Garden

Official gardening season has begun, as it always does in Denver, on Mother’s Day. The primary reason is that usually, but not always, we are past the very cold days of winter. The second is that the Denver Botanic Gardens Spring Plant Sale is Mother’s Day weekend. I, and many other people, go every year and buy lots of plants. Then we are forced to become gardeners for the next week as we struggle to put them in the ground before they can die in their little pots on our back porches. 

Every year I swear I will show self-control and only buy what is on my list. Every year I enter the Gardens and all my good intentions evaporate. I suppose this wouldn’t happen so quickly if I actually took the time to write down my list. Or if I actually sat for five minutes and really thought about what I needed and did not need. But the Garden Sale begs for you to enter and explore and discover and how do you do that if you limit yourself to what can be listed on a piece of paper?

The Botanic Garden has introduced me to some of my favorite plants. The first year I went with my cousin, Christine, we came across a plant, Nicotiana sylvestris (flowering tobacco), which we had to buy because her maiden name and my mother’s maiden name is Sylvestre.  Also, we both had space to fill and it grows big, but mostly the name was irresistible. And so I planted it in my back yard and it grew and grew and grew. The plants grow between four and five feet high and several feet wide. The leaves are big and they have white tubular flowers. Best of all, it seems to not care very much about soil quality. Another favorite is the gazania, which is from S. Africa and is low growing with daisy-like flowers. I love the name and it is drought tolerant. 

Of course, there have been problem plants. I could not resist the adorable little plant with the pretty serrated leaves. The tag said it would grow up and have yellow flowers and it wasn’t finicky about where it was planted. I convinced Christine to buy some, too. I put it in my yard and it immediately attempted a hostile takeover of the flower bed. Not to name names here, but it was tansy. I’m pretty sure the reason Christine and her family went to live on a boat for a year was to escape it. Consider yourself warned.

For the first time this year I did not go to the garden sale. It felt very odd, like I had missed an important holiday, but I  have managed to survive. It helps that Christine did not go either. Christine has the excuse that she had classes to attend. I was busy at the barn and it just seemed a bit much this year to fit it in. On top of that, Laurence and I swear that we will be having the backyard redone, but, of course, we can’t really agree on what, exactly, needs doing. So, I think I am sticking with some vegetables and annuals this year. 

Despite not attending the sale, I still feel that the season is upon me and I have begun cleaning out my beds. A job that would be much easier if I had just done some of it last fall. So far, everything seems to be taking longer than it should and at this rate I’ll be lucky to be planting in August. Thank goodness for the perennials, they cover a multitude of ills and bad planning. 

Since the sun is still shining I think I will head outside and pull more dead leaves and debris out of the garden. Mostly though, I think I will just enjoy the fine weather.

(If you would like to read about Christine and her family's adventures the year they lived on a catamaran you can order the book her husband wrote, "Skirting the Shore," by Adrian Martin, on Amazon.)

Books and Movies

Since the last week was so horrific I have decided to completely ignore it and instead share some things that have made me happy in the last few weeks.

First, of course, would be my awesome new Tesla. I still love that car. I love driving it, I love the color, I love the endearing way the door handles ease out as you approach the car. I particularly love the feature that updates the car over the internet. You go to bed one night and the next morning there is a message on the computer screen that you can now set the car to start charging at a particular time. Good for those who have lower electricity rates at two in the morning. (Denver does not.) And, not mentioned in the message, but found out over the next few days, when you save your seat position it now includes the side mirrors!  Yay! No more Laurence messing up my mirrors! Our marriage is saved!

Michael Pollan has a new book out, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.”  Just saw him on the Colbert Report and the main message of his book seems to be not to worry about what you eat as long as you cook it yourself. (The example he gives is french fries. Not good for you, but easy to order in a restaurant. Now if you cook at home, how often do you make fries?) This easy rule comes as a great relief because his previous book espoused the message, “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much,” which seemed a bit difficult to follow.

I am a big fan of Mr. Pollan’s ever since I read his book, “Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World.” He discusses apples, tulips, potatoes and marijuana. My favorite thing I learned from this book was that if you plant apple seeds, none of the trees will be the same. You cannot plant seeds from a Macintosh and get a tree that produces Macintoshes. You will get all kinds of different apples, most of which will not taste very good. All of our apples come from grafts. It is a wondrous thing to contemplate. 

Another of my favorite authors has a book out.  Mary Roach has just published, “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.” I have just started it, but already I am hooked. So far she has covered saliva (amazingly we have two types and she covers both!), the stomach fistula of one Alexis St. Martin, and the crunchiness of food (including fruits and snacks.) Along the way she points out that people who have a disorder or injury that will not allow their voice box to move so that they can swallow would rather have it removed and be mute than not be able to eat properly. She also gives advice on that age old question: If you had to be swallowed whole by an animal, which animal would you choose? I do not think I am giving too much away when I tell you that she recommends picking the penguin. Truly, I cannot wait to head into the intestinal tract. 

      Anyone familiar with Ms. Roach will no doubt have read her book, “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.” This book is a must read if you have any ambitions at all regarding your life after death. Always wanted to go to med school? Volunteer as an anatomical teaching aid. Car safety your thing? You can go to work as a crash test dummy. Law enforcement? The FBI is always looking for a few good men to study decomposition. The mind boggles at the career opportunities.

      And last, I have a movie recommendation. We rented “28 Days Later,” I loved it. Of course, I do enjoy a good zombie movie so if you do not like zombies, I think you should probably rent “Groundhog Day” instead. As to “28 Days Later” it starts out with animal liberationists in England liberating the wrong animals, in this case rage and virus filled chimps. One bite and twenty seconds later (no kidding, it is very specific) people become homicidal zombies who run way faster than the traditional shuffle we have come to expect. This makes them scarier, but luckily, they still succumb to repeated blows to the head. This is particularly good news for the Brits because they lack any good access to guns. The movie follows the trials and tribulations of four of the survivors, one of whom awakens from a coma in a deserted hospital with no knowledge of the epidemic. It was directed by Danny Boyle of “Slumdog MIllionaire” fame and I’ll admit we watched it because we are probably going to go see his new movie “Trance” at some point and just felt like watching a Danny Boyle movie. So, if you like post-apocalyptic zombie movies watch it. If you don’t, watch “Groundhog Day.”

Tesla: Early Days

Leaving the Service Center

 I have just finished wiping down my new Tesla. Earlier I hosed it down to get the dirt off it because I had to drive it in the snow on Monday (which was supposed to be sixty degrees and sunny) and the mud on Tuesday (because the damn snow melted.) Then Laurence took it out  and said it looked worse with all the water spots on it, so I grabbed my new car washing spray that I had previously purchased and went to work. It looks much better now but not as great as if I had hand washed it.

This is not good. I am not one to regularly clean my car (although I keep vowing to, I don't really mean it.) My van would go months before I'd drag it to the car wash and run it through the express wash. I think of cleaning my car as a chore unless it is a hundred degrees outside and a water fight is involved. Somehow, though, with this car I feel compelled to do it. I am not sure I enjoy doing it, but it feels wrong to let it sit in the garage all dirty.

Part of the reason I want it clean is because people notice this car. This is not a complaint, everyone loves to hear how cool and lovely their baby is and I am no different. The point is when someone notices your baby and she has jelly on her face and a dirty diaper you feel like a bad parent (even though she was spotless and smelled great not five minutes before, I swear!) So I cleaned my car.

Now it's not like I did not know people would notice the car. I did. I read the Tesla forum and the owners comment on this all the time, I just thought that they were, perhaps, just a bit, exaggerating. For the record, they were not. It is ridiculous the amount of attention the Tesla gets.

A sampling:

Half a block from the service center, where I had just picked up my brand new car, I stopped at a red light. A man in the passenger seat of an SUV rolled down his window and motioned me to do the same. He wanted to know what kind of a car it is and told me, "It is a beast!" (Which it is.)

At the grocery store a man came up to me in the check out line and asked if I liked my new car and how did it drive? (This was a bit embarrassing because I had parked it on the far side of the lot and, because I wasn't used to it yet, had kind of slammed on the brakes and parked it at a weird angle.)

Driving with my windows down a guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, "Nice car!"

Another time at the grocery store Laurence and I were in the car, about to pull out, when a pickup truck drove by and the driver took a picture of the car.

Driving down the road a young man with a beard and tattoos driving an old beat up car pulled up even with me, got my attention, and gave me a big grin and a thumbs up.

Waiting to pick up Stephen from school four young teenagers told me how cool my car is. Of course, I let them sit in the car and showed them some of its tricks.

At the car shop to buy some mats for the car the clerk asked me what kind of car I have and when I told him I had a Tesla, two of the three on duty clerks immediately left the store to check out the car.

An older man and woman in a car next to me turned their heads as they drove by to look at the car. I was afraid he was going to drive off the road.

I have owned this car for only twelve days.

Luckily, I have enjoyed showing people my car and answering questions. I just hope I become immune to the attention and don't feel bad about not washing the car. Now excuse me, I have to go put on nice clothes and fix my hair so I can drive my Tesla to the grocery store.