El Nino es Muy Bueno

I carried this text around like a cross to bear.

For most of my life I have been tormented by an inability to speak, read, write, memorize vocab words, and order food in Spanish.  It started in high school when I made the absurd choice to use "Cristobal" as my Spanish name in class.  You can imagine all the crystal ball and Christ ball jokes tossed my way.  I spent way too much time trying to think of witty comebacks and much too little time actually listening to Senorita Whateverhernamewas teach.

My torment continued in college where I continued to lag behind once I got beyond the ease of learning the alphabet and how to count to a hundred in Spanish 101.  I dropped out of Spanish 101 several times before I finally completed it.  By the third or fourth time around I was quite fluent and could sing the ABCs and tell how old I was just like any two-year-old can.

A small part of the problem was that Spanish classes started at the unseemly hour of 9:00 a.m.  Maybe mine was the only college to do this, but each discipline seemed to have their own time of day for classes.  Science, math, Spanish, and history were in the morning.  English, Philosophy, Volleyball (my kind of classes) were in the afternoon or, even better, at night. So waking up for a 9:00 class just wasn't in the cards for a night owl like me; not on a regular basis anyway.  I know, I know, "es no bueno" to have treated my education with such flippancy.

Those poor choices and inability to comprehend the more elementary aspects of learning a foreign language (and I do mean elementary school level) led to summer school and taking Spanish for 3 hours a day five days a week starting at 8:00 a.m. before my chosen institution of higher learning would allow me to move forward in life with a few extra initials on my resume.  It was only through sheer willpower that I finally passed Spanish 102 with a resounding D+ and by God I earned my bachelor of arts degree in English.  The irony of excelling in the study of one language and drowning in the study of another was not lost on me or my advisor.  My advisor posited one afternoon (because that's when we English types were awake) that perhaps it was the love of my native language that created a mental barrier to learning a different language.  I wore that comment like a badge of honor.

Before I had graduated, I briefly toyed with the idea of applying to an MFA program in Creative Writing as a next step.  I say "briefly" because, for reasons unknown to me, every MFA program I looked into required fluency in at least one foreign language.  I just Googled how to express my reaction in Spanish to that discovery: "Lo Siento".  That means "I'm sorry".  I'm sorry, it just wasn't going to happen unless I was willing to lie on my application.  But what if they greeted me on the first day in Spanish?  [Hola, Cristobal!] What if they taught Early Shakespeare in Spanish?  What if all my papers had to be translated?  I'd be found out and then turned out!  No, it was time to enter the world and forge my own way.  Which is scary.

And so, because of Spanish, I was forced to embark upon an odyssey of existential wandering.  What does an English major that's petrified of public speaking do for a living if they can't teach and if they know they can't make a living writing?  

So, you see, me and Spanish have had our differences and I'm not quite ready to forget all that history.  But this new year, this blessed New Year, is starting to soften my stance a teensy bit.  And I owe the metaphorical olive branch to that kind Latino kid they call El Nino.  Which, in English means "The Nine" or "the Nest" I think.  Something like that anyway.

After several years of drought and strictly enforced water restrictions pitting neighbor against neighbor, there has been very little motivation to add anything to my garden.  Every plant I can imagine planting requires consistent watering in order to become established in my region and most plants need continued irrigation at least semi-regularly because we simply don't get rain for months on end in our hot summers.  So when you're only allowed to irrigate on a Saturday before 6:00 a.m. (please see earlier when I mention not being awake before 9:00 a.m.) it's unlikely that new plants will be happy.

But El Nino!  El Nino might change some of that.  See, an average January in Sacramento has 3.97 inches of rain.  It is the rainiest month of the year.  However, when you look at recent rain fall totals, you can start to see how it might create a problem for a region when your rainiest month is this dry for this long:

	January Rain Fall
2015	0.00
2014	0.12
2013	0.90
2012	1.22
2011	1.55
2010	4.82

What's left of Shasta Lake in Northern California
Photo credit: National Geographic  

At some point yesterday, January 7th, we crossed the 2 inch level for the month thanks to a series of El Nino inspired storms.  It's not enough to fill the reservoirs, to water all the crops, to replenish the ground water supply that's depleted to the point of causing the earth to cave in (oh mi Cielos, right?), and it's not enough to get Governor Jerry Brown to lift water restrictions.  It's a mere drop in an empty bucket really.  But it is enough for me to smile, for a change, when someone talks to me about the weather in Spanish.

