CUL-DE-SAC

We forget that life is precious when trials and responsibilities wear us down. But there is a state of mind that makes us face the fact without force or obligation. In fact, it comes to us with such stealth that we don’t realize it until much later.

Years ago I traveled to Italy with my wife to visit friends, and I tasted a Suave wine in an outdoor restaurant in Bergamo. It was the most wonderful white wine I’d ever had. When I returned home to Minnesota, the taste was so memorable that I had to find a case of it. After lots of searching I was able to find a half case, which a local wine seller said he’s hold for me if I’d come by soon.

I bought the bottles. I took them home, opened one and a poured a glass. I now see myself holding the wine in my mouth after expecting it to overcome me, just like it did before. It tasted plain. Not bad, but plain. It was a glass of white wine that tasted like lots of others I’d had before.

I lay in bed that night thinking about it and realized what was wrong. There was no sunny terrace, dotted with tables. There was no old city of Bergamo below the hilltop. I tasted the wine on a holiday when I was carefree in the company of friends. That magic was what made the Suave taste so good.

I thought of this when I was reading “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens a couple of days ago. The named character tells how he fell in love with a girl. They were only children when they shared a home for two weeks on the English seaside. Years later, David Copperfield wrote of it:

“It seems to me, at this hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that I have never beheld such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into the golden air.”

Merriam-Webster defines a weed as a plant that is “not valued where it is growing.” This is good to remember when you see plants taking root in your garden that were not part of your calculation. They’re only weeds if you wish they weren’t there.

Mexican Evening Primrose

Every spring and early summer a plant called Mexican Evening Primrose emerges in my yard. My backyard is large, because it backs onto a canyon. I never planted the primrose or planned for them. They simply appeared. But they have delicate pink flowers that paint the land with dabs of color that combine in waves that break just short of the fence.

When wild plants are desirable I call them volunteers, not weeds. Aside from the Mexican primrose, there is the tomato plant that came out even though I had decided I wasn’t going to plant a vegetable garden to spare water in a drought..

There is the Wandering Jew, a pretty plant with deep green leaves and tiny blue flowers. It’s fast growing and its stems stab roots into the ground as it walks across it. To keep it in check I tear off some parts and feed them to the chickens, never killing the whole thing.

Even dandelions are not entirely unwelcome because they’re happily eaten by the livestock. Same goes for the oxalis, a wild plant that looks like clover and runs mad in a San Diego winter. It’s a pest, I suppose, but it looks like a green blanket tumbled over the ground with tall yellow flowers. When I finally lose patience and tear them out, they don’t go to waste because there are the hens to feed.

Over the fence my yard gives way to a canyon that’s wild, in a sense, but like all of nature it’s touched by our presence with exotic trees and shrubs that were never seen two centuries ago. Humans have dominion over the plants and animals just like it says in the good book but it’s always slipping away. I’ll lose my grip on my plot of land as long as they’re not bunch of goddamn weeds.