The Garden ~ by Mickey Revenaugh

There’s always been a backyard garden at 321 Oleander, from the day we moved there in 1968 and our Mom planted Swiss chard along the brick wall where the previous tenants had created a bed for decorative shrubs that never took root. Perhaps they got discouraged by the intense arid heat of the Central California summers, but that never stopped Mom. In no time, that Swiss chard grew as tall as she was and its bitter boiled green leaves found their way onto our dinner plates night after night.

Mom had one full-time job as a social worker and another full-time job trying to keep us kids in one piece on her own, but she always managed to keep a garden growing. Three kinds of tomatoes, sage, snap peas, and cukes. Hollyhocks to the eaves of the house, four o’clocks on the side, hens and chickens, an army of irises. After we’d all grown and gone and she’d retired, Mom’s garden got more and more elaborate, its pickable sweets and gewgaws the delight of visiting grandkids.

That’s what made the tangle of empty pots and weeds in the backyard so disheartening after Mom broke her hip. Taking turns caring for her, we’d look out the back window at the desolate patch of brown and see only loss, decline. It was a relief that first year after her fall when first summer turned the whole town sepia and then winter left the surrounding croplands fallow. Just wouldn’t have seemed right for things to go on growing when our Mom was struck still.

But when spring came around again, our eldest sister couldn’t take it anymore. She paid the guy who cuts our Mom’s grass an extra fifty to come back with his Rototiller and turned the dead garden into a blank soil canvas. Then she headed back to Alaska for a month’s respite with the parting words, “If you feel like thinking about a garden…”

Our little brother, now a grown genius, had the first shift. Knowing that hydration is destiny in the Central Valley, he created an intricate homemade system of underground soaker hoses and multiple faucet heads so the whole 10 x 40 tilled bed could be deep-watered with one turn of the wrist. He also transformed Mom’s various abandoned garden decorations into planter boxes, trellises, and dividers, all ready for the plants to come.

It was my turn next, and I tackled the task with my two favorite tools: a computer and a credit card. I made a more-or-less to scale diagram of the garden with icons for various plants – red circles for tomatoes, mottled green ovals for zucchini, sticks with smiley faces for sunflowers – then posted them on Google Docs and asked my siblings to help plot out the plants. Then I hit both the local nursery and Home Depot for a cornucopia of seeds and seedlings. I was used to gardening in my over-shaded New York yard and believed in having back-ups to back-ups because half the stuff would never even come up anyway.

Actual planting was guided by our middle sister, the only one of us who’d ever grown a serious garden in a climate like this one. She’d even co-gardened with our Mom as a high schooler way back in the day, so she knew about things like planting the various vined things apart from each other, and when to put a paper plate under the head of a cantaloupe.

We all had a part to play – with Mom bemusedly supervising from her bed on the other side of the house. We’d bring her the updated plan printouts and empty seed packets, seek her advice on the relative merits of cherry tomatoes vs. beefsteaks. (Plant both, she advised, so we did.) Once the seeds were in the ground with their careful markers and water system had its test run, there was nothing to do but wait.

Within a week, there was very little brown left to see on our garden canvas – things were sprouting like crazy. Within a month it was clear that every single zucchini seed had taken root and was competing to produce the biggest leaves, the most blossoms, the fattest vines. The seed tomatoes were in a race with the store-bought plants to see who’d put out the most fruit first. Sunflowers shot up 4 feet, then 6, then 10 and 12 by mid-summer. A riot of cantaloupe turned the makeshift trellis into a mountain of green festooned with perfect melon spheres. A forest of dill bumped up against two kinds of basil tall and bushy enough to be mistaken for a fragrant hedgerow. And we all agreed that the standing too close to the pumpkin patch was hazardous – the vines were growing so fast it seemed they could wrap around your legs before you had time to move.

All summer we harvested zucchini the size of small children, tomatoes by the bushel, herbs, melons, even a cucumber or two. Although the carrots only grew a couple inches long, their greens came up past our knees. The pumpkins were huge way before their time, and a few mated with their squash cousins to created pumpkinis (or zuchkins - we were never sure which). We set up a Free Veggies stand out on the front sidewalk near the foot of the ramp we’d built for Mom when she’d first fallen, back when we were sure she’d be tooling around with her walker in no time. We’d bring each new astonishment to her bedside and say, invariably, “Can you believe this came out of YOUR garden?” She was the only one who seemed not the least bit surprised.

