Gardening with ADHD

Most days, I work in my yard.  My lovely, rainy, 2 and 1/3 acre yard. Because our home is on a slope, I've started to think of the yard in terms of levels.  In front of the house is the first level, which includes a looped, gravel driveway, a driveway island full of modern looking plants from the previous owners, and a sun-blasted, smaller slope to the north at the side of the driveway.  The second level is the backyard, a carefully created flat spot with a grassy lawn and some bordering flower beds.  The third level lies eastward, about ten feet below the lawn.  This place resumes the gentle slope of the land toward our woods, but it is preceded by a sharp slope, sharper than a 45 degree angle, where the edge of the buttressed, engineered flat lawn tumbles steeply to the third level.  And the fourth level is the edge of the woods.  So many possibilities! We even have a fifth area of the yard on the south side of the house where the previous owners planted fruit trees.

A doctor once told me I have ADHD.  I didn't believe him.

When I work in my yard, I can go for hours and hours without noticing that lunchtime has come and gone, or that it's starting to rain, or that my hands are hurting from digging hundreds of tiny holes for hundreds of tiny allium bulbs.

Before I had children, I taught seventh grade literature at a small private school in California.  I also taught ninth grade writing.  And advised a student social activism club.  And directed a small band.  And tutored kids during lunch hour.  And taught music lessons after school.  And graded essays all weekend, every weekend.  Probably sixty or more hours of work per week.  My stomach began to hurt.  I went to the doctor, and after I'd filled out several questionnaires, he diagnosed me with ADHD.

Huh?  What kind of quackery health care had I stumbled into?

I told the doctor I couldn't possibly have ADHD because as a child, I'd always done well in school.  He asked if I had liked school.  Yes, I said.  Socially, it was awful, but academically, I enjoyed it.  (I left the socially awful part out of my answer.  I was painfully shy and for many years I had just one friend.)  Well, said this doctor, people with ADHD can actually concentrate very well—on the things they enjoy.  Concentrating on the mundane stuff is hard.

I remained skeptical.  He prescribed a new-fangled medicine that was absorbed through the skin via a two inch square, clear sticker.  I felt like I was trying to quit smoking as I discreetly peeled up the hem of my shirt to put on "the patch" in the teachers' room at school.  The medicine made me jittery so I stopped using it.  Clearly, I thought, it had been a mistake, the medicine and the diagnosis.  

Back to my garden.  I have a few projects going on right now, all in various stages of completion.  On Level One, I'm eradicating a ground cover called Creeping Jenny from the driveway island.  It makes yellow flowers, and I don't like yellow there; I only want blue, pink, and white.  Creeping Jenny has tiny roots that go deep, and it spreads through those wandering roots AND through runners it sends out above ground.  I enjoy the detail work of loosening the soil and gently shaking it free from the Jenny roots.  These I throw over my shoulder into the driveway.  I suppose I could put them in a basket to carry them to the yard waste bin when I'm through, but I usually start working before I think of a basket, and then I just pour myself into the task of getting all those tiny roots out.  Can't leave any behind or the Jenny will come back.  Ooh, they are tiny!  And white.  And delicate.  And ooh, sometimes I'll see a tree frog, and I'll photograph it with my phone, then crop the photo so it looks extra cute, then text it to my sister and my mom and my aunt.

ADHD, my foot.

Well, I'm not done removing the creeping Jenny yet.  That stuff is everywhere.  Meanwhile, I've removed a knot of Shasta daisies that were blocking the view of a miniature Japanese maple tree, and I transplanted them to several other spots in the yard, including the parched mini-slope north of the driveway.  I've been transplanting wild foxgloves there, too, (they grow all over the yard, volunteer-style), and I've been crumbling hunks of a half-decomposed cedar log into mulch for them.  I found the log in the woods and put part of it in an old laundry basket (there, you see I've used a basket) to haul it up the hill.  I'm thinking of building a set of stairs on this slope or maybe removing the grass on the flattest part and making a fire pit.  Or both.

It's been twelve years since Dr. Nonsense said I have ADHD.  In the intervening years, I had two kids, one of whom struggles to concentrate in school, even though he can focus on his Legos for hours.  His school struggles were significant enough to warrant a visit to a doctor, and after a lot of referrals and tests and papers to fill out, he was diagnosed with ADHD.  Apparently, the condition is hereditary.  But he can concentrate just fine on his Legos, I said.  And his doctor (actually four doctors) said that part of ADHD is the ability to hyper-focus.  On the things you like.

