everything depends upon

* the italicised place-names are locations of official hydrology/meteorology data collection stations of the National Weather Service

The Vatican has spoken: the movie Avatar substitutes worship of nature for religion, though the Pope’s newspaper concedes the movie has “extraordinary visual impact”. In spite of the largely negative review, I think the Vatican might be a little envious; James Cameron’s animated plant kingdom might get more viewers than the Pope’s Sistine chapel ceiling.

I thought the movie was truly a feast for the eye – the eye of a plant-o-phile in particular. The “natural” world James Cameron created, with the assistance of 3-D glasses and cracking art direction, put my mind to work thinking about all the many wonders of Earth’s flora and fauna, though mostly about the flora.

If I hadn’t just recently traveled to a continent (that would be Australia) where the plants and animals are so different, so “exotic” compared to what I am familiar with here in western North America, I might not have been able to think that the fantastical world of Avatar’s Pandora was not so far from the fantastical reality of our own.

On the most basic level, Pandora is Earth. Those filaments of the Na’vi’s neural network are a stand-in for the DNA/RNA information networks of life as we know it. But that’s not really what matters to me so much as the fact that so much of the artistic vision of this movie was about the “background”, the landscape and the living organisms that we humans are so often so oblivious to in our daily perambulations.

In fact, Pandora is all around us.

Recently I went to visit a friend who has created, and had to abandon, several gardens around Berkeley. His current garden is contained entirely within a tiny wooden deck off the back porch; it’s mostly succulents and aloes, all the plants are in pots, and two rabbits live underneath it.

DW's garden

Gardens are not so immortal as we might think. Yes, some live beyond the lives of their creators. Colleagues and fans take up the challenge to extend and renew a friend’s garden, and even institutionalize it, making it a monument to the garden creator. And though some gardens persist after the gardener has gone, eventually little or nothing will remain of the original’s personality.

Though gardens live in nature they are not nature, and time will erase nearly every trace of human intent. The stone-paved path and perennial border will gradually succumb to the churn of time and weather, seeds that scatter may persist but in their own obscure design, and the work of the gardener’s hand will pass into dust as the hand itself. Gardens are human in birth, and die as we do, inevitably. Sad it may be, but as I observe the decline and demise of a familiar garden I am also revisiting the days of its birth, its youth, and its prime of life.

Some years before my mother died I wrote, “Mother’s roses are old, the canes gray. Her Victorian knot garden of clipped herbs is now more of a labyrinth, with bare spots in the hedges.” She rejoiced in fulminations of color, big blowsy rose bloom and confetti of flowers, purple and pink dahlias, floppy yellow bearded iris and stately blue flags, bright red and yellow striped tulips that had to be dug out and replanted each cold and muddy November; her lavender, sage, rosemary and lemon verbena knot garden took years to mature into visible geometry, and to completely enclose her signature sundial, “I count only sunny hours”. It did and she did.

Now that she is gone, the garden shows less and less of my mother’s hand and more and more of my father’s, who lives on alone. He prefers the solid perpetuity of non-blooming and, frankly, non-living things in the garden: jade plant, cement, redwood bark, and non-deciduous trees. The albizia and paper birch trees, once venerable and immense towering over the bird bath border and spring bulbs, are now stumps, brittle and decaying monuments in a bell jar of empty space that once contained their canopies.

So my mother’s garden has been hastened toward death a little faster than if it had been allowed to dwindle peacefully toward oblivion. Still, some life cannot be chain-sawed away or die of thirst, and survives because that is it’s nature – like the iris bulbs buried and forgotten until winter rains rekindle them, and the fountaining verbena fronds in June rising from their twiggy border of senescent rosemary. Or the rosemary itself, leaping out of its knot-edge confinement in one more rebirth of verdant pungency.

I note these changes as I walk the yard that, increasingly, appears to me in double vision–the garden I remember and the garden that I see. A brown and brittle camellia replaces the pale pink-studded shrub of last year. Jade plants sit like green gnomes where orange poppies use to crowd. But again Persephone has worked her magic and the garden’s lifeless forms of March now flourish in June: garish pink geraniums, tufts of Spanish lavender and pale blue salvia, wandering sweet alyssum, and the popsicle rainbow of tea roses are smaller islands than before in a sea of chunky redwood bark. The terra cotta pots are empty or host to twigs and bare soil. The gazebo awning is frayed and fading and the canvas chair seats torn. Nobody sits at the patio table to sip ice tea and gossip anymore. Family gatherings are done. But for the wind and a rasping wren the garden is silent.

