STOP! THIEF!

It's so hard for me to wrap my head around this, but we were most definitely burglarized today. A person (or persons) unknown entered our yard, unauthorized, and stripped one of our tangerine trees -- the satsuma -- of 95 percent of its crop. Sadly, we are the victims of Grand Theft, Tangerine.

Here are the few facts we have. Sometime this afternoon, my husband, whose office is close enough to our house to allow him to pop in now and then for a mid-day meal, returned home for lunch. He went to the yard to pick a few tangerines to eat, and was surprised to find the tree was almost without fruit. When we last took notice, probably sometime yesterday, this tree was laden with delightful satsumas. By my estimate, 60 to 75 tangerines have been pilfered. It was a tidy job, too. No dropped fruit. No torn branches. This crime was planned by someone who brought in a carry-bag and a clippers. Notably, the Meyer lemons and Mexican limes were untouched and still hang from their branches. Likewise, the lettuces, kale and other greens also appear to be fine.

So who took the satsumas? And for what purpose? Was it tangerine lust? Greed? Resale value? A desperate need for Vitamin C? None of this makes any sense.

The dog -- our ever vigilant corgi -- was in the house today, probably napping during the crime. She refuses to provide any useful information, claiming that she heard nothing, smelled nothing, saw nothing. I keep quizzing her, but she answers with the same "I don't know what you're talking about" stare. Tomorrow I'll talk to the neighbors to see if they noticed anyone in our yard.

Our kids both have solid alibis; both boys are away at college at the moment. Being late January, their friends are also mostly away at school. Honestly, I can't picture any of their crowd taking the trouble to steal tangerines, even as a practical joke. It's just not funny.

Do we have any enemies, you ask? No, no one we can finger. In fact, we go out of our way to build good neighbor relations by giving our oversupply of fruits and vegetables away. Our neighbors know that if they want some fruit, just ask for it.

This tangerine loss comes on the heals of our grape debacle this past September, when the local Station Fire created so much ash, our concord crop was dusted with it and made inedible. Now, it's a tangerine thief. We feel so violated.

So no leads -- only trepidation. Will the thief (or thieves) return for the rest of citrus? Will the salad greens go next? Should I make a police report? Who suggested that this gardening thing was a peaceful and relaxing hobby? It's full of heartache and disappointment -- and sometimes, a really good piece of fruit.

Seeds of Winter

This winter, I set about staging a small experiment. I planted seeds from the same packet in two different locations in the yard to see which group would thrive better. Watering levels would be the same, but one spot would receive full sun, while the other would get filtered light.

You're smirking. You know that I'm not the science experiment type and you're finding the idea that I voluntarily conducted an experiment hard to believe. You're right. This was not a botany experiment, but rather a greed-driven back-up plan. I was simply hedging my gardening bets. Given my spotty track record at growing things, I reasoned that if one patch of seedlings failed, I still had a second group in the dirt -- just in case.

Results of this trial: I proved to myself that in the gardening realm, a distance of 15 feet might as well be two different galaxies. The lettuce seeds that I planted in the raised bed under full sun are thriving. (See photo.) The seeds from the same packet planted in dappled sunlight in a ground-level patch of dirt have produced only a few anemic little lettuce leaves. Last night, New Year's Eve, I harvested some of the young, tender leaves grown in the raised bed for our first home-grown salad of the winter season. Sprinkled with good quality olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a few twists of salt, what could be simpler or fresher or tastier. A great way to end the year and welcome the new one.

Happy New Year!

Thank You, Sarah

Dear Sarah,

Please excuse this letter's informal opening, but I feel as if I know you so well, first names are only appropriate. Referring to you as Mrs. Palin would be overly stiff and just wrong, somehow.

So, Sarah, I'm writing today to say how much I've enjoyed your media blitz and to share with you, on this Thanksgiving holiday, some of the many things for which I am grateful.

The recent 24/7 news cycle has been broadcasting non-stop interviews with you of late, which makes me very, very thankful for the First Amendment. Seeing you on TV, or reading about you in the paper, reminds me that, in America, anyone can bask in uncensored media attention, no matter how inane their message is. Because of the First Amendment, Americans have just as much right to listen to vapid speech as they do to profanity, or to sound reason, or to eloquence. Thank you for reminding me of this.

You've also made me thankful for the many women who trail blazed ahead of you and me, winning for future generations of females the right to vote and the opportunity to run for elected office. I'm reminded of the suffragettes and of those first women who secured seats in Congress: Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm come to mind. Now a woman with your qualifications, Sarah, can be tapped for the vice presidency, which tells me that our gender no longer needs to be substantially more qualified than their male counterparts in order to be taken seriously. Our foremothers deserve a nod of gratitude on this Thanksgiving day for all of their pioneering efforts.

