Left Coast Cowboys

Last night I finally got a chance to see the excellent HBO production of Grey Gardens with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. It is of course the story of the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis so memorably told in the Maysles’ cult seventies documentary of the same name. For those of you who aren’t documentary fans or have no Gay friends, let me bring you up to speed. Through bad luck, divorce and probably mental illness, Big Edie and Little Edie Beale were reduced to living in their increasingly dilapidated East Hampton mansion as their water and electricity were turned off, raccoons tunneled in, semi-feral cats took over and neighbors worked to get them evicted by the Board of Health. Yet through it all, the mother and daughter  (who styled themselves “artistic”) prevailed: staging skits, singing old songs, bickering, then making up in a weird dance of co-dependancy. By the time the Maysles Brothers showed up with a camera crew, the Edies were ready for their close-ups. And seemed to take it as a matter of course that they were stars. With a documentary, an HBO film, a Broadway musical and a couple of Vogue photo spreads dedicated to them, I guess they were right.

Sorry, friends, that I dropped out of sight. Once you've gone Edie, it's hard to go back. (Drew Barrymore from HBO's Grey Gardens.)

I loved the tagline HBO chose for their version: True Glamour Never Fades. When you see Edie dancing about in her black net bathing suit, or her upside down skirt, trailing yards of scarf and occasionally a mink coat, you’ll understand how true that is. And you understand how this became a cult classic among certain groups prone to, shall we say, “flamboyance”. In a recent interview Drew Barrymore talks about how challenging it was to do justice to a character who is an icon. She tells how her friends would wrap sweaters over their heads and dance around spouting “Edie-isms.” Yup, Drew, I had those same kind of friends, God love ‘em. The world needs people who can recognize an odd beauty and style in something the less perceptive would dismiss as squalor. In fact, those less perceptive often leave a screening of Grey Gardens saying, “Well, how could THAT happen?”

Hey, spend a long weekend alone at Two Terrier Vineyards and you’ll see. With Andy away on a business trip, I loaded the terriers into the Range Rover and headed north from Friday through Monday. By at least Saturday night, I was approaching Little Edie Beale territory. That’s about how long it takes to completely drop out of the world, start talking to yourself and animals, and actually expect intelligent conversation back.

By dawn Sunday, had I neighbors and had they seen me, I’m sure they would have been calling the surviving Maysles brother. Let me set the scene. There is very small grace period between when a terrier wakes from a sound sleep and when they absolutely MUST relieve themselves. It’s about 30 seconds. So I’ve gotten into the habit of leaping out of bed, throwing on anything that looks like clothes and dashing out. In the wilds of Sonoma, dawn is prime hunting time for our Mountain Lion, so the terriers have to be on leashes and my hands have to be free to haul them quickly back to safety in the barn should we see a large predator. That usually means no large bulky coats as that interferes with arm movements. So this particular morning, I threw on the nearest clothes handy: a skirt I’d worn from the City, Andy’s shoes, a sweater I mistakenly put on backwards and, because it was raining but I needed my arms free, a light rainslicker wrapped around my head like a turban. The effect? Little Edie Beale’s weird, semi-Hippy country cousin.

Little Edie famously served her mother a mound of cat food with a twist of lemon and called it pate. I won't be eating Oscar's food when we both go feral. Here he is wrangling a deer carcass. Even a twist won't make this appetizing.

So that’s how it starts. Imagine what’s going to happen when, again this fall, I live up in Sonoma full time for the harvest. Long-time readers of this blog will remember that last fall, it took less than two weeks for me to enter the Dr. Doolittle State of Craziness (where you think you can talk to the animals.)

Now that I’ve become reacquainted with Grey Gardens, I’ll be singing Tea for Two with our varmints (foxes, not the Edies’ raccoons). My friends won’t have to call the Board of Health if they want to see me. (Our well water and electricity work just fine, thank you.) But they may want to show up with a film crew.

Now where’s my mink coat and head scarf?

