WILD GOVERNMENT

Wading into the bamboo over-and-undergrowth, a broad green tapestry woofed with vines of kudzu, wild grape, wisteria, yamaimo and other strivings wrapped around every rising stalk, all battling for a bit of the sky...

You're trying to get to the opportunistic locust tree, one among the many that rise up here and there on untended properties, the flexy bamboo and curly vines grabbing at your boots and buttons, legs and arms, feet and tools, you have to be free of artifice and shaped like a snake, boar or fox to flow like life through this kind of mountain growth, this vegetable government, but you're unsuited in about every way possible so progress is slow, a constant leaning against the relentlessly buffered presence, much like trying to deal directly with a human government, which everyone living and dead knows is akin to madness, but once you get started, the further you advance the more of a waste it is to turn back, so you keep on going, you keep on trying, working at leaning farther, pushing harder, falling forward with all the meager weight you can bring to bear against it all while forging forward with your shoulders, legs and feet and you do... appear... to... make... some...... progress... though only a little—it takes a while…

But did you really advance, did you really, drenched in sweat but perhaps truly halfway there now, with scythe, clippers and saw, all targeted by the vines that pull at them, trying to wrench them from your hand or pocket, loop or holster, take them back to the earth, and you too, you might wind up here forever one big green verticality, overgrown before too long, wrapped in green, kudzu grows as fast as any bureaucracy, and you're really part of all this anyway, over your head out here in this green expanse, eyes peeled for a true sign of progress through all this green tape, this tangle that is home to snakes and hornets' nests, wild pig dens, deer beds and bear lairs, trying just to get to a tree-- the tree--

Is the view all that important from the living room of the house you used to live in back there in that other time, that other place so far away on one shore of this green sea, becoming the illusion that perhaps it always has been - that may be the true nature of things - fuzzy at the edges and shimmery at the center like an old movie, do you really need that comfort to which you may never return, can you have it more than once, be again where you spent such a pleasant portion of your life as it passes before your eyes and then you are at the tree itself, struggling to regain your focus, clippers and folding saw at the ready...

Wiping the sweat from your eyes you climb a bit, reach up and clip off the tips of the highest branches, saw off the big one that splays its fingers in front of the nose of the Sleeping Buddha out on the Lake, or so it looks from that living room you had back there, the cut branches fall, you climb down and turn around like a world turns around and begin the falling struggle of your journey homeward across and through this green governance, fighting for each step, the well-organized wildness plucking at everything about you that has an angle and seeks to be elsewhere-- and may be, before too long...

LAND OF THE RISING WATER

I remember the sun. As do quite of few of us elder folks in these parts. A bright yellow disc it was-- up there, above even the rain, used to be there quite a few days of the year-- used to "shine," as they put it in the old days, get pretty warm at times, before the Rain Age, back when sunshine was something of a common occurrence. "Is it true that it even got hot-- and dry?" One of the younger folks asked me curiously not long ago, when we met on the flooding road and shouted some snatches of conversation over the downpour. "Yes," I recalled, "it used to rise over there every day and set over there every night. In fact, this country used to be called the Land of the Rising Sun, if you can believe that. Don't know what they're gonna call it, now..."

NIAGARA FALLS, JAPAN

Last night the rain was so intense it took me sleeping back to the time I visited Niagara Falls as a kid of about 12 and once more I went down into those caves, donned those yellow rubber raincoats and boots and ventured out into the endless roar of that maelstrom to walk those slick, rickety boardwalks and stairways among the giant tumbled rocks and gouts of spray that threatened to wash us into the torrent if the roaring blasts of wind didn't get us first and for an entire night that vast cataract flowed on over our house and through my dreams.

