ALL OVER THE MAP

This is a photo of a possible future cosmo, in a discontinued shade of brazen scarlet. It’s growing in my front yard under the rebar tepee. For weeks now, I’ve complained that seeds are a micro-managing mishegass, that I wish I could just blow money on bedding plants, that the whole thing seems dicey and unworkable. Well, now look what happened.

It rained. Spring sprang, some. Now there are sprouts just about everywhere I remember flinging seed, and some places I had forgotten.

Neat, huh? Yeah, I suppose. I really like cosmos and nasturtiums and lettuce—especially its name, merveille de quatre saisons—but this endless need for trust, which is probably supposed to renew my faith in nature, makes me feel old and cranky instead.

During my early twenties I once stated in print that the only way to get good at gardening was to get old. “There are no child prodigy gardeners,” I wrote. Almost immediately, I heard from a 16-year-old boy who actually was one, but I held to my theory. At my age, gardening was a screwball comedy, and everything that went wrong at least did so in a charming or instructive manner. Apple tree saplings that never progressed beyond sticks were okay because, I mean, a good stick is hard to find, right? It explained the Minnesota Midget melon that produced one cardboard-tasting fruit, but who cared—what a nice anecdote it made, after all.

Well, you can keep your cocktail party chat, because these days I hope, somewhat grimly, to feed my family on the fruit I plant. Furthermore, as my 50^th birthday approaches, the garden actually causes me stress, anxiety, and even a sense of impending doom. Something is suspicious about big items–my soil, my drinking (and watering) water. All, not some, of the leaves of the emerging plants at my place, are a weird yellow. The new plants may have just experienced a little shock. But it’s also possible that our ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD IS FULL OF TOXINS. And groundwater? Don’t get me started!

As to the seeds: I’m relieved they sprouted, but also nervous. Since when do squirrels dig giant holes next to tiny seedlings and for what dire purpose? What if the sunflowers choke out the alyssum? What insect chews perfect half-moons while my back is turned? Can these seedlings be saved?

My old vision of the calm and capable old gardener-savant is nothing but a pile of hooey. The fact that you question more as you age is the problem, not the solution.

Tomorrow is the best day of the entire year. I think this because I’m a gardener. For non-gardeners (gardn’ters?) tomorrow is Some Dumb Saturday—go to Costco, play soccer, see that Will Ferrell movie, whatever it is you people do.

Here’s what I’ll do instead:

–rise before the alarm rings, feeling how I did the morning of my seventh birthday, when I thought I was going to get something turquoise and sparkly. (And did.)
–bolt my coffee.
–dress in Carhart overalls with the sleeveless Werkstadt motorcycle repair shirt and aged hightops.
–spackle my face with Sex Wax sunscreen and affix a do-rag to my head.
–go into the garden shed I (nearly) built myself and load up a wheelbarrow with drywall buckets, yankee screwdriver, all the handtools, all the hoseclamps, the seeds, the Sharpie for labeling plant labels made out of plastic knives, a 2-quart water bottle full of ice and, at last, the TOMATO SEEDLINGS that are just too damn big for their pots and must go out, even though it might frost. So, also put into the wheelbarrow anything that might protect a tomato from a frost, up to and including old blankets, chicken wire, shade cloth, cardboard boxes, aforementioned drywall buckets.
–spend hours and hours and hours planting everything—seeds, plants, shrubs, divided perennials, potential weeds, everything.
–as the sun goes down, enjoy the first gin-and-tonic of summer. On March first.

Any gardening reference work will tell you of tasks performedd at intervals—the old plant-lettuce-in-successive-two-week-sowings methodology. I’m sure this is all sensible and makes for a long and manageable harvest. But to hell with it, I say, every year. Because I get to this point and all of a sudden I just can’t wait another second. I want to be watering, feeding, pruning, harvesting—IN THE GAME.

In one thrillingly frazzled day, I can completely change my landscape. Tonight, as I type this, I am a garden writer. 24 hours from now I will have turned back into a farmer.

As usual, it’s already been pretty brutal for my seedlings. Fully one half the tomato starts never made it through the boot camp of the fluorescent light hung over the bathtub. The other fifty percent have heart—I can just feel it, though some of these brave cadets won’t survive until harvest time, either. There will be stink bugs. There will be weeks when the temperature soars past 105 degrees. A time will come when I lose interest in the whole thing and suddenly want to stop distributing fresh water and go immerse myself in salt.