Bonus: Meet the real Little Edie Beale

Up here in Sonoma on my own trying to set out my garden has not been as much fun as I thought it would be. The favas are infested with aphids, the Lady Bugs I bought are more interested in partying than eating them, and this is the stage where “gardening” is really about shoveling stuff. Turning soil, digging in compost, hauling stuff. After the dreaming stage of planning your garden and imagining the new recipes you’ll create with the produce comes the brute force and ignorance stage of just shoveling shit.

Then it struck me: this would all be so much more fun with a Gardening Girlfriend. I know it would be smarter to latch on to a girlfriend who is at least several years ahead of me in this gardening stuff. But I’d rather find another rank amateur. Then we can laugh at each others’ mistakes rather than becoming annoyed when one of us pulls up the radish shoots thinking they are weeds. Not that I think “Michelle Obama” and “rank amateur” have ever been used in the same sentence. I make no secret of the fact that I think Michelle can probably, not only do, but excel at anything she puts her mind and well-toned arms to. But in all the hoopla about the new White House vegetable garden, I haven’t heard much about Michelle’s experience as a gardener. Therefore, I’m assuming this is all new to her, too.

So Michelle, call me. Here are the Top Ten reasons I think we’d be excellent Gardening Girlfriends. 

Michelle, you can round up kids to do the grunt work. That gives us more time for Girlfriend Stuff.

1. Michelle, you have kids. When you have kids, you can always corral other kids. If you work it right, kids can be a great source of unpaid, enthusiastic and still physically flexible labor. (Which means you can work them day after day without them throwing out their backs.) Michelle, get Sasha, Malia and her pals over here and I’ll supply the shovels.

2. Like me, Michelle, you have a husband who hates beets and, if I’m reading between the news story lines correctly, won’t even let you grow them. Girlfriend, think how much fun we can have secretly growing beets and thinking of subversive ways to get our husbands to eat them.

As a girl, you must have read Misty. I know where she lives. Well, she's stuffed now. But still. ROADTRIP!

3. Roadtrip possibilities. At least four times a year, we’ll need to get together and do a garden-themed reconnaissance. Michelle, I’ll take you on a great tour of old California Missions. Many of them have wonderful kitchen gardens laid out in the original Padres’ style. You take me on a nostalgic drive through the rural, agricultural sections of coastal Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. I haven’t been there since I was a kid. We’ll go see Misty of Chincoteague and eat at Stuckey’s.

4. Wine. I’ve got it. We’ll drink it. Lots of it. Don’t worry, those kids will be doing most of the work.

5. You’re very tall, I’m very short. Jobs that are going to kill your back bending over, well, I’m already down there. Together we’ll make this whole thing much easier.

6.  Which leaves us much more time to do outdoor Yoga and Pilates. Or weight lifting. You’ve got to tell me how you get those arms.

Barack thinks Air Force One is cool? He should go sailing with Andy. We'll even try to rustle up these sails I saw in Yachting Monthly.

7. Things like tomatoes, hot peppers and squash that you don’t have the dry heat to grow well, my Sonoma garden can supply by the bushel. I can’t grow salady type things reliably. You do that. We’ll swap. Imagine the salads and Al Fresco lunches.

8. Your husband is the only contemporary American politician my British husband has ever admired. In fact he gave him the supreme (to a Brit) compliment of praising him with a nautical metaphor: he thinks Obama is “a steady hand on the tiller.” Hey, while we’re gardening, the “boys” can go sailing. We’ve got a boat in San Francisco Bay if Barack feels like living dangerously. Or they can opt for the easier “brie and Chardonnay” style sailing of Chesapeake Bay.

Bo won't be dragging you around after he spends a day at TTV with Oscar and Lucy. You'll have to carry him, he'll be so tired.

9. Dog training. You bring that unruly Portuguese Water Dog over to Two Terrier Vineyards and I have a few terriers who will slap him into shape. A day with Oscar and Lucy and, believe me, Bo will be too tired to drag you around the White House lawn as I saw him do the other night.

