With a yard like mine, one looks outside and right away sees something that ought to be “gardened.” Swoop down, determined to put an end to the big dandelion, the patch of stinky bob, the dead rhododendron, whatever I see, wherever I happen to be.
Can’t do that at my gardening job. That’s a job where I am not the boss. Several people above me are the bosses, and the job is at a 9-acre park, visited by multitudes every day. The park has its more popular, populated spots, with their particular landscape issues. The park has me as an employee, responsible to explore its width and length, height and depth, every day, with a critical eye to spot issues immediate and critical, subtle and less consequential.
Before choosing a particular problem to tackle, the whole park has to be looked over so priorities can be assigned.
A particular task– eradication of a caterpillar nest on a branch of garry oak– might be quickly accomplished. Another task– removing the vetch from the kinnickinick– might be ongoing.
Certain tasks might need rethinking. What is to be done with dandelions? If one is committed to non-chemical means of weed control, and one has a large space, limited time, limited labor, and competing priorities, maybe one has to accept that at any given time, a certain number of dandelions will be there in the lawn.
Dandelions are never going to renounce their claim to my yard. They will show up in force every year, in their baffling variety. I can commit myself to attempting to dig out the taproot of every single one– or, I can allow the yellow blooms one day in the Sun, then pluck ’em and spend my limited time elsewhere on less-futile activities.
If one has smaller sections of particular lawns that are not cut short and micro-managed, lawns with high-growing grasses, trees, and shrubs, perhaps one can simply pluck the dandelion flowers as they bloom, and elsewhere, do the same. Then one has the peculiar lawn that has dandelions, but not blooming ones, so the dandelions seem like a strange type of grass.
Establish the time limit, look over the entire yard, or section of yard to work on, focus on the biggest things, then work down to the smallest things.
Why spend an hour on a minor thing when a bigger problem could have been handled, had one taken the time to look over the whole yard?
Why spend three hours to halfway finish a job in the back when one could spend an hour finishing a job in the front?
Sometimes, you want to make the yard look better. Sometimes, you just want to deal with something that’s bothering you.
Nowadays, one always has to ask– is it good for the bees?

I mentioned to Aimee that I’d probably go to Silver Platters after work, because it was Record Store Day, and I’d never gone to a record store on Record Store Day. We tried one year, but they closed just before we got there.
“If you can’t find anything, you could get me ‘1989’ by Sailor Twist!” she said.
“Sailor Twist” is an easier name to remember than “Taylor Swift.” Just so, Tina Shrimpton is easier to remember than Tilda Swinton.
I wandered around and got some stuff.
As the weather warms, I always like to get African music, so I got “Radio Mali” by Ali Farka Toure. Rai music is an old favorite, so I got an Algerian compilation, “Algerian Proto-Rai Underground.” Also got two DVDs: Rory Gallagher “Irish Tour ’74” and “Gimme Shelter,” about the Rolling Stones’ ill-fated 1969 US tour.
Algeria isn’t far from Tunisia, and when I think about the Rolling Stones, I remember stories about them smoking hash in Algeria, so Algeria has always seemed like a cool place. “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out” was recorded from that tour, and I always listen to that in the Summer too.
If you want to learn to play guitar, just learn that album and you’ll be well-equipped for wherever your musical inclinations take you.
My current haiku project includes last week’s installment, “Irish Summer,” so even the Gallagher purchase has a Summer connection.
No Taylor Swift, so I inquired at the cash register.
“She’s in the Country section.”
“No way!”
He dashed off and got me a copy of “1989,” still on sale.
Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner are looking over my shoulder (literally: souvenir black & white photos I got at the Country Music Hall Of Fame in Nashville) and I like to think they would approve of my objection to the idea that Taylor Swift is a country musician.
I read the review in The New York Times that said Ms. Swift is too singular an artist to be in any category smaller than the category of Pop that is the genre of music that not only aspires to but actually achieves a level of universal popularity. I agree.
You might not like Taylor Swift, out-of-step person you, but you know her. She is gigantic.
I can’t help but think of Shania Twain, because she was still called a country musician when what she was up to was something that had no trace of country at all that I could tell. Then I saw a photo of her wearing the classic Ramones t-shirt, and who am I to judge? She was married to Mutt Lange, so she presumably knows her way around AC/DC.
I wonder what Taylor thinks, because, little-known fact– I too am a country musician, though no one thinks so, but it’s true, and that doesn’t stop me from also being a blues musician who sometimes plays jazz too.
A musician shouldn’t be blamed for being extra-musical.

