Reading "In Defense of Food" left a rather strong impression on me. This was not so much in the information that he presented that was new to me, what it did was open up an inner dialog about mindful behavior, and also specifically how it (or lack thereof) effects my food choices, eating habits and social responsibility.
I've been trying to come up with a strategy for implementing change in all of the above, and it's complicated, to say the least. First of all, it's not just one thing, it's many things about my dietary habits that I've wanted to examine, and am now doing with resolve. It started in earnest when I got sick this last year, and has been at the forefront of my thoughts for most of the time since. I've already addressed some of the ways that this questioning of my food behaviors has affected my life: Farmer's Market every week in the summer (and it starts again in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait), canning, freezing, other preservation methods, preparing my own meals for almost all of my eating time and also the importance of basing my diet on whole, not processed, foods.
For the most part, I've really metered down my consumption of what I call "the white foods": white flour, white rice, sugar, processed and ready to eat "food", and just in general, empty calories. To say that I've been perfect would be most disingenuous. Sorry to have to admit it, but I do love the things that white flour makes: pastry crust, bread dough, pasta, roux, etc.. I still prefer white rice to brown, but I'm trying to at least mix it up and include some brown rice into my repertoire as well. As for sugar, I can't lie and say that I'm not consuming it. I do love my ice cream, and especially now that it's summer, the occasional soft drink. I find artificial sweeteners to be disgusting, both in taste and theory, so my poison of choice is still sugar.
In many of the above-mentioned areas, I had commenced change long before I finally went back to finish the book. I was eating seasonally, as well as preserving food picked at it's peak time of the year. For the most part, my produce, dairy and meats have been organic, as well as being locally-sourced. There were just in general a lot of really good changes that I was exacting on my lifestyle, but I didn't think that this was all I could do, I just wasn't sure what I was missing. It's amazing what you find out when you really start to listen to your body and give it what it is telling you it needs. Eating seasonally is a great example.
In the past I've never really paid that much attention to the importance of eating produce in season. I knew enough to know that summer fruit grown in the winter and imported from Chile never is very good, and is often downright awful. What I really noticed this last year, especially after going to the Farmer's Market every week and really paying attention to what was there, was how much better produce was that was picked at the absolute peak of its season. Even more remarkably, I could tell you what was likely to be the peak produce of that week before I went to the market, because that was what I was craving. This became even more apparent to me this winter, when there isn't really a decent farmer's market around here. I would be craving something, go to the grocery store and find it to be in peak season. It's happened over and over this winter, with pineapple, persimmon, citrus, avocado and now strawberries for example, and every time that I've bought what I was craving, it has been delicious.
I can tell you what is out of season without ever tasting it. When I saw summer fruits, and ones that I love, mind you, such as plums, melon, peaches, etc. at the grocery the other day, I had no desire whatsoever to eat any of them. I can tell you that they would have been marginal at best without ever taking a bite. If you want to test that theory yourself, here is the easiest test: With fruit, when it is at the peak of season and ripeness, all you need to do is put it close to your nose. A peach should smell peachy, Santa Rosa plums should smell sweet and floral, and a pineapple should smell like a pineapple, sweet, tropical, and intoxicating. Now go to your grocery store in the winter and smell a cantaloupe or a plum or a peach or whatever. I'll put money on you finding out that its bouquet is lacking, or completely non-existent.
Right now, strawberries are just coming to market: local, big juicy strawberries from Watsonville (south of San Jose, strawberry capital of the US), and they are fantastic. Not only that, I'm craving them. As much as I love strawberries, they're typically not a fruit that I tend to crave; for me a little goes a long way. But now, when they're so good that I can smell them when I hit the produce aisle, I want them all the time, and I'm eating them in everything. Citrus, on the other hand, is nearing the end of its season, and I'm desiring it less and less. Here is another little-known factoid: Have you ever wondered why you can get oranges and apples (and potatoes too) that are grown in the US year-round? They were indeed picked seasonally, but then go into cold storage at a temperature between 38-42 degrees, where they will keep for months. Other than potatoes, which I don't care if they're stored that long, since it's been done for generations in root cellars and they hold well. I think the difference is that they grow underground - being a tuber, unlike the cold-storage fruit, which grows on trees. I really don't like the idea that I'm eating 9 month old fruit. Then let's consider that carbon footprint that we're leaving by refrigerating these vast quantities of produce for months.
