Near Watsonville (on the landscape changing for the worse)

An old, perfectly pruned and tended apple orchard, one of many still in the valley, but one of the few that are so well  kept, and standard-size trees, and one of few that still rings true, that is right.

Sunlit, bare, gray branches above a sunlit sea of field mustard in full, glorious, fresh, vibrantly yellow bloom.  And it is only the end of January, not, as I remember from those fond, hazy years of childhood, the first of March . . . a month early.

“First of March, in mustard”—my Song Sparrow poem

2/1/01

Lost the poetry, but . . .

The flower fields of other days were ankle high, or knee-

And those that took their place come to the waist

God is always sweeping, sweeping

Creating new and when those who care about the old are few

Sweeping away and—

2/1/01

Along the same vein, but later, after talking to a CRFG guy who remarks that nobody knows how various plants grow in their particular microclimates. . . .  And after talking to Mark Allaback regarding the “restoration” scam . . .  I recall how vastly things have changed (for the ugly and cluttered and “busy”) even in my short lifetime, much less in the hundred years prior.  

Starting with the ultimate “clean landscape—clean and rich.  Then we gringos came and cleared much of it away and replaced with orchards and crops . . . and modest vegetable/flower gardens.  But even then it was fairly “clean”.  Now it might as well be a landscape of billboards and neons—all is garish, all clashes, all out of place, out of 

And worst of all, the “landscape architects” and the nurseries, as if by conspiracy, have selected not only the garish and ugly (purple leaf and pink branch and yellow, sick-looking foliage, and toilet-paper flowers), but also selected for (ironically) low diversity and no wildlife value, and not only that but also little aesthetic value as well, almost no attention to fall foliage or fragrance and if any attention to fruit at all, it is to breeding for absence of fruit. “Low maintenance, low mess, low brow.”

In flowers, selection for double and dark, livid colors over clean, natural color and fragrance.

Awash in Krauter Vesuvius, Raywood Ash.

Plastic-looking Photinia and Myoporum—why not use real plastic trees?

Fruitless plums, mulberries, olives, Viburnum opulus, gaudy Sangokaku by the million.  Hideous mutations of every kind, and now a fad for artificially contorting everything into corkscrews and goofy topiary, and of course the detestable London Plane, and all over-watered, over-sprayed, over fertilized.  God what a waste.  The whole American/Californian landscape is kitsch.

And yet . . . so many choice trees and shrubs and vines are near impossible to find, while the vast suburban wasteland is sown wide with more of the same old boring shit.  No wonder people don’t notice trees any more, and don’t care.