Deja Vu

I got turned on to organic gardening at UC Santa Cruz, at the feet of Alan Chadwick, a brilliant horticulturalist credited with inventing the French Intensive system of cultivation. The English-born, former thespian integrated the Chinese method of double digging the soil with cluster planting (similar to French postage stamp gardens - small urban plots with high yields). The densely-populated space forces plants to compete for moisture and nutrients, creates a micro-climate under the resultant canopy, and conveniently minimizes weeds. Aside from adjusting the pH with lime, the only soil amendments were well-aged horse manure, bonemeal and wood ash.

That was back in 1970. I was twenty years old and had only just moved to NorCal from SoCal. My roommate that first summer was Bob Eder, also from LA and attending the University. I had been renting a one room studio carved out of a Victorian on Washington Street, a few blocks from Pacific Avenue, the main drag in town. He asked if I'd like to go in with him on a summer sublet a few blocks down on Maple. I said yes. My share of the rent was fifty bucks. I know. Seems beyond the realm of possibility, doesn't it? I know it was four decades ago, but still. Anyways, he needed someway to get from town to campus. I had a car. Another deal was struck.

Bob had a work-study involving a garden project, so that's where I took him on that first Monday. The garden was across the way from Stevenson College, one of the first five colleges established at the time. Rather than terracing the steeply-sloping hillside plot in the traditional manner, Chadwick had chosen to create long, gently-mounded beds about four feet wide which ran down the hill toward Glenn Coolidge Drive, with perpendicular paths at the top, middle and bottom. There was a small chalet, on the other side of which, a chicken coop, a greenhouse/potting shed and a small orchard. That's a lay of the land. The first impression, and the one I still vividly recall, is how amazingly well everything was growing. Alpine strawberries, Red Oak lettuce, Chantenay carrots. Scarlett Runner beans, Early Wonder Beets, Fairy Tale eggplant. Seed catalog photo-perfect. All accomplished without the benefit of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Oh, and the flowers! Perennial and annuals alike, also ready for their close-ups. Mr. Demille, please take note! Blooms were snipped, bunched and deposited adjacent a bus kiosk early each morning for administrative staff to pickup for to adorn their work spaces. Gratis.

I wasn't there in any prescribed or official role that summer being neither student nor staff – it didn't matter – by the end of the week I had found my niche, that of breakfast cook. There were twenty mouths to feed and that's what I was going to do. And did. All summer long. In addition to the stovetop and oven, there was an upright piano whose ebonies and ivories I lovingly caressed along with the spoons that stirred hot cereals in their pots, and spatulas that flipped pancakes in their pans. It would seem I had found myself and it was good. If we're going to subscribe to the phenomenon of imprinting in ducks and geese, and I do, then I ask you to consider the possibility – no certainty! - that that summer at UCSC making breakfast, playing piano, harvesting vegetables, made more than just a lasting impression. It planted the seeds of destiny for this young 61 year old.

I call your attention to the reality of the present.

This morning, at SLR's encampment at the PA Renewable Energy/Sustainable Living Festival in Kempton, Pennsylvania, I awakened before my alarm and began preparing breakfast. I rang the chow bell promptly at 8:00 AM. The twenty something solutionaries with whom I have been traveling these seven weeks were welcomed with Red Rice Johnny Cakes with Maple Syrup-Infused Agave.

They were seriously, yummy flapjacks.

As Yogi Berra is oft-quoted: This is like deja vu all over again.