From reading the book, there was one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb. As I was reading it I realized that though small, this was revolutionary. I could exact a very direct influence on the locality and quality of the produce I was eating by doing something relatively easy: I should start growing as much of my own food as possible. I'm very spoiled by where I live, because we have a very long growing season, which makes it easy to eat your own homegrown food nearly year-round. I then started looking at why I hadn't done this before, and the main stumbling block that I had always come upon was that I felt that I didn't have the space to do one. The best gardening area that I had was one that I looked at all the time; it's directly outside of my family room, and for some reason I had it in my head that this area needed to be flowers. For some dumb reason I had it in my head that a vegetable garden wouldn't be pretty enough to look at. Then I thought otherwise; even if a vegetable garden wasn't pleasing to look at, and trust me, they are, the beauty is still in you producing your own food. And I go out and can stare at my vegetable garden for hours. In ways, it's prettier to me than my ornamental flora.
As I finished the book, it initiated a profound change in my feelings about aesthetics and beauty. What could be more lovely that to look out the sliding glass door and see a beautiful edible garden growing, one that required only a little love to produce lots of fresh and healthy food? The back of my house faces west, and is about 150 feet long. The vast majority of the perimeter, in front of the fence, is all raised beds that the original owner had put into the house, and they're fantastic. The wall of raised beds is bisected in the center by a beautiful water feature. The side to the south of the waterfall is the sunniest, especially in the summertime. It actually gets downright scorching back there during the summer, and even in spite of lots of good shade trees - birches, a fern pine, curly willow and a red maple that I planted last year, it still gets a lot of sun. That made the most sense for where to start the garden.
Originally it was my idea to just take part of the beds and plant crop rows between them, but as I started tilling the soil (well, Romulo, my manservant) and rolling compost into my clay, my idea got bigger, and then bigger and then bigger. Before you think I planted veritable field back there, the plot that is now my vegetable garden is approximately 250 sq. feet. It looks huge, until you start planting it. I'm doing a modified French Intensive garden, where the rows are mounded. Adding the vertical inches by mounding to the row spacing adds extra lineal inches, since both flat and vertical distance have the same effect. Or that is how I understand it anyway, and I can be suspect in this regard (my understanding, that is) on occasion; it's a byproduct of the know-it-all syndrome. In small gardens especially, size really matters. Even with adding this to my agricultural repertiore, the garden is not tiny, but by no means big. It's also L-shaped with about 10 foot span in the center, where the inside right angle of an L should be. That, combined with the L shape in the mix as well, made the makings of a real pain in the butt in setting up rows and having it be fairly symmetrical. This is far less about aesthetics than it is about ease of organization, though aesthetics are a concern for little old OCD me ("Everything has to be perfect!") Problem easily solved. I wanted to try growing potatoes this year, and they are one of the vegetables (awright fellow know-it-alls, I know the potato is really a stem tuber of the plant's rhizome) that has more partial shade tolerance than most vegetables. It makes sense, since my back fence was covered with Carolina Jessamine, a fast-growing vine that has some of the most invasive roots I've seen, even worse than the morning glory that I relocated.
I (Romulo) have spent many a weekend in the last many months trying to eradicate all the rhizomes (bulbs along the root) from the Jessamine. This is virtually impossible, but it does make management of that crap a lot easier when I take away its engine room. Rhizomes are extremely tenacious, and the more of them that you leave underground, the more they will keep popping back up above-ground. That's why you can pull up tulips, but unless you also get the bulb, you'll have tulips next year. That was a hypothetical example, I can't imagine anyone thinking that tulips are unsightly and need to be eradicated. My squirrels think I'm the coolest guy in town for planting the couple of hundred this year - I didn't know squirrels liked tulip (and a few other) bulbs, but I found out otherwise, as every morning I would arise (the squirrels get up earlier than me, of course) and go out to find one of my tulip beds looking like an artillery range, pocked with little tulip bulb sized holes, or a gopher's playground, except that these were just nice circular consistently-sized empty holes that had no tunnels. But they were so consistent in size I couldn't believe it; even my squirrels are OCD.
