April Panorama
It’s hard to keep a perspective on the weather when you live in a place like San Diego. We are in our fifth year of living full-time on this hilltop and I am generally pretty happy about the weather overall, but more confused than not, especially at this time of year, about what is normal, what is abnormal and what is shifting. I will define the normal/abnormal axis as the cyclical swings of drought and wet that swing wildly in areas like Southern California, plus the wind-driven cycles most characterized by El Niño, La Niña, and the Santa Ana’s. The shifting issue has more to do with the effects of climate change that we are all undergoing in the world that is mostly characterized by a global warming tend, but which is perhaps better epitomized as dramatically changing weather patterns or all sorts. Ask any big data experts and they will tell you that the weather is one of the most complex systems with so many multiple variables that to say that weather patterns and trends are shifting is axiomatic. Likewise, the culture of the world is complex and always shifting.
There really are only two things I have specifically noted that are constants with the weather out here. The first is what they call June Gloom, which is the marine layer that inhabits the coastline as the warmth of summer roll in and the temperature disparity at the intersection of land and sea is such that morning fog is a near certainty in and around the month of June, making it all seem somewhat gloomy in the morning. I remember having the same effect during my youth in Maine. There we also lived inland from the coast (a few more miles inland than we are situated here) and we used to say that the morning fog would burn off by midday…and it usually did. The other thing that seems to happen with regularity is that May is the rattlesnake month when the varmints awake from their winter slumber and feel secure in their cold-blooded ways of venturing forth and making their presence known. We have killed as many as five rattlesnakes in May in I find myself calibrating my discomfort about wandering the grounds against that timeframe. So in some ways, that makes April a good month around here in that it has clear skies and safe gardens. Today is such a day and given that in ten days we will head east for spring break with the granddaughters, I want to get out and take advantage of the season. You never know when there is rattlesnake just around the corner next month.
My gardens have been getting a lot of attention lately for some reason. I have to think harder and harder about what needs doing in the garden because the wetter winter and the increased fall prep have kept everything looking pretty good and there are not really any spots that are too terribly shabby. Things do weather and need sprucing up, but I have gotten pretty proficient at keeping up with those things. Last week I spread DG on the paths and repainted the most obviously faded metal sculptures. My pots are all largely weatherproof unless one falls over in a heavy wind, which only happened to one this year. I suppose I could buy and place more pots around, since they are always a pleasant feature, but now that I know I have 132 already positioned, I am less motivated to expand that array. I have already ordered a few replacement bonsai trees, which is a best done via online ordering from Brussel’s Bonsai. It is easy to get lost in the small beauty of life, especially in the miniature surreal existence of bonsai and its broader analogy to life on this hilltop.
Nevertheless, I have a few chores in mind for today and will put on my garden crocs and go out and tick a few more items off my gardening to-do list. It’s Sunday and for one reason or another that is most likely rooted in a long history of work, I am more inclined to do light maintenance work that does not require grungy gardening clothes, since we hare headed for an afternoon movie today as well. That suggests a little weeding with 30% vinegar might be in order. I am committed to using vinegar instead of Round-Up to do my weeding, as much for my safety as for the better ecofriendly nature of the stuff. I think I will take a few spray paint cans down to the lower hillside as well and do some more metal sculpture touching up as I go around weeding. There is nothing in my life that makes a Sunday any different from a Tuesday, but it still feels like a special day during which to enjoy the gardens. That seems especially so during April when the air is still crisp but the sunshine makes it all seem pleasant. But is April too good to be true?
Our normal Sunday afternoon activity is to go to a movie with brother-in-law Jeff and his wife, Lisa. Today we went to see the new Anthony Hopkins movie One Life, about the life of Nicky Winton, the British version of Oscar Schindler, who helped save 690 refugee children from Prague as the the forces of Adolf Hitler advanced in their quest for European Arian domination. It was a moving story of human compassion in the face of genocidal evil. It did what these movies are intended to do, it reminded us of the importance of kindness in a world that is constantly overwhelmed by forces that place priority on things other than people. As much as there was no reference to the world of today, it was impossible to watch this movie, that showed a series of seemingly normal daily lives of people at a time when such unspeakable events couldn’t possibly happen and yet did, and then not think of our world today where it seems impossible for such events to reoccur. It is April on my hilltop after all. These events in Prague were a mere 85 years ago and yet we are witnessing similar events underway right now and perhaps on the verge of happening on an even larger scale if we allow the forces of evil to overwhelm our better angels yet again. I am reminded that we are only one degree of separation away from being the kind of people that the world will always look back on and wonder how could such things be allowed to happen. April should not let us forget the rattlesnakes of May.
As for that one degree of separation, the movie also reminded me of how close my life has been to events such as these. The reason the world knows about Nicky Winton and his extreme acts of valor and compassion is because his story found its way to a media billionaire who had been in Prague at the same time. That was none other than Robert Maxwell, and he discovered the Nicky Winton story in 1988, one year before I was tasked to go to Buenos Aires with him for three weeks to help him find and assess Argentine investment opportunities. At that time I was unaware of his Nicky Winton connection, so imagine my surprise in the movie theater to be reminded that we are all only a small degree of separation away from great evil or great kindness.
As I look over my April panorama on this hilltop, I find myself reflecting on all the wonderful things about my life in this place and then I imagine those people in Europe in 1939 that felt the same way about their lives and their version of their April panorama. We must all do everything we can to help move the world towards kindness at every turn. I made another donation to Joe Biden this morning with that thought in mind. We cannot look over all the wonders of the world and sit on our perches and do nothing to help the better angels overcome that dark side of man that can look at the same April panorama and see only greed and opportunism. The weather may be pleasant today, but the storm clouds are never far away and we must always stay vigilant by reminding ourselves that the good always needs help to persevere.