My Garden
Mail message
From: rriverstone
Date: Fri, May 18, 2001, 6:06pm
To: WebTV-Pals
Subject: [New Pals] Garden

Net4TV Voice: Surfari: Prepare To Garden

All I did was plant seeds I've gathered throughout the year (explained in story). And I buy some from Native SEED/Search, an Arizona nonprofit that collects indigenous, heirloom seeds from the Southwest US and Northern Mexico (primarily used by Native Americans).

I have: sunflowers, marigolds, alisyum, basil, cilantro, lavendar, yucca, oregano, potatos, canteloupe, gourds, pumpkins, corn, squash, beets, turnips, tomatos, tomatillos, onions, chilis (I like to grow my own salsa), carrots, parsley, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.

I mix stuff together: flowers, herbs, vegies. Sun plants together, shade plants together. I just think the garden's more interesting, all mixed up.

I bought potted: geraniums, petunias, impatiens, begonias, colombines, violas, a California poppy and tulips. I buy a pony pack or 2 of flowers thru out the season, about once a month.

These are all in colors of purples, pinks.

I scratched out flowerbeds from raw, packed desert dirt, over which river gravel had been poured (everybody does that here, to try to keep down prickly weeds...doesn't work). I have a trash can full of fertilizer (compost, really) that the parks dept. gardeners gave me. I sprinkled that on the bad dirt after watering liberally and letting soak overnight. I scratched it in with a cultivating rake.

My beds are recessed, to capture every drop of water. I cover with dried leaves to protect from heat and evaporation. I dug up: beer bottles, underwear, hypodermic syringes, used condoms.....

Nobody messes with it. They seem to respect it, and me for doing it.

I wish i had a camera that puts pics online.

Today, I scratched out a Kokopeli, hunchbacked flute player of the prehistoric Anisazi Natives. I soaked the earth this morning, redampened this afternoon, sewed grass seed and mulched with sawdust (I use free sawdust from Home Depot in my cat litter boxes).

In about 2 weeks, in the middle of the hot, dry river stones...yes, riverstones....a lush, green Native American symbol will appear. Kokopeli is a spirit of sexuality, reproductivity, spring winds that bring rain...he's kind of like the goat god, Pan, from Greece.

The corn's already almost six inches tall. One sunflower is darn near five feet tall. Pumpkins are sprouting. Potatos have flower buds......

Cuz i never remember where i planted what, everyday is like a surprise.

=====

Good Morning, Garden

Mail message
From: rriverstone
Date: Tue, Jun 12, 2001, 9:59am
To: WebTV-Pals

i was just out watering and tending my garden. I find it best to soak in the morning and wet it down in the evening. we've been having a merciless heat wave. i didn't really notice, as i've been in the house working on line.

anyway, when i go out betw. five to about seven pm to water, it literally feels like an oven, as the heat radiates up from the riverstones, asphault and concrete.

I'm so glad i decided to plant melons, whose vines will cover the stones. there's a pumpkin coming out, too, and i think some squash--but i don't remember planting any squash.

some tender plants are dying, particularly 2 violas (like miniature pansies) who get full sun almost all day. but, basically, everything's very healthy.

I found a kid's wading pool with a hole in it and dragged it home. filled it with gravel, dirt, compost. I emptied a few flower pots into it, too....i noticed, way back in Feb., that a little thing was sprouting. I had no idea what it could b, but carefully protected it.

Well, that "little thing" is now a seven foot tall sunflower plant, growing in a wading pool! it hasn't bloomed yet. the bud is only about five inches around so far. i see some yellow petals starting to show. I water it til it's soaked, every day, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. the stem, at the base, is almost five inches around!

EVERYTHING's creeping and climbing and blooming and stretching....my corn is almost a foot tall now. alyssum is blooming. i let some radish go to seed, cuz the flowers are so pretty, and cus i want more radish seeds. same with turnips. i see beets and cauliflower and broccoli (i can't tell the diff.) and marigolds (tiny ones and ones that'll b about three feet tall) and cosmos (which will b giants) and sage and lavendar and parsley and oregano and basil and cilantro and tomatoes and tomotillos and.........

It's an absolute thrill for me to water everyday...I'm always finding something new.....

my gold fish, who live in a zinc wash tub, are twice the size they were when i bought em. they eat tiny, star-shaped trumpet flowers that fall from a vine. I'm training that vine, from my neighbor's fence, on heavy yarn. It's climbing up over my little front yard of pond, potted plants, and a strip of grass for my critters to eat, and is heading for the balcony now....alll covered with white mists of flowers!

