planting clover

it's autumn. maybe winter? there was frost on the road down the hill today.  last week, in the real world, otherwise known as the garden, Max and i spent the morning before the first big rain pulling up dead plants and irrigation hoses. it was the first time we've gardened together, at the same time, in a while. the sun barely makes it over the redwood trees at this time of year, it's lower every day but when i am working in the garden i can sit on the loungey lawn chair to rest and close my eyes and feel almost too hot, even though the low, amber quality of the autumn light on my face betrays the coming turn. the gardening to be done right now is mostly getting ready for winter. cutting back. mulch. right now, the roses and fruit trees still have leaves; the apples will drop theirs soon, probably; you never know with the roses. in california, sometimes the leaves don't drop, and when that happens we walk around and strip them off by hand, to give the plants a little rest before spring. it wasn't very hot this autumn, the way it usually is. it is going to rain. 

 

there's a part about weather in my book that i had to go back and edit because last winter, which was wet, people who don't live in the Western US kept saying, i don't understand how there can be unprecedented destructive wildfires and drought there when all i hear about right now is unprecedented destructive rain/floods, so is the whole wildfire thing over now? and i realized that i needed to be a bit more explicit about the fact that extreme weather, as a result of climate change, means extreme. it doesn’t necessitate any particular flavor of extremeness. the weather of climate change might be everything, anything, everywhere, often at unexpected times. and the pendulum between extremes swings faster, further, more wildly. it is the stuff that stymies pundits. 

 

so i cut back all the echinacea flower stalks, which had a short bloom this fall because it wasn't hot. i cut to the ground the long-spent peony bushes whose leaves have been gathering sunlight all summer, and a few of the dahlias (it was a terrible year for dahlias here! rather depressing!). then i dragged a rake across the big lawn, which we call "the meadow" but it's not quite up to that name yet. we're working on it. i walked around the roughed-up meadow tossing seeds in my wake: california poppy, farewell-to-spring, a bag of "sonoma splendor wildflower mix" from the local nursery. then i sowed clover all over. the clover is part of my annual, doomed attempt to find something that can outcompete the lawn grasses planted by the home's previous occupant. the type i sowed this year is called "Palestine strawberry clover." that was a coincidence but it didn't feel like one. (strawberry clover is originally native to the mediterranean, hence the geographic reference in its name, and it is introduced and cultivated here in the USA as a cover crop and ground cover. its flowers are pinkish and round, hence the fruit reference.)

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you need the approval of a boss or an authority figure; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.

For an intellectual these habits are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits.”

—Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual