August 5. - 20, 2002
what can happen if you let a Hippo loos on a garden or behind a wheel.
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Hippo the Gardener August 5. - 20, 2002 what can happen if you let a Hippo loos on a garden or behind a wheel. |
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| Mother Nature out of control, part I in March, our tree looked simply pathetic... |
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| Mother Nature out of control, part II ... and this is how our tree looks in August. |
You have probably noticed that frequency of our trips dropped lately. It has been possibly so, because there is a bit of wilderness even within those few square feet of our own yard. When Martina insisted that I should not worry, that in California it suffices to spit on the ground and something will sprout there readily, I took it as somewhat exaggerated. Four months later I must say that my anxiety about how our little garden would survive my amateur care were completely unfounded. We seem to be rather trying to prevent ever-zealous Nature to crawl right into our living room, and keep it restrained to our orderly concrete-rimmed area around our pool.
Naturally, I know whom to blame. Sid accepted a role of family handyman
right from the beginning and had restored the house irrigation system back to working order.
Our lawn rejoiced, just as our tree did, which back in April looked like a very
unfortunate plucked chicken. Our vague idea that a lawn may need occasional mowing
settled to a very actual "at least once in a fortnight".
We consciously ignore the tree and hope to find a contact to Army's Corps of Engineers.
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| Scowlerias considerably enlightened our concrete back yard |
Not that we would miss other warning signals about nature's fertility before. When I found in May a mysterious twig with tiny green leaves and pretty yellow flowers shooting out of our jasmine pot, I ripped it out with its roots and replanted it in its own pot. It sneered moodily for a week and pretended to wither. Today, I doubt that it would stay happy with all the space I gave it.
Other, strange bunch of green leaves in boxes suddenly awoke and we got two beautiful scowlerias (Hippos generic name for an unknown plant). One is red and another yellow. A bowl with pansies and other scowlerias overflows, competing with pelargonias. Water-loving plants that we inherited from previous house owners, arranged high above our master bathroom shower, already reached to rooftop and back down behind our toilet -- and we water them maybe once a month (perhaps they thrive on shower fog, but I don't really know).
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| Hippo the gardener ... what have our neighbors for lunch... ? |
It's simply an earthly paradise for a lazy gardener. One cannot go wrong, everything grows. I admit I propped some plants up (e.g. a tiny, withering lemon tree in our back yard corner) using forbidden means -- I bought some new soil, which I diluted with dust and nondescript construction leftovers that constituted the original planting ground. The previous gardener never bothered with anything like that, simply pushed plants into a hole in trampled rubble. I'm nevertheless convinced that it is the irrigation system, independent of my good will and memory, which is to blame for all the vegetation.
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| A challenge for patient readers how many lemons are you able to spot? It took us several weeks just to notice that we have lemons at all... |
All that remains to be said is that my garden and I, we're good friends. For the few times it gets out of control, I invite my Hippo. At one moment it seemed that my huge colony of watercress was not faring as well as it used to. I gave it some fertilizer and left them alone. Then I looked at them from our window once after sunset, and I almost lost my cookies -- several hundreds of snails feasted on my watercress. Of course -- during the heat of the day, they were hiding in a shade somewhere, and partied only after dark. I delegated my strong man to deal with them. My strong man brought a box labeled "Last Bite" the next day and announced sadistically that we will feed the slimeys for the last time. A few days later he mentioned that he should probably collect all those snail corpses, but meanwhile our watercress managed to cover this mass grave by thick foliage.
Hippo is also quite effective on any destructive activity. In May, we carefully trimmed all overblown roses, one twig at a time, just not to "cut them too much". Today, they're six feet tall and we bought large hedge trimmer for my Hippo. With their help, he wedged a path through "trees" blocking access to our pool machinery, and surprisingly avoided cutting any of many wires hanging above our fence. He sometimes has to pacify yew-trees that threaten to lift our roof off.
On our front yard, I designated three trees for partial demolition, which were turning our guest bedrooms into film labs. My only condition was that the cut was to last for at least a month. A closer inspection revealed that one least suspicious tree decided to endow us with lemons (in contrast to our official back yard lemon tree, which stayed undecided this year), so we will leave it alone for a while. Just as weeds around a drain that turned out to be a mint plant.
