Beginning Year Two In the City Of Angels

We’re back in the City of Angels. We had a wonderful, golden summer in Maine! It was full of fresh food from the garden and the farm market and family and friends visiting. It was the kind of summer where your bathing suit never fully dries out because you go swimming every day and your feet get dirty and dry from being barefoot in the garden. I feel refreshed, and as the seasons turn to busier times I reluctantly re-purpose myself.

I can’t believe that it’s been a year since I started this blog! I promised that I would keep it up for my first year in L.A. I had envisioned that I would have reached some kind of peace or have some kind of clearer purpose in my new home by now, and I’m not sure that I have lived up to my own expectations on this point. I definitely need to keep writing, digging through words to help me find my footing in my life these days. Thank you so much for being with me. Writing this helps me so much, keeps me clearer and more honest and positive than I can be when my words are just for my eyes alone.

So far this week sort of feels like an, (albeit much milder,) echo of my disoriented arrival last year. A little over a week ago I was eating fresh peaches from my tree in Maine. I was closing up the house, cleaning for our winter renter, putting the garden to bed and trying to squeeze in some last minute visits with friends and family. Then a long plane trip away from the cold northern coast and finally a descent into a sea of lights. Tim agreed, the first few days back in L.A. after a summer in Maine are disorienting. The dusty sunshine, the traffic and freeways, the city blocks stretching on and on, Carnicerias and lowriders with la Virgen stickers on them, and all the stylishly dressed and coiffed people on the west side. These are just things that, for better or worse, you never or rarely see in Maine. We went to the farmer’s market in Hollywood and wandered through the crowded maze of amazing fresh figs, jewel-like plums and tomatoes piled high. I ate a fresh date, which was lightly golden in color with surprising flesh the texture of an apple. It was like something wonderful from another planet. And speaking of another planet, the first day that I descended into the asphalt solar collector that is the San Fernando Valley to go on some soul scarring errands to a series of big box stores, I felt like I was on one. I really can’t complain too much though, now that I live in sunny Topanga, in the mountains between the sea and the valley, where the sun almost always shines, but not too hot, and we hear coyotes and owls in the night. Even here though, in this new place I love, my heart goes out to Maine with its bad weather, dilapidated houses, bumpy roads and poor dental hygiene.

I can’t say that I am always particularly happy to be back here right now….because sometimes I’m not. But a week in Maine alone without Tim and the kids was enough to remind me of how much I love and miss them and don’t like to be far from them for long. And this first week back has brought me that wonderful taste of fresh date, a celebratory dinner party with some good friends and a visit to the hospital in Burbank to meet another friends’ beautiful, brand new, elfin baby daughter. I’m so happy to be here for these events with these people that I care about. And I’m happy to have the anchors of friendship to tie me to both my homes.

Last Dog Days of Summer

These are the last dog days of summer. It has been clear and sunny and in the high 80s and 90s for the last several days in a row. The sky is blue. The sun is burning. The flowers are browning. The garden is drooping. The dogs are comatose under the furniture. The children are sweating in their school desks. We are packing up to leave and it is almost like L.A. is coming to get us!

My agricultural impulses chafe at me. I made pesto and froze it. I want to make more, but why? We leave in a week and it won’t be good by next year. I can’t ship it to myself in CA. I have a tree full of apples, and a foley food mill. I could can sauce. A pile of cukes ready for pickling. Tomatoes heavy on the vine for jars of marinara. But what am I going to do, spend probably a lot of money and fossil fuels shipping this food to myself for the winter in CA where oranges hang heavy on the trees and the markets are bursting year round? That isn’t very reasonable, thrifty or ecologically sound, which are some of the major factors in favor of the work involved in preserving your own food. Another is pleasure and another is pride. In this heat it wouldn’t be such a pleasure to stand over a hot stove canning anyway. I guess that just leaves pride. There’s my real problem, pride.

In my twenties when others were perhaps interning and career building and building an economic future I was traveling and having a good time and learning how to feed and prepare the soil, preserve the harvest, save the seeds and propagate the important heirloom varieties of food crops. It still burns me sometimes that I can’t fully use these skills in my life these days. Now I’m 33 and I can speak Spanish, play guitar, draw and run a small subsistence farm. But you can’t run a small subsistence farm in a split life on two coasts. And more than I need canned tomatoes these days I need to make a living. I haven’t figured out how to draw on these, my hard earned skills, and turn them into my career and economic future. I may have some ideas but I am not there yet. It kind of hurts my pride sometimes. Shouldn’t I have this stuff figured out by now? Ah well.

To use some farm terminology, this is what “gets my goat” about going back to Cali more than anything else. I need to put aside my farm girl self, the one that I made when I thought I knew what I was doing with my life. My comfortable, simple old farm girl self that I revisit in the summer. Back to the work of creating a place for myself in the big, strange world of L.A. No resting on any agricultural laurels, I’ve got so many more and different things left to figure out!

At least at this point, as opposed to a year ago, L.A. doesn’t feel so big nor so strange. I’ve got a home there, some neighbors, some friends. I’ll be slowly chipping away at the masters program again this fall and looking for part time work again. (Not going back to the English Café full of English fruitcakes, bless them.) I’ll build myself some new garden beds at the new house that we rent in Topanga. I have galleries and stores and places that I look forward to going. I’ll be so happy to see the beach, the wild parrots, the coyotes. It’s really not L.A. that I have a problem with, I know that now, it’s my concept of myself in it. I wonder when I will feel as at home there as I do in Maine and what will happen between now and then?

Summer Party

There is nothing like a good party to really stir up a bunch of good energy and memories. It’s also handy for cleaning up and getting things done around the house that you’ve been meaning to do for a while. We had a party last weekend and cleaned the barn, mowed the yard, painted the bathroom, took a load of stuff to goodwill, and made a lot of food. We also got to see a lot of old friends and some new ones and visit and play together. It’s particularly rewarding to see the many kids we know and love as they grow and change from season to season. We ate potluck, played whiffle ball, had homemade ice cream sandwiches, (thanks Anna!), and finished the day off with a quick trip to the beach, and then a houseful of guests overnight. We drank a bottle of Dom that night to celebrate Tim’s recent sale of the magazine, and as I wandered around the house with a flute in my hand looking for Cortaid for 3 year old Kate’s sore bottom, I was aware of my life feeling particularly full and satisfying. I sat on the kitchen floor gossiping and telling stories with Tim’s cousin Sonja late into the evening. Or at least it felt late after that day. I really appreciate the infusion of joy and fun that came with that gathering though, and it was a perfect end celebration to what has been a near perfect and beautiful summer.