Love, Poop, and Forgetting

A Sad Tale of Disgrace and Embarrassment on Lovers Lane

Sweet Molly Malone* welcomes you to this exploration of the worst back yard in Dallas. She looks at you skeptically because she is not sure she should allow anyone to see this disgrace in her yard. Seriously, she’s embarrassed, which means a lot coming from a dog who has no problem sniffing other dog’s behinds.

*Our dogs do not normally look this bedraggled. We rescued Molly from the streets in south Dallas just before this was taken. She was starved, almost totally lacking in hair, and had sores all over her body. Plus, she’s heart worm positive. Poor boo boo! She’s doing great, now, though!

We start with a shot of some bamboo the previous owner planted. My dear husband took MY clippers to it but gave up half way through. I left it that way because it at least shields part of our yard from our neighbors who are nice people. They don’t deserve to have to look upon our disgrace. But you just wait until you see my husband’s other project. It’s, um, special. In a bad way.

Here we get into the biggest problem in our poor yard. We had grass back here but it died under the pecan tree. I spent the better part of two months covering the ground with newspapers and mulch to try and get back to a place where we could plan for something new. That was not the smartest course of action when you have 4 dogs. Do you like all of the stuff lying around? It gives the yard depth! It draws the eye away from the mulch! No? Dang it!

Speaking of stuff lying around: What disaster of a yard would be complete without a pink flamingo? Meet Pinky Tuscadero. She’s embarrassed to be there. So is the garden monkey behind her. They’re trying to blend in, like clowns at a phobia convention. Poor dears!

Do you like the mower? It’s nice to have one, isn’t it? What? I don’t have grass? LALALALA! I can’t hear you! The gravel was not my fault. Someone tried to make a path without actually digging it out, lining it or putting borders on it. I fall on that gravel all.the.time. To be fair, I’m not the most graceful person.  I have a dream of installing a French drain around our patio and putting the gravel on top of it. If it weren’t for that pesky sewer line! Maybe I can dig around it. What’s that you say? Broken sewer lines are not happy occurrences? Oh, you silly bunny!

This is where I store all of the plastic pots I have that I swear I will use for more seed starting someday. Oh, and that’s a compost pile on the right. Do you see the black bins on the left? That was my husband’s idea for a dog poop removal system. It didn’t work. Let’s just say that a black bin buried in the ground full of dog poop in Dallas in the summer is… well… let’s not speak of it. (The dog poop has been evacuated. Oh! Hee! Hoo! Haa! I crack myself up!)

So, this had the makings of a false stream. We had these completely insane neighbors who went through a very public divorce a couple of years ago. And when I say public, I mean that the wife would come outside, leave her empty home, to scream at her husband on the phone. Good times. So, she had stolen these rocks from an apartment building they were tearing down up the street. When she moved, she put them in our front yard. For all her faults, she was very sweet. I decided to try and do a false stream, as I’d seen on HGTV. Oh yes, I am THAT person… the one who watches a half hour show and then thinks she can do whatever it was they did on the show? That’s me. I recently told my husband that I could build a deck. He laughed. So, the “stream” was my attempt to make a decorative something or other back there for all of my succulents. It didn’t work. For one thing, the dogs decided that the stream was the perfect place to go potty. Have you ever heard the phrase, “a river of you know what”? Yeah…

This area is fenced off because I planted a vegetable garden back here. It didn’t work out so well because we have so many critters in our neighborhood and they ate everything. But I did spread some lovely homemade compost so it’s very fertile back here. That means there are lots and lots of weeds growing happily! Yay for me! I do still have a peach tree and a fig tree growing. Maybe some herbs. How would you know? It’s a tangled mess! On the bright side, I do have a plot at the Lake Highlands Community Garden, now. Here’s what my plot looked like before the record breaking heat:

This is another shot at that back space. My rain barrel has fallen over, as has the metal grating I was going to use to grow loofahs to give as Christmas presents. That happened. Oh, no, wait, it didn’t. Oh, and there are a bunch of vertical garden containers I bought from Smith Hawken when they were going out of business. I started painting them white to blend in with the house then gave up. I think I might have run out of spray paint and forgotten about it. That could be the title of this little story: Spray Paint and Forgetting. Wait, that makes me sound like a huffer. Never mind.

I moved Pinky Tuscadero and planted this weeping red plum that I bought at North Haven during the breast cancer event. This is especially shameful since I am a Dallas Citizen Forester and am even on the Executive Committee! I might deny this one, should anyone ask.

OK, are you ready for the piece de resistance? It’s coming! You’re almost there! You might want to take some deep breaths before you turn the page. It’s just that bad.

