The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING; Or, Why I'm Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog

by Jen Lancaster

  I invest in these plastic sheaths to put over the cats’ nails so that Gus can’t attempt to filet Eddy when I put them together. Then I buy really great toys, like the Cat Dancer, that will keep everyone occupied when I do test runs of them together in the same room. And I pick up a kilo of catnip. I work on introducing everyone through concurrent play and their version of weed. Come on! It’s a party! Everyone be cool, okay?

  Nothing works.

  I finally break down and put Eddy on kitty Prozac. The doctor said it will be a month before the meds fully take effect, if at all. So there’s a possibility that this warfare will go on indefinitely. Argh, seriously? Don’t I have enough to worry about right now with poor little Maisy?

  I have to fix this.

  I find some cat behaviorists online and am deeply dismayed to learn that the fees begin at $125 per e-mail consultation. I’m sorry…what? Now, I realize that the cats have cost me at least ten times that in damages, but I can’t bring myself to write that kind of check for such a first-world problem.

  Kittens are free, indeed.

  I also try to get Jackson Galaxy’s My Cat from Hell show to work with us, but Fletch refuses to help me make a video. Something about our dignity being at stake? Pfft, like that wasn’t gone long ago.

  I have all of the above systems in place when I suddenly receive a dozen e-mails telling me to check out the link about Martha biting her cats.

  Beg pardon?

  As it turns out, Martha had just brought two new baby Persians into her house and lets her new cats know she’s the boss by nibbling on their little faces.

  I swear I’m not making this up.

  The Internet pretty much lost its collective mind with Martha jokes, but this woman did not become a billionaire mogul by doling out bad advice. If Martha does it, then this shit must work.

  I immediately rush up to my office, where the cats have since been relocated, and I pick up Eddy. I gently give her a nip on her wee cheek and I wait for a sign of recognition that I’m her true leader. She gives me a look as if to say, “I’d advise you against doing it again, bitch,” so I figure the fault is mine and I didn’t nip her hard enough.

  I bite harder, this time on the top of her head. She cocks her head, flattens her ears, and gives me a tiny bite back.

  We’re communicating here! She gets it!

  And then I give her another nip for good measure.

  Eddy pulls full back from me and looks up, blinking her trusting green eyes. A true understanding passes between us.

  Yes! We have liftoff! I’ve broken through to her!

  Then, with the quickness of a cobra and the ferocity of a lion, she somehow unhinges her jaw and latches onto my nose like the refugees clung to the last chopper out of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind.

  But something happens as I try to shake her from my face. Other than bleeding, I mean.

  My tolerance level and capacity for foolishness vanish faster than you can say “cat scratch fever.” Here I’ve been babying these little assholes for months. I’ve catered to their every whim and tried so valiantly to understand their needs that I’ve forgotten mine.

  I worked hard for these rugs and these floors. I deserve to lay my head on a pillow that’s not damp with liquid displeasure, and I’m sick of all my shirts smelling like a litter box. I want to ride in the car with the windows down because I enjoy a breeze, and not just because I want the stench to dissipate.

  This ends now.

  I am the alpha cat, and every feline in this house needs to recognize that fact.

  With a bottle of cat pheromones in one hand and a squirt gun in the other, I open the doors to my office and watch the Thundercats come pouring in. As Chuck and Gus attempt to pounce, I douse them with a solid stream of water, which, from their reaction, you’d assume was battery acid.

  Each subsequent time they attempt to mount an attack, I spray them. Eddy and Patsy aren’t immune, either. Whenever they give the boys the evil eye, they get a thorough spraying, too.

  I spend the next week patrolling the house, squirting whenever needed. I keep a Rubbermaid thirty-two-ounce spray bottle looped through my yoga pants, as well as one in the kitchen, on my desk, in Fletch’s office, and in the TV room, and every time a cat growls in warning, everyone gets wet. I find myself calling, “Who’s got a hurting for a squirting? No one? That’s what I thought!”

  Yes, indeed, cats, there’s a new sheriff in town.