Finally, I have to hand it to the editor or marketing person who came up with the title for your memoir, "Going Rogue." Until the book's release, I had never thought of you as rogue, given that the dictionary defines such a person as a "villain, trickster, swindler, cheat." But maybe you're hiding some ill deeds that the National Enquirer will soon reveal. While that would be fun, I doubt that you have many more skeletons in your closet. More likely, the book title was just a cynical attempt to position you as an iconoclast of the right, a strategy that may well work. But if true roguishness was your goal, you might consult with your own rogue from Wasilla, Levi Johnston, for some tips. Or better yet, Martha Stewart might give you some pointers. Martha has actual prison time on her rogue resume. Just a thought.

Seriously, Sarah, the rogue thing is at odds with your Alaska-beauty-queen- embracing-home-and-hearth image, which worked so well for you and reminded all of us of the importance of family, especially at Thanksgiving. So in honor of the family values that you previously espoused, I'd like to propose an idea: Rather than spending $25 on your book, people could donate that amount to a local charity that helps needy families. Just to show that I'm fully committed to this idea, I pledge to send $25 to my local chapter of Habitat for Humanity in lieu of owning my own copy of "Going Rogue."

What do you think? If you tell your friends and I tell mine, and they tell all of their friends, we could do some serious fundraising. True, your publisher, Harper Collins, might be a tad annoyed at the idea, but they're a big company and they'll get over it. After all, my idea is for the greater good. Let me know if you're in. Happy Thanksgiving.

With warm regards from Glendale,
Cathleen

GERMINATION!!!

A couple of weeks ago, Dennis finally ripped out most of the summer's tomato plants. A few aging vines that had been tucked into a corner of the yard still remain, but, for the most part, this year's tomato extravaganza can only be relived by pulling a container of puree from the freezer and defrosting.

As you surmised, I was more than ready for those tired, whithered plants to go. But not without a fond farewell. Many of this year's tomato plants showed great aptitude and surpassed all of our expectations. But of late, they were saggy and parched. California summers are brutal, and those plants were weathered, long past their prime.

With the tomato obsession in abeyance, we could focus on a new season. Dennis stirred up the loamy contents of his compost bin and refreshed our raised beds with some dense brown earth material. Meanwhile, I grabbed the graph paper, sketched in our existing planting space, consulted the back of the seed packs, and formed a plan. Then, I carefully tucked seeds just under the dirt's surface -- two types of lettuces, kale, sugar snap peas, carrots, and an Argentinian green called achicoria from a seed envelope that a friend had shared with me.

I carefully studied how much sun each crop demanded and placed the seeds in what I hoped was the best possible neighborhood for each type of plant. Location, location, location -- never truer words than when endeavoring to grow something. I know this from my many past failures, including several of my kids' science fair projects, which went awry because none of us could germinate a simple bean.

Maybe the conditions in our yard are just better now -- more conducive to success -- with the raised beds and the compost and all, because I'm here to report that 20 days after burying tiny seeds, we have germination! Itty bitty little lettuce leaves, minuscule tips of kale, tiny pea shoots, and carrot tops are all breaking through. I'm stupidly proud.

Tomorrow's plan is to thin the young crops, a random and capricious exercise that calls for a devil-may-care approach and great trust that the plants left behind will live long and prosper.

But I'm game for the task. If any seedling gives me the slightest scowl, he's history.

P.S. If you're wondering what's happening with the South Laguna Community Garden (the subject of the previous post), an invitation has been extended to Michelle Obama in the hopes that she'll make a very special appearance at the garden's opening cermonies. No harm in dreaming big.

Space To Garden, Ocean Vu

Let me introduce you to someone, my father-in-law, Bill Rihn. A retired engineer, Bill is one of those people who sees a need for something and then moves forward to make it happen. You might find him tutoring in his local public schools, working in political campaigns, or spearheading efforts to protect the environment in his California beachside community.

Most recently, Bill and his neighbors in South Laguna Beach have rolled up their sleeves (literally) and moved mountains (of dirt). They've taken a patch of land and, with the generous consent of the property owner, obtained city permits, solicited donations for plumbing, constructed raised beds, brought in topsoil, and installed a shed. As a result of their vision and sweat equity, an idle piece of real estate has been transformed into the South Laguna Community Garden. (Bill is pictured above with Shary Seltzer, who painted the sign.)
http://www.southlaguna.org/garden/Photos.html

After a summer's worth of planning and hard work, the group is installing the last few planting boxes now, and plots are being assigned. The garden is officially a project of the South Laguna Civic Association, of which Bill is president. While having an umbrella organization in place probably made some of the start-up aspects easier, any group of dedicated individuals could create such a garden.

Events to mark the garden's official opening are now being planned, and I know this group would like to start things in a big way by welcoming a very special guest. Mrs. Obama, are you interested in a trip to Laguna Beach to meet some community volunteers? You can't beat a garden with an ocean view.

Not Without Its Disappointments

It's not all good health and happy talk, you know. Raising organic crops is no different from most endeavors. Disappointments appear unexpectedly, like your cousin Ted, who knocks, uninvited, on your front door, with sour breath and a sad tale that culminates in his need for a place to crash.

