Scarlet Begonias and Green Lantern: Rocking Out the Weeds

Recently I had the displeasure of refinancing my house.  Besides airing my dirty financial laundry to the kind loan officer, I had to repaint parts of the house to cover peeling paint.  That meant painting ALL of my fences.  Even though I have a fairly small yard, the job took several days, especially painting every little slat of the picket fence in the front yard.  I wondered if I could trick some unsuspecting kid into paying me to paint the fence himself, but no fitting candidates walked by.

After I finished painting the last slat on my front fence, I took a deep breath.  The fence looked clean and white and beautiful.  And the yard behind it?  Blecch!  Weedy grasses, clumpy dirt clods, I never pay attention to the darn thing unless I'm worried about getting fined by the city or the fire department.  If you want to know what my yard looks like, watch the t.v. show "Malcolm in the Middle" and you'll get a pretty good idea.

Anyway, my cheery, freshly painted white picket fence now made my poor neglected yard look especially retched.  I had to do something.

My yard is fairly tiny.  My house occupies about a half-sized lot, and one of the main attractions for me was that I wouldn't have much yard to take care of.  And yet--I still manage to make it look bad.  I hate grass, and grass hates me.  Walking to and from my house, I regularly shield my eyes so I won't have to see my weedy eyesore.

I wanted to fix the yard without having to take care of it.  Putting in drought-tolerant plants seemed especially good--not because I care about the environment or anything like that, but because I don't want to have to remember to water my garden.  I'm a plant killer.  Except for weeds.  Weeds love me.  Anyway, I didn't want to be reminded every day that I have the same effect on plants as a Ringwraith.

Instead of putting in a lot of plants, then, I decided to create a rock garden -- sort of an art installation.  I love huge art projects.  I hate gardening.  If I could make the garden into a huge art project, then I could stick with it and make it work.  And then ignore it because there wasn't much I could really kill.  A friend of mine called it a zen garden.  Please, there is nothing zen about this.  It's not about being in the moment, it's about avoiding weeds and dead plants in the future.

 I dug up the yard into 4x4 foot squares, sectioning them off with plastic garden barriers.

I used flexible plastic landscape edging pieces to create designs within the squares.

With this design, I used weed blocker to deter the weeds.  We'll see how that pans out.  With later sections of the installation, I used newspaper, mulch, and plastic sheeting in different combinations.

For this swirl, I used three different kinds of landscaping rock--lava, white marble, and "canyon red."

Then I added drought-tolerant plants.  Many of them are basic cactus succulents.

The ground cover is moss rose.  It's supposed to be an annual, but I'm hoping it will stick around for a while.

In this section, I used newspaper and mulch to control the weeds.

We watered the newspaper to flatten it.  I swear that's a hose.

On top of that, black mulch.

In this patchwork I used three kinds of rock.  The center square will host a manzanita bush.  I'll plant that in a couple of months, in the fall, when the weather is more permitting.  Since manzanita is a native plant, I could really ignore it and it should flourish in spite of my Ringwraith abilities.

The next square has a river of rocks flanked by scarlet begonias.  Yes, I'm talking about the Grateful Dead.

Adjacent to the "river" is a design that looks either like the Green Lantern or a Tie fighter.

I decided to go with Green Lantern.  It was hard to find green landscaping rocks.  I actually had to take a 30 mile drive to an industrial area just outside of L.A.  It was worth it!  The color of the rocks is "surf green."  The photo doesn't do it justice--it really is very green.   In the middle is a lavender bush.

By the way, I'm still working on the yard.  Creating my space in 4 foot square sections means that I only have to do a little at a time.  Here's how it looks so far.  First the swirl and checker:

And the "river lantern":

Now, please don't say that I'm gardening, because I'm NOT!  It's a huge art project, thank you very much. Getting rid of the weeds is just an added benefit.  Rocks > Weeds.

***New addition:  I added a sunburst.  The circles have moss rose--no pics now but they are beautiful bloomers.

The Dust Pan

I wrote this essay in 1997.

The Dust Pan

My husband and I spent a Saturday afternoon clearing out the clutter from our tiny house.  We collected a truckful of junk and dumped it into a corner of our yard.  What a pile of garbage we had collected:  a lamp without a fixture, a dangerously broken floor heater, a half dozen terra cotta pots, several trashbags full of clothing, and other goodies.  Well, one man’s junk is another’s merchandise.  Gint suggested that we pile our stuff into our pickup and take it to his grandmother’s house.