  And she’s finished with your nonsense.

  I’d like to say that all the cats are BFFs now and spend their days braiding one another’s tails. That’s not the case. You can’t have that much animosity for that long and then all of a sudden become one another’s bosom buddy. The girls primarily hang out upstairs, while the boys prefer the first floor and basement. They don’t mix.

  The thing is, they do coexist. They can walk by one another without feeling compelled to attempt an assassination. Their level of tension has dropped, so everyone else feels less tense, too. I’m overjoyed every time I see opposing forces sitting on the same couch. They may be on opposite ends, but they’re there together.

  Personally, I’m overjoyed to check this task off my list. And there’s peace in my kingdom now, finally, because I grasped what Martha’s known all along: Take control or be controlled. Your call.

  And to think that if Fletch hadn’t burned the balsamic, I’d have missed out on one of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned thus far.

  Hurrah for the ineffectual home cook!

  MUCH ADO ABOUT DIRT

  Secret gardener confession: I hate soil.

  Okay, that’s not quite true. I love soil that’s all rich and pH-balanced, composed of the perfect blend of peat and perlite, with built-in slow-release fertilizer, and tiny little beads that help maintain moisture balance. So, pretty much I like my soil prebagged and placed in my car by the nice kids at Pasquesi’s nursery. What’s in the actual ground is what throws me. I guess I just hate real dirt.

  Container gardens have always been my preference because of the dirt situation. I buy my big, happy bags of Miracle-Gro, and when I reach into it, at no point do I encounter bands of clay or rocks or petrified doody. There are no pesky roots to hack through, and I never have to fling my trowel and run away screaming upon discovering that I’ve cut an earthworm in half in my gardening zeal.

  So, even though I have a solid half acre of yard to garden, my efforts are primarily concentrated on the little baskets hanging off my fence, as well as planters spread across the patio.

  I’ve been trying to do in-ground gardening for almost a decade, with an overwhelming lack of success. One year when I lived on Altgeld Street in the city, I spent weeks planting and tending, doing an admirable job lining the small path between the fence and walkway with all sorts of flowering greenery. This undertaking was successful because I’d dumped many cubic feet of fine bagged dirt on top of the pathetic topsoil, and the tiny yard was really beginning to take shape. But then a cottonwood tree from down the block dumped almost five inches of fluffy seedpods on my fledgling garden, immediately followed by torrential rains. Then I spent the rest of the summer weeding tiny cottonwood trees out of my plot and scattering neighborhood rats with hose spray. I sort of lost my enthusiasm after that.

  Or how about last year? I attempted to fill a raised stone garden bed with an artful arrangement of perennial wildflowers and prairie grasses. The thing about wildflowers and prairie grasses is they grow wild; they germinate so quickly and spread so widely that people are always cutting them back and trying to contain them. I figured, “How hard could a wildflower garden be?”

  As always, these are famous last words.

  When we moved in, it was far too late in the season to do anything with the planter bed, so I spent all winter researching what might work there. My hope was that the 2011 wildflower and grass garden would be a lovely contrast to the roses. As my friend Laurie’s husband, Mike, services my roses, the perimeter of the house always
looks amazing.

  I have more than fifty varieties of bushes. In the early summer, when they’re all on their second bloom cycle, the fragrance is so intense that the air tastes like roses.

  Before I had roses, I never knew that their scents varied. I kind of figured they were all rose-scented, yet fragrances can vary from fruit to vanilla to clover. For example, the floribunda by the back door are redolent of cinnamon and spice, while my Elle hybrid teas are more citrusy. My favorite variety is the robust red Mr. Lincoln, which embodies a real traditional damask scent. And yet some of the most breathtakingly beautiful buds in my garden don’t even have any fragrance at all. I figure this is the same reason that God gives supermodels boring personalities; you can’t be a Victoria’s Secret runway model and a brilliant conversationalist.