You might be wondering what this is. I couldn’t blame you for wondering that. It’s a grill. No, really, it’s a grill. My husband decided to use all of these pavers we had left over from our front yard overhaul (and that truly is lovely when it isn’t 107 for a gajillion days in a row), so he decided to build this grill. Right next to the bamboo. Hang on, I need to breathe into a paper bag for a moment…. OK, all better. So, the grill worked OK, despite its appearance, but then my husband abandoned it. Rats live in it now. Yes, rats. My husband thinks he is going to get it back up and running. I think that’s going to be a lonely pursuit. Mmmm, rat!

Finally, Tam Tam hopes you’ve enjoyed your sojourn through our disgrace. He is in his outdoor kitty run that attaches to our house through a pipe. Did I mention the 5 cats? One of them is even famous, but that’s a story for another time. He has way too many celebrity demands as it is.


We apologize for subjecting you to this horror and hope you decide we are the worst. I think we’re the worst in the best sort of way.

With much love, poop and forgetting,

Liesl, Jon, Buffalo, Beowulf, Potter, Molly, Tam Tam, Pearl, Dixon, Harvey, and Ozymandias

I Kant Understand It! reclaiming Clotted Cognition

This was originally posted on Clotted Cognition on 10/22/07:

"So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only."  Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals

As I was preparing for my second class today and rereading Kant (my homey), it struck me that we place more value on objects, the things that can never be ends in themselves, than we do on human beings, now. As I mentioned in my post about the value of life versus the value of money, objects can only have the value we assign to them in our rational minds; life, however, has intrinsic value, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Why is that true? Kant would have us believe that it has everything to do with reason, so life really only refers to human life. Is it true that because we can reason and we have a priori knowledge that we have intrinsic value without anything a posteriori involved? (objects value and perhaps existence being wholly a posteriori) Why does reason make us an end in ourselves?

We talk about people being "reasonable" and thinking with logic all the time. I tend to think that if a person is blessed with the capacity to reason and they don't use that capacity then they are acting in a way that does not just themselves, but humanity a grave disservice. If we believe in the categorical imperative (Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law), then we must accept that what we do is what we would have all people do. Is it true that we should allow our "kingdom of ends" to be populated with people who refuse to reason? This cannot be so.

If we have a duty to mankind (as we must if the categorical imperative is to be believed) and our duty is bound to our will, as Kant would have us believe, then we must will that we reason and that we employ our natural gift of logic in every way. We are dual beings with an emotional side to our nature, to be sure, but if we have this a priori knowledge, or foundation, then acting out of reason is our greatest duty. We might react to things emotionally, but it should only be our most shallow response and not our permanent response.

This is where I am puzzled: why is it we substitute the shallowness of emotion for reason as our final decision? We see it over and over, in politics, in friendship, in family, in commerce, and I am wondering why people think that will serve them in any beneficial way. Sure, there are some situations that call for emotion and lots of it; but to allow that to rule our lives to an extent that we betray reason? Why would we do such a thing?

I think people are too used to taking the easy way out. "If it feels good, do it." That's far easier than subjecting all that you do to a universal principle of morality. But when we do this we are denying all that we are as human beings. And when we value an object (e.g. money) over life we betray the gift of reason. An object cannot act and cannot, therefore, have responsibility in the human community. Therefore, its value can only be the value we place on it. What a shallow life it must be to do these things.

And now I must truly leave for class! Don't you wish you could come? :P

Candied scurvy prevention

I'm riffin' on a recipe I tried for my friend Scarlett's boxing day party. I found the original recipe on the website for The Splendid Table. If you're not listening to that show, you're missing out. The recipe is for Limones Rellenos de Coco, or coconut stuffed limes. I found the recipe lacking because limes are very tough and, even with the boiling process, hard to chew. I decided to change the recipe while keeping some of the basic ingredients. Here is what I came up with, and I apologize for the weird spacing; I have never been able to get blogger to work for me:

Start out by slicing several lemons into stripes.

While you are slicing the lemons, have a pot of water on to boil. Once the water is boiling, add the lemons.

Boil the lemons until they are tender. Maybe 15 minutes? It's hard to say; my brain doesn't really process time and I am not smart enough to time these things.

After the lemons are tender, add a couple of cups of sugar.

Allow the water, sugar and lemons to boil for quite awhile, until the lemons start to turn translucent. Remove them from the pot and pour the sugar water into your compost. You do have a compost pile or tumbler, right?

Now it is time to work on the coconut. first, add 2 cups or so coconut to the pot.

Next, add about a cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of lemon juice from the lemons you peeled.

Now, stir it all together and cook it until the liquid has reduced quite a bit. Don't forget to monitor it, though, or it will burn. Not that I did that.

I didn't take a picture of the next few steps because I was tired from having to go back to the store at 10:00 to get more damned coconut. Anyway, let the coconut cool until it is cool enough to handle. While the coconut is cooling, slice the lemons into smaller strips, lengthwise. Once the coconut has cooled, roll it into balls, wrapping a piece of lemon rind around the ball.

