What saves you?

Earth, dance, music, and sun

I’m stuck in hellsville again where I both “can’t think of anything to write” and have so much I could write that I can’t select a topic, and I slide helplessly into analysis paralysis, where I generally cast about in misery until I can’t bear it any longer. Then I shut the computer, stand up, and go about my day with a terrific painful sense of utter loss. When I succeed in writing—anything at all, shite or no—I feel better. Therefore, I’m determined to simply write today, and to hell with the result.

I’m seated in my breakfast nook with both windows open on the city. I’m listening to Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece,” utterly beautiful, painfully so. A siren moans in the distance. Ravens caw from the trees, and tires on the road rasp by in their noisy, oddly-high-pitched way. Small birds are twittering from the few trees, seagulls cry as they soar overhead. It’s Sunday morning, it’s early June, and even though most of my garden is still covered in concrete, the bits I have freed have growing things upon them which are responding beautifully to my care.

I went to my Guido Street house the other day, the house I’m renting, and the gardens were so sad. It’s clear the tenants aren’t watering, though they said they would. I had called a few weeks ago to say I’d come by and water, and they hurriedly said, no, they would, and of course, they have not. The young avocado is dropping leaves, the young fig is parched, but standing courageously, patiently waiting for attention. The hummingbird sage has died, and the garden is showing signs of dogs running rampant over the beds. We had said “no dogs” in the listing, but our tenant’s dog is not a dog at all, it turns out, but an “emotional support animal” in the eyes of the law—a being with protected rights.

Now, there’s a second dog they’re fostering. We’ve told them, find a home for the second dog, stat. I sent my gardener Bernardo to water on Friday, and I’m installing an irrigation system this month.

Here in my cement garden at my new place, I have punched holes in the stuff to plant a handful of trees: a Fuyu persimmon, a Violette de Bordeaux fig, an improved Meyer lemon, and a Persian mulberry (because how could I resist, with a name like that. So romantic.)

In the front, I’ve planted a Pacific madrone and a pink-flowering California buckeye. Also, a manzanita that is growing so slowly it’s killing me, a ceanothus (aka California lilac) that is also emerging at a glacial pace, a desert olive, a mountain mahogany, and a native hawthorn.

Yesterday, I visited my friend S.’s garden in Concord, where 12-foot hollyhocks with raspberry-red blooms wave in the breeze wafting in from the Carquinez Straits. She also has a bunch of self-seeding cardoons sporting electric-violet blooms. I told her about the sea of cement. She said, Remove it. Remove it, and mulch like crazy. The earth is dead under there. The microbes can’t live. Free the earth.

She said I don’t need a plan. I can just remove the cement, mulch the ground, and think about what I want to do next. Let the earth breathe. Let the earth recover. Do it this favor. Also, she mentioned that concrete is so hot… and yes. We’re here in summer. I’m extremely lucky to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, close enough to the water that I have seagulls visiting me here. That means that in addition to the maritime effect, I have our special, consistent, dear bank of fog nestled up to our coastline almost every evening, sometimes all day long, as was the case yesterday, and it’s a boon, I tell you. As the earth warms, and records shatter daily, I’m deeply grateful to our fog that delivers reliably cool mornings and evenings.

I’ve planted Channel Island mallow against the back border, and it’s already taller than I am. I’ve planted an unruly herb garden dominated by leaf celery, where sage, chervil, and organo compete, and where mint is already (predictably) jumping the bounds of the confines of broken concrete chunks I placed around the bed. I planted a baby California Live Oak in the back corner, and I’ve nestled a couple of sprigs of geranium picked on my walks into the earth near the oak to see if they’ll root. I have a Roger’s Red grapevine that’s only a foot tall, but will be great on the ugly chain-link fence when it takes off, and alongside the house, in a narrow patch of exposed land, I’ve planted coffeeberry (‘Eve Case’), rue, rosemary, two sages, and lemon verbena.

All of this sounds promising, but when I look out the window, I’m awash with a wave of helplessness. There’s no two ways about it: I must remove the concrete. The earth is crying out for me to do so.

As I type, I’m listening to a Spotify playlist humorously called “Vegetables” by a British substacker named Mark Diacono who writes “Garden to Table” and recently published a book called “Vegetables.” This is a list of music he listened to while writing the book. Turns out, I did “fancy a listen,” and it’s great—meaning, eclectic, interesting, gentle, and full of gems. Music is so personal, and it’s hard to find playlists I like. This one is a keeper—so I’m passing it on to you in hopes that you enjoy it too.

I didn’t mean to write about my garden again. There is so much else to write about, and quite possibly more important things. Things I really need to delve into and sort. But, how can I not write about the garden when I hear the birds going about their business in the urban jungle on this Sunday morning in June, when I see and feel the day’s early sun warming the bits and patches of soil trying to recover from decades of neglect. A blanket of fog still lies on the bay and wraps the city of San Francisco in its embrace. But, here in Oakland, the sun has broken through. It’s fresh and bright, with birdsong and hope in the air.

The best part? I wrote, something, anything, and now I can go dance. Now I’ll don a new dress I found at the thrift store, a sweet little LBD that drifts low on the shoulders, grab my fraying tango shoes, and set off for the Empanada Milonga in a sweet little stone church in neighboring Berkeley, California. Suleika Jaoud, in her Substack, delivered today’s prompt: What is saving you? What gets you through life, through the tough patches? I realize now I’ve answered that prompt. It’s the garden, the birds and the sun and the birdsong, and the earth, and the growing things, and tango, and music—now, it’s ‘Thank you’ by Bonnie Raitt, and oh yes, this gets me through. Thank you.