It is said that some of the greatest art comes from great pain. That may be so, but I guess I am lucky and simply don’t have so much pain in my life…at least not so far. I understand that this could change in a heartbeat, but unless and until it does, I create my art from whatever place of joy inhabits me at the moment. A few days ago, while down on the back hillside, I started a list of to-dos in the garden. Ostensibly, this was to be a list for Joventino, but then I realized that it would be too much to explain, especially in the subtlety of what I wanted to do. There were bushy succulents that have gotten too big and those I can leave to Joventino since that’s sort of a bulk problem and Joventino is good at lugging away unwanted green waste bulk. But there were other issues like replanting certain pots I have positioned around the garden (I have about 50 on the back hillside and patio alone). Those require a bit more finesse and specific purchases of cuttings, not to mention some weeding and pruning. There are also specific gardens that I have now positioned and planted personally that I feel are my responsibility to maintain. I find myself breaking up my overall property into specific gardens that tend to have specific themes. I think it must have something to do with my limited attention span and completion obsession. I try hard not to bite off projects that I cannot chew in a defined period of time or with a defined amount of effort. This is not just a gardening issue for me, but a life issue for some inexplicable reason. I write short stories by preference rather than longer treatises or books so much for the same reason.
I’ve thought about this personal tendency and wondered if it is a constraint I ought to fix or at least address. I’ve decided that I should just leave it alone and that it’s who I am and how I roll. Not so long ago, I redid the hillside by the front left corner of the garage. This was more by necessity than desire since I had lost a massive Agave Americana to the natural order of life. That caused me to spend some time focused on the planter pots in the front of the house and around the driveway. I am very happy about how all of that came out and since I took the time to have Andre put drip water supplies to most of them, they are prospering nicely and should do so for a long while. I am a creature of connection and from those pots I was logically drawn to the lighted pathway from the driveway to the patio. That is a tranquil transition spot that looks magical at night with the path lights leading one through the forrest of boulders and exotic trees (Yuccas to the left and Palo Verdes to the right). But what I really like about that pathway is the way if feels from the Living Room in the morning light. Five years ago I had a few tons of multi-sized Arizona River Rock put down at the base of the area from which the yuccas, assorted agaves and a gaggle of aloes in a large blue pot sit. As I looked this pathway area over, I found that there is very little I want or need to do to it to make it better or more magical.
So, that led me to the patio, which I seem to want to constantly revise. Don’t get me wrong, I am not looking for change for change’s sake, but the northeasterly positioning of the patio combined with the shading from both the large palapa and the award-winning Queensland Bottle Tree make it a challenging area for a gardening neophyte like me to address. There is either too little or too much sun for what I choose to plant. I have literally changed out the area several limestone in the past five years, never quite seeming to get it right…and when I think I have, the maintenance of that perfection proves to be challenging in its own right. I don’t think I’m describing anything too strange to fellow gardeners, but others may be scratching their heads at my angst. As my youngest son, Tom, mentioned in a recent facetious Snapshat comment to me, “Phew, that patch was keeping me up at night!” Well, believe it or not, several nights ago I was, indeed, awake thinking about what I wanted to do with that “patch”.
The patio area can be broken down into four areas. There is the area around the Bottle Tree, which currently is covered by purple lantana that is not as prosperous as I would like, but still looks very tailored to that area. There is the infamous area against the house where the $43k rock garden didn’t happen, but rather the $1,500 DIY rock garden got installed a few years ago. That is looking just fine other than in a bit of need of some tending and sprucing up. There is the rock hillside up to the live oak and pagoda. On the one hand, I am happy that a ground cover I planted finally took off last year, but on the other hand I feel like I lost control of it and it has buried several of my accent pots. In general, that little hillside is due for renovation and is next on my zen gardening to-do list. That leaves me with my troubling area between the spa grotto and the house, where my large Japanese lantern lives (properly lighted by a low-voltage light I installed a few years back). This is at the end of the magical pathway and yet off to the side of the proper patio area. It gets way too much morning and noonday sun for the lantana I had in there. None of it ever looked good. In fact, I partially addressed it on the eastern edge by putting in a few cacti in pots and in the ground and they do just fine in the sun. But the job was not complete and the “patch” needed to be addressed.
On Saturday morning, I went out and yanked out all the lantana and raked up the area, preparing for renovation. The one thing that I did right many years ago was plant a ponytail palm in the crook of the large boulder that sits overhanging the spa grotto. That is a personal pride because its placement has turned out perfectly. Garden demolition is just as rewarding as household demolition. Tearing out the old is just so darn therapeutic, and so went the lantana. I smoothed out the “patch” and was ready for the next stage. The combination of the Japanese lantern and generally Asian look and feel of our patio space, combined with the direct and burning sunlight of the spot, made me decide that what I wanted there was a true zen garden. The first step was to buy the right gravel. My favorite rock store, KRC, must be on my wavelength because they have recently added two micro gravels that suited the bill. They had a black La Paz micro pea gravel and an even smaller (more micro) black pearl gravel that was almost sand-like. I opted for the cheaper and very nice La Paz and bought ¾ of a ton in 75-pound bags. By my estimate, 1,500 pounds would properly cover the space and be deep enough not to show any earth through. It’s not very zen to remind one of the earth beneath our wings.
While the 21-year-old roustabout was putting the 20 bags of gravel in my truck and moaning about it, I reminded him that I had 50 years on him and would be removing all 20 bags by myself when I got home. His attitude improved immediately. I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday laying out my zen garden with various plantings and pots, remembering to keep things sparse in an Asian way. The highlight was a wireframe Asian dragon that I had and painted Chinese Red. It highlights the back of the zen garden near the spa boulder. The finishing touch was that I had Amazon deliver a special bamboo zen garden rake so I could put the proper rake lines into the La Paz micro gravel. I am very pleased with the zen of my garden now, but I’m sure that Buddhism would reject my hubris and would want me to just stay humbly silent about it all. Ohmmmmmmmmmmm…..