These recent days and days of rainfall laugh at such feeble human artifices as raingutters, roadways and riverbanks, to say nothing of gardens I don't even want to look at my baby spinach or squash leaves, those American squashes are just not used to this they keep looking up to the sky with those big green friendly leaves expecting gentle caresses of sunshine, but instead keep getting hammered with this relentless rainsledge, I guess by now they must have figured out they're in Japan without visas, I can see the surviving leaves nodding to each other as they try to avoid the specifics of the pounding downpour; they must have learned from the native plants that this is rainy season, but still.

The rain quieted in the morning to the peaceful whisper of a standard rain, but that doesn't fool me any more than it does the riverbanks.

ABANDONED

Sad truth now so common in the Japanese countryside...

at Walking in Japan

A TIP FOR PLUM GROWERS

Plums taste even better when they have that rare quality of monkeys-didn't-get-themness.

ONE LESS FOR THE MONKEYS

As if those events weren't enough for one day, home alone after the morning described in The Approach of the Weedwhackers, and after I had later in the morning chased the monkeys out of the garden because the chain alarm sounded as described in The Me Squad, as I was even later trying once more to get some work done in the loft I heard a loud CR-R-RACK! and a leafy thrashing that could only have been caused by a newbie in the plum tree - young monkeys nowadays, I'm telling you... why, when I first moved here, even the youngest monkeys could climb, but ever since they've gotten used to the cushier modern lifestyle - o yeah, the plum tree... so for the third time that day I ran downstairs, this time toward the big glass doors, through which I could see a plum-filled monkey - the project supervisor - sitting on the rail of the deck picking his fangs with a pinkynail, savoring the flavor of my nearly ripe plums in a distant attitude that reminded me of a wine gourmet I once knew, until the ape heard the sound of my feet, turned, spotted me through the screen and took off redtailed, screeching to warn his crew still operating in the branches "The guy who has a thing for these plums is coming, so take off, now!"

The newbie crew in the tree itself, one of whom had snapped the branch, were not used to being chased by humans at such close range; they were but clouds of leaves whirling in the heart of the tree as they made for the exit and hit the ground running, also redtailed, the supervisor ahead of them looking back redfaced over his shoulder at me (redfaced and shaking my fist), to see if I was seriously in pursuit (a common concern among thieves of all species). I noticed that under his arm he was carrying a good cache of plums for later; unlike the empty-pawed newbies, he had anticipated a rousting. I also noticed that while supervising the hairy work force, he had eaten his take of plums fastidiously and not thrown the leftovers here and there, as one might expect a wild and unmannered monkey to do; rather, he had left a pile of peels and pits laid out along the railing in a sort of spontaneous natural nyah-nyah...

But although the monkeys had gotten a few of my plums, because I had reacted quickly most of the fruits remained on the tree and outside monkeys, so "One less for the monkeys..." became my loud mantra for each plum I picked on the spot as I walked around and beneath the tree, climbing the ladder in the hot and humid afternoon, plumbing the leafy reaches, squinting upward among the green-plum-colored and shaped underleaves, looking for orbs that might be barely tinting red but still indistinct against the glare, using my extended branch cutter when I couldn't reach high enough. I intoned "One less for the monkeys" at least a few dozen times, so the pickings were pretty good. I'll enjoy those purple goodnesses over there, by the big kitchen window.

You'd think that by now, after 15 years here with a garden and over 5 with a producing plum tree, I'd have known instinctively (how long does it take to acquire an instinct?) that after such extended rain and inactivity the monkeys would be hungry and out in force, coming for their vig-- and preempt them 100%, finally get to see a mob of monkeys nowhere near my plum tree, looking at me with respect. Maybe some day. For now, my dawning hope is that they acquire even more of a modern, processed lifestyle, maybe get a thing for couches and junk food, develop an aversion to fresh fruits and vegetables...

But I'd never stoop so low as to leave out a bunch of jumbo bags of potato chips...

THE ME SQUAD

As if the panic of that very morning's weedwhacker incident weren't enough (that 40 minutes had used up a day's worth of energy), I'd finally begun settling down with a good cup of coffee in the loft, savoring the fact that at least I'd managed to show my harried face out there and do a couple of useless things to assert and maintain my part in the community effort, vowing that I would do better next time - maybe even use an alarm clock, just in case - and was getting back into the mood for some editing work at my computer when, having just finished a couple of paragraphs, I heard the sinister sound of my chain alarm.

Some time before, in apishly devious fashion (am I now I aping the apes?) I had draped a long length of chain over the upper transverse poles of my garden cube so that when any totally unscrupulous life form such as - and pretty much only - hairy red-faced marauders climbed up the supports, the chain would rattle against the metal piping, bringing the Antisimian Commando Squad (i.e., Me) on the run, ancient hi-tech weaponry (i.e., rocks) at the ready.

Not surprisingly, my unpatented chain alarm has the major flaw of only being effective when the Me is at home. (If a chain moves against metal tubing in a forest, does it make a sound?) But I was at home this time, so is there no rest for the weary, I ran downstairs and looked out the window, gathering crucial combat data. The chain alarm had been set off by a teenage monkey who, like teenage humans, was in a hurry to arrive. He and his buddy were already hefting the green tomatoes.

A big healthy female, infant on her back (monkeys teach rampant brigandage right from birth) was ambling slowly toward the open gate, taking the easy way (she'd clearly been here before, and was sharing her wisdom with the little one) when I burst from the doorway hissing and screeching like... like... a monkey, I guess, would be the closest thing, we're not really that far apart, if you think about it; it hasn't been that long since we came to that fork in the road and took it...

My tactics worked, the female took off like a carnival monkey shot from a cannon, the infant loved the ride and will no doubt be back one day, the teenagers were hairy blurs that were there only a second ago... Thanks to the prompt action of the Me squad I only lost a couple of the bigger green tomatoes, and grabbed the rest for myself. I'll let them redden in the kitchen window, where I hope the monkeys can see them.

KYOTO JOURNAL #74
NOW OUT

Silk Roads
Samarkand-to-Nara
Guest edited by Leanne Ogasawara
(Click cover photo for content details, excerpts and related links.)

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THE APPROACH OF THE WEEDWHACKERS

I swear I knew beforehand that this Sunday morning from 8 to 10 am we were having the community work session, which we have a couple times a year, weather permitting, when everyone from the village - which includes all the way up here - comes out with their own tools and donates two hours of work clearing the roadsides of weeds etc., and since Echo is visiting family up north I would be soloing this time and its been a while since I took part in one of these, so I was gonna be out there with my weedwhacker and bells on even before 8 am, start on my assigned section of the roadside just below my house as the folks from down below worked up toward me. I usually get up around 6 so no problem...

Then this morning in the deeps of pleasant dreams I heard the distant sound of approaching weedwhackers and sat bolt upright, saw that it was 8:20 am and by 8:21 am I was out of the house opening the toolshed, fortunately having taken a few seconds to dress along the way so I was pretty much in my work clothes, took the weedwhacker out of the toolshed to the growing sound of approaching weedwhackers and discovered what I had already known: that the whacker had no whackstring in it.

So having had no coffee I tried for a few small eternities to wind the grudgy plastic cord around the spool as the sound of the weedwhackers grew louder, dozens of busy and dutiful participants approaching the section where I was to be doing my part for the community, a concept so deep in the J-psyche. As I of other psyche struggled with the springy string, somehow in my coffeeless state I realized that all the approaching whackers were dealing with the bamboo etc. that grew along the roadsides, not grassy weeds such as I generally deal with around my house, so they had the big-toothed blades on their whackers, not wimpy plastic string...

So I rummaged in the toolshed for my blade and then for a wrench to remove the plastic string fitting from the whacker, but remembered that I have to use a special wrench to do that, what else is new, and that that wrench was in the big tool box over by the kitchen window so I went over there and did some deep rummaging, at last reached the wrench and brought it to the surface, grabbed the debris mask and the 2-cycle engine fuel and went out front as the roar of the approaching whackers grew deafening, and me without coffee...

