The Naked Gardener

2017                                    The Ginko Tree                        2019

It's coming up near the end of summer, but my garden hasn't given up. Things are still going nuts, growing and blooming all over the place. Back in Florida you would have thought I could grow anything. With no winter snow and ice, things should grow easily in Florida. But no, they didn't. Trees did okay, but other plants couldn't deal with the heat, humidity, and soil that was little more than dirty sand. I tried tomatoes in Florida. They withered on the vine. I would plant flowers and they would melt in the heat. I did have a couple of nice orange trees alongside the house. The grove rats ate all the oranges, and when the oranges were gone the rats moved into my attic. But not here in Chicago. Three months of brutal winter, with three more of what I would call 'semi-winter' (aka, early spring and late fall) you would think there wouldn't be enough time for things to grow. Well, it's amazing what nature can do in a short amount of warm weather. My nasturtiums are taking over the patio area. The patch of wild flowers have gone... um, wild. And the ginko tree I planted three years ago almost doubled in size this summer. So I'm kind of looking forward to the colder months when I don't have to mow the lawn every week and fight back the marauding morning glories. Seriously, morning glories are very pretty when they bloom in the morning, but they've choked out just about everything in my vegetable garden. Not that I really planned on eating that stuff. I've seen Chandler pee on it.

Nasturtiums taking over the patio

The Cute Little Baby Goat Post

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

When I was a kid my dad and mom took us to the Brookfield Zoo just about every summer. I really didn't like zoos when I was a little boy. It wasn't the animals fault, they did their best to amuse me, but I just couldn't get past the smell. Somehow the antics of the monkey house weren't that much fun when my eyes were watering from the acrid smell of primate urine. My dad tried to help entertain me and my siblings by giving us a bag of marshmallows to throw to the undernourished beasts, but I think that only added to the smell of the place. Back then zookeepers thought it was a good idea to allow visitors to throw any kind of edible at the animals. Another reason I didn't like going to the zoo is that we seemed to always go on the hottest day of the year and the zoo exhibits were spaced quite far apart. It was like a safari in deepest, tropical Africa, as we trudged from the pachyderm house to the lion house in ninety five degree heat. When I got older and moved into Chicago, I discovered the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was the opposite of Brookfield Zoo, it was small, free to get into, and easy to visit in the cool months. It still had the odor problem though, vaguely like a Chicago taxi cab. The fact is that animals stink, but if you avoid the enclosed exhibits, you could have an enjoyable time.

On my first trip to South Florida, my friend Rudy took me to a place called Lion Country Safari. This seems to be the perfect Zoo because the animals roam freely over many acres and the way you see the animals is to drive your air-conditioned auto down a winding road directly through the animal's habitat. The lions, and all the other animals, can come right up to the car and say hello. I don't remember what kept the lions from attacking the gazelles, but they seemed to co-exist just fine. The zoo brochure says that they feed the lions just before the place opens so that they aren't looking to eat you. Maybe that's what makes the gazelles less appetizing.

Now what I found most interesting at Lion Country Safari, was what was at the end of the hour and a half ride through the wild animal exhibit. A petting zoo. Here in the petting zoo, you could get out of your car and mingle with all the non-lethal animals. The animals most prominent in the petting zoo were the baby goats. Probably a hundred baby goats that you could feed by dropping a quarter into a gumball machine that dispensed goat chow. They were so cute, they'd come right up to you and nuzzle you until you gave them their goat chow. It took me a few minutes, but then I noticed, no adult goats. Where were the adult goats? Finally it dawned on me. I was paying twenty five cents a handful for goat chow, to fatten up these baby goats. I have a sneaking suspicion that I know what Lion Country Safari feeds the lions before the place opens.

Cranky, Blanky, Yanky

Twenty two years sharing the bed with Mark and I still have a problem with that. First of all, Mark has that "Restless Leg Syndrome" thing. He jiggles his legs, and until I either yell for him to stop or I grab his leg and hold it down, he won't stop. He actually wore a hole through one mattress pad by doing that. And then there is the blanket problem. During the night, Mark will make little tugs on the blanket. Really, only small tugs, but always pulling the blanket from my side of the bed. It builds up and by morning my ass will be hanging out in the cool air. Meanwhile, on Mark's side of the bed, there is plenty of blanket draping down to the floor. Once in awhile he will also do the flip from laying on his right side to his left side while holding on to the blanket. When he does that I have to grab the blanket and give it an angry tug back over to my side. About ten years ago we got a king size bed with huge king size blankets. This solved the problem. The fact that it also opened up room for the dogs to lay between us helped too. Can't yank a blanket with a ninety pound dog laying on it. Well, then we bought a Chicago house. A nearly hundred year old Chicago house with teeny tiny bedrooms. Because of the small bedroom we had to go back to the queen sized bed and back to the battle of the blankets. I'm getting tired of it and I think I have a solution. I was watching an episode of I Love Lucy when it came to me.

