, it's almost an egg dish...

Big Dog and I love real Mexican food. Not the mostly goopy, heavy cheese-laden stuff of the American (Mexican) chain restaurants, but real Mexican food. Tiny two-bite tacos...tiny, fluffy tamales with their tiny hidden treasures...chile rellenos stuffed with queso fresco or queso seco, in a brothy tomato sauce. I also love the light, ungreasy pozole of Jalisco and Michoacan. For all the Hispanic roots and influences of SoCal, it can be tough finding the real thing. If you want it, you gotta make it.

Luckily, Lancaster (CA, not PA) has a huge Hispanic population and has what I think is the best Hispanic supermarket. Vallarta is like being in Mexico -- just not the little fishing village we know. It's giant and cosmopolitan and has nearly everything you could want from South of the Border. Mounds of dried chiles of all sorts, fresh ones, piles of regional produce, a big carniceria and pescaderia, a deli with salsas and ceviches and regional cheeses, and even a food court (tacos were pretty good, but I will never buy another tamale there. Sorry. After those awesome handmade tamales from The Tamale Couple, I don't think I can eat any made in the U.S.)

My chile rellenos approximate those we have in Jalisco. They are also a bit labor intensive, but definitely worth it. (My raviolis are not -- they are not much better than the pre-made fresh ones.)

1) Roast peppers. Doing this in advance makes the rest of the process more relaxed. Grill them on the barbie, broil them in an oven. However. Get them nice and roasty so that the skins peel easily. Don't try to peel them while they are hot unless you're that kind of person.
2) Stuff the peppers. Oh. Before that, you'll want to de-seed them. The local loncherias aren't too phobic about complete seedlessness, so I wouldn't be either, but the seeds and spines (the part attaching the seeds to the pepper) are where the heat is. Pasilla peppers are generally pretty mild, but I find that one in every 5 or 6 to be quite fierce, and since I make mine for children and the elderly (and am pretty compulsive) I tend to go for total de-seeding. I like to keep the top part of my peppers intact (the stem is useful in moving the peppers around later) so I make a little slit in the side, but others may want to just lop off the top, pulling the seeds out. Next, you stuff the peppers with cheese.
3) A word about cheeses. Chile Rellenos in the US usually have some kind of jack cheese in them. For me, they are bland and heavy at the same time. I prefer a combination of queso fresco and queso seco. Fresco for the light-and-creaminess, seco for the sharp, salty flavor. Mexicans are proud of their many regional cheese, as they should be, so try a few and see what tastes best for you. Use a toothpick to keep the slit closed. This is hard because the roasted peppers are pretty fragile, but necessary if you want any cheese left in the peppers after frying.

You can do all of those steps in advance. Now, it's time to fry them up.
4) Make the batter. Whip up some egg whites til stiff, them mix in the egg yolk.
5) Dredge the stuffed peppers in flour, drag them through the whipped up egg batter and then into the pan of hot oil (canola oil is a good choice.) Fry one side, flip over and fry the other. You just need to fry them long enough to brown the battered part. When done, lift them out carefully, drain on lots of paper towels. If you've done them right (having the oil at the right temperature for frying is important) they will be light and airy like a souffle. Never dense and heavy and greasy.

I've been served chile relleno in all sorts of ways. With beans and rice and salsa (on the chile), wrapped in a soft tortilla (once in a beautiful handmade blue corn tortilla), or swimming in a light tomato broth. I like this best. The simplest way is to make a chicken broth, add some tomato sauce, oregano and pepper. It should be sort of watery. You can spoon in some Mexican rice and eat it with the chile, too. You should always have to have a pile of warm, soft corn tortillas to go with the chiles.

Mmm-mmm good! Or as they say down there, Mmmuy Rrrrricos!!

Gopher Wars

2009-03-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

They have begun.

The gopher problem is nothing new. When we first got to The Ranch 3 years ago, I saw little earth mounds here and there and wondered what that was all about. City girls don't know much about anything!

And in my blissful ignorance, even after I found out what those mounds were, I didn't worry much about gophers.
Not when crops began disappearing from the veggie garden.
Not when some beautiful plants disappeared from our garden.
Not even when we discovered that the smallest cherry tree in our orchard was not sickly or dehydrated but a victim of the gophers.

"It's like Elmer Fudd!" Big Dog would tell his friends in amazement. "You'd be sitting out there, enjoying the view, when you'd see a plant move. As you look closer, you see the plant disappear into the ground, inches at a time and go, 'What the...'"

It was still sort of amusing.