10. Did I mention about the wine. . .?

So, Michelle, just drop me a line here. Gardening BFFs 4EVER!

Several decades after I graduated from college (okay, I’m only admitting to one and a half), my old school is suddenly pounding on all my virtual doors trying to re-establish contact. It started with several classmates “discovering” me on Facebook. Then I started getting Twitters (Tweets?) from fellow Class of Awhile Ago members. Next, I’m being heavily recruited to throw my hat in the ring for a five year tenure as Class Webmaster. As near as I can tell, the position calls for a little bit of programming and a lot of strong-arming classmates to submit pictures and blurbs.

All of this coincides with a landmark reunion that is coming up at the end of May. This is a reunion that one of my recently rediscovered classmates and I had just told each other we weren’t going to attend. Let me explain. I went to one of those colleges where you are expected to succeed in a big, history-making kind of way. Women from my college routinely win Pulitzer Prizes, serve in Cabinet positions, as heads of Fortune 500 companies and as “First Woman to Do. . .”. well, whatever people say women can’t do. And they’ve been operating at that level since 1837. So if your achievements haven’t reached those benchmarks, you stay home from college reunions. Since my rediscovered friend is a career CIA officer and can’t talk about her career (other than to say that she is in “Government Work”) and my job description is now “Farmer”, we are the kind of people who abstain from these things. Not that I didn’t have a modest amount of success in television and radio journalism and running my own graphic design agency in past lives. But my fame/achievements were of the excruciatingly local variety. Not the big, big global achievements you need to go back to THIS college, don a white dress and carry that laurel chain. (Don’t ask, it’s one of those strange New England traditions. We also had a tradition of having the College Trustees serve us ice cream at 6AM on the grave of the founder on her birthday. In November. In New England. And that’s just the beginning…)

Sadly, my favorite singer from college days hasn't withstood the test of time. But at least we can credit him with beating up the annoying Darryl Hannah. That's something.

While I try to decide if I want to be the first self-identified farmer to go to a [Prestigious] College reunion, I’ve been immersing myself in the sounds of my college days. It hasn’t been particularly illuminating. Basically, I’ve learned that I listened to a lot of crap music in college. Jackson Browne? After downloading several of his albums and giving them a go on the iPod, I’m finding he’s excruciatingly pretentious. And not even a particularly good singer. As an English Major, you’d think I would have spotted this as pap immediately. However, at least I can be eternally grateful to Jackson Browne for beating up the annoying Darryl Hannah.  But thank God, I’ve moved on to music by a real Aristotle for our time: Willie Nelson.

Anyway, in for a penny in for a pound, as my British husband would say, so I thought the next step would be to hunt up my best buddy from Senior Year. She was someone I always thought was destined for the kind of career that takes you back to reunions, and I wasn’t wrong. After dropping out of touch for the last seven years, I was pleased to reconnect with her and find out she was thriving, successful, and still the same dress size she was in college. (I’m going to be very careful what else I say about this illustrious alum since she is a high-powered lawyer.)

Yeah, she’s a big international deal, but after exchanging emails, I’m convinced she still rocks out to David Bowie as we did Senior Year.

So L*****, if you’re in for reunion, I am too. I’ll just walk in your shadow.

Now, I’ll just have to figure out a way to pad my resume. Vice President of Terriers? Chief Vineyard Cook and Bottle Washer? (Sadly too true.) Minister of Agriculture, Republic of Two Terriers?

When my high-powered classmates find out how my blogging is disrupting crime in Eastern Europe, well, they'll nominate me for a Nobel Peace Prize!

Wait! How about the fact that the Eastern European readers of this blog are so numerous that there are times when I can’t imagine anything is going on in downtown Riga, Tirana or Kiev other than people crowded in Internet Cafes reading Left Coast Cowboys. In fact, at those times, I’m realizing that so many hands are on keyboards that, by default, there must be a temporary suspension of arms-dealing, terrorism, and white slave trafficking in those largely lawless territories. If you look at it that way, I might be considered a significant peace-maker. That’s me. Right up there with Jimmy Carter. And Gandhi.

