I forget, yet again.

Forgetting

Forgetting the sunscreen, hat and gloves for gardening is my forte remember? I believe heartily that I’m going out for one minute and don’t need all that stuff. Don't need it for only one minute.

Today a free and wonderful summer day waits. I have even remembered to check the calendar! I have nothing planned. That's heaven.

Outside the green is blinding. Can I dive into it like diving into a warm pool? Or must I fret about using up Earth's limited amount of fresh water, worrying myself sick after watching repetitive horrific newscasts?

I choose diving.

"Don't think about that now, don't think about that NOW!" I think. "Don't think about THAT now."

My hand unknowingly turns the faucet...ahh, that's such a smooth, gratifying movement, so satisfying; that running sound, so relaxing...now my mind slips away, into the green in my head. Then baby plants are carefully transferred, mucky soil gently mounded around teeny hairy roots, with wishes and hopes nurturing the little bits of new flower...new tiny sprouting leaflets.

More water, keep these things damp! I water and water and water; old plants, new plants, all plants that we planted when there was nothing but field 25 years ago.

"Should we have left it as natural California field-land?" I think. "We've polluted with too many unnatural plants, too much processed dirt, fertilizers and worse. And yet, didn't the former ranch residents do the same before us. Wasn't the old man, here until he was 100, scrawling his name on our deed, didn't he add bad stuff like methane from his bull headed cows who scattered nitrites!?" I think.

"Don't think about it. Do not think about it."

More watering. I am watering yesterday's plantings that I shifted from O.S.H.'s best, rich, potting soil-filled mossy pottlets or fake terracotta plastic.

"Does this stuff degrade? How long? How well? What did that news special report tell me about artificially amended soil and plastic recycling and re-use being preferable to recycling anyway, due to the energy it takes to break down glass, metal and plastic, not to mention refabricating. Re-use, the new recycling?”

Worrying, I think, "Don't think...not now."

I look down at soaked, bright green and deep dark brown: the contrasting ground fizzles my head. The hose runs over my flip flopped feet, running away for nothing, out the flower beds, down the lawn, down the ditch, down the "MARIN CREEK WATERSHED!" as so marked on heavy duty, green traffic sign, metal riveted onto its post, stuck into cement on the nearby highway.

I wonder what the cost of that sign fabrication was, how much energy it used, when and how it will ever, ever decay? Why do we need a sign? Don’t they understand that we’re overwhelmed with shame and fear and we don't want to know why it's a creek that eventually runs to the bay, then the ocean!? Another worry startles me; I wonder if, someday, the old worn out metal sign will eventually litter the scarred, overfull landfills.

“Oh, my gosh, is there any hope?!" I think, trying not to think.

Now the dirt is soaked, black, mushy. Good time to pull the unpullable weed: The worst tough, flat-spreading, weedy grass you’ve ever met, now growing lush. Mushy ground is the ONLY time to pull those terrible over-running runner weeds. I stuff the hose down, push it hard into the unyielding weed roots, like the hydraulic mining that ruined the gold towns. Then I’m pulling with all my might, twisting the roots, fingers clawing into the gooshy dirt, patiently putting my legs, my back into it, and finally I hear the sucking sound of a sloppy soup slurper. Out pops the evil thing.

"Is this awful grass from the birdseed?” I worry. “The birdseed that artificially feeds the birds, birds that are thusly not subjected to natural selection and thusly, maybe, being non native and inappropriate ( I know the jargon) use for the land?" I think, desperately not thinking.

3 hours pass in heavy labor.

NOW I remember: sunscreen. Along with gloves that could’ve protected my now scratched, raw hands, and a hat! No hat for sunburnable neck and face!, I forgot the sunscreen subjecting myself to possible skin cancer, which I've already battled for several years due to long ago a parental lack of skin protection attitude at the beach, where we LIVED, where we baked to a roasted red, over and over again, until tanned to tree bark. Modern parenting warned me to KEEP MY CHILDREN PROTECTED! Sunscreen, a sure bet to keep skin cancer from the next generation.

"But, wait. Does sunscreen pollute? Think of the 55 gallon barrels of sunscreen over how many years, being smeared on thin skin in thick layers, washing off into the pool or into the lawn by sprinklers, down into the ground water, washing down into the creeks, rivers, oceans, OH MY GOSH, barrels and barrels of the stuff which, according to some reputable news source, may be carcinogenic. Which, of course, I have forgotten to slather on my cancer prone, possibly even melanomic self, oh my goodness!"

"DO NOT THINK ABOUT THIS TODAY! NOT TODAY! NOT THIS MOMENT OF LOVELY SUMMER SOLICE!" I think.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, would you cut it out!? The garden is now bereft of tranquility! Assuage the guilt, do the most 'appropriate' thing sanctioned by know-it-all ecological disaster-ists! I'm just gonna put on the damn fountain, listen to the safe recirculating water burbling and be done with it!" I think, sunburned and aching. "But what about the electricity that runs the pump? What about evaporating water, fresh clean water, never to be seen again? Forget it! I'm watching t.v. Not the animal trauma channel and not the frightening news, no, no! I'm watching cartoons, and not educational cartoons either!"

Thus, herein I end the blog.

Amen