Lunch at the Luther Burbank Garden, Santa Rosa

For this week's prompt we were to write a poem about our surroundings at lunch.  I spent my lunch hour on a tour at Luther Burbank's home in Santa Rosa.  Here's the draft I pieced together.

Lunch at the Luther Burbank Garden, Santa Rosa

History seems bricked in—but the soil
remains rich between the cracks, where the big-
toothed grins of Shasta daisies can spring forth.
If something doesn't suit you than graft it
to something else. Sometimes, a potato
seedpod small as a fingernail can sprout
ten futures thick with eyes; the largest sold
for passage on a train to another
life where the fields pulsed. Where onion skin-thin
paper journals were used to trace the shape
of each creations potential, weighing
risk against what could bloom against all odds.
When you leave, you must empty your pockets.
Let the wind unwind the lost paths to home.

This week, our assignment was to revise an existing poem.  I am working on editing my manuscript "There's Ghosts in this Machine of Air" and so I edited this poem.  It was originally called "Luther Burbank Experimental Farm" but I added in The Mother Tree.  The Experimental Gardens are a real place in Sebastopol that was for many years left untended.  But, in it's day, Luther Burbank would get visitors from all over the world.  This poem thinks about how something once so vital to the community has become almost forgotten over time.

The Mother Tree at the Luther Burbank Experimental Farm

In the late 1800s, Luther Burbank declared Sonoma County “nature’s chosen spot”
and sold the rights to the first Idaho potato to fund his journey out.

At his Experimental Farm, he solved problems—how to grow cactus without thorns;
how to grow apples year round.  He checked the pockets of every visitor
for fear one of his prized seeds might be carried away on something other than wind.

These days, there are less visitors.  But, Shasta daisies still greet with big toothy grins
as visitors walk the path past Burbank’s hybrid plants. Toward the back,
near Pleasant Hill Cemetery the mother tree looms full and large,
always bearing fruit, always bearing another graft or possibility.

Under brace, her branches are so full, they seem threatened even in a light rain.
Arms extending over the fence, as if guarding what is left
as if beckoning the ghosts back from the earth,
back from the fog as it burns off.

Day 15: Crying in the Face of Rain

Today's prompt should have been titled, crying in the face of taxes!  But rain it is and after finishing my taxes today (GULP!) I dove into the prompt.  This morning my friend Martha Wade mentioned to me that she remembered how the fog really held onto the scent of flowers and seemed to intensify those scents.  I couldn't agree more.  Here where it is often foggy, one smells not only the sea, but also the smell of the lavender and rosemary plants the cover the hillside, or the earthy smell of redwood or tang of bay.  For the past few days I've been wanting to write about Luther Burbank's experimental garden which is located just up the road from my house in Sebastopol.  It's a lovely place where you can walk the paths and see some of Burbank's original trees and plants.  At the back is the Mother Tree.  The fruit tree where are graphs were tested.  This draft incorporates that tree and Burbank's gardens:

In the Face of Rain

A low fog will gather the aromas

of lavender, rosemary, whatever

lies blooming in its path. Whoever walks
by smells the specific potpourri of
place: sea and salt mingling with what grows.

When Luther Burbank arrived he declared
Sonoma County nature’s chosen spot
He sold the rights to the first Idaho
potato to fund his long journey out. But,
once arrived success took to the soil.

Visitors to his Experimental
Farm in Sebastopol weren’t encouraged
(due to threats of thievery). But Shasta daises
still grinned big toothy grins at the front gate.
And rows and rows of plants and trees glistened
still coated in rain in the morning sun.

Toward back, near Pleasant Hill cemetery
the Mother Tree loomed full and large, always
bearing fruit, always bearing another
graft or possibility. Under brace
her branches seem threatened even in
a light rain. Her arms extending over
the fence as if beckoning ghosts back from
the earth, back from the fog as it burns off
leaving only the potpourri of plants
some known, some yet to be dancing in the air.

Day 7: Slightly Bereft

Today's prompt was: slightly bereft.  The word bereft comes from germanic roots meaning to rob (which is interesting given the history of the Gravenstein apple).  I spent most of the morning looking at photos of the Gravenstein Apple Show which took place in Sebastopol from 1910 - 1915. It was quite a grand affair and over 25,000 attended the show that first year.  The show featured sculptures of historic places (like Fort Ross) and apple growing scenes.  What I discovered was that the show was stopped in 191 due to the onset of World War I when Sebastopol began to ship off many of it's young men as well as supply the army with dried apples for soldiers overseas.  I began to think about how strange it must have been to ship out down the Petaluma river, following the same route of the apples your family had been sending out for years.  Here's my attempt at a poem for today's prompt:

After the 1915 Gravenstein Apple Show

“The Gravenstein Apple has, above all others, proved to be the money winner in Sonoma County.  It is a healthy vigorous tree.  It always bears a good crop, never over-bearing, as many varieties do; is of the best quality of all known apples”
      –Luther Burbank

After the logging, after the plowing,
the planting, the yield, most hills stood slightly
bereft but ever producing apples.
To celebrate the escalation of
apples sales, the Sebastopol Apple
Growers Union raised a tent across from
the train depot, began the Gravenstein
Apple Show in 1910.  Photos show
uniformed boys lined in neat rows, women
dressed in white floor-length dresses, entering
the sawdust floored tent.  Inside, the warm air
swelled with the tart picked apples arranged in
sculptures that set into form history
of the apple, the town.  Fictions or truths
built out of the bittersweet fruit yielded
gristmills, locomotives, a gold ridge farm.
even Gold, a Petaluma river
steamship that shipped the apples down the slough
to San Francisco Bay.  Until war closed
the fair and that same steamship was loaded
instead with the cargo of men and boys,
their arms still browned from the season’s harvest
their eyes looking back to the golden hills. 

Day 5: The accidental poem

Today, I looked into Nathaniel Griffith (the man who planted the first commercial Gravenstein apple orchard in Sonoma County on his Laguna Road property).  He was good friends with Luther Burbank (hence the trip out to For Ross I mentioned yesterday) and they often met to discuss altering the Gravenstein to extend it's season.  I've seen cuttings of the Winterstein, one of these variations of the Gravenstein that never really took off at Burbank's experimental farm in Sebastopol.  While I was researching Griffith though, I came across my "accidental poem".  Turns out, Griffith had three daughters, all of whom were extremely artistic.  One of these daughters, Grace, was an incredible painter.  Here are a few of her paintings I was able to find online.  What's interesting is how after the orchard was gone, after the farmhouse had burned down and their father had died, the girls (who had all had pretty successful careers as artists) returned to live on the property in their old age.  And if you look Grace's work, it appears in her artistic mind she never left.  Here is attempt at a draft for today:

The Accidental Pull

Griffith brought Burbank to his orchard on
the flat Laguna.  From his home the trees
spelled across the wide expanse in straight rows. 
Already, they were good servants –yielding
a ton of fruit each.  But the season was
short.  Burbank had ideas for winter fruits:
the Winterstein, still bittersweet tasting,
but with tougher skin to withstand the frosts.

The three girls could see the men on the porch
as they sat in the skirt of soft grass surrounding
the willow.  Spring had covered the grass
between rows of apple trees in yellow
mustard.  They made a game of following
the strokes of color – the low freckle of mustard,
the high powdery acacia, to the
solitary exclamations of
yellow iris crowing the front yard.  Years
later, after Burbank’s experimental
trees had failed.  After their father had died
and the green wooden farmhouse had burned down.

They would remember this inventory:
how that day the golden lines had burned in
them a tether to this land.  And each day
after they would try to pull themselves back.