That's it! I think it would be interesting to make the rinds even smaller, perhaps string-like and tie them around the coconut in interesting patterns. I also think that something else needs to be added to the coconut to make it less sticky. Any ideas? Another idea I had is to cut the sugar from the coconut and do sugar strings encircling the coconut tied with candied rind. I can picture it but I don't think I've explained it well enough. That might also be a two-person job.

Let me know what you think if you try my ripped up version of this recipe.

Travis Street Circle

Since someone bought my old blog address and won't relinquish it, I'm going to publish some of my old blog posts here. This is one I am particularly  proud of and one that won a nice award.

When my mother moved back to Dallas in 1989 she bought this town home. It's a gorgeous place, one that almost takes your breath away when you walk in. The street was one that had been taken over by architecturally designed town homes that were mostly higher end and populated by people without children. In general, the people in those town homes were older, retired, or better off young professionals. It was close-ish to the predominantly gay area in Dallas, so there were several gay couples as well. The street was named Travis Street and it was also the street on which my first home stood, 40 years ago last month.
We used to see one of those gay couples out walking every day. Well, one would walk and push the other in a wheelchair. Their love and devotion to each other was clear and I remember thinking that I hoped I would find that sort of devotion someday, too. Unless you've experienced what it's like to take care of a once healthy partner, I don't think the sacrifice is truly imaginable. This couple continued to take their walks, to slowly make their way down the street to get a glimpse of the life outside, traveling the street as any couple would who had been together for a long time.
And then, the man in the wheelchair died. This was sad enough and devastating, I am sure, for his partner. But the sadness was not to end to there, nor was the devastation going to be small. Instead of being allowed to grieve in his own home, surrounded by his own memories of times had in loving company, the family of the man who died, the man who owned the home and its contents in legal name only, unceremoniously kicked the grieved partner out onto the street. How could they do such a thing? Easy: with all legal recourse. They didn't care that the man they were throwing out onto the street has cared for their relative when they were nowhere to be seen; he had assuredly cleaned up after the inevitable failures of the man's body and had still found a way to push him down the street every single day. They didn't care that the man they were throwing out had loved their relative as they clearly never had, nor did they care that this man was a human being. No, what mattered most to them was that they had legal right to their relative's property and they were finally allowed to force their sanctimonious judgment onto the man who had deeply loved someone they were a part of through biology. It was more than sad, it was heart wrenching.
I was 20 when my mom moved into our Travis Street town home, and so very glad to be back in Dallas. I had so much family here, you see. Not "blood" family, but adopted family. These were people I had known my whole life and had loved deeply for as long as I could remember. Two of those people were a couple that had come to define the truth of lasting commitment and love to me; coincidentally, they had lived on Travis Street when I was a baby and had also moved back to Travis Street when I was in my teens. These two people had helped raise me when my mother had no idea what to do with a teensy baby and they had loved me as their own when I was a lonely kid without brothers and sisters. They had always taken an interest in me and my life and there was never a harsh word from either of them in my direction or anyone else's. When I married, Uncle Jack gave me a piece of his mother's chrystal since they did not have any children of their own. It meant more to me than any other gift we received and I am afraid I was not able to adequately put that feeling into words when I saw Uncle Jack at my wedding.

That was the last time I saw him. We went back to Santa Fe then moved to Montana, where I learned that Uncle Jack had died. It was as if someone had punched me in the gut and then kicked me repeatedly when I heard the news. Unfortunately, I was not the only person left to mourn for Uncle Jack, far from it. Aside from the multitude of friends they had made and loved through the years, there was the person who meant the most to him and the other half of the couple who had taught me what it means to stay together because there is more love in the world united than there is apart. This partner of Uncle Jack's was my darling, wonderful, Uncle Travis.

I still think of them as "Uncles" because they were closer to me than any of my blood relatives. I'm far too old to call Travis or Jack "uncle," but it still comes to my mind first when I think of either of them. I am ashamed to say that I don't know how Travis has been outside of the odd cursory email, though I think about him often. I owe them both a huge debt of gratitude for being such a large part of my life, especially the formative years of my childhood. I don't know if I would have turned out to be as accepting and compassionate if it had not been for Jack and Travis. I certainly wouldn't have had an intimate portrait of true commitment since my parents and the parents of just about everyone I knew divorced when we were kids. Not Jack and Travis, though; they stayed together through it all.

The ironic part of the commitment shared by Jack and Travis is the fact that they were never allowed to legally marry. They were never recognized as loving, devoted partners by the country in which they lived, having to rely on the grace of their friends to understand the deeper meaning of the love they shared. They didn't need a legal ceremony or recognition to share that love, but they should not have been forced to do without it by people who did not have a stake in their lives. It is deeply shameful to think that we live in a country where something as sublime and rare as lasting love is treated with such contempt. Love is not the weapon; love is the only salve.