So now, after two or three previous failed tries at stringing the whacker, here I was at blade time at least out front with the wrench etc., so I started to take off the string fitting and put on the blade, knowing deep in my heart that the fastening bolt loosens clockwise and tightens counterclockwise, but in the growing roar of the approaching whackers and the depths of no coffee while teetering on the knife edge of no time I forgot and tried to tighten clockwise with the wrench and the bolt fell off, also the washer fell off, the metal holder fell off, and that other round metal thingy fell off, then the blade fell off, onto the stone/pebbles/grass/shrubbery of the driveway so I put the whacker down and amidst the throbbing roar of imminent whackers began searching for a washer amidst gravel in a life without coffee...

I searched as well for the bolt and the metal fittings, I searched for the round metal thingy that had rolled away down the driveway where I finally found it near the gutter, the washer had fallen straight down so I had that, then the other metal holder I found at last way under the car, so all I needed now in the deafening roar of the converging whackers was the bolt, the key to it all; I looked everywhere, everywhere in that roar for the bolt but could not find it, until just as one of the village men began working on my assigned section I lifted my left boot from the pebbles and there in my footprint was the bolt, I put it and the blade etc. on and set forth, starting my weed whacker as I went, ready to shoulder my assigned task as part of the roar of the weedwhackers but the motor wouldn't start, so the machine and I wrestled on the ground there for a while until it said uncle with a bit of a cough and began to start, sort of, and by that time the weed whackers had already done my assigned part...

So having had no coffee I started on the part just above my property and began whacking the weeds there, sort of, the 'sort of' being because as soon as I started whacking I realized that the blade wasn't cutting, it was more like putting the weeds back into the ground, because I'd put it on backwards, then as I stood there watching the whirling blade, waiting for it to stop so I could take it off and put it on the right way round, a village lady came up to me from amidst the diminishing roar of the surrounding weedwhackers and said we're not doing that section, at which point it dawned on me like a descending meteor now three feet away from my face that from the start, meaning the big bang, I had not been meant to take part in this activity today. Funny I hadn't noticed.

That can happen when you haven't had your coffee.

DEJA VU AND POTATOES

Came out last Saturday morning and found that an eccentric monkey had gotten into one row of my potatoes, but only slightly-- pulled up just a few plants, simply laid them down in place without even taking a bite of the egg-sized potatoes on them and went away, ignoring the much taller potato plants in the next row! I at once harvested the now exposed small potatoes, replanted the stalks and enjoyed potatoes in the soup I made for lunch.

Came out Saturday morning a week later and found that the thief had come again (as per his scheduler, he apparently comes on days when neither of us is home), pulled up just a few more plants in the same row, simply laid them down in place without even taking a bite of the egg-sized potatoes on them and went away, ignoring the now even taller potato plants in the next row! I at once etc. in the stew I made for lunch.

This odd monkey is apparently a stranger and, unlike your average marauding redfaced beast (who throws stuff everywhere after taking at least sample bites of everything just to spoil it for whoever has wasted their time growing it ha ha ha!), has some deja vuey obsession involving potatoes and fastidiousness (e.g., I don't like to eat them but I do like to pull them up and watch them in private). He's quite neat and organized, and maybe each week will do a few more plants until he's finished with that row, then he'll move on to the next row with the much taller potato plants and harvest some more tasty tubers for me on Saturdays.

I wonder what he does for a living.

CHESTNUT WISDOM

After the long rains, on this at last sunny morning of blue sky filled with fine white clouds swelling their chests I was instantly out in the garden doing necessary tasks that didn't distract me too much from the beauty of the morning, such as slowly taking down the long net from the bush bean shoots. As I stood there rolling up the green length, I smelled on the breeze that musky fragrance that is the chestnut tree, engaged in the first step of chestnut creation-- taking advantage of this generosity of weather to put on its annual arboreal show. Now in full heat, it was thrusting all its catkins out into the air for maximum output of musk, the fragrance washing over me on the morning breeze.

