so, this is what i found when i went out to check my back fence today. the boards you see on the right are the dismantled raised garden beds. something about the attacking vines so close to my prized garden beds just chills me…uch…
this is them sneaking, not only further along the fence, but even across the concrete into the actual yard…
yep. right through a solid piece of wood. broke it clean off and kept right on going. you can’t really tell, but this one was thicker at the top and had obviously been chopped down before…
and here it comes under the fence. so, either i may go crazy or i may indeed hire a goat. but i still can’t get past the idea (i know, you have assured me otherwise) that it will really hurt the goat to eat this nonsense. what i was unable to capture in photos was perhaps the most shocking sight of all, and that was from about 25 feet up to about 50 feet up, a giant hulking beast of vines curling over and through actual trees. woven completely into the entire canopy of several trees was such a mess of these i-can’t-even-say-the-word vines that i almost had to fight back the urge to scream. they originate from another property, but i am literally at a loss about what to do with these, short of napalm.
no, i’m serious.
but that’s not even what i want to blog about.
no, i actually want to blog publicly about a beast that’s even more insidious than these awful terrible vines, but i think even more choking.
that beast is my ego.
a while back an article about garden people appeared in a paper and i was mentioned.
the article wasn’t about me, but i had been interviewed for it, and i had spent some pretty considerable time discussing various things with the reporter, so i was very curious to see what the final article would be like.
and when i read the final article, i felt like i wanted to throw up.
i literally felt like i wanted to go to bed for a few days and just stay there.
the first thing that hit me was that something i had mentioned to him, but specifically asked him not to write, was included in the article.
the second thing that hit me was that one of the assertions, made by someone else about me (but never fact checked) was blatantly false.
but the third thing, and this was the worst, was all the things that were true.
so, let me disassemble this a bit for you and explain a few things.
the reason why i felt like going to bed was out of a deep sense of shame. it took me a good long while of thinking it through before i had enough clarity to realize that the best way to combat this sense of shame would be to just come clean and air my dirty laundry in public! yes- there’s nothing like outing yourself and all of your demons and holding them up to the light of day to see that they aren’t so bad or so horrid after all. so i committed to doing exactly that, and then backed out repeatedly over the last several months 
as far as my first issue: i realized that i really should be a bit more reporter savvy by now. you shouldn’t tell them what you don’t want published. end of story. there is no “off the record” and they are not your friends. it is their job to be nice to you and they do their jobs. BUT MY BIG EGO let me believe that i was different. i thought i would get special treatment because he genuinely liked me, so he would respect what i asked him. (gosh, why does this sound like so much of high school???) i was embarrassed by what appeared in print that other people probably didn’t even notice. for real. if i had been more grounded i would have been more reality-based and acted based on what i knew versus what i wanted to believe. okay, so lesson learned, hopefully, and permission granted to move on.
item #2: in the article, someone alleged that the charges against me for the garden were dropped because i left oak park and moved to seattle. (i’m not going to dig the article out now to see the exact wording, so this is my best recollection of what was said…) i was very indignant! the charges against me were dropped because they were bogus, but it has always been a sore point for me that i was never found not guilty and never actually vindicated of wrong-doing. oak park was wrong, and the whole way they went about dismissing the charges without really dismissing them was really smarmy, and it always really bothered me. i felt very impotent in court that there was no way i could force them to fight the charges to a conclusion or drop them forever. so to see it implied in print that they basically let me leave town in exchange for dropping the charges just mad me really mad.
but then i had to ask myself why. most people who know my story know it by now. but, more importantly, the article WASN’T ABOUT ME. so nobody was reading this to get the scoop on julie bass. and if someone got the wrong information, what consequence would it really have? would it prevent me from getting a job? a husband? does it impact my children’s happiness or well-being? so, again, here was my ego, inserted where it didn’t belong. i was so invested in this image of heroic me- and really- who even cares about that any more? if i want to be a hero, i need to be a hero NOW, not two years ago… and that brings me to the next point…
point #3- and this is the hardest to write about, and the one that’s kept me hedging about writing this post for the longest, so please cut me some slack. there were so many hard truths in that article. there were so many realities that i hadn’t faced that i saw all it once, in one place, in black and white. and i read them all at once and i couldn’t escape them because they really were true. i felt like someone who had gained 100 pounds but who hadn’t noticed and then all of the sudden was standing naked in front of 10 full-length mirrors and 25 flood lights. it was awful and there was nowhere to hide. i had moved so far away from where i wanted to be as a person, but i had done it in little bitty increments, so i hadn’t even noticed. i was this big garden person who had no big garden in seattle. i had some failed seedlings last year, and a holdover compost pile from the previous homeowners (the seduction of the city of seattle taking meat, dairy, and fish into their compost proved too much for me in my first year here. this, combined with their strict limits on trash, meant that i was really delighted to just let them have all my food scraps together…). i had failed garden beds, with failed attempts at lasagna sheet mulching. i had happy chickens, but even the chicken i was holding in the article was dead by the time the article was published, and looked sickly and half dead in the photo.
i had fought for the right to have front yard gardens in oak park, but then left a house with no front yard garden, a city with unchanged regulations, and a city planner still at his job. we had helped to get a new mayor in office, but then i had lost touch with her and in my swept-up-in-getting-settled-in-seattle-ness stopped corresponding with her and didn’t follow through about her great plans for community gardens. i had lost touch with ryan, who had been such an inspiration through so much of my garden struggle and had proven himself such a true friend. he was going through a rough time, and i was reminded that i had dropped the ball (ryan, if you are still reading the blog, here is my public apology to you, and my vow to try to be a better friend going forward…).