If something seems missing from your life, maybe you just haven’t been to a music store in too long.
Used to be lots of them in Seattle’s U District: Cellophane Square, Tower Records, others names I forget.
When I go to Bellevue and drive past a certain strip mall by Bel-Square, I remember the little music store used to be there where I heard the Clash for the first time, “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” blasting over the stereo as I walked in. Never heard anything like that! Didn’t know it was that group the Clash I’d been hearing all about.
A little ways away was another record store where The Undertones did a meet-and-greet a few months before I became acquainted with them– a missed opportunity I’ve always keenly regretted. Out toward Crossroads, the heavy metal record store frequented by the folks who kept Lake Hills at the forefront of the metal world.
In this room I have albums in a crate that reminds me of Peaches, a record store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where my older brother and I bought Zeppelin’s “Houses Of The Holy,” among others, in the ’70s. We had record crates from Peaches. Where my wife and I got Spirit, our first chinchilla, once was a Peaches.
Now we have Half Price Books, where I get most of my CDs, used, slowly walking past the big box, scanning up and down the sections. Why are these the Guided By Voices CDs you have? Those were the ones they had at Half Price Books.
Yesterday when I went up north to pick up George, in the back of Grampa’s car, I saw a CD case from Amoeba Records in San Francisco, so I had to tell Grampa all about Amoeba Records at the top of Haight-Ashbury by Golden Gate Park. Only place I’ve ever found vallenato CDs!
Portland has Powell’s, about as excellent a place as one could ever hope to go, but if I had to choose between that and Everyday Records, just up Burnside, I’ll take Everyday Records.
Northgate isn’t exactly Seattle’s finest neighborhood, but they do have a Silver Platters.
Driving home from work on a Saturday, I’ll think of something sometimes and stop by there. Maybe I go to the back, to the jazz and country sections and look through all the names, trying to remember people and bands I’ve read about in jazz magazines and newspaper articles. An entire row is all metal, all the fascinating subgenres, groups never heard of that I’ll probably never hear, all types of music and musicians I someday hope to hear.
Maybe in the videos there’ll be something new I haven’t heard about– maybe someone has found a complete film of a Yes concert from 1973, or a complete film of “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” when Genesis toured that.
I wish a presidential candidate would make a promise to listen to a new CD every week as president. Presidents never seem to care about music, although Bill Clinton and Vaclav Havel went to Reduta Jazz Club in Prague one time and Clinton played the saxophone there.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” the Silver Platters clerks usually ask. A store full of music– I’m always happy to find that!

Years ago, a few weeks before Easter, someone walked past me eating Easter candy.
Not easily shocked, I think of myself, a veteran of the tough streets of downtown Seattle, but by that I was taken aback.
People I know now celebrate Easter as an occasion, but not as a religious holiday. I struggle to make sense of that, though I don’t know why, because that’s much more the case with Christmas.
Sell the candy, people will celebrate the marketed holiday.
Christmas has always been that way, though, whereas Easter hasn’t been so much so that until nowadays.
Even college baseball is starting to have a presence on television, although not so long ago that was completely obscure, maybe because baseball’s telegenics suffer compared to football and basketball.
Easter as a secular occasion is a tough one, though.
My wife wasn’t Catholic before we met. She converted so we could have a Catholic wedding, after I explained that any other kind of marriage wouldn’t seem necessarily more serious than any other type of civil contract. (Although my relationship with my wife would not have depended on that contract for me to have the deepest loyalty to her and our marriage.)
So Catholics we are, and a Catholic child we have. Christmas and Easter are religious holidays, and as the first Catholic of the family, I have the obligation to promote, cultivate, and maintain this aspect of our identity.
Not easy.
Can I prove that what we believe is valid? Of course not.
What I can do is try to explain why I find plausible what we believe.
First, the belief in God. Given what we know of the universe and the cosmos, the idea of an Omnipotent Creator seems far-fetched. The idea of Dark Matter seems far-fetched to me, though I trust the scientists who accept it as fact. I’m not an expert in the field, so I learn from them.
I’m not an expert on God, but there are people who are, and these people are found in every religious tradition. I learn from them, and piece it all together into a workable scenario. These people are compelling and convincing enough that I believe they’re right, everyone from Elijah the Tishbite to John the Evangelist to Catherine of Siena to Paramahansa Yogananda to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing in life is more frustrating than the truth that we really know nothing about what happens after death. Is what we believe all for nought, in the end, despite the value and meaning we derive from our religions in this life? It seems impossible to imagine any kind of scenario that has any chance of being at all accurate.
Is Charon, namesake of a moon of Pluto, out there taking people across the River Styx?
Jesus, some of us think, really did die and come back, so He is the proof of life after death, but that depends on believing in the literal truth of those Gospel accounts. Not exactly science journal material!
The idea of Jesus walking out of the tomb in those wee hours is frightful. Only someone of truly great faith would want to go back and wait outside that tomb.
But is it at all far-fetched that the Son Of God would do that? Or be born of a Virgin? Or die on a cross? Not far-fetched at all. That Jesus did all that would help explain how the Apostles were transformed after the Resurrection into the fearless characters they became.
Dubious as it can sound, the idea of guidance by the Holy Spirit can explain why so much good is done by so many in the world.
So long ago. Such different times. How can we believe in all that?
In Tales Of The Hasidim, there’s a story about a person who grew to doubt his faith. No one he went to could convince him otherwise. One day he went to visit an old rabbi.
“Suppose it was true?” the old rabbi asked with a smile.