plants

The harvest is always greater than the seed but you have to sow the seed first.
– Tony Gaskins

My garden is insane right now. Even though it’s a hot summer with a historic drought here in California, and it really has no right to be so happy. That’s just how we roll around here.

We are restricted in every way imaginable, and some that aren’t.
The watering days are cut in half and the times allowed are so short that everyone’s lawns are a sad and sorry shade of brown, the urban trees are dying, and the landscaping that Studio City had spent so much of our tax money on this past decade, beautifying the middle of Ventura Boulevard, and other public thoroughfares, looks like a sub-Saharan attempt to grow something green—that has been left to die.

In other words, I live in the land of brown on brown. Los Angeles is slowly reverting back to the desert landscape from whence it came.

But not my yard. Deprivation becomes it.

I have never seen my grass greener or my plants looking better. And the hydrangea. Forget about the hydrangea.
Most years I’ve had a hard time getting them to bloom for me. I see them around the neighborhood, covered with flowers, and mine just looked…anemic. A blossom here, a bloom there, they have been a consistent source of disappointment to me for years.

But not this year.
Their showoffery is so flagrant that I thank God they’re in the backyard so I don’t get arrested
I’m certain our neighborhood lawn police and water patrol would have me fined up the WhoHa. Nobody would believe that I’m adhering to the strict statewide restrictions.
I question it myself. Yet, There they are. Heavy with blooms.

I cut them. Every morning in fear of reprisal. My house is full of pink and blue hydrangea even though I don’t have a lick of pink in my home. And they grow back almost overnight. It’s spooky.

That’s the other thing.
My entire garden is filled with pink. Pink geraniums, pink cyclamens, pink nameless flower on that spiky plant, even pink bougainvillea. Pretty, right? Except for the fact that I planted red. I like red bougainvillea with a Spanish style house and I was extremely careful in my color selection. Same with the goddamn hydrangea. Blue and lavender. NEVER pink. I would never plant a pink flower. They’re simply not my thing.

So the other day while walking across my patio with its numerous pots of flowering plants, standing barefoot in my tall, lush green grass, staring in awe at my six hydrangea bushes laden with pink blooms, hose in hand on watering day, hummingbirds zigging and zagging happily around my head; my heart literally skipped a beat; I had never in the ten years of this garden’s existence seen it look so beautiful. That was precisely the moment when the voice in my head said this:

“That is what abundance looks like Janet, It is everywhere. And if you can notice it around you, you will see it in your bank account. It’s the law.”

Well, is that so?
Huh…I’d never really thought about it like that.
But they had been connected together, hand it hand, by some mystical power greater than myself. The money had started to flow back into my life at almost the exact same time that my garden exploded.

Then my perception changed and I started to notice abundance EVERYWHERE.

Every morning I would stand slack-jawed in my garden, amazed at it’s abundance; and several days a week a check would come in the mail. That has been a rare enough occurrence in my life of late that the word miracle is not an over statement.

Listen, have you walked with fresh eyes through a grocery produce section lately?
What about a farmer’s market? What about a bookstore?
There are twelve movies playing at any given time at my local multiplex and we have nine hundred channels to choose from on our TV.

I live a life awash in abundance—and I bet you do too.

Here’s the thing you guys: You can’t notice the beauty that is all around you when you have your head down, burdened with worry, doubt or despair. You have to be open to seeing it, of letting it astound and delight you.

So which came first? I’d say it was the seed of happiness the garden gave me and the overwhelming feeling of abundance shown to me each morning. Then the money harvest came. Cool huh?

As for pink, I looked it up, it represents caring, compassion and love. Alright, I’ll let it slide.
Hey, who doesn’t need more of that?

Carry on,
xox

Get a load of this library/office! Nigella Lawson amid cook book abundance for sure!

We are all connected.
And not just by the proximity and outreach that is available to us via our devices.

It goes way beyond that.

I believe that everything is alive and has a spirit.

There is another web active in our lives besides that World Wide one. It is a web of life, of energy that connects everything and everyone on this earth.

We are all interconnected and anything that suggests the belief that we are separate is an illusion.

Nature is the supreme example of this web of interconnection. The bees need the flowers. The flowers need the bees to bloom.