It made me look up, and there above me like its own cloud beneath the big others rose the chestnut, resembling a big cauliflower, festooned with all its ivory catkins (great word, that), limbs outstretched to all the moths and butterflies, bees and beetles, flying bugs of every description that were practically lining up in the blue air to get some of that rare nectar. Even the scoldy bulbul broke off from his tirade about me being near his strawberries and began diving here and there into the big white waves after the wreaths of sweet blossoms and the swarms of bugs. I of no wings down there on the ground was fully pleased to just stand there on my own time, draped with green garden netting, and watch it all going on up there.

What richness of life was centered by that time-rounded tree, draped in a shawl of old lace, arms outstretched in the success of being, offering scintillas of its own sweetness in exchange for chestnuts it will grow and one day let go of, bright-coated treasures I will gather by the bucketful and be nourished by, as I am nourished even now by realizing that the old tree has always known these things...

SPACE, TIME AND FIREWOOD

Folks who don't heat with firewood can't really appreciate all that goes into that bit of sunshine set loose in your woodstove, you think maybe its easy just because it's free (at least, the way I do it), but there are other burdens that come with the generally erratic supply of gleaned firewood such as I use. There's really no need to mention here the sectioning and hauling and splitting and hauling and stacking and hauling and burning and hauling and hauling and hauling, but I already did so it's too late.

Take 2: Say you've got four or five cords of firewood crowding out there in various locations around your house (as I do at the moment), wood from various periods of time in the past few years, some of it stoveready and some not, but in any case you've run out of stacking space and have just been given access to a whole new multicord bunch of bigwood to be split and stacked so it will be dry by the time you need to use it two or three winters from now, so you've got to put it somewhere on your land but you can't stack new green wood on top of fully ready or nearly ready wood are you crazy, so you've got to walk around, analyze your stacks and ponder your wood supply and various durations, juggling disparate concepts sort of like Einstein used to do with arrangements of numbers and symbols while wandering his theoretical woodlot, the space-time continuum at Princeton.

With these sylvan symbols as well, like Albert you've got to somehow bend time and space by combining a number (x) of similarly nearly ready pieces of embodied energy (E), i.e., photons+alpha as wood (W), into one or more taller stacks (S), thereby clearing a place for the new mass (m) of incoming atomic structures; then when winter comes, you unleash the power of those atoms inside your stove in the form of radiating heat (H) and so free up some space outside, thereby establishing a direct link between time, space and firewood, not to mention the speed of light (c), which can be squared if you want, but right now you have to match the mix of wood new and old.

Fortunately, last year you began to denote all the relevant data in numerical symbols on the end face of one piece of wood at the top of a stack, but unfortunately the newest wood is always on the top of the stack, so to get at the older wood you have to go to the bottom by for example turning the whole stack over, which is not practical (working in complete abstraction, Albert had it easier in this regard), and practicality is what we're talking about, so this approach needs work. Al's work led to atomic fissioning and nuclear power, which here in Japan has a bigly negative historic reputation but is now used in winter to power electric heaters, blu-rays and videogame consoles, among vast quantities of other things.

This is a universe, after all.

BRIGHT IDEA

The other middle of the night I was coming downstairs fresh from dreams in the total dark like I sometimes do for a change of pace at that 3 o'clock in the morning of the soul that F. Scott Fitzgerald spoke of, only without the hangover, when my seeking eyes at the heart of the dark were caught by a gleam of light, in a sensation somewhat like having a small but bright idea.

How attracted was my gaze by that bright but tiny glow, that only point of absolute undarkness! I stood mystified a moment at the bottom of the stairs, studying the phenomenon of such a single dot of brightness in all that deep dark, wondering how there could be a reflection in the window when there were no lights on in the room; there were no stars for the clouds, there were no streetlights around here. Moreover it was a greenish reflection; even moreover, the light seemed to be moving!

