Tao of Scott

Hi Nichole,

Kathy got drunk.

As you know gardening has led Kathy into a depression of medium depth, however we agreed to continue with the chemical free yard so together we forge forward in futility.

The next day I look out the window and there’s Kathy, out at the rose bed, applying some kind of granule wearing a HAZMAT suite.”

“I thought we had established that we would adhere to a scrupulous regimen of purely organic fertilizers as well as pest and disease abatements?” I said sorta perplexed.

“The yard will be pretty now,” Kathy assured me.

“Oh, OK.” I buckled.

We had to get ready to go to Hailey’s high school graduation so I hopped in the shower and Kathy hopped in the de-contamination chamber. We met up with Chris (Hailey’s dad), Hailey’s sister Loren and her boyfriend Nigel. Loren and Nigel came out from L.A. resplendent in multi- colored hair, numerous tattoos, and earring holes large enough to park an AMTRAC car in. They thankfully left the ferrets at home. They were surprised to find out that they did not stand out in the crowd.

“How could this be?” Nigel queried.

“T.V.” I instructed.

We gazed out over the graduating class of 2009. About 150 students, a podium populated by sundry high school dignitaries, an open football field, open ranch land, out past a national wilderness preserve, and finally to the San Francisco peaks 70 miles (as the crow flies) to the northeast all under a crystal clear sky studded with orange, red and pink glowing desert sunset clouds. Chris said this, heart of America, small town scene was right out of “America Graffiti” (Re: the classic film by George Lukas. Breakout roles for George the director as well as, Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss).

So what appears to be the principal of the school takes the podium and proceeds to read, never lifting his eyes to the audience, a speech so poorly constructed and ill rehearsed that to listen to it amounted to a torture so evil, so vile, that the CIA would have been shamed into permanent hiding for being so wimpy in their techniques. This guy seemed to believe that the word at the end of the line, you know over at the right margin of the page, was actually the end of the sentence. Every line was read accordingly. To say that this message to the hopeful students and proud parents was unintelligible would be gracious at the very least.

Then, in one of the most stupefying displays of linguistic befuddlement ever witnessed out side of a state hospital day room, the most popular teacher in the school (as the story goes) stood and ambled over to the podium. As her hair continually blew into her mouth and her green dress billowed up repeatedly, not quite but nearly pornographically I might add, she launched into a spoken word train wreck that somehow managed to dive under the snake’s belly in a wagon wheel rut standard just set by the principal. All singulars were made plural, all plurals were made singular, she couldn’t conjugate a verb with a gun to her head, and all of this punctuated by spates of sniffling and whimpering as her voice rose to the finale where she chocked her way through a bowl of verbal slop designed to rouse even the most jaded heart in support of these bright, beaming students.

There then followed three student speakers. Each delivered beautifully structured, well rehearsed speeches infused with clever humor and touching notes of longing for the wonderful memories recently shared with their fellow class mates. Each of these sturdy, confident young minds reached into a future, though fraught with potential difficulties, armed with grace, dignity, and boundless hope. Clearly these young people and all of their class mates had gotten a fine public school education in spite of the dip shit teachers and administrators with whom they had been saddled.

Handing over the reigns of the culture to these young citizens will be my pleasure. If this is the future then America is not going to hell in a hand basket.

As we were leaving the stadium we passed two perfectly spherical kids. The girl, wearing a black and white zebra striped tank top and microscopic shorts, was lying on the grass with her huge fleshy legs stuck in the air saying, “ Looky, stars!” As I averted my eyes I got a gander at her male counterpart. He was attired in a Megadeath t-shirt, covered with a vastly oversized flannel shirt, huge sneakers and the obligatory backwards baseball hat. He just picked his nose in response to his companion’s discovery.

Love dad

Hi Nichole,

God summer’s depressing.

So there I am, it’s winter, it’s freezing, nothing grows, nothing will grow, so I get to do nothing in the way of chores. “I can’t do the goddamn chores, it’s winter, shit!” I could say. And I would be right.