  At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  Anyway, roses are notoriously difficult, so much so that I almost didn’t want to buy this house. Fortunately, our Realtor is friends with Mike and Laurie. She explained how, for the price of a bouquet, Mike would continue to service our roses, thus neatly eliminating all my objections. An added bonus is that Mike’s married to Laurie and now she and I are great friends.

  So, Laurie and I are at our weekly Starbucks gathering and we’re discussing my stupid, failed wildflower garden, one of the many small aggravations that was the year 2011.

  “How did they not grow?” I ask. “That’s like having rabbits that won’t multiply, or groupies who won’t make out with roadies to get closer to the band. Like, does not compute.”

  “Maybe it’s the soil. Did you test it?” Laurie asks.

  I blink in triplicate in response.

  She continues. “You may have an acidity imbalance, or if there’s too much clay, you could have a drainage issue. Maybe you don’t have enough earthworms.”

  I think back to all the worm vivisections I accidentally performed when planting last year. “No, we’re lousy with worms.”

  I sip my latte and remember a conversation I had with Angie last year. She’d had similar problems with her garden, so she checked to see what Martha recommended. The advice somehow culminated in Angie killing parasites by baking cookie sheets full of dirt in the oven.

  “Ever smelled an oven full of hot dirt?” Angie demanded. “No? Then be thankful. Don’t let Martha hoodwink you into cooking your topsoil. Stick to containers.”

  Yet the whole point of the year of Martha is to get out of my comfort zone, so I really can’t keep doing what I’d been doing. I don’t want another year of 2011 results. What if my future happiness hinges on my efforts in the garden?

  Laurie offers, “I can come over and check out your dirt to see what you need.”

  I have to smile. “I really never thought the quality of my dirt would be important to me, but here we are. Please, yes, come over!”

  “Why don’t we go after we finish our coffee?”

  “Thank you; that would be great, mostly because I don’t know what to do with the bed. It’s all…Well, you’ll see.” I’m having trouble describing the wasteland of stunted greens and wan, listless sprouts.

  Soon we’re in my yard inspecting the few pathetic shoots that reappeared this spring, aided by three enthusiastic dogs that keep plowing into us while we’re bent over the soil.

  I point to the back corner of the garden. “I don’t get it. These were supposed to be sunflowers over here! They’re practically a weed! You see them all over the sides of highways, and guys have to come out on riding lawn mowers because they grow so tall they obstruct drivers’ vision!”

  With an expert eye, Laurie assesses the garden placement. “Do these trees cast a shadow?” she asks, pointing to the wood line ten feet back.

  A moment ago, the dogs raced circles around us. Now Maisy and Libby are wrestling, while Loki stands a few feet away and barks with much enthusiasm. I love watching Maisy tussle—one, because it means she feels well, and two, because of her fighting position. Instead of standing her ground, she lies on her back and wriggles around, pushing back Libby’s advances with four kicking legs. She still has such abdominal strength that she can spin in a 360-degree circle like a breakdancer without ever losing contact with the grass. Fortunately, Laurie’s a dog person, too, so the racket they’re causing doesn’t faze her in the least.

  “They’re showing off for you,” I explain, pointing at the scrum of dogs that’ve just discovered a tennis ball. “But the shade? Not until late afternoon. This plot gets southeast sun all day, starting at daybreak.”

  Laurie scans her mental checklist. “What about water?”

  I wish the problem were just water—but that’s not an issue. “The sprinklers hit the corners, and I have a hose on the side of the house that I drag over. I keep the soil moist, but never saturated.” Laurie nods encouragingly. “What really pisses me off is that I spent so much money on these damn plants. How do grasses not grow? We cut the lawn every week because it’s so hardy. I wish it would grow slower. But the stuff I paid fifteen dollars per container for? Nothing!”

  Laurie bends down and pulls off a green, leafy branch and then smells it. “Your mint is coming in beautifully, though.”

  At this moment, Libby and Maisy rocket through the bed, stomping directly on the mint, which immediately snaps back into place.

  “Yeah.” I snort. “That’s the one plant I didn’t want here. Fletch yanked it all out last year but it keeps coming back.”