I liked school.  My son likes Legos.

Oh, dear.

Well, I have many more garden projects on Levels 2 through 5 of the garden.  Making terraces.  Transplanting trees.  Ripping out brambles.  Stabilizing the steeper hillsides with myrtle and more Shasta daisies.  I'm slowly expanding the garden into the forest, planting English bluebells, which will naturalize and make the place look like a BBC adaptation of an Edwardian novel for a few weeks each spring.

Meanwhile, my kid is trying a medicine (a different one than mine) to help him concentrate on the stuff he doesn't like, and I, as an adult, have the luxury of not concentrating on the stuff I don't like.  Not even washing the dishes.  They pile up.  I buy paper plates.

A friend recently asked about my blog.  I said I was writing about gardening with ADHD.  Where's the entry? she said.  And I said, oops, I forgot to finish it.  Now, this doesn't mean I dislike my blog, just as all those half-finished garden projects don't mean that I dislike gardening.  I prefer to think that my creativity cannot be contained in one place.

So there I am, day after day, fluttering from the Creeping Jenny, to the eroding slope, to the steps I made from stones, to the wood chip pile, to the sandy bank in the woods where I load soil into my wheelbarrow, to my husband who reluctantly pushes the wheelbarrow that I've overfilled up the hill.  He says I could just call a landscaping place and have a dumptruck deliver a load of topsoil to the top of the hill where I need it, but I say there is no reason to do that when I have perfectly good soil at the bottom of the hill.

Besides, why would anyone buy dirt from a dirt store?  Who keeps such a business solvent?  People with hills and no wheelbarrows?  My native Ohio thriftiness says I should not buy dirt.

Where was I going with all this?

I've got a lot going on.  So has my kid.  But ADHD has its strengths.  Mine are spreading over our acres, faster than the Creeping Jenny, and I'm working to help my kid discover his own strengths.

CA Poets Laureate gathering and a poem for my cat.

Hi, everyone,

Here I am reading a poem at a gathering of California Poets Laureate, past and present, organized by California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia with help from the amazing Connie Post, past Poet Laureate of Livermore, who keeps a directory of all California PLs!  Thank you, Connie.  And thanks to Farah Sosa, Courtesy of the California Arts Council, for the photo.

This early October 2018 gathering was the first time all the PLs were in one place.  Gioia talked about how poetry is the fastest growing art form in America, measured by book sales and participation in our communities.  Poetry is the most concise and powerful form of writing.  Poetry gives a voice to those who otherwise might not have one.  And community Poets Laureate democratize the art form, bringing it down from its ivory tower and dispelling the notion that only those with an erudite education can "understand" poetry.  Poetry is for everyone!  We are all equal in the eyes of poetry.  

Use your words.  

Here is my poem, published in red wheelbarrow, the literary journal of De Anza College.  My long-suffering husband, bless him, sits in the audience and grimaces whenever I read this poem.  

______________

Hang On A Little Bit Longer, Honey

for Petra

Shortly after we are married, my husband gets me to say 

that if he and my cat were dangling from a cliff, and I could only 

save one, that I would save him.  We are in bed when I say this.  

I know.  Already you can see where this is going.  He’s been asking me 

for some time, and when we were engaged, I always said the cat.  

But now I say, I would save you, honey.  He’s curled up behind me, 

his knees to my thighs, the smooth tops of his feet pressed 

to the bottoms of mine.  He has nice feet.  I would save you, I say, 

and he pulls me in tight to his chest.  And I pull the cat to mine.  

Now you have to understand that this cat and I go way back.  

I’m talking about Hamburger Helper when I couldn’t afford 

the hamburger, and an apartment where a bat flew into the bathroom 

one time.  But that’s another poem.  What I want to say here 

is that the cat burrows under the covers, turning in her usual circles, 

and lifts her pink nose to mine.  She weighs fourteen pounds.  

Most of that was put there by me, and by mayonnaise, but I never 

mention that to the vet because she really likes it.  Don’t judge.  