Then spring shows up, uninvited, and I begin to plan to prepare to peel myself off the sofa and go out and review my itinerary for the next six months. Trim all the old dead shit off the perennials, turn the soil in all the beds, go to Home Depot and buy peat, soil amendments, mulch, lots of new annuals, and new perennials. This year we (Kathy actually) are adding vegetables to the soothing recreational activity that is gardening. We have no room in the existing beds for vegetables so you know what that means, new beds. So we need all kinds of blocks and pecky cedar ties plus drip system stuff. The drip system section at Home Depot is the height and length of a rail road car. There’s the main tubing, quarter inch tubing at the end of which will be fitted one of at least seventy five different water emitting devices, there’s soaker tubing, plastic elbows, splicers, “T”s, plastic male ends, plastic female ends (not the kind purchased at Ernestos’ Adult Emporium), clips, caps, timers if you want, this shit goes on forever Jesus!

Kathy is explaining that I have no idea how expensive produce is at Safeway or even Costco and that we can save real money by growing our own vegetables.

“So that’s one pallet of garden block, one pallet of pecky cedar ties, a half a mile of main drip line, an amazing collection of plastic attachments, all these annuals and perennials, plus all these bags of various dirt and shit?” the check out girl asks without even a hint of “jeez this is a lot of stuff” inflection in her voice.

“Uh, yes,” I say with a note of doubt as I catch Kathy out of the corner of my eye browsing the hand trowel, gloves, and organic insecticides rack.

“That comes to nine hundred and seventy nine dollars and sixty nine cents.” the check out girl reports.

“I can put about a third of this on my Master Card hon,” I inform Kathy.

“It’s cool, I’m pretty sure I’ve got room for the rest on my cards.” Kathy says without a blink.

I remember last year Kathy giving a friend of ours a tour of the yard, “so over here we have the grasshopper food” as she pointed out the flower gardens “and back here we of course have the squirrel food” she was directing attention to our first vegetable garden.

The primary human technological advancement enabling the population to grow at a rate that has left cockroaches green with envy has been the development of chemically and genetically enhanced industrial agricultural practices and techniques. The ability to grow food without having to factor in massive losses due to disease and or pestilence has led to the emergence of huge multi-national agribusiness corporations who, in an effort to placate their stockholders, will do anything and everything to maximize profits. Going organic will not be considered among the viable approaches to this gathering of money and power. Organic gardening implemented on a local level by local farmers, though proven to sustain the viability of the soil and provide safer (as in non-carcinogenic) more flavorful food cannot compete in the general market place against the larger agribusiness corporations with their giant land holdings, chemical and genetic engineers, and global transportation networks. This is because organic disease and pest control is, at this stage of development anyway, wimpy and pathetic. By the way the same is true for flower gardening as well.

The other day we were sitting in our rear patio watching as a fog of heinous little bugs, known as thrips, rolled onto the property and commenced to suck the life out of the very yard itself. We applied an organic pesticide which we had been assured by the manufacturer would be effective against all sorts of garden pests. Immediately after application I noticed the thrips had actually grown larger and more robust as if we had sprayed thrip steroids instead of thrip poison on them. As instructed, if this remedy did not work we would have to remove all the rose buds from the yard. As in all yards, roses are the queen of the ball. Kathy wondered why everyone else’s roses look great while we just had to destroy ours to save them. I said, “Did you smell the petroleum distillate stench of chemical pesticides wafting up from their yards?”

“Oh ya, that.” she resigned herself.

So last night we sat in our front patio area at dusk watching the stunning southwestern sunset, surrounded in the withering death that is our flower garden and Kathy wined, “How come we never get to have a pretty yard? Shit! I think I’m just gonna get drunk. Fuck it!”

“Well, as you know, organic gardening is a gateway drug to alcoholism.” I reminded her.

Love dad