The dreaded Lithuanian grandmother:  four feet tall, crusty, hollow, crackly, white, and crevaced.  She is always ready to tell you what you’re doing wrong with your life.  The first time I met Grandma Pat was a week before our trip to Lithuania.  Gint and I had just met two months before, and being in one of those in-between times of my life, I invited myself along on a trip to Lithuania he had been planning for quite a while.  I felt spontaneous and free and fearless.  Then I met Grandma Pat.  As we sat in the parlor of her modest and hot apartment, she waggled a bony finger at us.  “Don’t you trust anybody while you are in Lithuania,” she said in a dusty voice.  “They’ll rob you and take you for everything you have.  Everybody in Lithuania is hungry.”

I soon learned why when she presented us with lunch: tasteless tuna sandwiches on Kaunas black bread.  I politely nibbled mine and wished I hadn’t purchased my airplane ticket the day before.

My second encounter with Grandma Pat was at Thanksgiving.  The holiday tradition in my husband’s family is for everyone to gather at her apartment.  As we entered her home I realized it was extremely hot again, and not because she had been baking turkey and pumpkin pie all day.  No, it was hot because she never opens the windows, and even on an autumn day in Los Angeles this can prove to be deadly in her second story apartment. Everyone eyed the digital thermometer on the wall as it climbed into the high 80s. 

Thanksgiving dinner was imported by Gint’s mother Jo, who prepared the meal at her own house in Mount Washington and then transported it in plastic crates to West Hollywood.  After dinner, we retired to the living room, and Grandma Pat showed us a bottle of liquor she had won in a raffle at a Lithuanian festival:  Goldschläger, an expensive spirit with flakes of gold floating in the bottle.  Grandma revealed that she was saving it for a special occasion.  Gint’s father Gene took the bottle from her and eyed the gold flakes inside.  He smile broadly and nodded, “Yes, this is a special occasion.”

           

Grandma Pat tore the bottle from his hands and said, “I didn’t mean today!”

Gene hiccupped and said, “But why?”

“It’s not an after dinner drink,” she said.  A month later at Christmas we asked about the bottle, and she shrugged and said she had given it away to someone, she couldn’t remember who.

Over the last five years, episodes like the Goldschläger incident happened infrequently, only on those days when the family gathered for the holidays.  And here it was, a bright Saturday afternoon—nothing special—and my husband wanted to drag me to Grandma Pat’s.  There was a perfectly good reason why, too.  She keeps her garage stocked with a large assortment of yard sale nuggets. Every afternoon she opens her garage door that faces the alley and sells the items to everyone and anyone interested.  She makes pennies.  I know where she gets the stuff—she wanders through the streets of West Hollywood and rummages through trashbins and cardboard boxes.  I wonder if anyone has ever bought something from her that they had thrown out years before.

And now we had more treasures to add to the garage.  Grandma’s garage is full of decapitated dolls, 8-track cassettes, velevet dog paintings, dusty books about outdoor survival, rusty toasters, someone else’s red taffeta dress, boxes of buttons, Dean Martin record albums, termite-eaten bookshelves, dozens of wicker baskets, dirty used tennis balls, an even a corroded kitchen sink.  Turn off the lights and you’re in a haunted house, cobwebs included.

Reluctantly I agreed to go to Grandma Pat’s to drop off our junk.  I recalled the last time we visited, which had been exceptionally tedious.  It started with a perusal of the family pictures.  Hours later she decided to serve lunch: boiled chicken and boiled potatoes and a boiled conversation—basic Lithuanian fare.  After the meal she patted my stomach and asked if I was pregnant—I wasn’t.  She asked, “Well, what’s wrong with you then?”

I stammered.

“Well?”  The word hung thickly in the stuffy air.  I wanted to pluck out that word and stick it in my pocket.  “What’s wrong with you?”  she asked again.

I shot my husband the please-make-her-shut-up glare.  “We have to go,” he said.  That was my last non-holiday outing to Grandma’s place.

I pleaded with my husband to let me off the hook on this one.  He didn’t need me there, I’m weak and can’t lift things, and after all I have to clean the house.  He said it would be good for me to go, we haven’t seen her in a while, and she’s getting old.  “Fine.  I’ll go.”