Yesterday, pondering the weeds in the cracks of the brick patio, I looked up to see the old queen of Betty’s garden. The massive Rosa Madame Alfred M. Carriere, fallen over in a winter storm, has engulfed the raised border, the dwarf peach, and half the path and patio. Jutting out from its border, unfurling pale porcelain blooms, the old rose tilts into the sky like a maiden on a galleon’s prow sailing out to sea. My mother would have re-righted the old dame and pruned her to sobriety. But I rejoice in Madame Carriere’s sly refusal to accept either boundaries or death. And here, at last, I can put to rest the mortal remains of my mother’s garden. It is not a final resting place–there is no such thing in nature as every gardener knows. But on the imaginary tombstone it is written:

Here lies Betty’s Garden
Born 1962 Died 2009
“I Count Only Sunny Hours”

For years I have imagined the digging up of the green sod, smashing through the green netting embedded in grey adobe soil that allowed the grass carpet to be sown in a land far away, carried on a flatbed truck many miles, and deposited on my front slope over a decade ago, when we first moved into our little bungalow on Bayview Avenue. Being renters we had little say in the matter. We did not have to worry about home resale values or whatever it is that requires homeowners to roll out green carpeting on every available surface of their property.

Of necessity I ignored the front yard for years, concentrating on making of the small enclosure at the back of the house a gardener’s retreat and folly. But as the years went by the front yard, with its southern exposure and lack of obstacles–rotting garage and old metal clothesline, cement driveway, precipitous incline, and chainlink fencing–grew into an oasis of native shrubbery and pleasing cycles of seasonal beauty. All except for the useless patch of lumpy lawn in the middle of it all. Nobody sat on it or played on it or even noticed it. It was just something I had to attack once a month or whenever the neighbors made comments, or the “mow/blow/go” guys pestered me to pay them to blow my eardrums out with their gasoline mowers. I’d suit up in long pants, ankle boots, long-sleeved shirts, gloves, bandana head-wrap and plastic safety goggles and let loose with the electric weed whacker, two spools of heavy green cord snaking from the front hallway to the far corners of the front yard. And whack away until the nylon string was gone. $9.99 and an hour later the lawn would look about the same except for the mounds of whacked stuff that I would then have to rake and haul to the green bin. You couldn’t even compost the stuff – it would just go anaerobic and slimey.

In my wildest dreams the front yard would become an extension of the living room, french doors replacing the picture window and opening onto a terra cotta tiled patio with tinkling fountain and potted dwarf citrus, all enclosed by a low wall over which the ceanothus and live oak tree would drape their canopies. Such is the stuff of garden magazines, not the Bayview gardening budget.

This is a drought year. We have had barely five inches of rain since last July – and almost none this January, the most reliable rain month. The front lawns of Oakland will go brown by late spring and it will be a struggle to keep most garden plants alive unless they are genetically tuned to the dry cycle – the wild lilac, manzanitas, buckwheats, oaks, and California buckeye trees will be fine. The rhododendrons and azaleas will struggle. The old roses will survive. The hydrangeas may not. It just seemed like the right moment to exorcise the green demon and make magic with a bit of crushed granite, a few tumbled bricks, and a nice rock for contemplation–a little space under the wild lilac tree for a simple bench where somebody might sit and watch the sunlight play.

Every year, more than 10,000 migrating birds crash into Toronto’s highrise towers, then plunge to the sidewalks below, where a heavy-hearted Michael Mesure helps scoop them up in the early morning hours for disposal.

