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SPRINGTIME AWAKENS THE GARDNER IN MR. HANDYPERSON
Dear Readers: This week Mr. HandyPerson turns the podium over to his close, personal friend Mark A. Hetts for another of his life tales.
The gardening season begins in earnest here in San Francisco by late March. There is a rare possibility of frost in the city. But in my 32 years here, it's happened only twice, both times in January. The main impediments to getting into the garden are the winter rains and the cold -- making gardening a very unpleasant experience, drowning some kinds of tender seedlings, and simply discouraging others that decline to germinate or grow until it's warmer. (This seems quite reasonable to me, as I don't want to be outside myself in the cold, wet weather of December, January and February.)
By February, we get a few weeks of breathtakingly gorgeous, clear, warmer weather, and this is a signal to conjure up your garden plans, tools, seeds and plants. Even though we almost always get additional cold and wet weeks, sometimes as late as June, you can safely get plants started outside by mid-March because you can generally rely on more warm and clear weather between rains.
I wrote last year about my attempts to grow some tomatoes and basil in a close friend's somewhat neglected backyard, amidst the previously planted shrubs and perennials, the bees, birds and butterflies that lived there, and the experience (after many years of deprivation) of simply digging, pruning, getting my hands back into the dirt and trying to encourage things to grow and bloom and thrive. It drew me back quite willingly into the world of soil, compost, worms, bugs, weeds (some providing spectacular flowers or foliage -- "volunteers" -- that I couldn't just yank out for the compost pile), squirrels, birds, raccoons and probably rats, too, that perceived what I thought of as "my food" as theirs. There were also the stiff muscles, sore knees, aching back, thorn and sticker wounds, and clothes (and hair and fingernails) yielding up dirt, plant debris and bugs at the end of numerous 18-hour days.
No one was paying me to do this, nobody had a gun to my head, and no person could force me to work this hard or long against my will. I had to assume I was having a good time, and do. I also got some very nice things to eat. It wasn't easy, but it felt like a nice "give and get back" to me.
But things have changed. My dear, longtime friend Hannah (whose yard I've been willingly tilling) and I decided last year to combine our two households. After more than 32 years at my lovely 1908 Edwardian/Art Nouveaux home, I did something I never planned to do, never expected to do before death or was even previously willing to consider. I moved. I'll share some of that story eventually, but for now the changes and traumas are still percolating, still "too much with me." It was a good decision but not an easy one.
I live now with Hannah, my three cats and Hannah's 17-year-old cat in an 1893 Queen Anne Victorian. It withstood both major San Francisco earthquakes undamaged. I was here in the basement with Hannah's late mother during the 1989 quake and was sure we were both goners as the three upper floors danced and groaned. But there was no damage beyond a few figurines that fell off a shelf in the attic. This is a well-built house. I have been working on it for nearly 25 years. Now I live here and will likely be working on it until I keel over. Though it's only about three blocks from where I had lived, it's nice to eliminate that commute.
There are more layers to this tale to share eventually, but at the moment I have five varieties of tomato plants, basil seedlings, and other flower and vegetable plants and seeds to tend in the backyard. I'm hoping to raise enough tomatoes and vegetables that I don't end up resenting the critters who pilfer a few.
I'm amused at the irony of my finally joining the "back-to-the-land movement" right in the middle of one of the most densely populated cities on Earth. Amused but grateful.
(Editors: For editorial questions, contact Greg Melvin, gmelvin@amuniversal.com.)