I have GOT to take some PICTIURES!

you won't believe how this ugly corner is just rejoicing with life! no more drug shooting, no more drunken brawls....butterflies and birds!

WHO SAYS ONE PERSON DOESN"T MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

my cats and dogs LOVE it...the cats rarely ever leave the yard anymore, cuz it's so fun and shady and comfortable here. I'm letting the grass grow out and seed, then i'll cut it back after it reseeds itself. it's "patching" grass: a little bag i bought at walmart for two bucks. covers a large area. very hardy, grew right thru the river stones i couldn't completely rake away. it's almost two feet tall...great hiding place for cats.

=====

Death, 1
Mail message
From: rriverstone
Date: Sun, Jun 10, 2001, 9:41am To: WebTV-Pals
Subject: [~Pals~] did I say good morning yet?

I'm sipping Earl Grey tea with too much sugar, cuz I love it that way. Been watching Sunday Morning on CBS, which is my favorite thing to do on Sunday Mornings.

My head is full of images of weimeriners dressed up, butterflies on flowers, a fiddle camp, and the Oklahoma City Memorial.

I'm hungry and I need a shower.

I've already let the cats & dogs out to play while I watered my garden. Outside my door, I hear the chirps and wing beats of sparrows at my bird feeders.

It is such a beautiful morning!

And I started to cry. Timothy McVeigh is spending his last Sunday morning on earth today. He is a sick, warped, angry, impotent, heartless fool. Because of his arrogance and ignorance (he says he didn't know there was a child care center in the bldg.), almost 200 people didn't see what a beautiful morning this is. And their families' and friends' lives will be forever haunted by sorrow and terror.

I'm sorry we, as a society, are choosing to kill him, though.

Something must have gone terribly wrong in him. I expect he never noticed the butterflies, flowers, art, music, joy, celebration around him. What happened to cause this? If we kept him alive, we might get some information which could prevent others of these incidents from happening.

If we kept him alive, perhaps...just perhaps....something might teach him about those things he couldn't see or appreciate. I understand completely the desire for closure, for punishment, for justice.

I just wonder: he killed because he felt justfied. Are we doing the same?

Tomorrow will be hard for me. Part of me wants him to know, first hand, what terror feels like. Part of me wants to hurt him before he dies. Part of me wants it all to go away.

But I know, when I go out in my garden tomorrow and look at the corn and gourds and flowers and goldfish eating fallen flowers in their pond, I KNOW I'll be thinking: Timothy McVeigh will never see anthing like this again. And I know I'll cry.

=====

Death, 2
Mail message
From: rriverstone
Sun, Jun 10, 2001, 10:29am
To: WebTV-Pals
Subject: Re: [~Pals~] did I say good morning yet?

I'm not going to discuss law nor religion, if I can possibly get away with it, esp. about a festering bastard like McVeigh.

I will NEVER get one image out of my mind: that fire fighter, holding that limp child in his arms. That will haunt me forever. It haunts him; he couldn't save that child. What if that child grew up to discover a cure for cancer? That child would be about 13 years old now.

I lost a baby. Not a holiday goes by that I don't imagine celebrations, watching her grow. She'd be almost six now, conversing, reading, thinking for herself, and probably cute as a button....at least, in this mother's eyes.

I plant my garden every year on Mar. 21, what would have been her birthday.

I KNOW the fury, the agony, the hopelessness and helplessness of the loss of the innocent.

I can barely comprehend my own experience. And, when I multiply that by the experiences of all the family members and friend....it's just too big to wrap my mind around.

I don't want to add to that for anyone. Honestly.

Hearing about McVeigh on the news must be a living nightmare for those people.

And they are entitiled to their feelings, their politics, their faith, and whatever they need to stay sane in the face of pure horror.

I certainly don't mean to diminish that.

I'm not smart enough to decide this. Maybe none of us is. We are all just little tiny people, doing the best we can.

For me, the experience of losing my daughter has made so poignant and so real the preciousness and uniqueness of each and every life.

I see McVeigh's eyes: full of fear, cold. Yet the human eye can see so much, under the right circumstances. I guess I'm mourning, for all of us as a species, that somehow his eyes became dead, long before his life will actually end.

If I only had those eyes to give to my daughter! To let her see......