Stupid and Angry

I, like most people who did not vote for Donald Trump, have had a difficult time understanding why seemingly normal people would vote for an obvious fraud and con man. There is no doubt that many were swayed by his racism. They saw in him the same feelings they had. But, not all Trump voters were racists. So what was it? Yesterday I got slapped in the face by reality while waiting for my order of half a rack of ribs, at Mickey's in Tinley Park. I was standing there when a man walked in wearing a shirt with the word 'Panduit' on it. I laughed to myself because I used to work at Panduit. They made cable ties for electrical systems. The product was used in computers and other devices. Now they use them for that and police departments use them as cheap handcuffs.

"Panduit, I used to work there."

"Really, what position did you have?"

"I was an injection mold operator. I got fired in 1970."

"What, why did you get fired? That was a great job."

"Yep, two hundred dollars a week was very good pay in 1970. Turned out that I required too many sick days. So they fired me."

"Sick days?"

"Also known as party time. I liked to smoke a little pot and party instead of going to work."
The night I lost that job, I was out on the factory floor when the foreman came over and told me they needed to see me up in the office. The office had big windows that looked out over the all the machines and all the guys I worked with. Everybody saw me get fired. 
"I imagine that job has been automated by now." I said to the Panduit guy.

"Yes, it's automated but there isn't any production here. That's all done in Costa Rica."

For a moment I felt like every other angry old man who probably voted for Trump. They sent my job to Costa Rica. A high paying job that I got right out of high school was now gone, gone to another country. One of those shithole countries. That's why people voted the way they did. Donald Trump was going to bring all those jobs back to the United States. The trouble is, it isn't going to happen. Trump is a con man, a bullshit artist who fooled a lot of voters into believing those jobs could return. Instead of looking to the future and investing in the education of our people, investing in infrastructure for American businesses, Trump played on the nostalgia of a time that will never come back.

The guy from Panduit then asked me, "So you got fired because you were...."

Before he could say it, I did "Young and stupid."

The only thing worse than young and stupid is old and angry.

Mummy Dearest

I want to believe summer is still here, but there is something in my brain that was triggered by the Labor Day holiday. It goes way back to my childhood when Labor Day was the last glorious weekend before returning to school. You see, I hated school. I know most loved it, but to me it was so boring and so confusing. I have learned more from the internet and the time I was a bartender than I learned most of my school years. Anyway, from now on it's onward to Halloween with pumpkin spice everything and decorations put up way too early. But I'm not ready for pumpkin spice Spam. In my brain summer is over and mum season is here. That's why over the weekend I tore all the flowers out of the flower boxes and the planters in front of the house, and replaced them with mums. Oh, and don't feel bad for those flowers that served me so well over the last three months. I gave them a nice new home in the flower bed in front of the house. They can live and flourish there until the first frost kills them. I think that is only fair. 

The Home

Mom is ninety seven years old. I've known her for almost seventy years. Okay, maybe I've known her, but I didn't catch on to her until I was an adult. I look at her and realize that if I live to be ninety seven, that is pretty much what I will be. Bad knees, bad feet, hard of hearing, and kind of cranky at times. I actually have the cranky down already. So Mom gave up driving seven years ago, lost my dad nineteen years ago, and about a year and a half ago lost her right to live all by herself in her own house. We had to hire a lady to come and live with her because Mom fell and couldn't get up one night. Since that first 'lady friend', Mom has gone through eleven of them. They come and go. Some have been wonderful and others, not so good. They have left for various reasons, I think one reason is that Mom gaslights the ones she doesn't like. She likes the helper ladies who let her do whatever the hell she wants, and makes faces and little verbal jabs about the ladies who are too strict. So we've reached the point where we think Mom should be living in a more... ummm... structured environment. Not an old folks home, but kind of an old folks home. A place where old folks can be watched over. Oh, okay. An old folks home. We're considering a place not far from where she lives now. She'll have her own apartment with a kitchen and the freedom to come and go, as long as she doesn't wander off grounds. Just outside her door will be a nurse. The place has a restaurant where she can go hangout, a theater, outdoor garden, and game room. We took her there for a visit so she could get a look at what it was like. Mom was very quiet on that visit. It seems that she does not want to live in an 'Old people's home'. She doesn't want to live with those old people. What Mom wants is to live with one of her children. She has told me so. So I went down the line.

"Do you want to live in Florida with Dave?"

"Oh no. That's so far away."

"Okay, what about Peggy?"

Mom made a face.

"Rick smokes cigars. My dad smoked cigars. I never liked it."

I continued down the line. Alaska? No. In a high rise downtown? No.

And on and on, I went through all my brothers and sisters. Then it got quiet for a moment.

"I had a dream last night."

"A good dream?" I asked.

"No. It was a crappy dream."

"Crappy? How?"

"I had another dream."

So I wasn't going to hear about the crappy dream.

"I dreamed I went to live with you and Mark."

There was a long pause. Mom had a little smile on her face.