Grandma greeted us at her door and asked if we had eaten.  Thankfully we had.  My husband suggested that we start moving things right away since the truck was open.  So, we exited Baba Yaga’s oven upstairs and headed to the ninth level of the inferno downstairs.  As the garage door careened into its cradle on the ceiling, a cloud of dust billowed out.  I choked but decided to tough it out. This is, after all, a visit to Grandma’s.  I chanted my mantra: be nice, be nice, be nice.

Grandma Pat floated through the garage, picking up and caressing items in a way that she would never caress a human being.  With Zen focus she picked up a vase, she was in the moment, and she asked me if I wanted to take it home.  If only she could hug her grandson with the same tenderness.   “No thank you, we have plenty of vases.  But this one is lovely.”  Be nice, be nice, be nice.

She continued to offer up all sorts of items: that size 2 dress, this painting of someone I didn’t know, those measuring cups, these coffee mugs.  For some reason she didn’t remember that we had just dumped a truckload of stuff in her garage in an attempt to create some walking space on the poor cluttered floors of our cottage.  Wasn’t she paying attention?

I had thought she was finished with the inventory when she picked up one more object.  “How about this dust pan,” she said.  The bright orange dustpan gleamed as she held it up. I flashed back to our cleanup of the morning—no dustpan in sight, it would have been nice to sweep the floors.  Finally something we needed.

“Oh, we really need a dust pan,” I said.

Her eyes lit up in stark blue excitement.  “You do!” she said.  Her Parkinson’s hand shook the dust pan in my direction.  Our fingers touched.  Her skin was cold and smooth, funny but I don’t remember touching her hands before.  Her knuckles whitened as she gripped my hand.  This old lady was strong, probably from sorting through garbage.  She exposed her gappy teeth in a crusty smile.  I had become the perfect wife for her grandson.  I had accepted her dust pan.

The dust pan had become our peace pipe, and I clutched it tightly as we exchanged a rare embrace.  I lingered a moment as I held her tiny, shallow body.  Maybe she’s not so bad.  So what if she’s not warm and affectionate like my effusive Italian family.  She expressed her love differently.  She gives from her heart and her soul: she gives from her garage.

Book review: The Book Without Words is just that

Book review:  The Book Without Words: A Fable of Medieval Magic by Avi

Characters with confusing motivations. A potentially interesting setting with limited detail. A slow-moving plot that goes almost nowhere. Pages and pages of dialogue that go where the plot goes. These are the reasons I was so disappointed with The Book Without Words. 

I would have enjoyed this book if it had delved into the deeper workings of the magic it describes. I might have recommended this book if the characters had compelling stories to tell. I would have put other books by this author on my to-read list if he hadn’t bored me so much with dialogue that babbles endlessly without advancing plot, character, or setting.
This book had a lot of potential, which is probably what makes it most disappointing. I have read several books that take place in medieval settings, and I was looking forward to another angle on this genre. Aspects of this story reminded me of the setting of Inkheart—it would be better to read Inkheart itself.


This book had a lot of potential, which is probably what makes it most disappointing. I have read several books that take place in medieval settings, and I was looking forward to another angle on this genre. Aspects of this story reminded me of the setting of Inkheart—it would be better to read Inkheart itself.
Here are my recommendations:

• If you want to read about the details of casting magic in a fantasy world, read the Harry Potter series or Magic Study.

• If you want to read a story that takes place in medieval times, read the Brother Cadfael mystery series.

• If you want to read a young adult story with compelling characters, read the Hunger Games trilogy or anything by Neal Shusterman. 

Sadly, The Book Without Words feels like just that—a book without words. There’s really no reason to read it unless you just want to add another book to your list of meh.

Two stars--maybe one.

The House on Mango Street: Classic or Classic Hype?

Book Review:  The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street was just plain irritating. With an unreliable narrator, this book is written in a voice that I don't particularly care to read. It's the diary of teenage kid, plain and simple. 

Sandra Cisneros tries too hard. On the one hand, the writing is slangy and informal to capture the narrator's voice, and then she inserts gobs of heavy or inappropriate metaphors. Here's one that bugged me:

"...Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut..."

Okay, really, did you mean sugar donut? Because when I try to imagine this, I get nothing but sugar donut. I don't see Angel Vargas falling like a sugar donut, I just see a sugar donut. Sugar donuts don’t really have any special falling quality—they fall like everything else.  She could have said that Angel Vargas fell like a loaf of bread or a box of kleenex.  Maybe she was trying to get across that he fell like anything falls, but the metaphor is just a distraction. Here--I think the author is trying to get a rise out of the audience by including some random metaphor that doesn't really fit. Hey look, I'm deep, I'm using an inappropriate metaphor here. Real deep. Oh gosh I know this is supposed to read like poetry, but it feels contrived. And when I feel like an author is trying to manipulate me, I'm bitter.