But let me disembark from that tangent's tangent I just rode in on. Point being, if you just get rid of the plant, if it is a stem and/or root-tubered rhizome, then you have to get all the way down to the tuber. Many of them also have this nifty (to them) safeguard in the the tubers tend to be connected to the stem of the plant by very fine delicate roots, so you can have a false sense of security about how well you've eradicated said nuisance plant. We (Rumolo) are still finding Jessamine tubers every time we (Romulo) till the soil. Those of you that live, as I do, in an area cursed with an abundance of Oxalis (a noxious invasive weed endemic to the Bay Area, looks a little like clover) know what I'm talking about - the bulb clusters are about a foot past very fine and fragile roots - a great survival technique. But the more rhizomes I get out of the soil the easier the weed management becomes.
Now let's disembark from the original tangent get back to potatoes. So the center of the L is a pretty sizeable space, especially since it's deeper because you've cut off a lot of feet from the center of the L. Those inches have to go some place, and that someplace means that my raised beds are deeper. Since potatoes take up more space than the average vegetable (rhizome tuber), the increased depth was great. It's also shaded by 3 birches, which are great for maintaining correct soil moisture, since they love excess water, being naturally a running waterside (river, creek , stream) growing tree. Potatoes rot quickly if the soil moisture isn't consistent, correct and carefully monitored. Mulching also helps a great deal with moisture regulation. They also have a few other quirks: Once they're about 9-12 inches above ground, you cover them about halfway up with mulch or straw, building a mound. Potato tubers are very shallow, and if they get exposed to air, they're inedible; they turn green and never finish ripening, or they just die. This means that every week or two, you're going out to build up your mound. I think the most critical period of having to make sure that the tubers are subterranean is up to when the plants flower, though you need to continue to monitor the mounds on a regular basis.
There are a couple of upsides to this mounding process: First and most importantly, you're introducing more soil-enriching organic matter that, as each time the plot gets tilled. When you live on a plot that is basically a big mound of dense gray clay, emphasis on dense, it's like trying to spoon out crystallized honey, it's a lot more work for me (Romulo), and in addition, that clay has to go somewhere. Right now I'm piling it outside my fence line. A month or so after the rainy season is over, I'll start some moonlight trips across the road to a big vacant city-owned lot and mound the crap clay there. Yes, I'm giving them extra work, but cry me a river: they have manpower (lots of Romulo's) and resources to deal with a little pile of clay, that is, if they ever find it, so no, I really don't feel guilty about it. I just don't want to get busted doing it, which even at night is risky.
Walnut Creek has a lot of cops and they are extremely bored; it's pretty much like policing Mayberry. Since I moved here, twice I've left my garage door open and gone to bed. Both times, there was a knock at the door at 3 am or so (scary cop knock) asking if I realized that I had left my garage open. The first time I nearly shit my pants, since I was sleeping to the office (during the remodel), which is next to the entry. Imagine the feeling of being butt naked, sound asleep, and then having flashlights shined on your white ass as they bang, not knock, at the door. That is one thing that television cop shows do not exaggerate, at least from my experience. I can imagine how harrowing and intimidating that would be if you were actually doing something that demanded that kind of a commando-knock arrest. Now that said, their boredom does allow for some very nice concierge-esque treatment, that is, as long as you're white or Asian. I see poor unfortunate landscape workers get profiled driving past my house all the time. They're easy to spot: Pickups with the bed loaded to the gills with mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers and other miscellaneous equipment, and the cabin stuffed with 3 and often 4 Hispanic men crammed in like sardines. They're pretty obviously not on their way to a Cinco de Mayo celebration, with a truck loaded down with a lot of weed and illegal firearms. They're doing the crap work that none of us want to do and would rather pay to have it done for us.