There in that countryside mid-night dark and silence it was eerie, mysterious, suitably rural for the genesis of myth - the finest mythology originates in the countryside - I suddenly realized that yes, it is that time of year: it must be a firefly! Trapped in the house! I had to set it free, let it go outside!

I went over to the tiny light and saw that the firefly, shadowed by his own light, was walking up and down the lower part of the window, texting for any interested female that might be in the vicinity, but I couldn't tell whether he was inside or outside the glass, since he was turning himself on and off as he moved up and down.

Then as if to answer my question in the simplest way possible, when I tried to get some close perspective on the matter my forehead struck the glass with a suitable but unexpected bong in the night, like the forgetting of a small bright idea, the shock of which caused the firefly to lose his footing and fall to the deck-- outside, where he lay still turning on and off. I remember being that age. Problem solved, question answered.

And I just had a small, bright idea, about a myth...

THE PILLBUG MANUAL

Inevitably, there are times in life when one has to acknowledge inaccuracies in one's mental archives. Such a time has come again for me (ninth time this week!). But often such errors are understandable, and fortunately seldom have Titanic-type results. This one involves a mere garden matter, specifically the affairs of a single potted plant, as posted about yesterday, regarding which my conclusions weren't exactly Sherlockian; I was too ready to jump to conclusions, a big problem in those less than 100 years of age. 

On my own behalf, let me simply state that when one sees the fragments of impatiens leaves scattered here and there amid frenetic ants, it is natural enough to right away think: its them! The ants did it! Ants always look guilty anyhow, scurrying everywhere like that, all the while looking around like they're about to be caught redhanded; one can be forgiven for thinking them guilty or capable of just about any heinous garden act-- look at the way they Svengali those aphids on my peppers, for example. Guilty.

Well the laurel worked with the ants, but it turns out that the ants were not the culprits!

I had noticed incidentally among the myriad scurrying ants the many pillbugs who were partying big time in their own subdued way-- pillbugs love moist places too, and as everyone knows, pillbugs consume decayed organic matter. Turns out however that, unlike everyone, I didn't read the small print in the Pillbug Manual: pillbugs eat decayed organic matter and tender young shoots, such as my new impatiens plant, the lowlifes.

So my apologies to any of you ants who may have read my previous post; but just let me say for the record that I know you're guilty of something, so take a good long look at your lifestyle and try to turn your self around. You can start by getting those aphids off my peppers.

Now if I can find a cure for those little pills...

GETTING OFF MY LAURELS

Last weekend I put a new impatiens plant in a pot beside the ginger bed for a little decor before the ginger comes up, and this morning noticed that the plant was about half its original size, when all things considered it should be heading in the other direction, dimensionwise.

A quick bit of plant forensics revealed pieces of leaves, buds and blossoms on the soil in the pot and the ground around. I thought at first it might have been a deer sampling the flowers, but, like me, deer don't throw anything away. What remained had been nibbled at, in a familiar, curvy way-- then I spotted the red, guilty-looking ants. Probably because of the heavy rains of the past few days, plus the irrational generosity of impatiens which gives away the farm by providing little droplets of nectar here and there on its person. Thus some of these ants, which love wet areas, had taken over and were having a party on my tab.

Went online and looked for a natural solution if there was one, found several sites saying spray the mothers, dust 'em, kill kill kill, but one site saying crumple up a handful of bay laurel leaves and sprinkle them on the soil around the plant, the scent of the bay leaves will confuse the ants as to the scent of the impatiens. The idea of confused ants had a strong appeal for me, plus I just happen to have a bay laurel tree beginning to tower again in my garden-- I trimmed it a year ago but it's taking over once more, being vitally evergreen and growing like crazy, a real life force, which is why the Greeks and Romans loved it so much as a symbol of highest achievement, but this one is a bit manic; what's more, it has been functionally idle, and in my garden it's earn your keep or move on, we're all working together here, no resting on your laurels. (Sorry.)