And for the first time in a long time, I find myself pausing at the window to daydream about what could come next.  I just might get to plant something this spring when El Nino is finished making it all up to me.  

Rain Delay

My front yard project has been in a rain delay for the past five days.  In that time we’ve received almost a full five inches of rain.  About a half inch of that came in a single stop-what-you’re doing-and-take-notice 10-minute period Sunday morning.  We stood at the windows and watched the water on the street crest the sidewalk.  If the local news hadn’t brought in all four of their meteorologists that morning and talked at length about this thin yellow band on the Doppler radar I would have been concerned about real flooding.  But I trusted that Mark, Eileen, Tamara and Dirk all knew what they were talking about and that the “extreme weather” wouldn’t stay long. 

The storm has knocked down most of the leaves.

By Sunday afternoon the clouds had finally cleared.  When I stood outside and looked east, I could still see the dark grey clouds and knew they were dumping snow on Lake Tahoe a hundred miles away.   

Berries on an Arbutus 'Marina' - also known as a Strawberry Tree

The sky was still clear this morning so the landscaping crew was finally back at work.  Today’s goal is to dig the trenches for the new sprinkler system.  They are running into some pretty hefty roots leftover though so work is progressing much slower than I’m sure they hoped. 

A red leaf cradled by Lambs Ear

Normally they would also plan to lay the sod today but the landscaper called his supplier and was told that right now the sod is under about 2 inches of water.  If it dries up early in the day they might be able to lay it down but it’ll likely be “heavy as hell” so the sod might have to wait a few more days as more rain is forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.



Acer palmatum 'Glowing Embers'



It’s a little crazy to me when I think about this being December and yard projects of this type are still being done.  But this is California and, in spite of the storm (or perhaps because of it) overnight temperatures have been in the mid-to upper 40s with daytime highs over 60.  So, why not?  After all, it still looks and feels like autumn.

Lagerstroemia x fauriei 'Natchez' (A white-blooming Crepe Myrtle)

Broken Ground

I am pleased to say that the front yard redo has begun.  The guys came at 7:00 a.m. yesterday morning and brought their sod cutter with them.  I am tempted to ask them to stop here.  Look at all that bare dirt!  I could just go crazy with plants and never bring the lawn mower out front again.  

But I will resist.  For one, I don't think my wife would go for it.  Secondly, the benefit of lawn in this case is that it's actually lower maintenance for me than other options since I can just mow the often-mentioned and much-hated palm seedlings that constantly grow in my yard.  And, finally, if and when we come to a point where we decide to sell our house, I think the "average" buyer would prefer the expected American front yard which means green grass. 

Speaking of grass, in the picture above there is a strip of rock that borders what was the lawn and the walkway.  The landscapers will remove this rock and use it elsewhere.  They will replace it with even more grass.  This is fine with me as I had grown weary of weeding this strip.  I may eventually remove the grass that will be installed where the rock is now and replace it with a curvaceous planting bed or perhaps grow a boxwood hedge, but for now I'm going to let the plan of sodding this area proceed without intervention. 

In the bottom left corner of the picture above you can see a black drip irrigation line.  This line currently runs directly from a hose bib a foot or two away.  This setup has worked for me just fine, but the crew is going to tap into the in-ground system and run the line beneath the stones and re-install the drip irrigation.  This will make the area look cleaner and it will be one less thing for me to worry about.  I find that drip irrigation timers can be unreliable after a while and those pesky batteries die without my permission. 