But that will be a lesser time than this, and right now I am constructed entirely of hope. Maybe I can persuade one of my daughters to make me a sandwich at high noon tomorrow? If so, the last detail will have fallen into place, and the day will be perfect, and good Lord, when else would I even dare to think such a thing?

Happy Plant Everything Day, if and when you have one.

Gumbo earned the alpha dog title after one solid year of jockeying for position.

At four months old, he came to live with us–four humans and two older dogs, one a three-year-old male, the other an eight-year-old female. When adolescence hit, he began to challenge Jack, the male, who outweighed him by twenty pounds but was basically a gentle dog—something of an English gentleman, if you’re going to anthropormorphosize, and I am. Gumbo goaded Jack into fights by ambushing him just outside the front door. If he had to, Jack would pummel Gumbo almost senseless, but you could almost hear him wandering away from the brawl thinking “terribly unpleasant, simply not done, awful little Australian type, hope he’s not planning to stay long.”

But stay he did. The Gumbo-Jack fights turned, literally, into pissing matches. For one infuriating week, this drama unfolded in our living room, against my prized leather sofa. And then, on the seventh day, Jack gave up, settling permanently for the role of Male Dog Number Two.

With Gumbo officially in charge, things quieted down. Jack chased chipmunks in the yard, Molly, who was nearing the end of her life, dozed under the grand piano, and Gumbo dedicated himself to selecting Gus’s stuffed animals and relocating them to his basket of Gumbo toys, which, in his heeler worldview, meant they were now legally chewable. During walks, I made him practice lying down, staying, and heeling off the leash, all skills he pursued as if he were trying to make partner at a law firm. He probably could have been one of those speed-and-agility dogs, but I never worked him that hard, not being much of an alpha myself.

He didn’t obey me out of love, but intelligence. He was impeccably well-behaved, but only until he saw a chance to bust out. He liked to lie on the perimeter of the invisible fence, letting his collar beep until its battery wore out. Then he’d run off to the nearest construction site, where he knew a guy who didn’t mind sharing his steak sandwich. Gumbo wasn’t aggressive with other dogs, but whenever a fight broke out at the dog park, I’d see him running around the perimeter, enjoying the spectacle.

He liked to supervise children. He was a prodigious shedder of long, white hair, and he had a charming smile that usually couldn’t be trusted. In short, he was a difficult child. Never having had one, I fell hard into unconditional love. If there had been conditions, in other words, I wouldn’t have loved him. Admired him, maybe. Been entertained. But no, in my case, it was love.

Did he love me back? I’ll go this far: Gumbo knew he was my dog. He didn’t mind being my superintendent. He responded to my special high-pitched edge-of-hysteria Gumbo-training voice. If you were looking for him, you would most often find him sitting by me.

Last fall, although we didn’t know it at the time, a tumor began growing in his brain. Suddenly, he was growling at Jack again. By this time, Molly had died and been replaced by Myrtle, a two-year-old boxer/pitbull mutt. Gumbo had raised her from a puppy, and doing so had brought out the best in him. Finally, he had something to herd, boss and protect. She grew up submissive, but also a brick house—seventy pounds of solid muscle. And Gumbo made the weird decision to growl at her, too, backing her into the laundry closet, not letting her walk out the back door, herding her away from her food.

Finally, one awful night, he attacked her outright. She defended herself. I brought Gumbo home from overnight surgery half-shaved, plugged with drains, hobbling, his head immobilized in a Shakespeare collar. He stumbled in the front door and growled at Myrtle; snapped at Jack and fell over on his side.

The vet and I pretended to have a conversation about trying to find a person willing to rescue a borderline dangerously bad dog. But we both knew it was time.

In the exam room with me, Gumbo snapped at the vet techs, then turned and walked calmly into the blanket in my lap. He eased himself down, arranged my legs to hold his beat-up body, looked at me once, and shut his eyes. I rubbed his nose and thought about how he could bite my hand, that fed him. I knew he wouldn’t.