Fact is, I myself use few of my laurels, only now and then in winter soup and occasional other cuisines, and as gifts for the rare Japanese folks who know how to use bay leaves (even rarer than those who know how to use oregano). So I went and got a handful of the fragrant leaves and crumpled them (they crumple well), sprinkled them on the soil around the base of the plant and now the ants are running in confusion over and under the bay leaves, saying in ant: Where'd the flowers go? What happened? What's this sudden weird odor? Is this the end of our little community?

Very appealing. So far, so good...

CLOSE-UP

I was out early this imminently rainy morning checking the firewood tarps and at one point during the process, as I rose to my full height beside a cord of oak I found myself close-up eye-to-eye with a frog the size of a chick pea, who'd been chilling out atop the tarp enjoying the gray dampness that was his day, on his rampart. I wasn't surprised to see a frog up that early, even though his crew had been up all night singing about the wonderful rain and this perfectly watery environment with prayers for more and suchlike, the common material of frog lyrics. He, however, drew back a millimeter or so in shock at the sudden appearance of this huge head before him, but at once he regained his composure and stood stock still in that haughty froggy way, so we just stood there staring at each other.

I don't know how often frogs get to see huge heads up close like this, but I thought him remarkably brave to stay in place; thus we got to see each other very close up. He got so see how I need a shave and should clean my glasses, maybe do something about those eyebrows and get a new hat for godsake, whereas I got to see how perfectly green his body was-- the perfect green, to my eye. I can think of no match for it really, a bit too light for imperial jade... I can't say I've actually seen this kind of matte green anywhere before, maybe in Aztec wall paintings, but it was deeply appreciable to me. The upper parts of his minutely greened limbs were dusted in gold powder, like you see on some old Japanese creations of urushi worth millions of dollars, but his was an older kind of masterwork he'd had done for free. His splayed and bulbous hands and feet were translucent, a nearly transparent cloudy green of beyond museum quality. He also had some neat black curlicue pinstriping here and there, most notably on his face and around his eyes, two tiny orbs of dark, deep onyx that just looked at me with that look the world gets on its face sometimes when you really stare at it.

We stood there gazing at each other in natural silence until I just had to say something, me being the bargee, so I said Wow you are a work of art, that design is amazing and those colors are just... His eyes seemed to say Maybe. I don't know. I've never really seen myself. Anyway, I didn't do any of it, so what can I be proud of? Don't praise me, or the next thing you know I'll be taking credit for it; you two-leggeds know where that can lead. Anyway, I wasn't always like this, I had a tough childhood. For a long time I wasn't even a frog. No legs, even had a tail, constantly morphing, it was all pretty traumatic,... Anyhow, none of it was my fault or doing, so I can't really feel guilty about it or take pride in it, can I. You look proud, I said, the way you stand there. No, that's just the way you two-leggeds look when you think you have something to be proud of. Which isn't too much lately, is it... Saying which, he hopped casually away.

Jaw dropped, gazing after him, my huge head was shocked at his wisdom and all that he knew about us.

COOL

The list of fortunate gardeners is not a long one these days, but it occurred to me this morning that it's a really lucky gardener who lives next to a mountainside of bamboo perfectly sized for use in gardening to make stakes, lattices, trellises and, oh, large statues of Brigitte Bardot if you're of such a mind and have the time.

This is not the standard biggo kind of bamboo that you can make walls and pipes out of, this is the strong but slender kind, that for example is finely handcrafted into the world's best flyfishing rods for thousands of dollars, but I get it for free. So when I need to make a slender lattice to keep my pushy squash leaves from bullying my shy peppers, or a nice inviting ladder for my touchy cucumbers (a device of my own crafty invention that might even give the cuke-thieving monkeys a bit of well-deserved trouble), I just wade into the green whispering sea next door and select my bamboo stalks, much like Stradivari must have selected his viola woods.

