OK, I did it, I started a blog. Kind of a bummer, really, but when I manage to find a graphic artist, this can get up and running as a real site. In the meantime, it's too easy to let moments, thoughts, and writing slip through my fingers while I diddle around. Today was a real suburban day. We bought this behemoth suburban house two years ago, at the height of the bubble market (of course), one month before Simon was born. OK. It's butt ugly. OK. But the yard is nice. One acre, lots of little hidden yards, kind of cool, needs lots of work. I'd never really had a garden, so it didn't hit me just how much work it was. Let me rephrase. I was raised on a farm, during mother's marriage number three, and from the age of about 5 lived in the country, but I've been living the the city or in the 'burbs since I turned 18, for heaven's sake. Most recently, on San Francisco's Portrero Hill, which is ONLY cement. And besides, suburban gardening isn't like country gardening. With country gardening, there's room for Jake's old car (up on blocks for the last six years), a bunch of kittens, a cast-iron stove, a few extra buildings, etc. etc. etc. In *my* neighborhood, I need to make sure that the "edging" is neat! I'm not doing it, of course. I'm going for a kind of bossa nova, machete in the teeth, exotic plants (coupled with camellias) kind of thing. Will probably fall on my face, but am having a lovely time. Suffice it to say that my gardens lack focus, discipline, and so forth. They are wild and they are organic. I'm a nervous gardener, so I have just planted things every foot or so. Of course, those plants, some of them, are three feet wide now, so things are getting a bit hairy. But this is the year to experiment. Note to self: keep the red yarrow. It's cool. The Whole Foods parking lot is littered with yellow yarrow. Totally pedestrian. At any rate, we have one acre, and there are, ummmm, let me count: 13 oak trees on the property. Big ones. About four feet in diameter. Or there WERE. One was dead when we moved in, one died (is still dying) last year. One died about two months ago. What causes this? FUNGUS. Why? Because the stupid people living in these houses set up sprinkler systems that sprayed water right onto their oak trees. They did this so that they could have yards surrounding the trees. They did this because they are the upper-middle class white guys who do what THEY want, imho. Grrr. So today, I had the primo tree care company come to my house and clean fungus off of four and a half trees, except they got it wrong, so they did one tree more. And get this: It looks as though four more trees are going to be dying in the next few years. Including the fifty/sixty foot wide tree in my front yard, which overlooks the road on which I live. I'm soooo upset. The trees are totally rotted out. Fungus up to four feet off of the ground. Aargh. Folks, if you have oak trees in Northern California, don't water them. Especially don't spray &*())(*& water onto their trunks, please? I am not writing about anything else today. It's an official house mourning day for the trees. I am horrified that the people who lived here before I did took such poor care of the nature entrusted to them. These trees are about 80 years old, I would think! Aargh. kate.