so, here i thought reading the article would be a pleasant stroll down memory lane.
instead, it was more like realizing that, rather than being the still-cute 20 year-old former high school football star who drives a mustang and impresses the cheerleaders, you are actually the 38 year-old paunchy and balding former high school football star with the too-tight polyester shirt, and it’s no longer cool to try to relive your glory days.
it’s time to play a new soundtrack.
and that’s when i kind of got it.
that’s when i got that if i could get over my own ego enough to not have to be a superstar, i could try to just be enough.
i might not be able to move to a farm, but that didn’t mean i couldn’t try again to have a successful garden.
i looked again at the front yard space, and guess what? there are some bushes we can pull up and make a space for some veggies!
hurray!
and if we weren’t going to end up with livestock after all, it darn well wasn’t going to be for my lack of trying…
instead of moping around about having so few chickens, i’m proud to say (several posts after you already know this- hahahaha) that we have finally added to our flock!
instead of feeling bad about the substandard compost pile, i’ve started a new one in the front with the chicken bedding. sorry, city of seattle!
and instead of letting my ego tell me how important i should be, i’m trying to be guided by a vision of what a good person i could be…
i’m hoping it will free up a lot of brain space for more important things…
Feb 12, 2013 @ 19:00:25
It’s ok to make mistakes. The true test of character is whitney you learn from them. And you did!
Feb 12, 2013 @ 19:27:28
You ARE enough. You are who you are, and that IS enough. You will become who you want to become. No apologies necessary. We all are here to experience, learn and grow. You are doing that, so you are a success.
Feb 12, 2013 @ 20:06:51
Julie, your blackberry battle makes me think of Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. I read it probably 20 years ago and don’t remember any of the story line, but I do remember the image of the ever-present Pacific Northwest blackberries. Welcome to Seattle!
Feb 12, 2013 @ 20:32:18
Three comments.
1. You didn’t run away from Michigan. You moved for the same reason as lots of people move: your spouse got a new job.
2. When you move, there are about 10 gazillion things that you have to do the first year or two. You have to get everything put away in a new house; find new places to shop, to get the car fixed, etc., etc.; get the kids settled into new schools and friends; get yourself settled into new activities and friendships, etc.. You can’t do everything the first year, and putting in a new garden is probably one of the things that will languish for a year or so.
3. Gardening in Seattle is really different than gardening in Michigan. The climate is different; the soil is different; the plants are different, etc. It takes awhile before you can “read” the moods of the local plants and figure out what will grow well here, and what isn’t worth trying to grow. This will come, but some of the tricks you learn in the midwest aren’t relevant here, and we have to learn other tricks to make a happy garden. So cut yourself some slack, and start again at a level that is not overwhelming. Try a few things, see what works and what doesn’t, and let your local gardening wisdom (and garden) develop over a few years.
And yes: those blackberries are really the plant equivalent of “he who must not be named”!
Feb 12, 2013 @ 22:23:44
Ellen made some very strong points and as a garden owner in just about every place we have lived, I will tell you that we have been here 2 years and this is is our first shot at a garden. It’s very different here. You are a several steps ahead of us with chickens (coming to a yard near us soon) and a compost pile. I can relate to the has been football star image. It’s odd the things we let our perspective convince us we must be…but hey, if it motivates us, then it’s usable. For the record, you can’t be a has been if you drink raw milk and eat your chickens eggs. Just sayin.
Feb 13, 2013 @ 00:44:32
I have probably missed several of your blog entries so I don’t know what name you can’t pronounce, but that looks like blackberry brambles to me. I have been cutting the same ones back for, can’t figure out the number of years, it’s been since 1985. They always come back. It is reassuring as far as the power of nature to survive, but gets old for the gardener.
A link to this post came up on my facebook page. I moved my blog recently to wordpress so now I can “follow” you directly. I have always enjoyed reading the entries that I have read.
Feb 13, 2013 @ 01:25:31
Julie,
i once read that a leader isn’t necessarily successful and perfect. rather, a leader is someone who is a “doer”. someone who tries when others don’t bother.
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:25:44
thank you!
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:27:26
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:31:13
sigh…deep breath…thanks for that… really…
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:31:40
you are such a true friend
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:32:33
hahahahaha- okay, if that’s what it takes to feel welcome, the i guess i’ll take it!
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:33:21
ok- that is quite a positive spin, and i really appreciate that! that was nice to wake up to- thank you!
Feb 13, 2013 @ 08:35:07
ok- i guess we’ll all see going forward! (big cheesy smile from me sitting at my computer while my kids wonder what i’m doing…). thanks for the kind words!
Feb 14, 2013 @ 10:18:49
Have I told you today How Awesome You Are?
Keep on keepin’ on, My Friend. Sincerely, Sterling Prentice
Feb 14, 2013 @ 11:22:11
well, thank you!
Feb 16, 2013 @ 11:12:56
when we lived in Springfield OR we had blackberries growing in the field across the street. we loved picking them and making jam. the kids would make armor out of cardboard and climb over pallets to make trails into the center of the briar patch!
To erradicate the brambles, I have heard of people who lop them off and then use a syringe to inject them with some kind of herbacide. I like the idea of goats better, you’d be surprised what they can digest without harm!