The farmers down in the village have to drive all the way up here to get theirs, and small bundles of this quality item are sold for a lot more than nothing at the gardening stores in the city, where nature costs money, but I have the entire inventory right here at hand and I get it for free-- all the heights, all the thicknesses. So if you want to come and get some just let me know. Then after you cut your selection and start to trim them you can leave a few spiky branches here and there along the desired length for cucumber tendrils to cling to on their way to the sky. The climbing vegs - such as beans, squashes and cukes - naturally prefer a natural surface and don't really bond with plastic, just like human beings (there's a bit of climbing vegetable in all of us).

So this morning when I spotted my vigorizing cucumbers ignoring the plastic support poles (I left the winter snow supports in place), I went and Stradivariated several ideally sized, strengthed and lengthed stalks so as to provide the the optimal cucumber-appreciated tonal quality, and bound them into a cucumber ladder that the cukes are even now climbing like a little kid runs up a set of stairs in a new house, only slower.

I thank the bamboo grove, it just nods in return. Bamboo is so cool.

THE FRUGS

Some things never leave you. In our case, one of them is simple frugality. Back when Echo and I were traveling, before the kids were born, as I've mentioned a few times in these long chronicles, we made our living as we went along, lived many years at a stretch without such niceties as utilities, so when up here on PLM our old faithful kerosene-powered water heater blew a pipe the other day we almost automatically went into low-mode living and began making necessary adjustments for the duration until repair, during which time we'd be doing dishes/laundry/bathing a la our time in Spain when we had no hot water, and even in winter bathed each with a bucket of water heated over the fire. The body steam was impressive out there in the field. We'd also grab the soap and shower in rainstorms.

When we slipped so effortlessly into that mode the other day, even these decades later, it was heartening, comforting to know what we knew and could fall back on, regressing without regret, without negativity or stress, knowing that we could adapt, we've been there; and now that warm weather is here, no hurry to repair...

That's another of the treasures that simplicity bestows again and again on the long brown road that leads wherever we choose. Traveling on foot, of course.

PERMACULTURE FORUMS

NATURAL PASSIONS

Potatoes really love each other. Avoiding that whole homohetero thing, they get way intererotic when left alone in the dark, as I discovered even further than before when I opened my garden toolshed this morning and found the remaining unused half-bag of potatoes (I had nowhere to plant them) locked in flagrante delicto maximo. What's more, they weren't the least embarrassed, which is one of the benefits of being a vegetable; everything is 100% natural. Unless you get your potatoes from Monsanto-- they can probably blush.

Anyway, vegetables in general, despite their laid-back attitude, are a lot more passionate than we ever give them credit for; in fact, eros is the word, as far as they're concerned; it's their very reason for being. Not for nothing was the lascivious tomato called the "love apple" during insanely holy times, and in its flagrant prurience thought to be a deadly poison. Thus do we pull the wool over our own eyes; but upon opening the toolshed did I turn away in righteous disgust? Heck no.

Thankfully, we of today live in more enlightened times. Though many vegetophobes are still loathe to encounter vegetable acts in daily life, such individuals can get help; the barrier is lowering with each generation. As higher beings, we must learn to be more tolerant of the passions of nature-- in vegetables as in ourselves.

PLUMS OF AGE

Interesting the way the new plums, all but invisible at first and for quite a while thereafter, are hard to spot among all the plumlike leaves, both leaf and fruit at this point being the same identical shadings of curly, multigreen curvature. Not yet ready, the plums are hidden even as they swell with growth, aren't easily discerned even when I try to filter out the leaves in search of the fruits so as to get some idea of what might be in store regarding the plummy cornucopia, as I often do at about this time of year, to maybe outfox the monkeys.

But then one day amidst the summer sweetness rising everywhere the swelling plums turn a see-me green, then a daily brightening yellow, then drift toward orange, then darken to a deep, sweet, frosty amethyst, in stark contrast to the still-green leaves. Time to be easily found, because at last they're ready. The sweeter they are, the more they stand out. In their own ways, people age in much the same way.