How I got from mounding potatoes to guns, weed and fiestas is pretty impressive, but not terribly relevant to growing a vegetable garden, so back to the real story. By relocating non-food plants, making an empty palette, (Romulo) getting the soil turned, amended and mulched, I've been able to actually get a decent amount of space out of what initially looks like a too-small area for growing any significant amount of food. I still have a bit of space left, and that is after now planting 8 assorted pepper plants, summer squash, cucumbers, 3 varieties of heirloom beets and 1 non-heirloom variety, Swiss Chard and cabbage (2 kinds of each), lettuces, carrots radishes, peas (4 varieties) beans (3 varieties) , 4 San Marzano (giant Roma, best for canning and spaghetti sauces) tomato plants, and a multitude of assorted onions. That isn't all of it. For all intents and purposes, all of the perimeter of my backyard, save a small area behind the hot tub, is littered with mostly ceramic pots filled with tomato plants (7 to be exact), chives, shallots, herbs, including 2 varieties of Thyme, Parsley, Sage (2 varieties), Rosemary (how could I not grow those 4?), a couple of varieties of basil, marjoram, tarragon, 2 varieties of oregano, 2 varieties of chive, mint and arugula. I already have 4 containers of pickling cucumbers started, and am planting more "salad" cucumbers any day now. Then there are a couple of pots that I don't remember what I planted in them and a couple of empty ones, including one larger one that I'm going to trellis cantaloupe in. Speaking of trellising I'm also going to trellis a different variety of cantaloupe in a spot up in the raised beds. This week I also put in 4 sugar pie pumpkin (small ones, sweeter for cooking)plants in another bed outside of my bedroom and under the Red Maple I put in last year. Did I not know how to can and not have a freezer, I would be nuts to being doing this much. Luckily, I know how to preserve very well, and in the winter, there is nothing like eating something you grew, picked at its peak of flavor and preserved with love. Oh, and lest I forget, I (Romulo) have also planted 7 fruit trees: 2 avocado trees in the back (Hass and Zutano), a Meyer lemon, (my current one hasn't bloomed in almost 3 years), Persian (or Bearss) lime, a Black Mission Fig and a Fuyu Persimmon (the crunchy variety).
I still plan to support my local farmer's market this summer, but certainly for a lot less, especially vegetables. I'm still dependent on them for fruit, especially since I don't expect to harvest from any of my trees until probably next winter at the earliest. I really don't mind it at all, I got amazing fruit last year. I was really good about buying at peak of season, when the flavor was maximized. As I've been opening my canned peaches and freezer jam lately I can really appreciate the reward of that strategy. My raspberry jam tastes identical to how the fresh raspberries tasted when I bought them last May. The same goes for the peaches, which amazes me even more, since I've been eating the canned ones, not the ones I froze. The tomatoes that I canned (Italian San Marzanos) last summer are amazing; I've been using them in my cooking and they are better than any canned tomatoes that I've ever bought, even really expensive "gourmet" ones.
Happy Birthday to me. April 7 was my 50th birthday. Generally, I really don't put a lot of energy into thinking about my birthday. I don't see the day as me a year older on that day; in my mind, I'm a day older than the day before. 50 is a bit different though. It's half a century, and as far as numbers go, ages that end in a zero seem to be landmark, even watershed birthday ages. They tend to make one more contemplative about the last decade of one's life, and they can also stir up many emotions one is feeling about the new decade they are entering: excitement, fear, trepidation, melancholy. In Western cultures (I can't speak for others), there is a lot of emphasis on decades in one's life, and nearly everybody can relate to talking about how people change as they enter a new decade - the differences between one's 20's and one's 30's for example. It's very common to ascribe a set of generalized traits that one is expected to go through in the decade that they are in and in the next decade if they are at a point of crossing over into the next one. So as much as I would like to say that it was just another day, it really was not.
I first spent much of the earlier part of the day reflecting on my 40's, a time in one's life that is often described as being the decade that one both really hits their stride in, and also the one where one of the major challenge is usually the dreaded and infamous midlife crisis. I really thought back at what had happened in the last 10 years.
