Some photos

Today I am posting a few photos from around the garden. I feel a bit silly posting photos of our garden, but there are some quite pretty things to share and sometimes it is nice to see these things instead of just read about them.

In an attempt to eat in season (or at least buy in season), I've begun freezing in-season fruits to use in the off seasons. Below is a collection of apples and various berries: I took a photo because I thought the array of colors was beautiful.


My mom came over and said: Oxalis? That's a weed! I guess one woman's weed is another woman's treasure. Below is one of the two Oxalis plants I bought at the Horticulture Society sale.


Lavender on the window sill. We've got quite a bit of lavender from the six plants in the garden, so I've been placing it around the house in champagne glasses and mason jars.


'Champagne Bubbles' poppy cultivar. These remind me of the Newnham College garden at Cambridge: the poppies brought such light to the landscaped spaces. The pots these guys are planted in were created on day on a whim. I decided to decoupage some old black plastic pots (the kind that you buy plants in) with The Independent, and then touch them up with a bit of paint. I think they turned out quite fun.


Some lettuce in the winter vegetable garden. Newspaper makes a great mulch AND it's a fabulous way to recycle in your own backyard!


Sugar snap peas growing on the north side of the house. I built the trellis from some sticks I found in the yard and cotton string. It's not the prettiest, but it is working quite well.

Linaria reticulata ('Flamenco'): I bought these at Sumida a few weeks ago and added them to the garden at the side of the house. They do not have a lot of foilage but simply burst into magenta and butternut yellow, so they fit nicely with the bunches of cabbage, kale and leafy herbs scattered throughout.

the first rain

I've begun a book called Botany in the Field (by Jane Scott). It was published in 1984... but I bought it for 2 dollars at the book sale and I don't think that our basic understandings on botany have changed that much in the past 25 years. I quite like what Scott says in the opening chapter. She says: 'among the special appeals of botany is the fact that plants, unlike animals, do not vanish at our approach. Yet they do move in time, shifting images with the revolving seasons like a slow-motion kaleidoscope, as bright fruits replace delicate flowers and the pervasive green of summer explodes into autumn's fire.'

Today I began planting our winter garden. This included a trip to the local nursery and a long chat with the owner about how best to (organically) amend the soil to yield the best crop. I even brought in a soil sample to test and get specific advice about. It's so lovely how persons in this field are (or at least appear to be) so willing to share their knowledge.

Another bit of writing that I want to share; this one is actually a refrain that we sing at church when we take the wine and bread: 'Laudate dominum omnes gentes alleluia!' It means: Praise the Lord all peoples, Alleluia' I find that singing in Latin is quite grounding, espeically during communion. It is a subtle reminder of the Saints who came before and of the two thousand years contained within the ritual.

Today we had the first rain of the season; it was light but so lovely. I found myself strangely aware that this was the first rain I've seen in this country in a year and a half. I think I'd forgotten that Santa Barbara is not a land of perpetual summer. Perhaps I developed a bit of an image reflecting that idea during my time away in a land of (seemingly) perpetual winter. The rain today was very, very nice. I love this time of year and the dampness and the gloom and the chill in the air. The sound of rain hitting the roof and the crunch of leaves under foot; I think that maybe autumn is the season that lends itself most willingly to a sense of serenity and calm.

Borrowing from others

Today I am going to borrow from others.

First: 'Je te manque?' in English this mean 'do you miss me?' or more literally 'am I missed by you?' We were writing sentences on the board in french class using the verbs manquer à and plaire à and a boy wrote 'je te manque?' For some reason that struck me: how often is that actually asked: do you miss me? Perhaps it is just me, but I feel like it is silently considered a lot more often than it is actually said. Je te manque? Oui, oui, tu me manques.

Second: I picked up a book at the Planned Parenthood charity book sale called The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. It is a reflection about her experience becoming a member of the Benedictine order. In the preface she discusses a process of reading called lectio divina, which I think sounds quite good. She decribes the term as meaning: 'an attempt to read more with the heart than with the head ... a slow meditative reading, primarily of the scriptures, lectio respects the power of words to resonate with the full range of human experience'. I don't have any more to comment on it, I simply thought it worth sharing.

Ces choses que j'ai appris.

Topic one: little trees.
Today I bought a dwarf pomegranate tree. That makes my collection of little trees two. I also have an Australian tree fern growing in the shade of my patio... it will get bigger, but for now it is still young. I figure by the time it is big enough to demand placement in the earth, I'll have moved to a more permanent location... or not, I guess. Regardless, I have developed a profound fondness for my small trees. I never realized how much one could fall in love with flora... I often sit at my desk and day-dream about my plants. J'adore mon jardin!

