One nice thing about not having a "squeeze" in my life is not having to worry about falling short on Valentine's day. I remember hustling down to the flower shop at the last possible minute before heading over to Nicole's place for a romantic dinner. "A dozen red roses, please, if you've got any left", I said to the smiling flower clerk. "Why yes of course we've still got some. Most of our business comes on Valentine's day afternoon. We stock up on red roses just for forgetful guys like you who are kind of over a barrel because of last minute purchases. That'll be $ 125." she announced cheerily with a glint of smugness. " $ 125 ?---wow. That's a hell of a lot for twelve flowers!" I replied.
Now I imagine running a small flower shop in downtown Mill Valley must be a challenge. Because of the desirability of these store fronts in the heart of our quaint and precious little village, the rents must be sky-high. You can tell by how quickly these little ventures come and go that these poor shopkeepers struggle daily to maintain a positive cash flow and I imagine that profit margins are razor thin. Having an MBA in finance and accounting, and having once been a partner in a recording studio, I knew something about struggling businesses. "Okay", I sighed. "I'll take them. Just one question; how much will these same flowers cost tomorrow?" She smiled, "Oh probably about $ 30-35. The mark-up on Valentine's day gets us through to Easter. Come a little earlier for Easter, the Cala lilies will probably triple in price come Easter morning. We'll be open to 1 PM on Easter."
As I mentioned, now that I'm post-sexual, I don't have to deal with being in a romantic relationship and the obligatory flower purchase. This year, I sent my lady friends talking Valentine e-cards with silly messages. I imagine they were surprised to hear from me at all.
The cherry-plum trees in the back yard and the plum tree in the garden are all in glorious blossom. That's a risky strategy for these trees. But because of our balmy, droughty weather for most of this year, they couldn't help themselves. The problem is, it's not quite warm enough for our little denizens in the apiary to be out and about pollinating. They have their sugar water to sustain them till Spring. With the cherry and plum blossoms unpollinated, there's a risk that a heavy rain at this point will knock all the blossoms off and there won't be any fruit this Summer. It has happened several times before and it's very disappointing to have no plums in June and July or pears in August. Keith, my eighty-two year old beekeeper, within whose bosom hope springs eternal, has planted a cherry tree and another peach tree down in the apiary. After helping him to plant them a few weeks ago, I haven't been down to see how they're doing. I think I'll do that today as it appears that it's going to be a lovely, sunny day. I noticed that the peach tree we planted was already budding.
When I decided that my garden needed some fruit trees back in '91, I consulted my almanac, Organic Gardening Magazine. The editor, a third generation organic gardener and grandson of the original editor, had recommendations for the types of fruit trees to plant. I trusted his recommendations, as he was "standing on the shoulders of giants". His grandfather J.I. Rodale had been a huge promoter of all things organic and had been urging people to grow their own since 1940 when he started his own "Experimental Organic Farm and Garden". At Mr. Rodale's urging, I planted heirloom trees on M-1 dwarf root stock. Even at maturity the trees will be short enough that you'll never need more than a small wooden step ladder or a long handled fruit picker to harvest (I have both---the fruit picker, though, is tricky; especially when you have a cluster of fruit. And harvesting before the damn yellow jackets get after them is also a bit of a challenge). J. I. Rodale, along with people like the Englishman Alan Chadwick, was one of the pioneers of organic gardening. After he turned the editor's job over to his son, he traveled all over the world, lecturing on the importance of growing organically. He was killed in a car crash on an icy road outside of Moscow after a lecture in 1971. R.I.P.
You plant fruit trees in the middle of Winter when growth is dormant. So in mid-february, I journeyed to several specialty orchard tree nurseries to buy what they call "bare root whips". These are fruit trees that are just a year old and their roots are covered in damp wood shavings. They look just like buggy whips and it takes a leap of faith to plant them. The orchard owners assured me that if I did the planting, as instructed, they would grow and probably bloom the following Spring. With their trimmed root balls carefully trussed up in wet burlap bags, I laid them in the bed of my pick-up truck and drove down through the horse pasture to the garden. I dug six holes for my infant dwarf heirloom fruit trees, while a heavy rain poured down. I had to dig the holes fairly large and deep to accommodate wire gopher baskets. The resident dog, a young and very spirited golden lab, had a serious jones for retrieving thrown objects. The rain didn't dampen her spirits one iota so the planting "drill" went something like this: Stevie would drop the tennis ball next to the hole I was digging. If I didn't respond immediately, she would push the ball with her nose till it fell into the hole. At this point I would get down on my knees, fish the damn ball, covered in mud and dog slobber, out of the hole, and heave it out of the garden and down the hill as far as I could. Now I had been a baseball pitcher in my youth and I still had a pretty good arm. The ball would sail up and over the greenhouse roof and bounce down the slope above Highway One. With the ball and the dog a good hundred yards away by now, I would hurriedly continue digging. I usually got about three or four spadefuls dug before dog and ball magically reappeared 'hole-side'---damn that dog was fast---in moments, the ball was back in the hole and Stevie Wonder-Dog would look up at me with a quizzical look as if to say, "C'mon, guy! What's the hold up?"
I eventually got the trees planted, aided by several mighty heaves of the tennis ball that had Stevie running down the side of the road to retrieve her prize. Now we get to enjoy Spitzenberg and Spigold German heirloom apples; Doyenne', a French fancy desert pear; Fuji, a golden russeted Japanese desert pear, (often called an apple pear because of it's crunchiness. I especially like them poached in pernod + sugar syrup); a Santa Rosa plum and a nectarine tree I bought at a nursery in Bolinas. The nectarine, alas, never really panned out. Although the fruits had a wonderful perfumey aroma, they never got much bigger than duck eggs and now, twenty-three years later, the poor tree appears to be have end-stage cancer... All we can do now is give it palliative care. It could probably use a morphine drip at this stage of its life.
Valentine roses and heirloom fruit trees; how the hell did they get mashed together? I blame my fingers. Once I let them out of the box in the morning and they are hovering over the keyboard, I never know what the hell they're going to type. And for that, dear reader, I apologize.
Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
Here's our new cherry tree in early blossom. In the background is the rental cottage I built. God bless Mill Valley rental prices.
That's Stevie Wonder Dog in the foreground waiting for me to put away the damn camera and throw her orange fluffy again---and again---ad nauseam. In the background we have her partner in crime, Jester the Molester (he's uncut...). Jester's owner, (not me), took him out mountain biking when he was a pup. That permanently weakened his leg tendons and he eased his distress by sitting down a lot. He used to follow me around the horse pasture while I shoveled up horse manure for the compost pile. He would sit patiently while I did my shoveling. Sometimes the horses would come over to investigate. They were intrigued by this immobile brown creature sitting next to my garden cart. Sometimes they would bend over Jester and give him a sniff and a gentle nudge and occasionally a little nip on his lustrous brown coat; at which point The Molester would look up at me with his sad but loving brown eyes as if to say: "You've got my back on this, right?" Jester made it to David Letterman's show where he was featured on "Stupid Pet Tricks". Because of his tendinitis, it was painful for Jester to walk down stairs. Instead, he would get down on his belly and pull himself down with his forelimbs, softly grunting as he went. We called it "Downward Dog". It wasn't till many years later that I learned that the term actually referred to something yoga sufferers did...
Stevie Wonder-Dog and Jester the Molester. Jester has just asked Stevie to be his valentine. Evidently she said yes. No, we did not pose this picture.
A rare moment of repose between bouts of ball retrieval. Alas, neither Stevie nor her owner are with us anymore.
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