Hmmm, what else. I didn't like any of the characters, and I didn't care about any of the characters. Sure, the vignettes just gave a slice of a glimpse of some of the minutiae of this life and this neighborhood, but what does it matter if you don't care? The narrator's dispassionate approach to everything was contagious.  

I guess what bugged me the most was that reading this book was like reading the essays of my fourth grade students, which aren't that great in the grand scheme of things. I understand it's in the point of view of a barrio kid, and everybody's excited about this kind of literature, but it just left me wanting. Wanting other books.

Books that accomplish similar goals that I would rather read than The House on Mango Street:

• The Dead by James Joyce. A somewhat similar style, but so so so so much better. 

• Inside the WhiteHouse: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay. Someone else's diary with a better story, better writing, and likable characters. (And John Hay wanted to be a poet.)

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, if you really love metaphors. I ripped this book apart in an earlier review because of the heavy-handed use of figurative language, but at least the characters and the story are compelling. By the way, Zusak unabashedly admitted that he tried to put at least one good metaphor on each page. Too much! But aside from that, the story was very good.

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the master of words. Okay world, if you want to learn how to make the English language sound like poetry, read this book. Mr. Capote doesn't club you over the head with the metaphors, he just quietly sneaks them in. 

• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. This book also has a dispassionate narrator, but the dialogue is superb.

I've noticed this book on reading lists for middle and high schoolers. Kids either love it or hate it (I think mostly hate it, which explains its low score of 3.5 on the Goodreads review). Save this experiment with literary forms for the older kids.

I'm glad I read it to see what all the hype is about; now I'm wondering what all the hype is about.

Review: Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

Review: Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

I read the original Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle on the heels of seeing the new movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. (Loved it, by the way, thanks to Andy Serkis.) 

It's tough to write about a book that has been made into a movie that is iconic in popular culture. Certainly nobody expects the book and the movie to be the same, and of course in this case, there were lots of differences. But honestly, it's really hard to get the images of Charleton Heston and Kim Hunter out of your head when you're reading Planet of the Apes.

Having said that, this book was a good solid piece of science or speculative fiction with major thematic issues. The most significant issue is probably experimental testing on animals or people. You probably already know the premise of the book, but in a nutshell: Space travelers have crashed onto a planet where apes are in charge and humans are treated like animals. The apes have set up experimental centers, testing the brain patterns of humans by medically altering them. It reminded me of the Nazi experimentation on Jews during World War II, and it was probably meant to trigger that connection, given that the author was French and wrote it in the early 60's.  A really good piece of science fiction will explore a moral or ethical issue, and Planet of the Apes is no exception.

Also, the ape world was very well developed. I especially liked the ape-world stock exchange--utter chaos, like the NYSE, but also in three dimensions. Apes swing through the air from place to place to expedite transactions. Now that would be great to see in a film! 

What I didn't like about the book was its almost complete lack of dialogue in the first half, and limited dialogue in the second half. It was really hard to read so much exposition and description; my eyes would glaze over and I'd have to poke myself to keep reading. I know this was partially intentional because the space traveler did not understand ape language, but even after he became fluent, there was still limited dialogue. Also it's really difficult to develop characters when everything presented about them is done by the point-of-view description of another character (this is told in the first person by one of our travelers). The writing is so-so.

If you really love the movie franchise, then go ahead and read this book--it's a quick read. But if you're looking for a well-written piece of science fiction, maybe you should swing to another tree.

Game of Thrones: A Game of Show

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

If you take one lesson from George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, it’s this: Show, Don’t Tell.

Martin masterfully cultivates a complex and compelling story without clubbing you over the head with exposition. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

His ten page prologue prepares you for what’s to come: he is a master storyteller capable of parlaying character and plot intricacies with a quick twist of the pen. Or keystroke, as it were.

“The trees press close here,” Will warned. “That sword will tangle you up, m’lord. Better a knife.”
“If I need instruction, I will ask for it,” the young lord said. “Gared, stay here. Guard the horses.”
Gared dismounted. “We need a fire. I’ll see to it.”
“How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is the last thing we want.”
“There’s some enemies a fire will keep away,” Gared said. “Bears and direwolves and…and other things…”
Ser Waymar’s mouth became a hard line. “No fire.”