He didn’t move when the vet came with the shot. He knew what was going on. He knew what was going on until he didn’t, and then his legs began to run as if in a dream about running, the way dogs do. He ran into the Next World. After some time, I stood up with his dead body in my arms, only vaguely aware that people kept telling me to be careful of my back. Eventually, I had to hand him over.

Three months later, I still catch myself talking to the dog I think is lying under my desk.

In fact, things are very quiet. There’s no high-pitched fingernail scratch of a blue-heeler yelp when the mailman comes. The piece of cold pizza on the counter is still there at lunch time. Yesterday I left the back gate open by mistake, but no one called to ask if I knew Gumbo Chotzinoff, or to see if he could stay at the Greek festival another hour because he really seemed to be enjoying other peoples’ gyros.

I won’t get another dog of my own any time soon. Having your own dog is a big, big deal. I could have done it better.

In the meantime, I keep company with the remaining two dogs, both good ones. At nine, the dog Jack is a reserved old bachelor who keeps to himself. At three, the dog Myrtle is a barrel-chested, limpid-eyed, not-too-smart half-pitbull with velvety brown skin and affection to spare. She rests her cannonball-sized head on my lap, her forehead wrinkling with what I think is concern but is probably something like, I’m Myrtle! Remember me???? And then, overcome by an hour of squirrel-barking, she slides a blanket from the bed to the floor, wriggles it into the correct shape to fit her big-boned self, and drops off to sleep.

I signed up for regular weather e-alerts because weather events trump all others in terms of sheer excitement. My father put Radio Shack weather radios in just about every room of his house—yes, bathrooms–and they sent out piercing shrieks whenever a tornado might be hitting the plains. His idea of a good date was jumping into a car and heading into the path of a hurricane. Growing up, I felt deliciously like an insider, backstage at the big weather show. Good times were had when the barometer fell—it gave us the sense that daily life was never predictable.

Except for the past three months, when the weather, no matter what accuweather.com promised, followed a basic pattern: threat of rain, followed by a half-dozen rain non-drops, and plenty of sun, with the occasional dangerous high-wind-and-low-humidity combo. This is edge-of-your-seatly thrilling for firefighters, such as my husband Eric, but it’s terrible seed starting weather.

I imagine a seed finally sprouting, only to be sun-fried during the one day I forget to mist it. Then again, I forget to mist my seeds almost every day because I resent having to do such a micro-managerial thing in the first place. I shouldn’t have to deal with phrases like “sprouts in 4 to 47 days.” I shouldn’t have to “prepare seed bed.” You just know the redwoods would never be what they are today if all this niggling perfectionism had been required.

It has been two weeks, and NOTHING is coming out of the ground for me. Sure, this could be my fault. I could have done something wrong. But isn’t that the point? Gardening itself has always been about making giant, impulsive mistakes—letting acts of nature occur all over the lower forty. It shouldn’t be about scrutinizing six square inches of soil to see if anyone has bothered to come to the party.

Could 100 percent of my seeds be “non-viable?”

Could they be fertile, but pouting in their biological dressing rooms?

Are they waiting for permission?

If so, you have it, pipsqueaks. Become mighty acorns, already.

It was my turn to get a dog. I met Gumbo online, through the Denver Dumb Friends League. I had said I wanted the kind of dog who cocks his head sideways at you when you say something interesting. This one did. He also knocked over an office chair to watch its wheels spin, and kept them spinning with a paw.

He gazed into my eyes. Also, he sat on my foot, in an act of twisted blue heeler domination.

In short, even at four months old, he was the smartest dog I ever met, as well as the most manipulative. Shortly after bringing him home, I did an NPR commentary about how hard he was to train, and how intensely satisfying it was to have finally broken his spirit and converted him into my faithful, entertaining servant. Two years later, I was sitting in my office listening to a slight clinking in the kitchen and pretending it wasn’t the sound of Gumbo standing delicately on the counter, eating butter off the butter dish.

Gumbo was a bad dog the way only a smart dog can be, and I was a worthless alpha, never mind the hours with the trainer, or the many hours we spent alone together.

I work at home. In a given week, I probably spoke more to Gumbo than anyone in my nuclear family. He walked all over me. (Especially when I was trying to practice yoga.) He yipped when I was on the phone trying to impress someone. He sat on my foot as I wrote. He cocked his head sideways when I bitched about how badly the writing was going. He put his narrow nose in my lap when I told him it was going well. He stared at me. One eye blue, one brown.

