5 Growing Things I Can't Do Without

  Even in their mid-60s, my parents still out-farm and out-garden me. And during my childhood, they set a ruthless precedent for what a garden should be. I grew up on five acres of Shangri La in the mountains of Colorado—where every summer my sister and I feasted on fresh corn and strawberries and played hide and go seek behind colossal lilac bushes and patches of rhubarb.

This really IS how you should live.

But. I live in the city. And I’m busy!

Plus, although I appreciate certain qualities of it, I’m not necessarily a back-to-the-land hippy like my parents were. I choose my small-but-good garden carefully—from veggies to flowers—for low-maintenance awesomeness. Below, you’ll find five growing things that I just can’t do without.

Lettuce: Store-bought lettuce is disappointing. Sometimes you just want two pieces for a friggin BLT, but you have to buy the whole head—which just rots behind the ketchup bottle on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Grow your own lettuce, though, and you can graze at will. Even if it’s just a couple heads, a little lettuce patch will chill out for months with nothing more than regular watering and weeding. It doesn’t like the extreme heat, so I do a spring crop and a fall crop. Easy peasy!

Cilantro: Fresh cilantro has a strange kind of power. It makes everything taste better. And it goes in so many different kinds of food—from Mexican to Thai to Italian to simple fresh salads and sandwiches. Plus, it’s über-easy. Toss some seeds in the dirt during spring-shower time and reap the reward a month or two later.

Dahlias: These exquisite flowers are true works of art. They come in a million different colors and variations, each one a tiny masterpiece of nature. Plus, the dahlia grows from a bulb, making it extremely low on the effort scale. In early spring, just dig a little hole in the ground, drop some bulbs in, and let em rip!

Jasmine: Plant this creeping vine in a giant pot right by a window or on a patio or anywhere you’ll be hanging out regularly. Those tiny white flowers might look unassuming, but the scent they discharge is nothing short of powerful. I have mine growing up the pillar on my front stoop, so that when I sit out there of an evening contemplating the neighborhood goings on, the deep, mysterious perfume wafts up gracefully and surrounds me in a cloud of scented ether.

Rosemary: Plant this one for the bees. It’s nice to do something for someone else, right? When they’ve had their fill, you can use it in your roast potatoes, on grilled corn, to make butters and herb-flavored salts, to rinse through your hair to make it all smooth and shiny (Aveda does it!), and finally, to rub all over your dogs and cats to keep the fleas away. You guys, rosemary is a miracle plant.

Fam-zine

My parents, my big sister, and my nephew came to town the weekend before last. And it was just my luck that for several days straight, water poured forth from the sky. Here's the deal. Portland is sooo awesome when the sun shines, but when it doesn't, especially at this time of year, you get kinda embarrassed in the face of visitors. Like, it's okay to lurk out in your sweatpants all day watching David Attenborough documentaries when you're by yourself, but as a method of entertaining? Nah.

So we wandered around dismally wet streets and ate. Ate a lot.

But I don't want to get down on the Northwest in general and Portland specifically, because even when it's foul out, you're confronted with so much beauty on a minute-to-minute basis that how can you complain? And yet ..... I do.

I dragged them all on a soggy hike in the gorge and cursed the skies as they marveled at yet another giant snail/slug thingy on the trail.

Hittin the rosé with my sis.

Annual trip to the rose garden. Love this place. A natural wonder.

My nephew just turned 8 and is a total BA (bad ass) and at the same time a total nerd. I love him for this.

Dark Shadows

As I've said before, I NEVER go to the movies, so when I do, I get all excited. Just to go to the theater with all the normies and get blasted in the face with big shiny imagery, completely shutting down my brain cells, thinking of nothing at all, and not having to talk to anyone that is around me. Like hiding.

Aaanyway, my fam was in town this weekend and so my big sister and I went out to see Dark Shadows. We both remember the mildly entertaining TV show from back when we were just little bear cubs in Colorado. And well, there's Johnny Depp, and of course Tim Burton, and Helena Bonham Carter and stuff.

My vote for the movie: ......

It wasn't bad. It wasn't good. It was sort of luke warm, with funny stuff and stuff so painfully blah and cheesy that I got the cold shivers. But there were pretty colors and stuff got blown up and I laughed a little, so everything's gonna be okay, ya know?

Exit Spring

This weekend, I threw off a long, dull two months that had hung heavily around my neck like dead weight. I pointed my car to the highway with a cooler full of bread and peanut butter and drove—south across the flats of Salem and Eugene, up and around through the winding trees of Grants Pass, down and out onto the parched plains past Redding and the gray-green olive groves north of Sacramento, all the way to the greasy blacktop of the Fresno Amtrak station. There, Lance stepped off the train, and next thing ya know, we were camping in Yosemite.

Mt. Shasta springs up suddenly, the second you cross the Oregon-California border. I've been jaded by my proximity to  Mt. Hood so I was only nominally impressed by this view.

Dusk in the Sierra Nevadas—so many shades of green.

This little view is what John Muir was on about. Minus the girl and the dog. Not bad, eh?

Beyond the tour busses and open-air people movers packed with butt whites, there were pristine meadows like this one.

Sleeping in the dirt. Barking at the wildlife. Chewing on the firewood. Lefty loves camping!

My first swim of the ’12 summer season was at this, the mother of all river spots—right at the base of El Capitan. Then we hit the road.

Now, no offense to anyone who lives there, but the section of California between Fresno and Sacramento is the worst. Driving through it filled me with dread. Shanty urban sprawl made from drab, depressing vistas of sun-parched America where, on the way down, I ate lunch by myself in a Motel 6 parking lot just because there was a little merciful patch of shade. Ugh. We drove as fast as possible to get this leg of the trip behind us, only stopping when Shasta Lake came into our view.

Four minutes off the highway, empty, crystal clear, complete with rope swing. So fucking good.

Sunset over Williams, California.

The Weekend Report

Worked: Snnoooozeville.

Ate: I decree that cornbread should accompany every meal—that, or salty-ass paprika fries. (Photo: T Byrnes)

Panicked: Although I have a lot of experience filling sandbags, they are not, unfortunately, an item I keep on hand in the household. But maybe this should change? Global-warming freak downpours and all.

Rode: Sweet freedom. (Photo: T Byrnes)