Unfortunately, what was originally estimated to be a 2 or 2 1/2-day project looks like it's going to end up taking 9 days from start to finish.  The crew has been splitting time between my yard and my neighbor's yard which they are also re-sodding.  They expect to complete the grading of my yard today but they won't have enough time to put in the pipes and lay the sod before the day is done.  And now the rains of Northern California's wet season are scheduled to begin in earnest tomorrow morning and continue for five straight days.  They are warning of potential flooding.  Which means lots and lots of mud in my yard and not a very good time to be trenching sprinkler lines and laying sod.  [Insert grumpy face emoticon here!]

No work will be done in my backyard as part of this project but that doesn't mean things aren't changing there too.  The crepe myrtle leaves are changing and starting to fall finally.  I plan to use the time after the leaves have fallen to study the branching and do some artful shaping - paying special attention to the lower limbs so that eventually I can push the lawn mower beneath it without having to duck.  Those seeds just jump off the tree and attach themselves to my hair.  It's annoying.     

One of my Japanese maples, a 'Glowing Embers' has really gotten orange in the last week. 

The 'Red Dragon' pictured above is still red but it's not the deep maroon that it was this summer.  I love sitting in the iron chair next to this tree.  I love the way they look together.  The colors are so different.  The texture, also, so different.  This is a slow growing Japanese maple.  This is a quality I have grown to appreciate.  This tree looks just as perfectly sited as the day I planted it.  I can't say the same for every tree or shrub I have planted. 

And finally, a seldom-used but fairly old Japanese cultivar called 'Otto's Dissectum' has gone from light green to orange and red.  I've been growing this in a wine barrel for a couple seasons now.  It's such a nice tree.  Some day I hope to create a spot of its own for it - a place where it can sink its roots and grow without impediment and live up to its potential . . . a hope I'm sure we all desire for ourselves and our loved ones. 

Monomaniacal

Last month I mentioned that I was reading “Moby Dick” and I tried to draw a comparison between Captain Ahab’s desire to seek out and kill the white whale that had maliciously devoured his leg and my personal issues with the grey squirrels that maliciously devour my seeds.    

Common flowers? Yes.  But colorful? Aye!

Well, I have now finished Moby Dick (finally) and in so doing, my head has been filled with a couple things: a nearly-encyclopedic and worthless knowledge of the anatomy of a sperm whale and a new lexicon of nautical and American romantic terms like “avast”,“hast”, and “doubloon.”  But the word that really got stuck in the riggings of my mind is “monomaniacal”.  It was the one adjective that Melville used to describe Ahab.      

My new Acer palmatum 'Murasaki Kiyohime' under
planted with dwarf mondo grass and a fern. 
The fern might have to be removed if it gets much bigger.

Now, monomaniacal is not a word you hear every day but it’s pretty easy to figure out what it means.  We don’t hear it every day because it is “no longer in technical use” as a way to describe a “psychosis characterized by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas.”

Close up of the Murasaki Kiyohime's spring leaves.  It's a dainty dwarf that does not take afternoon sun at all.

These days we probably just hear the word “obsessed.”  Obsessed is fine, but monomaniacal is more fun to say out loud.  Go ahead and say it. 

I’ll wait.  See?

Mexican Feather Grass, or Stipa tenuissima if you speak botanical.

Anyhow, given that it has been raining here in Sacramento all week and the gutters are filling up like it was the fourth day of Noah’s flood, a little fun is what I needed since I have not been able to do anything related to my monomaniacal desire to putter around the garden.    

The peach blossoms are getting ready to paddle off into memory.

I don't have a lot of pinks or reds in the yard.  These blossoms always make me second guess that decision.

Until today.  There was a brief reprieve in the typhoon this afternoon, okay, it's really just a light rain, so I went out and took these pictures in my back yard.  It might just have been enough to tide me over (nautical pun intended) until the next time the sun breaks through.  And when it does, I might have to fight back the urge to hail the sun with a hearty “Thar she glows!”  

I'm leaving the bird feeder empty for now.  It attracts too many of those damn squirrels.

Same picture but with a different focal point.

If you hate bad puns, I’m very very sorry for this post.  Please don’t make me walk the plank.    



I purchased these columbines this weekend.  I've never grown them before.