Glass Guy and his girlfriend put in a giant vegetable garden last year and that's when the Gopher Wars started simmering. First he tried Macabee Traps. They work but are a gruesome thing to deal with when they do. Then, he tried flooding them out of the tunnels but the gophers were faster. Next, he tried pumping butane into the ground and igniting it. We got some singed fur smells and a call from a neighbor who was freaked out about our possibly doing fireworks during a bone-dry summer. ("The ground lifted up in a wave!" Big Dog said excitedly -- I was not there for the WMD show -- as he sang John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom Boom" to himself.) The gophers just dug new tunnels, so he got one of those black box traps and caught a few. I have no idea how many gophers live here, but I am sure our efforts amounted to less than a drop in the bucket.

This year, I have enlisted in the Anti-Gopher Campaign. I still believe they have as much right to be here as we do, if not more, and if there were a way to just send them packing, I would do it. I am tired, though, of plants being destroyed randomly and I am sick of our 30-hole rough course that was once a lawn. (I am going to turn the former lawn into a nice landscaped garden with everything gophers hate to eat!) And I am concerned that they are burrowing from the yard to the ground under the house and will soon make the whole house list.

In addition to the Glass Guy's failed methods, I can tell you what else doesn't work:
1) Those gopher repellent pegs sold in garden supply catalogs. A friend who visited last summer took pity on us and bought me a pack. Since it was close to the end of the season, I didn't try them out until this spring. They are smelly pegs filled with castor oil or something, but it's not Gopher Kryptonite! They'll just dig them out of their tunnels like we get rid of the trash. I am thinking of sending this photo to the manufacturers.(the peg is that thing in the lower left corner)

2) Garlic. I had read that garlic also works as a repellent so I bought a huge bag at Costco and began dropping them into the gopher tunnels, making sure to mash them a bit for extra odor. I think it was only a nuisance for the gophers, but it's become an afternoon ritual for me to go around poking garlic in the many gopher holes around our house.

I am on Item Number Three at the moment: a solar-powered Chattering Stake driven into the ground. The noise is supposed to mimic their "danger" signal. We'll see if it works, but I have my doubts.

Poisons are out for us. We don't want anything polluting our water source. Traps do work, but it was horrible when I actually caught one by its leg in a Macabee trap and had to ask Big Dog to deal to it. All choices, including letting it go, were terrible.

Big Dog who "battles" nature in the European tradition has taken to shooting them with his rifle, but they are quick and fearless.

"I was so close! Mere inches away..." he mutters. "My god, he's coming back out again!"
BD aims and shoots. He misses, again, but the flying bullet doesn't seem to scare the gopher one bit. It keeps on shoveling dirt out of its hole.
"Wait til I get my hands on Dad's shotgun!"

The gophers have turned us into that Bill Murray character in Caddyshack!

I don't want a gopher massacre nor do I want lead all around our house, so I am secretly hoping that his dad's shotgun is long gone. More openly, I am hoping that the Chattering Stake actually works!

Spring in Eden

2009-03-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the Ranch on Sunday, via the Antelope Valley. There was some strange weather going on -- a storm front moving southeast -- with dark clouds shifting the light over the high desert and even snow or hail up through the Tejon Pass. But it's spring and even the desert was abloom with wildflowers.

At the ranch, it's just outrageous. Everything is growing in a mad rush, as if the plants are afraid they'll be left behind. The famous poppies of the Antelope Valley are dainty orange truffles but here on the Central Coast, they are the super-sized globes. It's the earliest we've been here and I'm enjoying flowers I'm seeing here for the first time. Crocuses and daffodils, peach and nectarine blossoms which are a gorgeous deep pink. Usually, by the time we get here, the only blossoming fruit trees are the apples. Right now, they are bare.

It is good to be here. Nature is a healing mother and with all the emotional upheaval of the past few weeks, I need Mommy! Although I am stiff and sore, bruised and blistered from a full day of weeding and gardening (and slipping and hitting my tailbone) my soul feels like it's in intensive care.

Why I can't blog for a while

2009-03-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

I am sorry.

I was working on my post about slack key guitar (I love it!) and Hawaiian music and Makana, a slack key whiz and a beautiful soul who I got to know more on this trip to the Island... then I get an email from my best friend in Tokyo about her mom passing away. Then the next day, another email from a client/friend whose father passed away... and then I flew to LA where I couldn't get online anywhere and just when I got the problem solved, receive another email from my friend's niece telling me he may have weeks, MAYBE DAYS before his body shuts down from the effects of cancer.

He was only supposed to be suffering from back pain! or neck pain! or whatever it was! Now, he's been rescued by his nieces (people with children can not imagine how much we childless adults love our nieces and nephews) and is in a care facility in Berkeley.

I've never been into organized anything in general and organized religion in particular, but a large part of faith is also cultural and so beyond my belief in a "life force" (which I believe is both Divine and divine) I am probably a very good Buddhist who ultimately believes that life is an illusion and all things must pass. We are supposed to experience death and parting stoically, but right now, I just want to hit somebody. I want to break windows. Maybe smash my laptop. Didn't they used to kill messengers of bad news?

I just need some space.

And time.