I kiss my cat’s cool ears and smell her head, and she thrums hard 

against my chest.  Cats do this, you know, to heal one another.  

Saw it on a nature show.  In a colony, they gather around the downed 

one and purr it back to life, or into the next.  It’s a good send off.  

So I ask you, what doesn’t this cat know of love?  She is patient 

and solid as a bowling ball.  And she looks at me in green certainty,

like she would at the cliff, if her clipped claws were slipping on the rock.  

____________

Oh, my cat Petra and I loved each other very much.  She passed away in 2014.  Before I met my husband, Petra and I were each other's roommates and best friends.  Now my husband is my best friend.  Petra knew this.  One night when we were sleeping, she hopped up on his pillow and peed on his head.  Bad cat.  He leaped up and chased her around the house, yelling a string of expletives that amounted to "bad cat" and a bunch of threats.  I was trying so hard not to laugh.  Is that horrible of me?  I just had the feeling that if I laughed at that moment, it would have done damage to my relationship with hubby.  Oh, Petra.  That was very wrong of you.  But I still love you, and I know that in cat heaven you are loving me, too.

Banana Slugs to the Rescue

The first time my kids saw a banana slug, they were freaking out.  They were stamping their feet and screaming in the corner of the yard at the edge of the woods.

"Come quick, Mom!  You gotta see this!"

"Okay, okay.  I'm coming."

"Hurry, Mom!  It's getting away!"

My husband and I were like, Wow.  We moved here just in time.

In Cupertino, our old Silicon Valley home, one day we saw a raccoon squished in the road.  Two turkey vultures were swooping around it.  It was on a pretty busy street in a residential neighborhood.  ("Busy street" and "residential neighborhood" should not belong together.)  One turkey vulture had landed on the carcass.  As I drove around the corner and saw it, I was amazed at the enormity of it.  Giant black wings.  Hunched neck.  Just like an ancient, roadkill-eating demon.  It flew off when I drove near.  So I circled the block and parked the car near the raccoon.  I had to park half a block away to find a bit of shade that would allow us to sit there, waiting for the vultures to return.

"Why are we sitting here, Mom?" whined the kids.  "I thought we were going to Target."

"We are witnessing the wonders of nature, kids."

Nature.  Yeah, right.  I can't say that this was the time when I realized that Silicon Valley could not afford my kids the kind of life I wanted to give them.  This was actually the forty-seventh millionth time.

"Why is that raccoon in the road, Mom?"

"It's dead," I said.

"Maybe a car hit it," said my seven-year-old son.

"Maybe it just got dead," said my four-year-old daughter.

We waited about twenty minutes.  Many other cars continually zoomed past as the vultures circled and circled above the houses.  They didn't land again.

The cool thing about banana slugs is that they can't get away.  "Hurry, Mom!  It's getting away!" is not something my kids have to worry about.  They are no longer ignorant of its powers of locomotion.  And there are plenty of them to observe.  They, too, are animals that take care of organic material.  Could they be the vultures of the forest floor?

They can't get away, which make them the perfect introductory animal.  We see them in the garden, in the woods, on the porch steps, in the bushes, and even on the compost bin in the mornings, slurping their way around its conical shape, stretched out to their full length, sagging in the middle into a sloppy C shape.  Into a banana shape.

My husband and I plan to get them into backpacking shape so we can take them on long trips in the Olympic National Park, an hour away.  It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen, after Lake Superior. A month ago, we took the kids on a two mile hike in the Elwha River Valley.  They complained pretty much the whole time.  I tried to get them to sing boy scout songs with limited success.  But just a few days ago, we took them on a five mile hike and they loved it!  We were on the Dungeness Spit.  And now we are highly encouraged.

They like the beach, the tide pools, the otters we see offshore.  They like blackberry picking.  Soon, they will like sleeping on the ground under the stars.

Kids, we are witnessing the wonders of nature.

"Ophelia" published in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review

Howdy, readers,

Check out my latest publication from July 2016.

http://thedoctortjeckleburgreview.com/works/poetry/poetry-ophelia/

This website will allow you contribute $2.00 to support my artistry.  Oh, yeah…  I'm telling you this because when you go to the link, you may be thinking, A) what's up with this?, or B) thank goodness I can now send Amanda two dollars.  :-)

This is a really cool journal.  Browse the website and enjoy it.  I send gratitude to Poetry Editor Natalie Homer for selecting my poem.  I had originally submitted it to a different journal for which she is a reader.  She liked my poem but was overruled by the editors.  Then she became the poetry editor at Eckleburg.  She remembered my poem, looked me up, and asked to publish it.  How wonderful!  Thank you.


