rants, reports, raves, and embarrassments from eric trules

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gardening

Woodshop, for Dad

my father used to be a carpenter a master craftsman a cabinet maker extraordinaire he’d turn these perfect round cherry wood salad bowls on his lathe dove tail smooth fitting mahogany joints on his meticulous router pull his whining De Walt table saw over huge planes of wood that   would magically become with his love and care and endlessly detailed patience kitchen tables with white inlaid formica tops custom built wall units complete with knotty pine bookshelves for the World Book Encyclopedia and antique scrolled top desks with french wire netted doors that were sanded smooth as a baby’s…

mountains and ocean and hollywood sign… and yet?

look to the right, exactly 90 degrees from the terraced hillside back deck of lucretia gardens, and there are — the san gabriel mountains — gently looming over the hazy glendale flats. turn 180 degrees back to the left and there’s — the glassy silver rim of the pacific ocean, dividing the big sky of another multi-colored california sunset from the slightly high-rise sprawl of snarky century city and the equally-hazy flats of LA’s toney west side. turn back another 90 degrees to the right, and there, straight ahead, is the white dome of the griffith observatory, the shrubby tree tops of tom mix hill (of legendary silent film cowboy lore), and lo and behold… the iconic hollywood sign itself.

“when i’m 64”, the slow fade of the perfect easter lily

i go out and sit on the plump, stuffed designer chair on the narrow, red-tiled front porch, in a little corner i like to call “mi rincon de memoria” (my corner of memory), amongst the low hanging creeping charlies and the wood-carved mexican religious figurines, and i notice a single white easter lily growing through the green ground vegetation towards the black wrought-iron fence. it is singularly beautiful and very alone. i know that it is way too late in the season for a white easter lily to be growing in the garden. but there it is. i look a little closer to admire it, and i see that its white graceful edges are now fading to brown. in a few days, it will be gone. it stands there entirely alone, so fragile, in its slow, elegant decline. inevitably, it will crash like a springtime flower into the cold of september.

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