So, what do we read from this quote? Gared is experienced, cautious; Ser Waymar is arrogant and suffers from the sin of hubris. Mr. Martin, you had me at hello.

Starting this 800-page book was a daunting prospect. What if, after 400 pages, I hated this book? What if all the hype was just, well, hype? What if I invested hours of reading, only to get halfway through to realize that it just wasn’t worth it? I have been burned before. However, once I had read the first five pages, I knew that I would not be disappointed. 

A lot has been written about this book and its series, so I won’t belabor my review. 

You will love this book if you also love:
• fantasy
• a complex and well thought out world
• a good mystery
• intriguing characters
• an epic saga
• kids doing brave and interesting things (yes, kids)
• cool dwarves
I would like to make one comment about one character that merits a spoiler alert. Oh my god, what was Eddard Stark thinking? He was so obsessed—yes, obsessed—with honor that he shot himself in the foot. He foolishly trusted everyone, including people who outright told him they can’t be trusted (Littlefinger). He let the sword fall based on his rigid code of honor. He is no better than the merciless Lannisters. After all, how can you trust a leader who is rigidly bound by some code and will not make distinctions of gray? Eddard Stark suffered the same fate as King Arthur, who set up his own standards only to have his hand severed when he must enforce his law against his best friend and his queen. Frankly, I was relieved when he lost his head. 

A final note.  I am going to add Tyrion Lannister as one of my favorite literary characters of all time.  Yeah, I wouldn't mind having a beer with him, Sherlock, and Atticus.  Thanks, Mr. Martin!

The Borrower: Librarians on the Loose

Book Review:  The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

My friend suggested I read The Borrower because I love books, and he was spot-on. This book drops dozens of references to other books (especially children's literature) in an endless stream of inside-jokes. And I loved it because I got the references. Yes, I've read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler--got that reference. And of course I've read Goodnight, Moon--loved the chapter based on that book. Not to mention Middlesex, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and The Wizard of Oz. I got many or most of the esoteric references and felt like I was in the in-crowd. Of nerds, of course. How can you not love a book that makes you feel so cool?

The demographics:

Plot: small town librarian escapes confused and dreary life as she embarks on cross-country journey with 10-year-old library patron. 
Characters: Lucy the librarian (actually she's a librarian by trade but not by education), and Ian (precocious kid who is infatuated with books)

I've read many reviews of the book, and there are a lot of librarians (and just regular folk) out there who are really offended by some aspects of the book:
1. Our twenty-six-year-old hero Lucy works in a library but does not have a degree or certificate in library science. She makes many bad decisions as she embarks on her adventure, and this gives librarians a bad name. Boo!
2. There are a few negative references to anorexic people. 
3. An apparent kidnapping is apparently upsetting to some people. But really, if this upsets you, is it any worse than Lord Voldemort's numerous attempts to kill Harry Potter? How about the treatment of children in The Hunger Games? This librarian's intentions were well-wrought (and I really mean wrought with sweat and worry). Treat this story as a mild fantasy. 

To these complaints, I say: don't be so literal!

Our hero Lucy is clearly confused. She's young, idealistic, inexperienced, and carries a lot of baggage. The good thing about Lucy is that she shares all of her twisted logic and misgivings with us. Really, are any of us that perfect that every decision we make is the exactly right decision? So what if she decides to take little Ian for a ride--across state lines. She wasn't sure if he was being abused at home, or if he was just weird, or both. Most of us would just contact the Dept. of Children's Services, but hey--Lucy is immature and impulsive. Instead she decides to take him to Chicago.

People, haven't you ever felt like you just want to run away? Surely you were in your twenties at some point in your life. Even though many aspects of this story seem fantastic, the reflective musings of Lucy ring true to life. She agonizes over her decisions, is paranoid when she thinks she's being followed, worried about what's going to happen, confused about her purpose in life. Haven't we all done that? Anyway, she's a lot nicer than You-Know-Who.

I enjoyed her voice and her thoughts. I loved the people in this story--this book was chock full of fun and interesting characters, my favorites being all the Russians, and Tim the theater guy. We went to many small towns and even hit the big city of Chicago. I had so many big-smile moments as I read this book that I had to stop and read excerpts to my 13-year-old son (also a book lover).

Entertaining and nerdy--if that's what you're looking for, you'll love The Borrower.