Going back to Travis street, there was another gay couple who lived on that street whom we knew and still know. I won't name them as I do not know if they would want me to, but they are still together, still in love, and still living on Travis street. They are another testament to the power of love over the power of rejection and hatred from people who clearly do not know better. I'd like to think that the people who would condemn any of these men (and women) I've known would do so simply because they do not know better. I'd like to think that if they had the opportunity to know a Jack or a Travis or any of the others from my life they would be better for it and their lives would simply be more filled with love and happiness.

I have hope for our future as an accepting society of autonomous individuals. I have hope because I've seen what we can do when we need to and when we want to. It is for Uncle Jack that I will never stop fighting for the rights of all people. It is for Uncle Travis that I will never stop proclaiming that civil liberties are not liberties if they only apply to some people. It is for every gay couple who has been harassed and told their love was not true because it was not "traditional" that I will continue to hold onto the hope that we are good people; we are people who will learn. We will learn because we know what it is to have to hope and we know what it is to see our hopes turn into actuality. I have this hope because I've known Jack and Travis. I call the hope they gave me love.

Seed balls

I figured I would start the ol' blog writing again with a "how to" post. I've been asked how to make seed balls and I haven't found a demonstration I like, so I've written this one instead.

Seed balls are an easy way to repopulate the world with flowers and plants.  You can put them anywhere and they provide an easy solution to long hours of attempting to get things growing.  Once you've made your seed balls, put 'em where you want things to grow.  Some people throw them out of their windows as they drive but you must remember that city lands are mowed and property owners generally don't appreciate your gardening on their land.  However, if you know of an empty lot that is filled with weeds and is never mowed, by all means, throw out some seed balls!

Let's get started. To make your seed balls you'll need:

Compost
Clay
Water
Seeds

I bought some cotton burr compost for mine, which wasn't the smartest thing to do since it had lots of sticks in it.  It doesn't really matter what kind of compost you choose; it's best to sift it anyway.  Some people use clay soil for their seed balls but I don't like to do that because it isn't "clean."  I got my clay at Trinity Ceramic, which is local, but you can also order from them online. Really, though, there's probably some place close to you that has clay. As for the seeds, be sure to choose things that are not invasive.  People make fun of me for being so militant about using invasive species, but it's quite important.  If you'd like a lesson in how important it is, come to my house and help me battle ivy.  The previous owner of our house planted two English ivies that will not die, no matter what I throw at them.  So, go native!

Now that you've gotten your materials together, it's time to start making your balls. hehe, balls. (I am such a child) Here are the steps with some crappy Iphone pictures.

1. Sift, sift, sift your compost.  It should be powdery and look gorgeous.  You might want to spend a minute or two or ten admiring it before you go on to step two.  Pretty, isn't it?  I use cups to measure my ingredients, but you can use whatever.  You're going to need three parts sifted compost. 

The finished product should look something like this:

 Preeeeetty.



2. Measure out 5 parts clay. 

3. Stir the compost and clay together.  Don't be alarmed that you can't see any more of the gorgeous compost.  I mean, you can be sad, just don't be alarmed.

4. Add 1 to 2 parts water.  I just pour some in with a watering can.  Go slowly because you don't want the mix to be too wet.  Mix the water in, getting to a wet-ish consistency.  It should stick together and not crumble but not be so wet that you can't roll it into balls. 

Busted for doing this in my jammies and slippers!

Here's a perfect consistency:

5.  Pick up a bit and squish it together.  Roll it in your hands like we used to do with Play-doh when we were kids.  Make a thumbprint in the middle for your seeds. 

6.  This is where I diverge from others on seeds balls: I like to add the seeds to each ball rather than mixing them into the compost/clay/water because you have more control over the ratio.  It takes a bit more time but I think it's better.  So, add some seeds to the thumbprint.

7. Squish it together over the seeds.

 8. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze!  This is difficult for those with arthritic hands, I know.

9. Pretend you're in kindergarten and roll that ball until it's the desired shape.

10. Place in a tray or whatever and allow the balls to dry at least 24 hours.  It's best to let them dry in the sun but it's not mandatory. 


You can put the balls out at any time but I prefer to put them out when the rains start.  You don't need to water them; the rain will take care of everything.  You may need to thin the seedlings once they get to about 2-inches, but that's not always going to be the case. Just make sure they aren't crowding each other out and stunting their growth. 

Enjoy!

Formerly known as...

It's time to acknowledge that I'm not getting Clotted Cognition back. Someone bought it and they are refusing to let me buy it back. All things end, right? So, this is my new blog home. I'll try to get back to posting desperately intelligent posts (ahem) sometime soon.