He was a bad dog and I loved him unconditionally, something I understand only after having had to put him down.

Seeds are miraculous and all that, but I’m an instant gratification gardener. When Lowe’s sends me a 10% coupon, I heed its embedded, subliminal instructions: save money by buying enough plants to fill the cargo area of a mid-size American car. Dig holes all over property and go nuts. Three years later, wonder why three shaggy rosemary bushes were really better than one, or even none. Fantasize about a spare, serene landscape in which tall grasses wave behind short Martha Gonzales roses, not the other way round.

The most recent coupon is staring at me. I’ve vowed not to use it unless a crucial piece of equipment breaks. (This doesn’t mean if I don’t get a chipper-shredder, I will die of boredom.)

I must resist. This year, reasons not to wave my credit card around are as abundant as stink bugs on an heirloom tomato. I’ve become a fiction writer, as opposed to a non-, and this isn’t a job so much as a full-time cash-sucking hobby I can now add to gardening, quilting, thrifting, dining out and bicycling. This year, I will scrimp.

Okay, but where are the kicks in just tending a garden? How can I live without infusions of the new, thrilling, and fraught with potential failure? Maybe another stab at giant, tasteless watermelon! Absolutely another home-made irrigation system that either refuses to drip or drains the local aquifer! But no, no, no!

So I’ve been forced to turn to seeds-as-future-landscape-plants. I had a lot of seeds lying around. I threw them everywhere. I covered them with a layer of fine soil and firmed it down, sort of. Watered in with a gentle mist, somewhat. And even wrote the names of the seeds on plastic knives and marked the spots where the seeds were to emerge. Unless I didn’t.

Sitting in the palm of my hand, the seeds betrayed no personality at all. They went to work in the earth about a week ago. So far nothing has happened.

I have a terrible feeling this is all going to take discipline.

I’m getting out of the dog writing racket. It’s gotten sinister.

It began when Gumbo came home from the dog park with a yellow rubber racquetball-sized dog ball, equipped with an inner squeaker and mounted atop two large, rubber feet. He brought this thing into the house, placed it on the ground between his two front feet, and spent five minutes staring at it.

It was out of character. Gumbo doesn’t fetch, although he enjoys taking tennis balls and Frisbees away from other dogs, just to see what will happen. Usually, he manages to start a fight without participating in it himself. I don’t know how he does that. Unfortunately, his IQ is higher than mine, and it really screws up the master/dog dynamic.

I wondered why Gumbo was now supervising a ball, indeed, why he now spent every waking hour with it, sometimes taking it for walks, sometimes lying on his back, squeaking it and adoring it, and sometimes just scrutinizing it.
It was kind of cute, at first. There’s Gumbo with his Yellow, we’d say. Maybe he’s capable of love?
One night, he dropped it onto my pillow, sliming up my bedlinens in a desperate attempt to create a kind of safe deposit box no other dog could crack. He was a wreck–his eyes bloodshot, his coat dull. Now he fell to the floor on his side, overcome by caregiver’s fatigue.

But the next morning he picked up the Yellow and returned to his nanny job, because, as an Australian Shepherd mutt, he needs to work. That’s what I told myself, but there was something addictive about that Yellow. So that night, as Gumbo slept, Gus hid it in a closed file cabinet.

Soon after, Gumbo returned to normal, if that’s what you want to call him. Until last week at the dog park, when he met a slow-moving Lab carrying a Purple. A snarling fight broke out.

“It’s nobody’s fault,” said the owner of the once-typical happy-Lab. “I blame the Squeaky Toy. It’s an obsession. Sometimes Barney gives me this look, like he’s saying Jesus, I need sleep, I gotta eat something.”

“Plus, the Squeaky Toy squeaks all day and all night,” another woman added. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“If you wait long enough, they chew the squeak right out of it,” yet another dog owner observed, “but what difference does it make?”

“I think the squeaky toy is made out of crack,” said the Lab’s owner.

And, like crack, it is readily available.

I think I’ll write a book about cute kitties.

Barking up the right tree, for a change.