It's such a waste....

=====

3 ways to kill yerself in 1 day
Date:    Mon, Apr 1, 2002, 4:00pm (MST-1)

Ok, I get up and it's a heart-breakingly beautiful day in the 'hood. Birds are having sex in the tree outside my house.

The ornamental plum trees next door snow pink blossoms in the breeze down the street. Tiny seedlings poke out of the flower beds I've made. The cats meander around with lazy grins on their faces.

So, rather than just enjoy it, I take advantage of the good weather to do Projects.

My neighbor across the street (the one who abandoned her heap in front of my house?) moved out two weeks ago. My dog and I had already done reconosance at the place, and had dragged home stuff. We found a nacho cheese crock pot that looks like a witch's cauldron. We found iris, drying up and dyig, tossed from a flower pot. We found a big bag of blankets, sheets and towels. We found a tiny, red wagon and the wheels that had fallen off, to make a bird bath in my garden.

There's a "For Sale" sign in the yard there. So, I called the real estate agent last week and said I'd help clean up the yards if I could have the washing machine, some furniture and other things they'd left. The agent had said yes.

So, Boo (the dog) and I walked across the street with my dolly and I started wrestling the washing machine out of the storage shed. When I was staggering, I recrossed the street and sat on a milk crate to rest and to mooch cigarettes from passers by.

Finally, Enrique came by. He used to do maintainance at my old apartment. He asked me,

"¿Porque estas triste? (Why are you sad?),

I explained, in my very bad Spanish, that I wasn't sad; I was tired. I managed to explain about the washing machine.

Enrique is eighty years old. He stands maybe five foot, one. He ways about a hundred pounds. He dyes his hair and moustache black. He was working as a groomer at the race track. He's now looking for work. I help him fill out the job applications. He can barely read Spanish, forget English.

He had two job applications rolled up in his hands.

He waved them at me and said "Wait here! I'll be right back to help you. Let me put these in my house!"

So, I sat back down on my milk crate and continued mooching cigarettes from passers by.

No luck.

To watch us with that washing machine must have been priceless. Tiny, old, wiry, grinning Enrique, and a tubby, blousy "white" woman with a limp and a cough. We danced the washing machine across the street and set it up in the back yard.

We connected the hoses and electric and I started her up. She worked.

Enrique and I did a little happy dance around the yard, and I told him he could wash his clothes here any time, if he brought his own soap. He was tickled.

I guess I wasn't exhausted and sun burned enought, so I decided that, since I now have a washing machine, I could shave my dog for warm weather. I do this every year. She hates it. So do I. And, without a washing machine to get the fiberglass-like hairs out of my clothes, it's really a job.

So, I found the clippers and a bucket for the hair. I found some penetrating oil and a brush to clean the blades. I got my milk crate and went back out front, in case a moochable cigarette might pass by.

I called Boo, who came cheerfully. Until I turned on the clippers....at which point, she dashed under my camper with her tail between her legs. She has very sensitive, pink skin.

Clippers make raw spots on her, no matter how careful I try to be.

So, there I sit, wrestling the dog, shaving gingerly holding her with one hand while i clean the clippers with the other and my mouth to hold the brush....A real acrobatic accomplishment.

Two crank heads walk by. I know one: she's a child abusing, foul-mouthed prostitute who uses people and betrays them if they ever tell her "no."

She's with a pock-marked, scrawny, greasy young guy with a deranged grin. He barks at Boo. Boo flinches, and I cut her with the clippers.

I say, "Big man, scaring dogs! She got cut cuz of you!"

He says, "Suck this, b-tch!"

I say, "I can't; it's too small."

He picks up a rock the size of my fist and pitches it at me from twenty feet away. The rock hits the heap in front of my house and cracks the wind shield. Do I shut up? Heck, no.

I say, "Look at the big man! Scaring dogs and attacking women! Hey, everybody! Look at the boy with no penis! He wouldn't know a real man if one peed in his mouth!"

The dog is shaved and bathed. I am bathed and wearing my yellow, Mexican peasant dress. The hairy clothes are outside in my washing machine.

The guy with the rock got stopped by the cops on his way back down the street and got thrown into the back of a squad car and hauled off. My garden is still growing. And Enrique loaned me three dollars, so I even have cigarettes.

Moving washing machines, shaving tender dogs, telling a punk what he REALLY is.....these are not jobs for sissies.

I feel SO GOOD. So does Boo.

The end.