Happy Earth Day 2015

When I was growing up the world seemed incredibly huge.  The sky was so big and the ocean so deep that they seemed to go on forever.  But I do remember not being able to play at recess because the smog in the San Fernando Valley was so thick.  Even then, my lungs would ache walking home from school.

We used to burn our trash in an incinerator in the back yard but that was outlawed.  As more and more cars drove the Los Angeles freeways, more and more smog accumulated between the inversion layer that would occur usually during the change of seasons.

It got one to thinking about living more naturally.  There were many years as an adult that I would not even drive a car.  I carried many heavy bags home from the grocery store, having to stop at the end of each block.  I rode busses and pushed my laundry to the laundry mat in grocery carts up and down hills with my son in tow.

My shoulders are all but shot now.  I use a heating pad every night on them.

When Saddam Hussein lit all the oil wells up in Iraq, I said to myself, “What difference am I making with my sacrifice?” and started to drive a car again.

I had a garden that was full and lush in my mid-twenties using entirely natural means.  Companion planting, compost and natural pest control.  Who knew that would make me feel like a major rebel of my time?

I garden naturally with pride now knowing that any small act effects the entire whole.  I even have a successful nature blog that is viewed internationally.  We need to trust that life can heal itself if we will only get out of the way.

I also spend a little extra money to buy organic food and in a glass container or from the loose bins, if possible.  Every dollar we spend is a vote for the kind of experience we wish for the earth’s inhabitants.

Happy Earth Day 2015

La Conchita in the Summertime

In the summer I went to stay with Grandpa and Grandma Westcott at their beach house in La Conchita for a week or two (just me, not the whole family).   We would spend hours collecting shells from the wide beach but then we would hear Grandma yell:  “Come up, the tide is coming in!” and we would walk up the stairs and go inside.  In a short while the ocean would be on all three sides of the house down below where it was perched on a sand berm.

The living room had a loft.  I would climb the ladder and lay in my loft while the surf pounded all around the house during high tide.  Later Grandpa moved  to the other side of the highway and railroad track, before the sand eroded the berm even more.

The new house had a root cellar that was cool and fun to play in and there was a small store that sold candy a couple of blocks away that we were allowed to walk to.  I would buy candy cigarettes and Red Hots.  Maybe a pink bubblegum cigar too.

 

This was the same little town (La Conchita “Little Shell”) that was known to have had previous landslides and later did have a series of terrible landslides.  The soft California hills slowly melt and here in La Conchita, they melt toward the ocean and occasionally block the train and highway and bury the homes along with a few residents. 

The town consisted of twenty-eight acres divided into 200 plots only 850 feet wide along the coast and it was without a water source. The area became settled with founding multicultural families consisting of railroad workers, farmhands, and oil workers who were used to making do with less.  La Conchita became a unique multicultural, working class, coastal neighborhood.

As a child I was happy to be walking in such a small town next to the huge ocean and the wide sky and surrounded by the rolling verdant hills.  The biggest thrill was going to get huge blocks of ice from the ice house in Carpinteria for the ice chest (refrigerator).  And of course, playing marbles or jacks with visiting cousins (while chewing gum) and eating Grandma’s cooking.  Tea was every afternoon at 3.  Sugar and milk.  Scones with jelly, thank you.

 

A Nice Saturday

Today was a fun day going to the Farmer’s Market with a friend in Old Folsom, eating lunch out and buying new shoes for tomorrow’s hike which will be led by volunteer naturalist Chris Connard (from the Audubon Society).

I bought a phenomenal salad mix and a Feverfew plant at the market and my new shoes are turquoise blue with acid green shoelaces.

I gave my friend a small planter of new lettuce seedlings I had transplanted yesterday when she dropped me back to my house.

At dawn I had driven a seven mile horseshoe shaped road through the hillside adjacent to the block I live on and was charmed by the trees, vistas, farm houses, deer, horses, pigs and sheep.

Our neighbor said there was a second sighting of a mountain lion on our street yesterday morning and there were three deer in the front yard.

I helped block a fence that the neighbor’s goats were getting through into our yard (which has long delicious weeds and grass) by securing the grates and placing a tarp over the fence and tying it like a quilt in several places. 

The pony was hysterical.  I figured that she (Cupcake) had adopted the young goats and was beside herself when they left the yard.  Cupcake was prancing around and winnying and snorting and quite upset until the little Houdini’s were returned to her side.

Then I started reading the books on birding that I got from the library as prep for tomorrow’s hike while listening to the Coachella music festival on YouTube.

What a nice day.