In 2000, Ken and I were starting our 9th year together. He had become involved in Planet Pooch, a dog daycare and boarding business the he owned with 2 partners. I am now the 3rd, but non-managing partner i.e., I own it on paper, but I don't get paid for it, since I'm not a working contributing partner.
In 2001, Ken and I went to Europe with Brian and Van, and had the most bizarre experience of being on the island of Mallorca (off the coast of Spain) on the ubiquitous and horrific day of September 11. We sat in our hotel rooms the rest of that afternoon (it was about 2pm in Mallorca when it happened) and watched over and over as they replayed footage of the WTC being hit twice and then falling. We ended up being stuck in Europe 2 extra days, since all flights in the US were grounded, and one of my most distinct memories of those days was having strangers come up to us on the street and offer their sympathies as soon as they figured out that we were Americans. This was also the year that we got our very first Silky Terrier, our beloved Bobby, aka Bob Barker.
In 2002, Ken and I started planning what would end up being our last renovation of our home on Diamond Street. The project was 2 years in the planning, with many hours spent with architects, contracters and the San Francisco Planning Department. That was also the year the Ken got promoted to Director of Engineering at the hotel, a huge, almost unheard of promotion, one in which he lept past many of the usual interim promotions that normally precede a promotion to a job that put him on the hotel's Executive Committee. Over his many years at the hotel, Ken had acquired a nearly universal reputation as one of the real leaders at the property; the General Manager was very fond of him and trusted him implicitly, not a trait that this man was known for. I, by the way, was very fond of the GM, and he and I had a rapport that I was told was unheard of from this man. The reason for that is very simple: Ken.
In 2004, the renovation started on Diamond Street. I had lived through years of renovations prior to this, living without a kitchen for months, perpetually in a cloud of dust and construction debris, but this was even more invasive. Once completed, the size of the house would be more than doubled, from about 1400 sqare feet to about 3000 square feet. The one saving grace was that we did have a working kitchen the entire time, so we didn't have to rely on a steady diet of burritos, pizza and KFC. 2004 was also punctuated quite sadly by the loss of our first pet together, our beloved Basenji Hodari. To this day, other than the last time that I saw Ken in the hospital, this is the most devastated and inconsolable that I ever saw Ken. After that, I never had Ken go with me when we had to euthanize a pet, something that happened 2 more times before I lost him as well. The devastating grief that I saw in Ken that day is something that will always haunt me. This was also the year that our 2nd Silky Terrier, and easily the sweetest dog I have ever owned, came to live with us, our Hillary.
2005 was a year of dust, clouds and disarray, both physical and psychologically. The house was in full-on demolition and rebuilding mode, and Ken's lifelong battle with crippling depression was clearly becoming a losing one. The things that kept him going, mostly work, alcohol and Xanax, were no longer working. His diabetes had become far less stable, as did his moods. More often than not he was sullen, shut down and pretty much emotionally inaccessible. That he managed to maintain such a good front with others still amazes me. Very few people had any idea how much he was suffering. In September, we took our last trip to Europe together, spending a week in September in Amsterdam. This is probably my last really fun happy memory with Ken.
2006-2009 on has been pretty much the fodder of this blog and the one that it replaced. These years were pretty uneventful (insert heavily sarcastic tone here), except for losing my favorite of any dog that I had ever had, our beloved Jaadii, Ken's suicide, a nearly fatal motor vehicle accident, selling our home of 15 years in San Francisco and moving to the suburbs, meeting, dating for 2 years and then breaking up with Brian, and getting involved in one of my new and possibly most favorite hobbies, drag. During this period I also went to Burning Man twice, something that I had always wanted to do. I also raised my first home-bred litter of puppies, a litter that included my 3rd Silky Terrier, Hillary's daughter Mini Me. I got Hepatitis A and C and spent 2 years feeling probably the worst that I have in my entire life, partly because it took so long to diagnose the Hep C. This was also the start of my still-ongoing intensive psychotherapy and antidepressant therapy, 2 things that not only likely saved my life, but they also gave me the tools to handle what came afterward and keep my sanity in the process.
