HEARTS OF THE CITY: Where dilemmas are aired and unsung heroes and resiliency are celebrated. : The Veggie Cure
Have you ever noticed that L.A.’s weather sometimes plays to the city’s tensions? Last week, as O.J. breathed out its last poisoned fumes, so did our departing summer, producing a Santa Ana that blew hot gusts around the city like a Greek chorus. By this week both had dragged themselves off belching heat and grit, threatening to return, but daily losing their grip over us.
So, we’ve turned the corner on O.J. and summer. Fall has now arrived. Plantin’ time. Out back I’ve got my broccoli started, my peas, my carrots, my onions. This year I’m also trying an experiment. I discovered some tomato plants that a seed company developed for the cool summers of the Northwest. I figure if they will produce tomatoes in the summer fog of Seattle, they just might do the same in L.A.’s winter. We’ll see.
This fall-planting business amounts to one of those odd features of L.A. Everywhere else in this country, fall carries the message of death to the plant world. A hunkering down has begun. Here in L.A., it’s spring. Not the true, seasonal spring but the spring of seeds and new shoots poking up from the soil. Even as the days get shorter and cooler, the lettuce thrives.
I remember when I discovered how plants grow as they do--or when they do--in L.A. I was newly arrived and poking around a nursery in Santa Monica. A man next to me, observing that it was October, said it was time to get his vegetable garden started.
I figured he was playing me for a rube, the adult equivalent of telling the new kid in school that the rules require everyone to walk backward into the bathroom. So I played it cool until he walked up to the counter and bought half a dozen packets of seeds.
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After he left I asked the clerk about the probable insanity of anyone buying seeds in October. Surely you could not plant a vegetable garden when winter was coming on? Of course you can, he said. Flowers, too, all kinds.
And so I got indoctrinated. I got used to reacting smugly when the gardening books, all of them printed back east, referred to planting strawberries or scallions or johnny jump-ups in “early spring.” I knew that meant October in L.A., anytime before Halloween. I knew it meant we would be picking bell peppers while everyone else was waiting for the snow to melt.
That’s the way I hope it will work this fall, too. The plants, I know, will pop up on schedule. But somehow the prospect of fall veggies has lost some of its allure, you know? In fact, none of the old amusements seem to sparkle. Something’s wrong.
They’re not enough, that’s what’s wrong. After the riots of ‘92, the earthquake of ’93 and O.J. of ’94 and ‘95, Los Angeles has become a city that runs on adrenaline and news on the hour. Almost four years of it, nonstop. At any given point you could turn on the TV for a quick hit of civic melodrama.
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And suddenly, no more. O.J. went, the summer went, and at long last it all stopped. The city looked into the bland face of normalcy. But instead of settling back, it seems-- we seem --poised, waiting for the next big thing.
Of course, that’s what all junkies do: wait for the next fix. And who knows, we may get it. But most likely not. Most likely, we will be forced to enter L.A.’s post-adrenaline years cold turkey.
It won’t be easy, but my recommendation is to stick with winter veggies as the antidote, whether or not they have the old allure. You get to dig your fingers into the dirt. You get to breathe the winter air. You get to watch spinach grow in December.
I know, it’s not like waiting for the verdict. Or wondering if your house is going to roll down the hill. Or watching the looters hit your street. But for right now, it will have to do.
