October 28, 2023

by Dr. Plastic Picker

The parking lot rooftop guerrilla gardening planter project is mainstream now. At some point, the official administrative HMO people found out and a gardener comes up and kind of semi-cleans up my succulent gardening. It’s a beautiful place now and more of us walk up there and get some air and take in the view. That there are interesting succulents to look at are a bonus for sure. At some point the HMO I’m sure will be putting up solar panels, but for now I wander up there when I need to get some exercise.

I hadn’t really talked to Dr. Dear Friend for a good week. We had been in the same building and said hi and working in parallel hallways, but we hadn’t really talked. We are good real friends and clinic besties, and it was important to catch up on each other’s lives. I shared my stories, she is always so patient and loving to hear me prattle on about my daughter and son. I am truly listened to her stories and her stressors and what is going on with her beloved families. We swapped hopes about what our weekend plans would be. We thought we might have been able to hang out on Sunday together, but she has concert tickets with another friend and will do that. Caring for friends from work, truly caring, is something I’ve come to late in life. I really care about her, and the other doctors in my clinic. It’s a gift that burnout gave me. I’m not alone, and none of us are – who practice medicine. We just have to reach out to our friends and share. Medicine is not an individual sport, it’s a team endeavor which none of us were adequately taught in medical school nor training (at least when I trained).

So Dr. Dear Friend and I wondered up to the guerilla gardening parking structure planter area, and we gazed at all our plants. She has a cactus that is her baby, and it was overshadows by a few other succulents, but we pushed back some of the plants and saw her cactus. It’s doing fantastic and has become five larger cactus humps? I don’t know another work for them. But they are doing well, and I’ll prune some of the overgrowth later.

But how that garden has grown! It gives me this radical hope when I’m up there. I was there the entire time and documented it on Instagram. I would initially bring bags of compost, and hay and bunny poop and compost tea. I had to revitalize the soil and that took a season or so. When there were just a few plants, and can to try to cool down the soil with rocks and mulch. All the plants are extra cuttings from our garden, and mostly from my parents rooftop succulent planters that were overgrown in La Jolla. It was initially watered by saved shower water I would lug in from home. I made it a game for myself, I wasn’t going to spend any money on it, but just my time and things I found around the world. I was going to get exercise while doing it, and it was going to get me out during lunch to at least take a walk up there.

And now it looks like it looks now, and it makes me happy. It makes me hopeful. It makes no radically optimistic. Because I helped bring life back to these essentially dead planters, and there are insects up there now. I know birds visit once in a while, because they peck away at home of the succulents. I know some humans wander up there to get exercise. I know that some of the water from the rains were absorbed by the roots of those plants. I now some friends have taken some cuttings and propagated some more succulents. If you go to a gardening store, those succulents aren’t cheap! You are welcome to go up there and take a cutting or two!

Just happy and wanted to show you how big this wonderful plant has become! Have a wonderful weekend dear blog readers. I really do care for you. I care for the earth. And I’m going to care for myself this weekend, because my 15-year-old is still blessedly 15 and hanging out with me. We are going to try to catch the Taylor Swift movie Eras at fashion valley, and I heard there are very large Dios De Los Muertos decorations there. So we will go try to get some pictures and maybe have dinner there. It’s just us and I joked around at work that the Koreans left for Berkeley. So the technically full Koreans (Mr. Plastic Picker and the the grandparents) left this morning to visit our son up at Berkeley. The little one is home with me, but this weekend I’ve determined that she will be Vietnamese. She can morph into a kdrama star later. But I’m going to make her be a demure Vietnamese young lady this weekend, and no boys allowed. Just mommy and daughter, and lots of silliness. Sometimes the thought of teenage boys in our life (other than our son) does cramp our style.