I never really felt like I went through a midlife crisis, something that I fully expected to experience. I think that there are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I've never really had an issue with aging. Because of living with HIV, I think I had a completely different outlook on aging, seeing it as a success and not a failure, something that I felt lucky to be experiencing. I've also been very lucky to be blessed with my mother's genes that have always kept me looking substantially younger than my actual age, especially from age 30 on. I never wanted the red corvette, the hot new boyfriend (how could anybody be hotter than Ken?), or some exciting adventure. I've never had the temperament of a thrill-seeker, and I think that once you put all these factors together, it makes pretty good sense why I never had this overwhelming experience of a midlife crisis. For me, my 40's were, in spite of much personal tragedy and adversity, the garden where I was able to grow the Me that I needed to get through the rest of my life, or at least the next 10 years. More than at any other time in my life, my 40's was a period that, despite all the happenings that should have spelled disaster, the time where I really actually thrived. I found out really how strong I am, and how much adversity I'm able to not only handle, but to learn from, grow from, and succeed because I used the adversities as lessons to grow from, rather than using them as an excuse for self-pity.
This was the time when I learned that when others treated me unfairly, or I perceived it that way, if I couldn't let go of my anger and move past these perceived slights, it wasn't their problem, it was mine. Blaming them and using these perceived injustices as an excuse to wallow in self-pity was really misplaced anger; I thought I was angry at them, when in reality, I was angry with myself. There wasn't just anger there either, that anger really was a cover for some very deep-seated self-loathing. This was the time when I finally figured out how to move past these grievances and resentments, take a long hard and honest look at myself, and finally learn that I didn't need to fix the world, I needed to fix myself.
The missing puzzle pieces that I needed to fix myself finally started to fall into place. I relearned how to meditate and pray. I found my way back to my soul, and planted the seeds in my spiritual garden that would lay the way to move forward. I developed a more disciplined and consistent approach in my spiritual practice, I started to learn how to become more attentive, mindful and fully present in each moment, even if I didn't always succeed in the execution. Failure stopped meaning capitulation and became a way to apply my lessons I learned in real life situations.
This was the time that I also finally started to do my first truly honest self-inventory, and not for the purpose of beating up on myself. It was apparent to me that change was impossible if I didn't first look at my demons, and honestly assess and own up to my mistakes and shortcomings of character. I had to own up to traits that I never wanted to acknowledge in myself: Bitchiness, catty behavior, an intellectual superiority complex, selfishness, self-centeredness, and most importantly, what was the root of all these traits: A deep and abiding self-loathing.
I am very much still a work in progress, but I can say this in all honesty: The person I was 3 years ago when my life turned upside down and seemed to be irreparably broken is as dead and gone as Ken is. Things might still suck a lot of the time, but that does not need to dictate my future happiness. I'm also succeeding somewhat at not letting these obstacles make me bitter and bitchy. Lashing out at others doesn't make me feel better about myself. To the contrary, it just makes me feel less worthy of love.
When I first started to really get into gardening this year, I have to confess that I was worried that I perhaps was just swapping this new obsession out for one of my previous ones. Now though, looking at the situation with some more clarity, gardening has really become a metaphor for my new life. I started with a crappy foundation (clay soil, which is nearly impossible to grow much in) and I took what I had, added what was necessary to make it more fertile, and I'm now growing not only fruits and vegetables, I'm growing a new me. Some is starting from only seeds, some from seedlings, and with some love, attention and care, it's thriving and springing forth new life. My new life is my real garden. I'm still not sure what kind of crop I'm going to get or where the whole adventure will finally end up, but I'm creating something of purpose and meaning. If the only thing that I harvest is enough fruit to give me seeds to plant my next garden, then I'll still feel some sense of success, but I know I'll succeed to a degree far greater than that. For you see, I now realize, nobody ever told me I couldn't do it. I can grow a new life. It may not be what I expect, but there is no going back, even if I want to. And I don't.
Last read: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell and A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Bartholome De Las Casas.
Current read: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Course In Miracles Workbook For Students; The Gifts of God, the poetry of Helen Schucman, and Selected Poems of Denise Levertov.
Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
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