Planting

Last week, San Diego experienced its first deluge, marking the start of a rainy season that promises to bring the unusual spectacle of a green Christmas. Having long finished with the renovations inside, we decided it is high time to tackle the landscaping. We plan to plant our garden.

We have a huge yard by San Diego standards - 16,500 square feet. The prior owners tended to it sporadically and bizarrely, creating little pockets of order amid what otherwise amounts to pure chaos.

So, this weekend, Geoff and I tore through our side yard, combing through the brush, assessing the survivors of this unseasonably hot summer, and clearing out the stragglers.

There is something intuitively backwards about this plan, though. Forget the ill-defined seasons, the steadfast weather, the arid desert climate. The financial climate alone makes this enterprise seem, well, wrong.

During these uncertain times, the only digging that anyone seems to be doing is to bury their life's savings in the backyard. Yet, here we are, planning to sink our money into this uncertain investment, staking our hopes in these tiny, feeble plants, committing our resources to ensure their well-being, hoping to watch them grow and flourish outside our kitchen window.

And the worst yet? None of it is edible.

Maybe (just between you and me), I should squirrel away some provisions under a ceanothus or tuck a bit of cash beneath the jacaranda. Perhaps the bouganvilla could serve as our new ATM.

Or maybe, along with most everyone else, we will just keep on living our lives as if nothing has really happened, as if the financial fabric our our nation - of the world - is not actually unraveling before our very eyes.

After every winter, there is a spring. We believe that.