Who Wants Some Lemonade?
When the Universe Gives You Lemons…
Two months back, a hoard of foresters arrived one morning to fire-harden the property where I now rent a small apartment.
After three years living in an RV, I had been delighted last fall to get into this tiny apartment before another winter. Getting into a dry, temperature controlled environment felt like being transported to Shangri-La.
When I lost my home and garden and everything I ever owned three years ago to the Alameda wildfire, this place I’m living now was miraculously skipped. These buildings and landscape were unburned. Mature trees and shrubs line the property and the green grass is lush right off my patio. Lil’ Josh can just fly outside our back door to pee or roll in the grass.
Back in January, though, folks living here for longer than I were all aflutter imagining what forestry crews might do to render this landscape safer for new wildfire as climate change continues. Me too.
Of course we all want to be safer as climate change continues. I sure don’t ever want to be burned out of my home again. But the beauty of mature forests and landscapes is also valuable and powerfully nourishing to all of us who choose to live here in southern Oregon.
Well, the cedar outside my living room window — and elsewhere on the property — turned out to be a primary target. Cedar burns like holy hell when it gets dried out the way everything gets dried out here in the summer. So do the kinds of lush blackberry vines that line the creek that runs through the property.
So out they went. And, man oh man, the scars are ugly.
Before they tore all the cedar all out, I had no idea there was a gigantic tree stump behind it, right up against the fence that borders the creek. According to my neighbors who have been here for longer than I, that tree came down over a decade ago. Judging by the size of the stump, that tree was more than 100 years old.
If there’s one thing I admire coming up here from Texas, it’s old trees. But, when the crews finished their work, to say I was disappointed with my new living room view would be minimizing my horror.
Now, eight weeks later, it’s April. And, the Spring brings me to life again year after year the same way it brings all living things to a new season.
Okay.
Time to make some lemonade with what I’ve got to work with. What the hell else is there to do?
Bitching just makes me feel bad. At 73, I’ve already got enough stuff that makes me feel bad not to indulge more. Bitching at this age is something I simply can’t afford. Psilocybin showed me that.
Mid-week last week, it got warm enough to be outside for longer periods of time. I started dreaming about plant starts. Since I can’t plant anything in the ground here, I started picking up pots off the street where other people left them during their spring cleaning.
A guy on Facebook Marketplace sold me a couple bags of the finest potting soil you can get up here in the northwest for a third of what I would have to pay in a garden shop. (It’s full of earthworm castings and kelp and the magic stuff that forests make from dying plant material during the cold, wet winters here.)
I found some inexpensive solar lights on Amazon that unfold like little umbrellas when you poke them into soft, torn up soil. They make me laugh.
Then two days later, the Universe hooked me up with a couple who are moving and can’t take their 5-foot Sun God statue with them. Since the Sun God is made out of rebar and his arms don’t bend, it was quite a trick to get him into my little Honda Fit. But I got him home and dragged him out into the landscape of solar lights. I didn’t ask the couple what they paid for him, but I’m gonna say upwards of $500. They asked me for $20 to give him a new home. That really made me laugh.
And he’s already changed the whole world out back.
Facebook Marketplace led me to other people getting rid of yard stuff and,… Voilà!
In a week, a few cheap garden banners will join the new crew.
If anyone should come along in the weeks ahead and tell me I can’t have these things out there in the scar, I’ll just install them on and around my patio.
In the interim, I’m laughing my head off every time I look out the window.
The neighbors love them. They for sure love them better than the fire-hardening scar. Me, too.
I keep hearing Creedence Clearwater Revival singing “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor” in my head:
“Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn.
Bother me tomorrow, today I’ll buy no sorrows.
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my backdoor.”
- John Fogerty
