Pretty Non-Threatening Things

(Look to the right of this post. Look over there. It’s the info on my Booty Call reading. Click on the link to RSVP.)

Hi! And welcome to pretty non-threatening day on the internet. Yesterday I might have had a wee mental collapse and today I am happy and it’s sunny and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG. I’d also like to welcome my newest blog reader, my mom! Hi Mom! I miss you and would like a hug.

Trust me, Mom, the following post is a fine example of the content here at Recovering Californian.

I thought we’d take a stroll through my garden. Oddly, we bought the only house in all of Portland without a tree. And without a plant. Basically, what we have is grass. A lot of grass. Like 75 acres of grass. And here’s the clever thing about grass — it always grown back. No matter how deep I dig to plant something, grass always returns. And so, come fall, I will put newspapers on the grass and call for a load of compost and cover the newspaper with compost to kill the grass once and for all so that, eventually, I will have things in my yard that are pretty and not juniper bushes and grass.

This is my Japanese maple tree I planted in March. I planted it and another one “after the last frost.” I put that in quotes because nearly a month later it snowed. And this tree’s friend died a slow, painful death.

This is the last of the strawberries. We had a ton and now we don’t. I guess the plants don’t just make strawberries all the time. The supermarket has spoiled me and confused me. And made it so I am very far away from the food chain. FIREBOMB THE GROCERY STORE!!!!!!! I kid.

One of my seven dahlia plants. There’s a guy around the corner who is the president of the dahlia association in Portland. He grows a zillion dahlias each year. He gave me a bunch of tubers to plant because, did you know dahlias grow from tubers? I did not. But now I do. And next year, I’ll have twice as many dahlias as I have this year. I KNOW — it’s almost as exciting as when I link to porn. (That was ironic, of course, because I have never done that.)

Tomato plant. I went to the garden shop and told the guy what I needed were tomato plants for dummies. “I just want to put them in the ground and water them when I remember and they’ll make tomatoes. What have you got?” And he looked at me very confused because this is Portland. He looked down his nose and said, “well our heirlooms are all gone and all we have are these (spit) cherry tomatoes (spit) and these (spit) beefeaters (spit) and these (spit) red ones (spit). So, maybe this is something more (spit, spit) your speed.” And I said, “Great! I’ll just load those into my SUV!” Really I had ridden my bike, but I just couldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I had ridden my bike to save on gas. I’m contrary. And irreverent.

This is the gardenia tree I just bought at Fred Meyer. I don’t know if these things even grow in Portland. But the ones with flowers smelled so pretty and reminded me of my mom (Hi Mom!) so I bought it. And I could very well kill it because, as Steve says, I have a black thumb, but whatever. I’m going to plant it –

HERE. What’s that you say? Those are three of the ugliest juniper bushes known to human kind. Well, I agree. But I am tearing them up. And charging admission to those who want to tear them up with me — $3 bucks and you get use of the sawzall and I’ll throw in a beer too. The trash people in Portland gave us a yard waste bin, which we filled and set out two nights ago. And guess what? Arrow Sanitation Service did not take my juniper bushes. I don’t know what happened, but those branches came from my yard, and they are most certainly waste. I think maybe they were refused for not being organic. Or the trash guy knew they were not humanely killed. Aw Portland, you so craaaaaaaazy!

Okay, that’s it for me. We’re off to the zoo today where we will throw empty soda cans filled with pebbles at the animals and drop our McDonald’s wrappers on the ground. It’s okay for me to tap on the glass, right?

No, really, we are going to the zoo. Portland has a very cute zoo. I say that as a San Diegan, of course.

Our Lovely Lawn

Here’s our lovely lawn. Steve’s been working on it. Can you see that center strip where it’s been mowed and the outside area where it hasn’t been mowed in more than eight months. What happened is, we bought a lawn mower for $25. For my long-time blog readers, you’ll remember two days ago when I said we were getting one from Craigslist for $35. (I need to remind my core blog readers of these things because, to the reader, they’re all alcoholics and pill poppers and who fucking knows what they remember from one day to the next. They’ll forget I wrote this shortly, too.)

So what happened was, Steve went to the outer reaches of Portland and bought a lawn mower from a large black man called Leslie. Why did I insert Leslie’s race? Well, because Steve is a tiny white boy from ‘burbs and picturing Steve driving his little Toyota corolla with the California plates to the outskirts of Portland to meet a huge black guy named Leslie both tickled me and scared me all at once.

Steve gets there and pays for the mower with two cigarettes, some dirty playing cards and a shiv with two twenties because the mower was $35. Leslie gives him back a five and a roll of quarters. Steve leaves with the lawnmower and comes home exultant because he got a deal on the lawnmower.

And because we’re both cheap and any deals we can score we celebrate with beer and sexual intercourse.

And then Leslie called him and left a message saying he gave Steve back the wrong change. I don’t know how you hand someone a roll of quarters and not do it intentionally, but whatever. Steve doesn’t call him back because WE GOT A DEAL!

And then Steve tries to mow the lawn for the first time. He gets two stripes done and the mower dies. Not to be revived. But the next day, he is able to start it and mow another stripe and then it dies. And finally, yesterday, one more stripe is cut, but the mower dies again. Why does it do this? Is this a common lawn mower problem? It’s been raining here in Portland for 75 months, so maybe our grass is too wet? Little help here, readers.

Steve called Leslie back and said, “I’ll bring you back the roll of quarters, but I was hoping you could give me some advice on keeping the mower running.” And Leslie hasn’t called back. Now who’s the chump, Leslie? Who’s my bitch?!? Say my name!

Oh, and to the guy who left me a comment about his podcast about lawnmowers and how I should listen to it because I just bought a lawnmower for $35, please understand that unless your podcast is sponsored by the Melissa Lion fan club, and instead of lawnmowers, you’re going to talk about Melissa Lion and how everyone should buy my books and editors across the country should call me to write book reviews for which they’ll pay me a million dollars per review, well, then I’m not going to accept your comment. So don’t leave one today. Unless the previously mentioned conditions are met.