Okay, bring on that white dress. I’m heading back East.

I used to be obsessive about museums. I paid my fee. I went in the front door. I viewed every gallery in order on every floor from start to finish until I’d seen every single item. I did this once at the Louvre. Took me eight hours and that’s WITHOUT a snack or lunch break. (Or bathroom break given the state of French bathrooms. But that’s a different post.) I’m smarter now.

The first big breakthrough was finally living in a place long enough that I could visit a museum more than once or twice. That allowed me the luxury of actually getting a membership to a museum. In most places, and certainly in San Francisco, that means you pay a flat yearly fee and you can visit a museum any time you want for free. Suddenly, museum going is something that can be squeezed in to a routine shopping trip. And you can run in and see just one painting, then go. Hmmm. Driving to the hardware store. The De Young is on my way. Maybe I’ll nip in and see “Boatmen on the Mississippi” one more time. Have to go across town. I’ll have lunch at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Maybe I’ll check out the Impressionist Room. Or maybe I’ll just give Rodin’s The Thinker a quick glance.

The ability to do “Drive-By Museuming” becomes even more valuable if you have a baby in tow. Tiny babies, especially those under six months of age have a notoriously low tolerance for works of art. You’d better scope out the rest room with the changing table and the cafe with a discrete corner first because somewhere after the third gallery, you’re going to need them.

Not that little Amelia May, who is my new museum-going buddy, is fussy. It only took a quick turn around the Faberge exhibit to get her totally acclimated to museum-going. In fact, the difficulty with her, as I noted in this post, is that no matter how precious and exquisite the artworks on display, everyone is much more interested in seeing The World’s Most Beautiful Baby. It can slow progress through the galleries. But we can’t let her beauty stand in the way of her cultural education. So today her mother, Susi, and I took Amelia May for her first visit to the De Young.

Since we are both members, we were ready to do a spate of “Drive By Museuming”. I wanted to pop in and see the extensive permanent exhibit of Oceanic Art. Susi, who is married to the man with the largest collection of Tikis and Trader Vic’s memorabilia in the world, said it would be like touring their garage. So we settled on what we thought Amelia May would most be interested in.

There's a wonderful collection of contemporary portraits of George Washington. We decided it was time for Amelia to meet the Father of His Country. Even if she's half British.

Then we found a display of American Chairs through the Ages. Naturally, a stroller with the World’s Most Beautiful Baby should take pride of place in that display.

Albert Bierstadt anyone?

How about a Frederick Remington?

I've always liked these busts of a Hopi man and woman.

And this is fascinating. A Sacramento Indian painted as if he were an English Country Gentleman.

I love the chain that connects the two. The bonds of matrimony?

Yup. That's enough culture for today.

 

Next up for the Most Beautiful Baby in the World, and now, the Most Cultured Baby in The World: The Treasures of Bhutan at the Asian Art  Museum.

My Mother and Father had one inviolate rule of parenting (although I don’t believe it was called “parenting” back in the Sixties.) That was the bedtime story. They were convinced that, if each of us were read a story, each and every night from age one to when we demanded they stop, we would grow up to be confirmed readers for life. I think they secretly harbored the illusion that, by age four, my brother and I would be demanding a steady diet of the world’s classic literature.

They were right on the first count. We grew up to be serious bookworms. They were wrong on the second — especially with my brother and especially in his early years. While they thought he would seamlessly segue from Winnie-the-Pooh to Huckleberry Finn to the Russian Classics before he was seven, my brother tended to get locked in on a favorite book and stay there until my parents were reciting it from memory in their sleep. One of his most persistent obsessions was a book called Around and About Buttercup Farm. As literature, it wasn’t much more than a rural version of Goodnight Moon. If I remember correctly, about all that happened was that a little boy ran around a farm saying hello to everything from goats to tree stumps.

In their Seventies, I bet my parents could still recite this entire book from memory.

“Let’s read some Grimm’s Fairy Tales“, my exasperated father would suggest.

“How about a nice couple of chapters of The Jungle Book? There are wolves and tigers in it”, my mother would cajole.

“Please, please, anything else but this book,” they both would finally cry in desperation.

No luck. For the longest time, it could only be Around and About Buttercup Farm.

Several decades later, I think I finally see what my brother was on to. There is something comforting about just making a usual circuit and ensuring that everything and everyone is right where they need to be. When you have a farm, as we do of sorts, it becomes even more soothing.

So consider the following post my updated unabridged mostly illustrated version of Buttercup Farm. Call it Around and About Two Terrier Vineyards. It’s destined to be a children’s literature classic.

First we head out to our “forest” path down near a seasonal creek and a stand of Redwoods. But first, Lucy backs into a Stinging Nettle and has to rub her furry bum in the cool grass.

Hello Lucy! And OWWWWWWW!

Meanwhile, Oscar acts as scout, checking over the steep ledge and blundering into a stand of new wildflowers.

Hello Oscar. Hello Wildflowers.

Once down at the shaded seasonal creek, we are astonished to see what we think are Giant Pacific Salamanders swimming in the pool below the waterfall. If Wikipedia can be believed, the Giant Pacific Salamander can bark like a dog. We didn’t hear this one over the yelping of terriers.

Hello Giant Pacific Salamander (if that is what you are.)

Once at the Redwood stand, we were shocked to see that many of them had ripped bark as if something with very long claws had been raking at them. I’ve heard that this can be a sign of Bobcats or Mountain Lions (we’ve sighted both up here). But the marks are way too high for even the tallest cat to reach. And I can’t imagine one clinging ten feet up by one paw as it skritches with the other.

Hello poor Redwood. I hope whatever is bothering you now leaves you alone. And I hope it's not BigFoot.

 We leave the forest and head for the sun-baked vineyards. This is the upper vineyard, planted mostly with Cabernet. The colorful flowers are part of our “Insectaria”, plantings designed to attract beneficial birds and insects for biodynamic pest control.

Hello Flowers, Vines and Beneficial Insects and Birds! Everybody keep feeding someone or eating.

Below is a close-up of Vine Two in Row Six of the upper vineyard. I’m going to be taking a picture a week of this Featured Vine from early growth through harvest. You can follow the lifecycle of a wine grape in this Flickr set.

Hello Vine Two. Hello little bud things that will briefly become flowers, then grapes.

Meanwhile, there are wildflowers everywhere. Hah! I bet you thought this one would be a buttercup. Nope, it’s called Diogenes’ Lantern, after that poor old Greek philosopher who allegedly ran around Attica searching for an honest man.

Hello Diogenes' Lantern. Let me know if you find that honest man.

Heading back to the barn (and temporary living quarters) through the orchard and the lower vineyard (mostly Rhone varietals), we notice that things are already looking parched. And it’s only April.

Hello Lower Vineyard. Hope we get a little more rain for you.

Back down by the barn at the Kitchen Garden, we’re shocked to see that the recently released Lady Bugs aren’t eating their way through our aphid infestation. They seem to be MATING.

Hello Lady Bugs. Stop that nonsense and start eating aphids!

Then we are distracted to see half a dozen Turkey Vultures circling over the barn. Especially since I found out they hunt by smell — and eat dead things — I’m wondering if it’s time to turn the compost pile.

Hello Mr. Turkey Vulture. What bad smell is lingering over our barn?

That’s our circuit. But like Around and About Buttercup Farm, we’ll be doing it again and again and again. Tune in every night just about Story Time.

P.S. To those of you who are “discovering” this crazy place now that Bossy has featured me as a blogger and The Women’s Colony has reprinted one of my travel posts, WELCOME. Set a spell. Glad to have you. We’ve got a (virtual) glass of wine around for you somewhere.