He and I walked under a hot sun, and I talked about the seasons where I grew up.  There is no need for air conditioning in Petaluma, I bragged as we sweat uphill.

Hot summer days were spent in water, under a tree with a book, perched up in a tree with a book, or just waiting — and not for long — for the rolling ocean breeze that naturally cooled the air.  Doors and windows were open all day.  Evenings required layers, and hot summer nights were a thing from television.

Except for an occasional funeral or family reunion, we did not travel much. And by my 10-year-old estimation, there was no need for it.  The beach and the City were close enough.  As a kid in Petaluma it was your duty to complain about how boring it was there.  But I secretly never wanted to leave.  I loved being home, and was content to staying put.

It wasn’t until I moved to the arid mountain west and then the east coast that I felt the urge to see other places.  But I was growing up, too, and my desire to travel was the first indicator of that fact.  I left Northern California and my childhood, knowing one day I would be back.  The first few years were filled with homesick heartsickness.  But that slowly went away.  I grew up, saw things, and in the process became who I am.  I live a life that looks different than the one I intended at eighteen.  (Which is largely good news.)

These days I rarely think longingly about what it was to live in California.  But when we walked up that hot summer hill, I couldn’t help but think what I would plant if we lived in Petaluma.  Here in the land of magnolias and old oak trees, crepe myrtles and rhododendrons, my subconscious sneaks in thoughts of eucalyptus and junipers, feather grass and succulents.  And the daydreaming of it all gives me a nostalgic high.

I may wax romantic about northwest flora but I live here, and I love it.

Here is where we go on walks.  We talk and laugh and make plans for a future garden.  Here there is a dense richness of color.  Fecund forests line every highway.  Our seasons are extreme in a way that remind you that you are deeply alive.  And the true queens of summer are fireflies that transform tall oak trees into looking like twinkling Christmas trees.  It never stops being beautiful.

If traveling was my first adulthood marker, then perhaps the second is embracing the life that is before me.  For the first time since childhood, I feel as though I have arrived at the place I most want to be.  I may not be digging in my native soil, but I am supremely content to care for the plants in the yard, and every so often entertaining the thought of someday caring for the spare landscape of my youth.

“What is a weed?  A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.” – R. W. Emerson

 I wondered the other day where this burst of gardening love comes from.  It started last fall — paused, as it were, through winter — and now with spring I cling tightly.  I love the sense of self I feel when I, though little, can pick up and move around heavy objects.  And oh the fruits of it all.

Much like taking walks, I also feel mental clarity churning through soil, an attempt to organize the chaos underground.  So if it’s clarity and calm I am after, what do I do with weeds?

I attended a lecture last week on the virtues of weeds.  I went home and saw the problematic side yard, and started working with urges to pull and organize the chaos.  I couldn’t get them all even if I wanted to.  Sheer exhaustion and a bit of defeat set in.  They will be back in droves the moment I look away.  So with focused energy, I pulled only the milkweed.  A few days later, I read of a woman’s attempt to save the great Monarch Butterfly by mailing milkweed across the eastern U.S. to help its spread.  Our cherished species depend upon the weeds.

I am a plodding amateur when it comes to gardening.  Through this process of deciding what to plant, what to dig up, is shaping what kind of caretaker I will become.  My focus today is to be less rigid about what is definitively beautiful, and embrace the ultimate good of healthy native species.

So as in everything we do what we can.  The pursuit of balance between the chaos and order in my life, in my garden, will be everlasting.  All we can do is work hard, take care, and remember that everything is made of stardust.

An easy and economical way to grown your collection of succulents:  remove bottom leaves (below the rosette) and lay on soil (or rocks).  It’s best to grab leaves from succulents that are healthy and a bit leggy.  Soon you will have a wilting leaf and a budding succulent!

Lines the Highline
naturally peppered throughout the southwest
and the sweetheart of my garden.

It is both un-stuffy and beautiful
Watch it peacefully rustle with wind
and be mesmerized.

Put it in sun
and it changes colors
under blankets of snow.