Ophelia

Oh, how overdone
I am, swamp-logged,
blue-lipped. Poets
invoke my pickled virginity. 
All my life: “I know not
what to say, my lord.”
Now I know. Little girls
want to be me on Halloween,
wrapping themselves in weeds
and torn lingerie. I never
owned a white brocade
anything. But somehow
I am their adolescent
anthem, the early pure
death, flower-drowned,
bound in my own braids.
It’s embarrassing. Their reedy
legs remind me of herons
in the marsh where I was found,
my hymen grown soggy
and pecked out by a beak. 
Death consummates,
not consecrates, even me,
fifteen and spot-faced.
Bride of a bird. Bride
of mud. Spare me Mr.
Millais and his Pre-Raphaelite
pomposity. I never 
looked half so good dry.

Amanda Williamsen

A New Home

My family has moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington!

Leaving Cupertino was hard because I had to step down from my job as the Cupertino Poet Laureate.  I will miss the opportunities and connections it brought me, and I'll miss being able to give to the writers and poetry fans in that place.  I had the privilege to lead a Poetry Memoir Class full of active, caring, talented poets who became a community, a group of friends.  That was my favorite part.

My CPL successor, Ann Muto, will do an awesome job, I am sure.  She will continue the Poetry Memoir Class, and she has graciously allowed me to continue participating.  I get to send her ideas and exercises for the meetings.  But I know she will lead things in her own wonderful way, and will bring new ideas to the city.  Win win, except that I'll miss the Cupertino writers very much!

Life on Bainbridge Island will be balm for that.  It sure is beautiful here.  And it is joy it is to be in a green, lush forest instead of a city.  No offense to you, Silicon Valley.  You are amazing.  There are many cool things about living in the epicenter of innovation.  It was exciting and fast-paced.  And it had everything:  fancy boxed, organic, meal delivery services (competing companies!); organic flower deliveries that were so organically-composed that you couldn't choose the flowers; oodles of niche childcare choices such as language-based, religion-based, academic-subject-based, educational philosophy-based, dietary choices-based, rote learning-based…. Everything....  It was hard to find a daycare where my kids could just sit on the ground and eat a little dirt.  You know, just relax and be kids.  (We did find a wonderful place like that, except for the dirt-eating.)

Silicon Valley seems to have everything, but I'm meant to be in the country.  I need space.  Space for my brain.  For my heart.

I'm now living on two and a third acres.  That's the first thing I noticed in the real estate advertisement when searching for a new home.  It looked like this in my mind:  "Nice house for sale, blah blah blah, sits on TWO AND A THIRD ACRES."  Growing up, I measured prosperity in acres.  It seemed like an important thing to which to aspire.  Do you have any acreage?  Why, yes, I do.  It's not very many, but it's plural.  Hot damn.  I couldn't ask for more.

One acre is cleared for the house, and the rest is part of a forest.  My kids, ages 7 and 4, have made a trail (with my help) by wading through sword ferns and cedars.  I clipped a few fern fronds but felt morally ambiguous about it.  As a kid, I stomped trails into existence without any garden tools.  But I decided to use clippers here because the ferns are taller than my daughter.  Woo!

This place is so alive.  There are deer and frogs and birds and squirrels and salmon and elk and otters and whales and orcas.   And banana slugs.    More on that later.  Long story short:  We love our new home.

Cupertino Poet Laureate

I'm very pleased to say that I'll become Cupertino's Poet Laureate in January 2016.  I'll be following in the footsteps of David Denny and Jennifer Swanton Brown, our first two Poets Laureate.

During my term, I hope to create a memoir poetry writing group for seniors.  How wonderful to create a collection of poems to chronicle a life.  Keep in touch to learn more.

I'll also hold workshops in the Cupertino Public Library at 10800 Torre Avenue, in the Story Room.  Come to my first workshop on January 14 at 7:00 p.m.  Our theme will be making a new year's resolution to enjoy more creativity in our lives.  I hope to see you there.