Life Is A Garden
Ever visit a formal garden? In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, there is a wonderful arboretum where many plants not able to withstand West Coast weather grow in profusion.
This search returns many links to San Francisco Arboretum web pages . . .
http://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+arboretum&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
This is a good place to start your online visit . . .
http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/visiting/index.htm
WHEN I was a boy, growing up on a little farmette, just East of Oakdale, California, on Orsi Road, off of Sierra Road, and ending in a dirt [sandy] lane that almost connected with Highway 108/120, going to Yosemite National Park, I was always interested in my father's little nursery he kept by the well, where he planted cuttings of shrubs he wanted to grow.
My! That brings back a wonderful memory! The water from that San Joaquin Valley well, dug into 100'+ pure sand, was the freshest, best-tasting water I've EVER had! Sure miss it!
Looking back, now, I am amazed at how we decided to yank out 100 year old+ native lupins, with pretty white-tipped brilliant blue pea-blossom shaped flowers, that were about 8" long, on stems that covered each large bush in the Spring! How utterly stupid! They were so old that their stringy bark was shaving off in in long, stringy tangles in the center of each bush. I'd give almost anything to see one again.
But, my mother, Gladys Armstrong, married dad, John Henry Armstrong, in 1944. I was their 2nd, my older sister still-born. Mother was raised on a subsistence dairy farm, where her father had moved their little tribe from Los Angeles area to take on a homestead of twenty acres in the Oakdale Irrigation District, formed by its share holders to catch Sierra snow melt and water the rich San Joaquin Valley soil, to develop Central California's great agriculture potential. Of course, where grandpa landed was the absolute worst soil, as it had hard pan just below the surface, and no water could penetrate its feet-thick barrier to all things fauna!
I've watched heavy caterpillar tractors that barely scratched this almost impenetrable clay semi-stone that lays in giant shelves just below much of Central California, and in other sediment soil locations. Dynamite, however, does the trick!
MY father was Oakdale Grammar School Gardener, and one of the custodians. His love for all things green and growing, along with mother's, led my interests, later in my life, to follow suit. It was in Pennsylvania where I took on their love for gardening.
That experience was pretty much indirect, because at first I was trying to raise worms for marketing, and read that corrugated cardboard and its glue, made top quality worm feed. So, being the true entrepreneur I am, I apprised myself of the tons of corrugated cardboard that my employer, and ag coop - Agaway, Inc - threw away every week, and built myself one, HUMONGOUS! pile of cardboard! Ask my poor, embarrassed kids! It was an eyesore par nonpareil! WOW!
But, all those worms it fed made for an enormous pile of - you guessed it - compost! Being as I am a collector, of nearly anything - ask the poor kids again! - I just had to find a use for all that rich soil! So, I became an instant gardener! Yeah, by that time of my life, I'd pretty much forgotten anything I'd learned from observing my folks' gardening, and had had little, to no interest in same, all the intervening years.
But, my children's mom did help me re-gain at least a modicum of gardening interest. She had planted some peonies and iris, as I recall, around some balck locust trees, and along a stone retaining wall along Mapledale Road we lived on - where Koser Road "Tees" with Mapledale, just South of Hershey, Pennsylvania - and I was called into husbandry duty to assist with the shovel part of the operation, or so I faintly remember.
Anyhew, her green thumb started to grow on my hand, and I took it to the ready-made compost soil/worm bed/giant mess growing in our back yard/pasture/garden/wasteland. Not being one to waste space, and being a natural laze, I devised a method to spread that rich compost - actually it is called vermiculture/worm castings - in wide, parallel rows across our garden/pasture/wasteland, till it in a bit, and cover with cardboard to curtail weed growth, perforate where plants were to grow, and, wahlah!, a weedless, high-yielding vegetable garden!
Oh! I also discovered that digging out a foot or so of that fantastic, PURE PA Clay soil and back-filling with vermiculture made for a wonderful asparagus bed, and . . . get this . . . to weed it all I did was to sprinkle table salt where the asparagus was growing! No weed in its right mind dared grow in all that table salt! The asparagus loved it, however! [Asparagus is one of the halophytes - "salt-loving" - herbs!].
Well, Pennsylvania is tens of millions of miles in the past, now, but my experience with and renewed love of gardening has to be regarded as begun there. Goodbye, forlorn Pennsylvania. You held my love for eleven memorable years, memories I shall not forget, nor be sorry to remember, even when I made horrible choices that hurt me and ours so much; but, dear Pennsylvania, I'm so happy to see you in my past.
Anyone interested, here's a Zillow real estate records map view of our long-ago property, and home for three wonderful children, and their once happy together parents . . .
http://www.zillow.com/homes/86419135_zpid/
My! Memories . . .
Yesterday, much to my amazement, I had an inspiration to try once more to find anything online I could, about my darling little baby daughter. Just awesome - I found her blog! Her big bro has kept a tiny trickle of her whereabouts in my ears, but his mom absolutely forbids him to divulge much of anything. So . . . my own faith in Creator to make a way for us to have some reconciliation is all I have left to bank on. Well, I found my awesome daughter! She's in Hawaii, of all places, and a pro photographer, to boot!
She doesn't know it yet, but the Summer of the year her mom left me I had taken her to a customer of mine on her beach, and my little gal was so happy playing together with that lady's two younger boys, Bugsy and Pauly P! Now, today, both are young men, and both are - - - ready for this?!! . . . Pro photgraphers! Yes, they are!
One Both started in New York City, but one came back to Seattle, where he now lives on his sailing yacht, and the other is still in New York. Both are finding assignments all over the globe!
Just amazing, this wild Life! Amazing!
Well, gotta go, for now. It has been great posting this, and with such wonderful news to share!
