GREEN DAYS / The Good Earth

So Shelley Jennings, after spending four years’ worth of Sunday mornings selling, alongside her husband Ken, the perennials and succulents they grow on five acres of Lakeview Terrace they call Worldwide Exotics, finally realizes three things about the Hollywood Farmer’s Market.

First, if you see two left hands reaching for the same plant at the same time, there’s going to be a fight. Second, if a man is lying face-down in your cactus display, he knows of a nearby bar that begins serving at 7 a.m. And, finally, if customers begin speaking to the air beside them before you can give them their change, it’s invisible friend day. But what Shelley Jennings can’t understand is how some so-called farmers will buy four dozen plants at Home Depot on Saturday afternoon, water them once Saturday night, then show up Sunday morning as the “growers” of their stock. Jennings knows the state agricultural law about certified farmers’ markets: Anyone who buys a plant and waters it once can legally call himself the grower of said plant. But it hurts her pride as a farmer.

Which is funny, because six years ago the only thing Shelley Jennings knew about horticulture was that her grandparents kept roses in their front yard. During the 1980s, she was a client account manager working the stock market--sitting on top of $2.8 billion in investments, watching the marching numbers on the Quotron display. Ken was in aerospace, building ejection seats, and since that job sector was going down in flames and Shelley was twitching from stress, the Jennings decided it was time to eject themselves. They found a town in Oregon called Remote, and a 23-acre ranch with an apple orchard and a place for a vegetable garden. Then Ken was downsized, and their plans to buy the ranch evaporated.

The Jennings sat around their Lakeview Terrace home, until one day a neighbor leaned over the fence and said, in effect: Why don’t you start a retail nursery? I’ll give you all the growing stock you need. Here was a man always flying in from countries like South Africa and Thailand, licensed to pass customs with suitcases full of plants jammed under his arms. The Jennings found five acres for lease just across the 210 Freeway, right under the power lines, and set up Worldwide Exotics. Instead of apples and vegetables, they planted Mexican cestrum and Australian Eremophila maculata and South African Clerodendrum ugandense--all of them drought-tolerant and, to their great fortune, suddenly the Next Big Thing among tout L.A.

Having traded Douglas fir and Oregon for Rodney King’s traffic stop and the occasional officer gravely telling Shelley, “You really should have a gun out here,” the Jennings are working the soil, raising their crops, and they’re happy, having garnered a level of mini-celebrityhood at the farmers’ markets around town. But when a customer confesses to having fantasies of the farmer’s existence and asks them, “How did you guys end up with this great life?” Shelley will answer, “Hey, I’m not doing this just to show off my friendly personality. I’m trying to put food on the table.”