Topic two: autumnal equinox
So, the autumnal equinox is this Monday...and I think that's pretty exciting. Just in case you were wondering, "On a day which has an equinox, the centre of the Sun will spend a nearly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth and night and day will be of nearly the same length."

Topic three: Picasso in Santa Barbara
If you happen to be a Santa Barbarian (or will be in this town in the next few months), you should pop into the SBMA to check out the exhibit of Picasso's drawings. It is always so much fun to see works in graphite or charcoal or ink done by artists whom we typically think of in oils or acrylics. I think it is easy to create an image of an artist in our heads based on one or two career-defining works... and thus it is both educational and fascinating to see what she or he has done in various media and/or across years. So, Picasso at the SBMA, toally worth seeing.

Today, today.

It is the end of yet another summer weekend in Santa Barbara (some hold to the belief that summer ends with Labour Day... I choose to believe that the end comes at the autumn equinox, September 21ish. Why would anyone admit to the earlier date?)

I've begun my drawing class: so far we've drawn lines and shapes (focusing on positive and negative space). It is quite nice to start at the beginning, at the basics. I had forgotten how dramatically the practice of art can alter ones perception of the world. I sat on the couch in my room this evening, listening to melodious sounds from Portugal, and tried to see the Spanish moss on the patio for its negative space. It tried to see not one continuous shape cascading in tendrils from the place where it hung, but hundreds of tiny shapes dancing about amongst the tendrils. When I looked further into the yard, I saw the sky as a shape bound by trees and structures; for a moment that huge, visually endless expanse was a form that could be rendered. How does it all work? I wondered.

Try it sometime: look for the negative space in the world.

I spent today in the garden... I have a bit of a sunburn to show for it. I've started several plants from seed, and some of them needed to be transferred from there little bins of moss into larger pots of soil. I quite like the process: handling something so delicate, something so mysterious as a seedling. The experience reminded me of certain good qualities of life, but what these are I cannot quite say.

In sum: it was a fine summer weekend in Santa Barbara.

from the other side

Dear friends,
After a brief hiatus--and significant thought--I have decided to blog once again.

So, to begin here is a brief update:
1. I am back in Santa Barbara, working for a small, local company
2. I started back at city college yesterday in French 103. I will start a drawing class on Saturday.
3. I am living with Laura and we have occupied ourselves with a number of home and garden improvement projects these past two months: I've since learnt how to re-caulk a bathtub, how to set gopher traps, and all about fungi that attack peppers and tomatoes.
4. I've decided to stop supporting the large-scale dairy industry (it's not as ridiculous as it sounds... I don't think). It is actually a bit of an adventure because it means learning to use many more goat products and soy-based products. And it feels good to know that I am 'voting with my dollar' every time I decide what to buy and what not to buy.

So that is that.

Something to read and ponder and maybe become disappointed about: Drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara

Something a bit serendipitous, I think: today at the farmer's market I bought a bunch of dime-sized white flowers with great green stems. The lady whom I bought them from used a bit of newspaper to gather the great green stems in preparation for the journey home. When I arrived back at the Portola Place and unwrapped my flowers, I gleefully discovered that the florist had wrapped them in the crossword puzzle page of the LA times. As I cut the stems and placed the blooms in jars and vases around the house, I concluded with confidence that today fate was on my side. I spent the second half of the evening working on the puzzle.

And... Henna! A friend from India offered to do my henna and so of course I said yes! The first photo is a bit awkward, but I think it shows the lovely designs quite well. The second is henna + mushrooms that were growing in the damp shade of the chamomile plant.

jumpers for books

Stuff: Whence does it all come?

Packing is a task that seems to be complained about more often than praised... it is viewed as a chore, really. But to tell the truth, it is one of my favorite activities. I always get excited about packing, so I usually start a week or two too early. This is especially true of the process when the end goal is a drastic move. Before moving to the UK I had a garage sale and ended up selling or giving away a third of what I owned: there is just something good about starting new, fresh. Something good in shedding off the frivolous stuff that has piled up, and giving it to someone who might actually want or use it. There is something good in the limits enforced by a move: they cause one to part with material items to which an attachment would have been (unjustly) justified in other, less transient circumstances. Something good in a move.

With this move I have, likewise, created four piles: 'recycle', 'charity shop', 'Cambria', and 'Emmanuel Road house'. (The Cambria pile contains various items that might be of use to her in London, and will make their way south on Saturday). It has been good to fill these piles: I feel like I am leaving behind little bits of my physical existence in this place and taking back with me only the items that have meaning and/or use. (But no doubt my cases will still be heavy: the category that always seems to win the meaning/use game is books. I have found myself sacrificing jumpers for French histories).

So, the main conclusion of this post is thus: packing is good. It is good to once in a while be forced to lift and shift all of our physical belongings, to remind us just how much we have and to encourage us to part with items and allow them to have a second life.