And I fucked up and cut down a tree in our front yard, apparently upsetting the delicate balance of nature throughout the world, or at least Los Angeles, California.

We are the custodians of a one hundred and fifty year old ash tree. And he is our giant, grounded guardian.

Of that I am sure.

I remember a psychic predicting that I would live in a tree house one day, (which at the time seemed absurd), but when I purchased this house a few years later my friends all remarked “I see you got a little house with your tree.”

It is massive, one of the largest trees in Studio City and we are so blessed to live under its majestic canopy, feeling its energy, enjoying its shade.

On the curb just adjacent to Ash (we’ll call him Ash) was a nondescript tree-thingy.
The arborist that came to the house ten years ago during our remodel educated us, telling us all about Ash, and when asked he informed me that the other tree wasn’t any species that he was familiar with.

“It’s just a weed that someone let grow into a tree a long time ago” he told us.

Just A Weed Tree was a lot of trouble.
His canopy was dense and…ugly, even after the annual hair cuts we gave him, not light and airy like Ash’s.
He cast too much shade for anything to flourish and the birds loved to congregate inside that dense, dark green foliage and shit all over our cars.

He had the bad attitude of an overgrown weed. He was pushy. And greedy, lifting the sidewalk, and getting into our pipes on a regular basis.

Just A Weed Tree always appeared to be crowding Ash, vying for light; and in the severe drought that we’ve found ourselves under, I feared he was chugalugging at the water table—and I knew Ash was too polite to say anything.

I LOVE trees, I do, ask anyone. I absolutely adore Ash, but I was not fond of JAWT.
He wasn’t a tree. He was a garden variety pest.

So this past Saturday our gardener cut him down. It took two guys and they were fast and thorough, even grinding the stump.

We both forgot that it was happening that day so when we got home the whole look and energy of the front yard had changed dramatically.

There was no sign that Just A Weed Tree had ever been there. But you could feel a HUGE void.
That weed had a presence.

FUCK.

We both stood at the curb, “Wow” was all we could say.

Now you could really see the front our house, there was the added sunlight in our yard that I had craved (for the plants) and with JAWT gone you could fully grasp the wonder of Ash.

“It looks like they trimmed the big tree too,” my husband remarked as I went around picking up leaves still on their branches.
It appeared as if they had been cleanly cut and they were EVERYWHERE.

Except they hadn’t been cut. They had been dropped.
I’d never seen anything like it. They covered the entire front yard, the driveway and even parts of the roof. In the fall Ash drops single, dead, brown leaves, never bright green leaves still on their small branches.
What was up?

My arms were full, carrying the leaves to piles I had made on the driveway
And it suddenly occurred to me: Ash was showing his shock and disapproval at the death of his friend Just A Weed Tree.

I walked over to him, closed my eyes and rested my hand on the rough bark of his truck—and I could feel his stress and despair.

Oh Fuck.

First of all, I had always felt Ash was a female. Wrong. He has a very pronounced masculine energy.
And he was pissed. And under extreme stress.
Apparently the high pitched whine of a chain-saw has the same visceral effect on trees as a dental drill has on humans (yeah, okay, got it) plus he had known JAWT for over sixty years, since he was just a tiny little weed that had somehow been spared. They were buddies.

I could feel his despair and it felt awful. I should have known better. Trees do have feelings and I had callously overlooked that fact.

We had basically murdered his friend right in front of him.

FUCK.

We are all interconnected, residents of this web of life and I needed Ash to know that I could feel his anguish, so I stood with both hands and my forehead on his trunk, apologizing and conveying our sincerest condolences for the loss of JAWT. I also explained the water situation and the fact that his health and stability were of the utmost importance to us. Then I played to his vanity telling him over and over how gorgeous (handsome) we think he is.
“You Mister, are the star of this neighborhood.” I think he was flattered.

Raphael watched from a distance, he could sense what was going on, and he added his sympathies from there. “I hope he’ll be okay,” he said with genuine concern, gazing at the piles of leaves.

“Now that he understands and knows how sorry we are—he’ll be fine.” I replied.

And he is. After our little talk he never dropped another leaf.

Carry on,
xox