Russian Garden
It’s a crisp Saturday morning in late October and I have nothing on my agenda today before going with Kim to a Halloween party this evening. For that party, I will be dressing up as I have several years past as a Russian. This is less a political statement on my part than it is an attempt to make sense out of keeping a large Russian fur hat that I acquired 35 years ago on my first trip to Moscow. Before heading to Moscow that December in 1988, a friend of mine told me that I should buy a Russian fur hat. I scoffed at the idea, asking him if he thought Russians figured that everybody who came to New York City would be wearing a cowboy hat. As it turned out when I arrived in Moscow, everyone was wearing fur hat. So much for being a seasoned world traveler. One of the things I learned well in Moscow during those unusual Glasnost days, was that no shopkeepers were interested in taking Russian rubles in exchange for their goods, and they only wanted US dollars. One of the few things that you could buy with rubles, was a Russian for hat, since they were in such excess supply. That hat is way too big and way too warm to wear under normal circumstances, but it does make a statement and it screams Russian whenever you wear it.
25 years ago, I had a need for a Halloween costume, and it occurred to me that my Russian hat, which sat on the top shelf of the hall closet, might be something that I could use. That’s when I started making the Russian hat part of my go-to Halloween costume whenever the need arose. So, for tonight’s Halloween party, while Kim dresses up as a hippie (another convenient costume, for people of a certain age), I will dress up as a Russian. I’m not exactly sure sure how one should dress as a Russian these days, but there are certain stereotypes that seem to apply. It would probably be more appropriate to dress up like an oligarch with gold jewelry dripping from every appendage, but that doesn’t really work with the hat. To make the costume work with the hat I have to go with a more traditional Bolshevik approach to being a Russian. I don’t want to spend too much time, effort or money trying to make this the perfect costume, since I don’t even know these people that are holding this party (they are some of Kim’s Encore choral group friends). But I did go to Party City to see if I could buy some inexpensive accessories that would invoke a certain Russian air. What I came back with included a large plastic sledgehammer and sickle, which Kim glued together for me to give me a hammer & sickle mace to carry with me. I found a costume black mustache to give me a certain Stalinesque manner. I also found a plastic bandolier of what could easily be AK-47 ammunition, which I plan to drape over my shoulder in revolutionary fashion. The last touch I’ve added is to rummage through all of my boxes of memorabilia pins, and find a collection of austere-looking medals to hang on the chest of the tunic I plan to wear. I think the overall effect says Russian and I have in mind various things I can say, if someone asks me what the metals are for, my favorite metal is actually a pin of a baby Trump balloon, which I will declare in a thick Russian accent to be an award, I received in 2016 for helping the unlikely candidate Trump achieve the presidency of the Russian arch-rival, the United States.
I did all that costuming preparation yesterday, so today I am at loose ends, and in an effort to get my bits and pieces of exercise in, I’ve decided to take a walk around the back hillside. Given the hillside, that alone is a mini-workout. This is been a very good year for the garden and everything has prospered. The beauty of the San Diego climate is that I have things blooming all year long. The tulip tree I planted last year in the back of the garage by the Betty garden, is overflowing with lovely orange tulips. That’s very rewarding for me because there were several months in the early part of the year when I thought the tree might not make it, but now it seems it was just dormant and finding its own cycle in the zone 9 of Southern California. I have now walked around the back hillside garden and sat on every bench there is to sit on. I’ve gone into the Hobbit House and replenished the bird feeder and checked on the camera installation, and everything is in working order. I still have a nice array of yellow, orange and purple flowers here and there around the garden on various flowering bushes that I’ve planted over the last 3 or 4 years. Everything looks both random, and yet purposeful at the same time. There is a blend of succulents with the preponderance of ice plants and blue agaves spread across the hillside. Interspersed among them are various, more exotic cacti of various sorts. It always amazes me to see the wide variety of plants that do well in this climate. I’ve said it before, but it’s hard not to repeat that we have managed to find our own little Garden of Eden on this 2.5 acres of hillside land. This morning I have wondered what the prior owner, Elisabeth, would think if she saw this back hillside. She worked hard to make the front succulent garden world class and I hope she would find that what I have done on the back hillside, with pathways , plantings, metal sculpture, and bits and pieces of whimsy here and there, pleasing to her. I don’t know why that should matter to me, but as the next person in line to enhance and upgrade this property, it somehow does matter. Perhaps I will find a way to invite her over since I know she still lives in the area. It’s been over 12 years since she sold us the property so she may or may not have an interest in seeing what has become of it.
I really am very proud of this garden, and I’m particularly proud of its own rustic beauty with all the boulders of various sizes spread around the hillside. There really is no more beautiful landscape element than these boulders because they sit where nature has placed them over the millennia and through the mysteries of the passage of time and geological events. I have merely adapted to the existing landscape and to a certain extent to the whims of nature. As for the landscape, they have determined the pathways that I’ve installed. The boulders have determined, not only the flow of the paths, but I’ve also used them as a feature element by painting on them, by installing a rock climbing wall with a bell at the top, by building a Hobbit House up against one that I carved, and attaching metal art like my famous 550 pound bison head to create a lounging buffalo in the grass. Nature has also had a hand in the design of the garden. The big oak tree on the northern corner of the house has dropped enough acorns over the years to have created several more smaller oaks in its shadow. The big blue agaves that were here when I got here have created pups, which I have spread all over the back hillside, so that now there is a wide array of blue agaves everywhere across the hill.
I know that I write very often about my garden and I imagine to some it has become a bit of a bore, but if you could sit here as I do on any given sunny morning like today, you too might marvel that with minimal effort and lots of patience, anyone could create something so naturally beautiful. As I dress up tonight as a Russian, I can imagine that some old guy half way around the world, doing like me, sitting at his dacha admiring his Russian garden. I don’t know whether I have it better or worse than that Russian, but on this Halloween weekend, I’m happy to make believe I’m Russian for a few hours, but even happier that I can simply take a walk in my American garden whenever I need the peace of mind.