And How Does That Make You Feel?

Here's how I know my 8 year old might be experiencing a wee bit of trouble adjusting to my new work schedule:

"Mom, Big Bear is more than my stuffed animal.  He's my therapist."

* * *

Stopping By My Living Room

My big project deadline is tomorrow.  So not much posting going on these days.  However, while I was busily creating maps in Photoshop today, my trusty radio was on in the background, and I learned, via The Writer's Almanac, that on this day in 1923, Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was published.  Click on the link above and read how that poem came to be: it's a lovely and bittersweet story.

To celebrate "Snowy's" anniversary, and to get something up on this blog for the first time in several days, I am reposting my twist on Frost's poem, originally posted in May of 2010.  Given that I have been working nonstop for the past two weeks and paying scant attention to my domestic responsibilities, this poem is scarily apropos of my house at the moment.  Enjoy!

Stopping By My Living Room on a Regular Evening

Whose shoes these are I do not care
Their stink and steam do fill the air;
They’ve been here for a week or more
Kicked beneath the comfy chair.

There are backpacks thrown behind the door
And cheerios stuck right to the floor.
Is that a banana, for the love of God?
This disarray is the stuff of lore.

My three year old must think it odd
To see me hone my staff and rod
When spying books and dishes--UGH!
And towels and clothing stained with sod.

She gives her blankey a tighter hug
To warn siblings of the coming thug.
She sees the quaking in my gait
And tries to hide beneath the rug.

It’s chaos that I truly hate.
But with children, chaos is my fate.
The laundry's always in a heap.
The order always little and late.

The mess is scary, dark and deep.
But I have a house to clear and keep.
And heads will roll before I sleep
And heads will roll before I sleep.

* * *

My inspiration.

* * *

Blossoms and Birdies

As previously mentioned, our annual garden tour is coming up.  You know what this means, right?

Weeding.  Weeding.  And then some more weeding.

So this past Friday, I commenced, and made a fair dent in one area.  On Saturday morning, I put "1 hour of weeding" on my to-do list, and promptly got so busy, it almost didn't happen.  But the hour finally came at 3:15, after transporting Sam to band practice, running various bank/post office/grocery store errands, and selling girl scout cookies at Lucky's for two hours.  I was tired, yo.  Didn't want to weed at all.  But I forced myself to get down on my hands and knees in the dirt and do battle with invasive grasses, oaxalis, and fallen apples.  The last 15 minutes were the hardest, but I kept reminding myself that I am at the beginning of a long road, and if I don't establish a little discipline now, I'll be in a world of hurt later on.

So I kept going.  When I finished, I stopped working and started sitting.

I sat on our back lawn, sipping the homemade lemonade my seven year old daughter had brought out to me, and let the garden come into view.

I take this place for granted.  I forget that I have a private paradise right outside my back door.  But yesterday, in the late afternoon, as the fog rolled in, I remembered.  I grabbed my camera and took some shots of some gorgeous apple blossoms.

And then look what I found:

That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the tiniest, most perfect little nest you've ever seen, with two baby hummingbirds inside of it.

If I hadn't forced myself to that one hour of weeding, I would have missed both the blossoms and the birdies.  Instead, I weeded, even though I really, really, really didn't want to, and I was richly rewarded.  I'm pretty sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but I'm too excited about the hummingbirds to think about it.  And my kids!  Well, I haven't seen my children this excited in a long time -- especially Cenzo, who took the picture above.

Thank God for my little paradise, and for the man who created it for us.

* * *

The Natives Are Getting Restless

The native plants, that is.

It's that time of year again, folks!  The time when Rick starts to obsess over our garden in anticipation of the annual garden tour we participate in.  It's a big deal.  First of all, our own garden is one of the stops on the tour.  Second of all, each year, some of the gardens Rick has designed are also on the tour: for 2012, there are two.  And third of all, the tour coordinator hires me each year to produce the booklet that every registrant receives; I'm on my 8th year of doing this project.  This 80-odd page guide contains descriptions of each garden, maps, lists of designers, lists of native plant nurseries, and various native plant resources.   If you've ever heard me refer to the one big project I work on each year, this is it:

This is also the time of year that...

...Rick decides to take on some large scale project in the garden that most people would spend 2 months planning and 5 or 6 months implementing, giving us exactly 2.5 months to make it all happen.   He's got a few in mind for this year.  I listen, smile, nod, and make a mental note to stock up on the Prozac.

...the kids remember how much they hate the garden tour because they lose their parents for 3 months and because they hear far too much about mulch, gravel, vegetable beds, piles that need to be moved, and Eriogonoum umbellatum.  And Eschscholzia californica.  And no, that is not misspelled.  10 points to anyone who knows what that is without using Google.

...we lose entire days off of our lives when we spend hours upon hours tidying up and arranging one area of the garden just so, only to return a few days later and find one of Tallulah's "pirate ships" or one of Vincenzo's teepees has sprung up like magic, causing our blood pressure to immediately spike, our panic buttons to all go berserk simultaneously, and our vocal cords to seize up rendering us speechless, which is good because otherwise we would scream ourselves hoarse anyway.

Tallulah builds her pirate ships by creating a random placement of crates, planks, flattened boxes, blankets, couch cushions if she can get away with it, and anything else she can find, and then stocking it with books, puzzles, stuffed animals, and dishes.  Sometimes she covers the whole shebang with multiple blankets draped across our courtyard.  It looks like the encampment of a crazy person when she's through.  Which, in a way, I guess it kind of is.

Vincenzo's teepees are decidedly more palatable, and yet -- still heart stoppingly frustrating when we are trying to get things "show ready."

Teepee by Vincenzo

We will come up for air at various points between now and May 6th.  At least one time when I've sent the garden guide off to the printer (March 9th) and at least a couple of times to eat and throw food at the other kind of natives we are responsible for, several times to enjoy a Guinness, one time in early April to shake our fists at the heavens and curse ourselves for saying "sure, we'll do this again!" and once or twice to drive the kids to something soccer-related.

It's that time of year again, for our annual California natives roller coaster.

* * *

The tour is wonderful.  Bringing Back the Natives.  Click through and register to attend.  There will be no same-day registration this year, so reserve your spot early!

* * *

What We Do

My husband and I own and operate Alatorre Garden Design, here in the lovely East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Lots of people look at me blankly when I say this, so I thought I'd provide a little sample of what it is that we do.

We meet with folks who want to create "native paradises" in their gardens: gardens that feature California native plants, encourage wildlife, and conserve natural resources. Rick is a walking encyclopedia of California native plants: his knowledge is impressive. He uses that knowledge, as well as his aesthetic sense and his love of Fibonacci numbers to create beautiful spaces for our clients.

Where do I come in? Having zero native plant knowledge but possessing some killer penmanship skillz, I render his ideas neatly on paper. He draws a rough draft of his designs, and then I come along and ink the drawing, adding all the features and notes he has crawled in his barely legible chicken scratch. Here's a sample of one of our designs in process. This one is quite simple -- some are more elaborate -- but it conveys the general idea of what we do:

And here are pictures of our own garden, our "showroom" if you will, where people can see Rick's beautiful ideas executed.

And that, my friends, is what we do. Aren't we lucky?

* * *