It was a gardening-perfect day.  The sun poured light like glistened milk from heaven into my garden lot. Towering spouts of gray whale exhalation speckled the radiant royal blue sea below me like Yellowstone geysers in a fury of passionate bursts from deep below.  My bamboo fabric-gloved hands cradled a packet of heirloom snow peas as I lowered myself closer to the fertile, but dry soil.

What little rain drizzled from the recent gray skies, was sucked into the composted chasm of rich, but thirsty dirt that I dreamed would take these small green seeds, harbor them as if dropped into a dark brown womb, and let them take the womb’s nourishment so that they, like the spouts from the migrating gray whales, would fracture from their earthen womb into clambering vines to bear the sweet fruit of a Pisum sativum.

Wait! Don’t leave this page now. The purple prose will make sense.

Yesterday was a real Chamber of Commerce day for California’s central coast. Item number eight on my to do list read: “Plant Peas.”  Yesterday was made for planting peas.  But the peas are yet to meet their “dark brown womb.”  I planted my face instead.

When you see me over the next few days, please don’t feel inclined to report a possible woman’s abuse case or an assault and battery, unless you want to arrest a few rocks and slate steps in my garden.

Coordination graces me when I pay attention.  But my autobiography reveals a girl with her head dreaming among the clouds and her feet not firmly planted on the ground.  It’s the good and the bad news.  Skinned knees still plague me.  Bruises, often the size of baseballs, are no strangers to my pale skin.  Stitches, plaster casts, elevated sprained ankles, knees, etc. are my autobio’s chapter titles.

Blame it on an astrological condition.  “Sagittarians walk with the grace of a gated steed. But with their idealist and curious minds ahead of their physical location, Sagittarians can also be frequent visitors to emergency rooms after tripping over a crack in the sidewalk that they never noticed.”  My birth sign is Sagittarius.

But even with this star-inspired klutziness, I’ve never, ever had a black eye—even when my Sagittarius mouth runs off into some cleverly worded rage that would incite the peace-loving Gandhi into a clenched fist aimed at my face.

This time, however, I blame climate change and weakened storm systems bypassing my now-thirsty garden.

When I “lowered myself closer to the fertile, but dry soil,” I placed the bag of pea seeds aside, reached for the nearby hose, lifted up, yanked the hose (somewhat like Carl Spackler in “Caddyshack”) and searched for a likely place to let the hose slowly ooze water into the ground.  Simultaneously, my right eye caught my first glimpse of what looked like a whale spout just off the shoreline three blocks below my hillside abode.

“Wow, if that’s a gray whale, it sure seems early for the migration,” I chatted to

myself, all while recollecting the recent visit of my whale-activist friend from Australia and the current community effort to halt a proposed seismic survey testing of 250 decibel blasts into the fault-ridden coast line sometime later this month – when pregnant gray whales will typically be migrating south. That’s when I planted my face instead of the peas.

Smack. Kaboom. And “Oh Cripes!” Sprawled out on slate steps with my head resting on garden stones, the hose flung into an over-sized lemongrass plant, I ran an immediate “all systems check” on the body. “Okay, nothing broken.  Slowly raise my head and feel for blood.  Whew. No blood. But what is that knot over my eyebrow? A little pain on left shin bone. Slowly lift my torso from boobies-down to boobies-up.  Look at leg. Ewww…shin bone exposed. Must disinfect immediately. Get up on my feet and make way to bathroom for treatment.”

Today my purple prose matches my purple eye—and not like the sexy purple eyes of the late Elizabeth Taylor.