Studies show that window glass, mostly in high-rises, kills more birds than any other human-related factor, anywhere from 100 to 1000 million deaths worldwide each year. Accidental death from power lines, lighted communication towers, cars and trucks, and of course, pesticides, affects several 100 million more birds each year. It is a problem that one individual has little power to do much about.
But there is something entirely within your power to do to help the birds, and it could save a lot of them. In your own back (or front) yard, you could save 15 to 18 birds in a year. Nationwide, we could save perhaps a 100 million birds every year. All we have to do is keep our pet cats from roaming outdoors, and making a real effort to rescue stray cats and give them permanent shelter.
If you think your perfectly sweet, well-fed, even aging, Tabby wouldn’t hunt, or kill, a bird, here are some facts:
Cats kill prey regardless of whether they are hungry.In one study, six cats were presented with a live small rat while eating their preferred food. All six cats stopped eating the food, killed the rat, and then resumed eating the food. (Adamec, R.E. 1976.The interaction of hunger and preying in the domestic cat (Felis catus): an adaptive hierarchy? Behavioral Biology 18: 263-272). Just substitute “bird” for “live small rat” here; I’m guessing that live birds weren’t available – or just unacceptable bait for this science experiment.
Don’t bother to bell the cat. The Mammal Society, in England, conducted a survey of animals brought home by domestic cats. During a five-month period in 1997, 964 cats killed more than 14,000 animals. The mean number of catches or kills per cat was 16.7, and birds were 24% of the prey. The mean kill rates for belled cats was 19 and for no-bells 15. (The Mammal Society. 1998. Look what the cat’s brought in!). In other words, cats wearing bells killed more birds.
What you don’t know will kill the birds. A study conducted in Wichita, Kansas of cat predation in an urban area found that 83% of the 41 study cats killed birds. In all but one case, when feathers were found in scat, the owner was unaware that their cat had ingested a bird. In fact, the majority of cat owners reported their cats did not bring prey to them. Instead, the owners observed the cats with the bird or found remains in the house or in other locations. A de-clawed cat killed more animals than any other cat in the study. (Fiore, C. and K. B. Sullivan. Domestic cat (Felis catus) predation of birds in an urban environment).
In answer to the argument “but my cat only kills mice/rats/snakes/gophers”, be assured that, whether it’s laid at your doorstep or not, a cat that hunts small mammals is also killing birds 16 to 20% of the time. Often, it’s fledglings who aren’t yet skilled at avoiding predators, or peeps in the nest who have no protection from predators–just the willingness of their parents to die or be maimed trying to protect them.
It’s a jungle out there.Consider giving your free-roaming cat the gift of a long life: according to the humane society, the estimated average life span of a free-roaming cat is less than three years-compared to 15-18 years for the average indoor-only cat.
And as for the birds, there are some nice things you can do for them to make up for the havoc we’ve caused them (I forgot to mention earlier that human-caused loss of habitat is the largest single factor in declining bird populations worldwide)….

Does your garden have a bird spa? Birds love bathing. Robins are total bath hogs, sitting in the bowl for ages while smaller birds wait impatiently on the sidelines. Give ‘em all a chance. No matter how many bird baths you install, they will all find customers. Make sure they are shallow so the tiniest bush tit doesn’t have to learn to swim. I’ve seen hummingbirds take a dip, and goldfinches nestle down for a good soak.
Refill the bird baths daily. The plumbing, afterall, is primitive. Also, visiting racoons and possums will turn them to mudbaths after dark. You don’t need anything fancy – a cheap terracotta dish for potted plants, set on a stump or another pot, will do. Try to place them in open areas so sneaky predators (cats) can’t surprise attack from the shrubbery. They look nice sitting amid flowering plants in your summer annuals bed, or under a tree or rose bush that supplies convenient perches for drying off.
Better than bird feeders, the bird bath offers close-up viewing and cute antics without the problems of squirrel seed-hogging, seed chaff messes, and feeder cleaning. It’s also a great boon to birds that in many places – urban areas, rainless summer regions – lack natural water resources for their bathing (and drinking) needs.
In my own garden I have many more, and more kinds of birds since I noticed the popularity of the bird bath and added several more. Birds will come for something specific (the wren and the flycatcher value the compost bin’s ample soldier flies; goldfinches like the Rudbeckia seed pods; towhees and sparrows ground-scratch for seeds and random nibbles; hummingbirds favor nectar from the abutilon flowers, and tiny bugs in the Albizia and Ceanothus trees attract flocks of bush tits and warblers)–and then stay for a bath.
And as for the cat, we are both a lot happier since she became an “armchair birder”, content to indulge her predatory fantasies from the inside of the window.