News of California's fiscal totaling is just hitting the media. It's as pretty a picture as any pileup ever coned off on the fast lane of a freeway. This isn't a poetry blog entry, but a lament. I can only respond to what may shortly be an official disaster by gardening. That's right, gardening. Because the first response to devastation must always be new seeds taking hold. As I learned on a lava field in Hawaii, a wasteland is always fertile ground. As is any failure or loss. So tomorrow I'm planting, and not just a victory garden to get through a lean time for myself, but a little something of beauty to remind the earth that that's what it wants to be, no matter what we do on its surface.