This fall, I’m writing a big ol’ moneymaking bestseller. You may have heard this is not just an “impossible dream” but a “pointless crapshoot.” Believe it all you want, Mr. Crabcakes, because I have a simple, workable plan.
Dogs are big earners, publishing-wise. Not books like Old Yeller and Sounder, but first-person, soul-baring, pop-psych books, starring dogs. Stuff like How My Dog Saved Me From Alcoholism. Why I Left My Man For a Dog. El Perro Magnifico: My Tale of Old Mexico.
This is a bandwagon upon which I intend to jump. Herewith, a letter to my agent

Dear Betsy,
As promised (or whatever) here’s my outline of Seven Business Secrets Learned From One Tuff Mutt.

1. You can live in a house, or you can dominate it. Your choice. Pee on the carpet, I always say.
2. If you wanna to be alpha, you gotta roll in the smelly stuff.
3. Yap yap yap yap yap long enough and you’ll get the attention you deserve.
4. No one, but no one, can stop your upward climb—into the Sleep Number bed, onto the counter where the coldcuts lie, over the fence to freedom.
5. There is only one God, and it is dinner. (Betsy: this has nothing to do with business. Or does it?)
6. They loved you as a puppy, but lately you sense a cool detachment. When you shed, which who doesn’t, and they’re wearing black, they start talking about converting you to an “outside dog.” A Foster and Smith catalog lies open to a page of training aids equipped with cruel electric zappers, some circled in red Sharpie. Canine PR is at an all time low, what with Paris Hilton carrying a rat-dog-thing in her purse. What’s left to hope for? A monogrammed goose-down dog bed from Eddie Bauer ? Don’t make me laugh. (Betsy: This isn’t a business tip either, but don’t businesspersons feel down in the dumps sometimes? Huh?)
7. Hey! A ball! A ball! A ball!

Does this concept have legs, or what? Please hand it over to any publisher who’ll cough up a hundred copies to sell at a high-level signing to be held at Petsmart. Or maybe at Petsmart’s annual corporate retreat. We’ll need to hash this stuff over, but basically, the deal’s done, the contract’s inked, the check’s in the mail.
Am I right, or Amarillo?

Thanks in advance,

Robin

My father never gave me a present that didn’t plug in or require batteries. When some schmuck broke my heart, he’d take me to Radio Shack to buy me a special weather radio that screamed out tornado alerts. He bought me an electric pocket thesaurus that spat out off-the-mark synonyms I found hilarious. When I typed in “cock”, for instance, the machine gave me back “faucet”. And this brings me to–

WARNING: RUN-ON SENTENCE DIVIDED ONLY BY DASHES APPEARS BELOW. MY HUSBAND SAYS IT IS “JUST LIKE HOWL” BUT YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Though appliances and electronics made my dad’s heart sing—in the exact way Bloomingdale’s uplifted my mother—I usually just went along for the ride—is it not the thought that counts–more than an alarm wristwatch that plays “The Yellow Rose of Texas”?—I did not long for my father’s electronica–not when I was young—but Autumn approaches and lately–oh lately–as the weather turns cold, which in Austin is 79 degrees–and the large winged cockroaches migrate across the lawn toward my house—surely I can see their feelers poking through the blades of grass like tiny, terrifying periscopes—and I open my cupboard doors and see through the darkness, crumbs—old carcasses of wheat chex, a floury haze—primal fear surges through my heart—what was once the cheery detritus of an enthusiastic cook is now insect food—and I sense in me a longing.

For a Dust Buster.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO, WHICH WILL RHYME

Dear Friends,
Blogs are about life. I live in Austin. They say Austin is full of famous musicians. They’re right.

Even though I had once been a musician and a nightlife writer, I wasn’t thinking about music when I moved to Austin. I was thinking about claustrophobia. After ten years on three acres in a mountain town, we were moving to a small house with three large dogs who specialized in endurance barking.

But my Texan neighbors had no complaints. Anyone can make noise here, it seems, as long as they do it on key. This is the land not just of live music, but of hedonism and barbecue. People want you to be happy. Over gin and tonics, they find out what you want and give it to you. My next door neighbor gave me a huge vegetable garden. We call it Mother’s Day Farm.
I hadn’t grown a large, ripe tomato in more than a decade. Either you know what I’m talking about or you don’t, but on my death bed, I’ll be happier to have grown tomatoes than to have written a word.

(Continued)