  “Mint is the STD of the plant world,” Laurie says. “Once it takes hold, it’s almost impossible to eliminate completely.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So what are you going to do with the planter? Vegetables?”

  I laugh bitterly. “Didn’t I tell you? Fletch kept a corner of the plot for tomatoes, and they grew almost as well as the wildflowers. You know, there’s a book called The $64 Tomato. Pfft, we got that beat.

  “After the fact, I learned that Fletch was fertilizing his tomatoes every day. He’s since banned himself from trying again.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I know, right? And at the time I was all, ‘Why do we keep buying tomato fertilizer?’ Live and learn. Anyway, we’re planting a big organic garden on the other side once we have those trees cut down,” I tell her, pointing to the area on the east end of the yard. There’s a scrubby old pine tree that’s about to go, even though I do enjoy watching Loki use the lower branches to scratch his ass. The first time we spied him backing butt-first into the pointy needles, we figured it was a fluke. But the next hundred? Not so much.

  Laurie grabs the spade leaning against the side of the house and plunges it into the planter’s soil. She turns over a couple of shovelsful and bends down to run her hand through the earth. She decrees, “This is perfect. This soil is truly perfect.” Then she demonstrates how well it drains by filling the hole with water.

  Maisy thunders over and demands a drink before we shut off the water. She snaps and snorts and ends up wearing more than she ingests. Libby takes off, because she wants nothing to do with the hose. I keep telling Fletch we’ve got to teach her to swim, and he keeps saying we should be thankful for the one dog that isn’t always dampening clean sheets during clandestine bed naps.

  “You’re kidding!” I exclaim. I really didn’t expect to hear my dirt was decent. “That’s great news. I thought I’d have to replace it all.”

  Still, that doesn’t explain why the wildflowers didn’t take, but whatever. New year, new chance to try again.

  “Have you considered a cutting garden over here?”

  “I don’t really know what that is,” I admit.

  Laurie explains how a lot of their clients keep a separate spot for cutting outside of the view of their main rose gardens, which makes perfect sense. I’m perpetually snipping off all the best blooms and spiriting them away inside, leaving big, gaping holes in the bushes by the pool.

  Having a cutting garden would neatly eliminate the problem of scalped bushes. Plus, I’d feel like a pseu
do-royal announcing to Fletch that I was off to the cutting garden, and he shan’t expect me for tea. This is a capital idea!

  I’m all excited, but then I have to stop myself. “Oh, wait—if I have a rose cutting garden, then I’ll be cheating. I’d really need to tend to the flowers myself to stay true to the project.”

  “Then take care of them yourself. I can have Mike and his guys plant them, but you could be responsible for their maintenance,” Laurie reasons.

  I consider this. “You don’t think that by having my own little plot and working with my own tools, I’d look like a little kid pushing one of those bubble vacuum cleaners, running after their mommy who’s actually using a Hoover?”

  Laurie swivels her head around to take in the wall of trees and blackthorn on the periphery of the yard. “Who’s going to see you?”

  This? Right here? Is why Laurie is awesome.

  “Excellent point. Okay, let’s do this.” I’m excited—I’ll have bonus roses, and I’ll actively be learning from Martha as I review her tips for growing roses. This is great! This is progress! This is going to happen.

  Laurie taps herself a note on her iPhone. “Okay, I’ll get you a list to choose from. My suggestion is we mix heavy bloomers and highly fragranced roses for the best variety. Maybe group them by color, too, for the most drama.”

  “Excellent! What should I do?” In my head, I’m already shopping for floppy British gardening hats and open wicker baskets in which to place my snipped roses, because the notion of a cutting garden has suddenly turned me into Lisa Vanderpump of the Beverly Hills Real Housewives. Yes! Look at me! Life is all rosé and diamonds and hanging out with Camille Grammer! Of course, I’ll have to buy lower-cut bras so I can leave my shirt open to midbreastbone, and I’ll need to find men with Rod Stewart haircuts attractive. Also, I must meet and befriend Camille Grammer, but I can make this work if—