Now another autumn is upon us, and the Rototiller guy has come and gone again. The abandoned weed patch that became the mother of all gardens is now a rich brown canvas once again. Like our Mom, it’s ready for whatever comes next.

Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay 6/6 & 7 '09

San Francisco's many and varied neighborhoods are where my younger siblings and I spent sporadic early seasons emerging in the big city when we visited our Poppa, Dick Revenaugh.

I recently arrived there on a Saturday morning via Amtrak at the famed Ferry Building, on lower Market St.

The day started by crossing paths with acquaintance, Aniko from Gather.com. Walking and talking, we quickly touched on cyber relationships, the wild ride of parenthood, and the challenges of marriage amidst transnational citizenship, (Ade as student on that one, just trying to fathom logistics alone).
We parted feeling like friends and I hope we get a chance to see each other again.

I headed back up Market street, destination: The Herbst Theater. Garrison Keillor was giving a reading from his delicious pink volume of 77 Sonnets. The evening was a benefit for the 826 Valencia Scholarship Program.

Hoofing with bags heavy enough for a small burro (who was off grazing elsewhere), I arrived at the famed City Center early enough to change into evening attire and mosey up to Max's Opera Cafe for Silver Dollar potato latkes and the piano bar.
Perfection!
So was the man in the red shoes!
High in the balcony and removed from mid-center by a few seats, I was tucked-in nicely enough to slip out of my black linen heels and drift into an advanced state of delight with the voice and imagery I've come to desire on a daily basis (now, not to gush but...!).

The tall man with the feathery eyebrows, perched casually. Placed in the middle of a faded Persian carpet, the stool, a microphone, and the poet opened an intimate space for everyone there. With Rich Dworsky as his piano accompaniment, they had the place lit. Silvery heads and imaginations glistened all around, as did "the youngers" present. Those holding romantic, poetic rompage in high regard were satisfied by the end. Keillor had again offered us beauty; the chance to love and to laugh.

Afterwords, I kept company with the full moon in all the old neighborhoods, walking and exploring memories throughout the rest of the night. I found nearly every location where we'd visited with R.L.Revenaugh as he nurtured the pulses of cultural change from his salon-type living arrangements.

I also found the building where I'd rented my first shared apartment. It was there I recognized I wasn't ready for the city as naive eighteen year old. I was yearning instead for the wilderness that I'd find a year later in Alaska.

Dawn was welcomed with a few good cups of coffee on Lombard St. at Mel's, the original drive-in burger joint. I took the time for a diner style breakfast and enjoyed the warmth, a place to read and people watch, before starting the day.

The elegant Marina district curves down to shoreline. There I found The Fort Mason Center. This old military post is now home to summertime art programs and year round cultural events. The waterfront location provided a gorgeous nest in the sunshine to watch the goings on, write and snooze.

I was joined mid-day by another Gather friend, Granny Janny and her pal Becky. We spent a lovely time getting to know each other at The Greens Restaurant. We then went walking through the six or seven blocks of the Union St. merchant's festival.


My Roman Holiday was a definite kicker. I'm looking forward to another installment on the return to Mazoo and Bako.

But for now...the sweetness of HOME!

To Entertain New Ideas ///

"A Roman Holiday"...


The Song Is You.
The way HOME in June, by way of San Francisco.
The Island Institute 2009

Maori author Patricia Grace, winner of the 2008 Neustadt Laureate Award featured in World Literature Today.
Looking forward to learning more about Grace and Maori culture and the similarities to N.W. Coast cultures of the Pacific.

Three weeks ago, I visited with Nora Marks Dauenhauer in Klukwan, Ak. at the story teller's gathering held during the Culture Week celebration.

When she was speaking to a mixed age audience, it was the little kids up front that she was especially connecting with. This revered elder has a spark and gumption I've enjoyed at many potlatches over the years. She knows how to keep an audience listening.

She's led a remarkable life, focused as an anthropologist of Tlingit culture with her husband, Richard Dauenhauer. The two devoted decades to retaining her people's native oral tradition. Their careers are represented in numerous books and ambitious projects.

Nora, a fine writer and gifted poet, told the kids they could write about anything that interested them. Anything! You could tell they were really listening and thinking just what that would be.