Simply said -- while cultivating our jungle, we often congratulate ourselves to having bought a house, whose back yard consists mostly of concrete pavement. It is a great area that does not require any cutting, weeding, or trimming.
I might be a much better gardener than a driver. After eight years in the U.S., a fate finally caught up with me that haunts every true Californian -- I received a speeding ticket, or a citation for a moving violation. Being a true Californian, I can immediately produce a proper excuse explanation: I was not driving with my Wagon, but with Tony's borrowed, elderly Audi, with a speedometer gage misrepresenting my actual speed by 7 mph. Everybody must agree: Hippo is innocent.
One does not pay a fine on the spot in California. A bill comes in the mail, and I may alternatively appear at a court and prove that I was incorrectly accused. No presumption of innocence here, at least so it appears when it comes to traffic violations -- a policeman is an absolute authority. Hence I wrote a check for $100 (=fine) and another for $31, by means of which I enlisted to a TRAFFIC SCHOOL.
I got to choose one whole day (weekday or weekend), or two nights during a week, or an internet school. The law requires that an offender must spend 400 minutes educating him/herself in traffic-related affairs. Actually out of curiosity (but also out of fear that I would not endure 400 uninterrupted minutes of online traffic chat), and ultimately to be able to report about it here, I opted for two nights (so that they would not deprive me of my daily salary, or ruin my and Carol's weekend).
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| Our working commute Carol's route is almost 2x longer, and over worse freeways, at wrong times |
There were about twenty of us after six p.m. on Tuesday, gathered in front of an obviously locked classroom C10, inside shabby premises of a former Sunnyvale high school. Each of us ceremonially yanked at a doorknob, gazed into the darkened room (visibly being remodeled), and wielding our subpoena-like papers, we scattered over the maze of low buildings, which now in summer serve as a holiday children's daily repository. A light in the dark! Our teacher checked our papers (they were in order, and yes, we were at the right place). She distributed austere brochures full of traffic regulations. I expected timed hell, never-ending, pedantic lecture with adjoining moderated discussion (each student is required to participate! announced our pamphlet), terminating in our utter exhaustion near ten thirty p.m.
In the end, it was rather fun. Within three and half hours, we barely managed to introduce ourselves and explain to others, what were the circumstances when we got caught by the arm of the law, and what each of us think about it. Only four out of twenty five were not "speeders" -- one driving without a seat belt, one driving in a bike lane, one illegal turn, and one red light runner.
People were openly promising: they would keep on driving fast, hoping to avoid being caught. One student admitted being lucky that he saw cops before they saw him, so he could slow down from the 110 mph he was making in a 35 mph limit, down to some 70. By far not everybody was American: the red light runner was a frail, squeaky-voiced, bony female professor of genetics from God knows what part of the world, who kept pointing out: "I'm only visiting!" One Greek demanded to know, now that the state took his money, so what exactly will the state use it for?
Our teacher was not going to answer such questions. She participated in our discussion from the perspective of a victim, occasionally befallen with a ticket; only due to her daily contact with new offenders she had more stories available on how things usually turn out while dealing with traffic police. And what was her recommended recipe? Should you have a chance to get away, after you've been caught, with only a warning, you should:
One has practically no chance if the spot is a place where people often break rules, or if police action was requested by locals or town/city government.
Such was the direction of the first part of my traffic education. The other half was less interesting: we had to listen to more lecturing on traffic safety, watched a short document on road rage and had to answer test questions.
Why did I attend such school at all, while I had already paid the fine? I could have saved my time and those thirty one dollars. Well, this way, with a traffic school, my violation won't get registered with my insurance, and I bet they would love to increase my premium -- likely by more than $31, monthly.
Wish me luck: next week I am to borrow Tony's Audi again, naturally still with a broken speedometer), as the Wagon needs his care again. I am permitted to attend this wonderful school only once in 18 months.
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Copyright © 2002-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved. | |
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