You may recall that at the beginning of the summer, I planted one tiny cantaloupe vine, as an experiment really, to see how it would fare. For much of the summer, the little vine grew and grew, sending out long shoots and broad green leaves. The cantaloupe's vines entwined themselves wherever possible, circling around adjacent plants. At first, only a few flowers appeared, and no real fruit developed from these blossoms. But the vine looked healthy and was visually pleasing, so I left it alone.

By early September, things changed. Dozens of delicate, white flowers developed, from which a few tiny cantaloupes began to grow. I had the audacity to hope and found that the cantaloupe was now engendering warm, smile-inducing feelings in me whenever I checked its steady progress. My giddy reaction was reminiscent of the best days of the Obama campaign, and I liked how it felt.

By the time the new flowers appeared, however, the vine had grown exponentially from its humble beginnings, taking up scads of ground and encroaching on the neighboring herbs. An intervention seemed appropriate. What kind of gardener would I be if allowed the cantaloupe to push everyone else around. So, I gingerly redirected some of its shoots toward a less crowded space in the planting bed, and inserted a tomato cage upon which they could climb. That was it. I swear.

Although I don't know when or how this occurred, my brown thumb must have inserted itself. Within 12 hours of my so-called assistance, the cantaloupe vine was a limp and lifeless corpse. Clearly, I had made a huge mistake, although I'm still not sure what I did wrong. Eventually, I removed the detritus and threw it into the green waste bin. Did I unwittingly uproot it when I redirected a few of its shoots? How delicate can a cantaloupe plant be!

This was not the summer's only disappointment. Remember the grape vines, from which I hoped to make grape jelly. Long story short, the grapes suffered from dramatically poor timing. Unfortunately, they came of age at exactly the same moment that the Station fire erupted just north of our house, the largest fire in L.A. County history. Our local air was so polluted and the temperatures were so high, that we didn't dare venture into the yard for several days. When we finally crept outside to assess the damage, ash covered everything, including the clumps of purple fruit, some of which were already drying on the vine. Since the newscasters were warning us of how damaging the ash was for the paint on our cars, ingesting traces of soot clinging to a bunch of grapes seemed imprudent, at best. I eventually clipped off the entire crop of grapes and tossed the fruit into the bin, leaving my new jelly jars standing empty and idle in the pantry.

Some produce is destroyed by insects and other pests. Other times, human error brings destruction. And, occassionally, mother nature sends in a flood or a fire to devastate what we attempt to grow. Imagine if your livelihood depended on how much and how well your farm produced. It's probably a good thing that I live in the city, where fruits and vegetables are stacked neatly for sale and groceries grow on shelves.

My Gazpacho Garden

Without any real planning or conscious effort, we somehow achieved the essentials for gazpacho -- tomatoes, cucumbers, and red and yellow peppers -- in our summer garden. A Spanish soup, served well-chilled, gazpacho has to be the perfect accompaniment to the sun-baked summer days found in Granada or Seville. Given how heated things had been here of late, with fires devastating the nearby Angeles National Forest and flames close enough to see from our front windows, cold soup seemed like the solution. Raw nourishment served up in a bowl. With this thought in mind, I consulted my Williams-Sonoma Soup Cookbook and set about procuring the one or two ingredients not already in the pantry or growing just outside the kitchen door.

A few days later, when the temps reached over 100 degrees and turning on the burners seemed like a foolhardy brush with heat prostration, I turned to my gazpacho recipe instead. Whatever climate you find yourself in, I provide this recipe below, in the spirit of passing on a good thing. One caveat, however: While I'm a big fan of this soup, the males in my house are, inexplicably, not as enamoured with it. They eat it, but they don't love it. On the flip side, I've served this soup at baby showers and other events where the guests have all been women, and not a drop goes uneaten. Could this be a gender thing? Perhaps a cold vegetarian soup lacks sufficient heartiness to appeal to more manly appetites, aligning it more closely with cold salmon, cucumber sandwiches, salad nicoise, and other so-called ladies' lunch fare. No matter, whatever my guys pass up, means more for me, which translates to cold comfort-- in a good way.

Gazpacho
This soup relies on a food processor, or a good blender, at the very least.

1.5 cups of bread crumbs
1/3 to 1/2 cup of olive oil
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 small red onion, chopped
4 cups of fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cups water, chilled
2 cups tomato juice, chilled
3 to 6 tbsps of red wine vinegar, depending on your taste. (Spanish vinegar is best here).
salt and pepper
Extra cucumber, onion and bell pepper for garnish

Put the bread crumbs and 1/3 cup of olive oil in the food processor. Pulse until a thick paste is formed. (If too dry, add more oil.) Reserving some of the diced cucumber, onion, and bell pepper for garnish, put the three vegetables into the food processor and combine with bread crumb mixture. Once pureed, add the tomatoes and pulse some more. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until well-chilled. Before serving, with a whisk, combine the pureed mixture with the cold water and tomato juice. Gently stir in salt and pepper and the vinegar. (Note: add vinegar incrementally, tasting as you go, until you arrive at a sourness level that works for you.) Serve with extra diced cucumber, onion, bell pepper, croutons, or diced hard-boiled egg.