Natural Perspectives:

Our staycation — a stay-at-home vacation — has delightfully coincided with the 2008 Olympics. From the incredible opening ceremonies with 2,008 drummers, dancers in lighted suits, flying fairies, digitally mastered fireworks, lip-synced singing and the spectacular lighting of the torch, this event has been over the top. We can hardly wait to see what Sunday’s closing event will be like.

China spent about $43 billion preparing for the Olympics, plus another $2.1 billion to actually hold them. We figure in reality U.S. citizens have paid for those Olympics by purchasing things made in China during the past two decades. If we paid for the Olympics, we might as well watch as much of them as possible.

Of course, there is a down side: bitter rivalries, unsportsmanlike behavior, rumors of illegal drug use and accusations of people being too young. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The Democratic National Convention isn’t until next week.

Back at the Olympics, the sight of all of those healthy, young athletes striving to achieve their personal bests is truly awe-inspiring. It almost makes us want to run, bike or swim. Do something other than just lie on the couch. Yeah, right. Pass the guacamole.

Actually, the Olympics have been inspiring me to be more active. But my idea of exercise is to garden. So between watching beach volleyball, synchronized diving and equestrian events, I’ve gone out to my yard and toiled in the soil. I did finally get my side garden planted with chard, eggplant and tomatoes. More veggies will go in later, maybe between hurdles and hammer toss.

However, I’ve noticed a problem with our garden. The plants seem to shrink after I put them in the ground. It’s like the earth is sucking out all of their life force. If I were a parent and the plants were my babies, I’d be charged with child neglect due to their failure to thrive.

In searching for a cause, I noticed the only plants doing well were those growing where a dead animal had been buried. I should point out we don’t kill animals, but wild animals live — and die — in our yard. I think somewhere on opossum MySpace is a post that the Murray-Leipzig yard is a great place to spend their last moments on Earth.

I can’t tell you how many opossums we’ve buried over the 20 years that we’ve lived here. Never a raccoon, and never a skunk (knock on wood), but opossums a-plenty have gone to their final reward in our yard. Vic gives them a decent burial. And that’s where my squash plants are doing the best. That said to me that I may not be fertilizing my garden enough. So now, in between watching Olympic events, I’m digging compost from our compost bins and adding it to our vegetable garden.

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor’s irrigation line broke. It flooded our yard for several hours before we noticed. Shortly thereafter, our fruit trees in that corner of the yard grew two feet. I had an epiphany. My vegetable garden not only needs more fertilizer, it needs more water than what I have been giving it.

Now I’m trying hard to water every other day. Our irrigation system is me with a garden hose, so it’s easy to water only the vegetable garden and not the drought-tolerant ornamental plantings. Those get water only every other week.

Our water usage is fairly low, about 50 gallons a day each, so we have a long way to go before we hit the city average of 143 gallons per person per day. I think we can conserve and still have a nice vegetable garden. We only wash dishes and clothes when we have a full load. We don’t run water while brushing our teeth. And both of our toilets are low-flow models. Our next water conservation step is going to be to buy a rain barrel to collect runoff rainwater from the roof.

When Michael Phelps isn’t winning yet another medal, I work in my garden. As I mentioned last week, our tomatoes are doing well. But it’s another story with our squash crop. We’re getting plenty of male flowers, but few female flowers on our summer squash and even fewer female flowers on the winter squash. And without female flowers, there are no squash.

Just to show you what a truly lousy squash year we’re having, I planted a total of 20 summer squash and 19 winter squash plants, yet we have no squash to give away. Out of those 19 winter squash plants, we have four nearly ripe butternut squash and one Red Kuri pumpkin that may or may not reach maturity. I’m still waiting for female flowers to appear on the Queensland Blue and Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkin vines.

I know, I should have had my head examined for planting so many squash, but it worked out. Vic is far less disappointed with our low yield than I am.

Even if we earn no gold medals for gardening, we may eventually have some golden butternut squash and pumpkins to show for our summer of labor. And there will always be another season in which we can strive once again, try harder, and maybe turn up a winning score in vegetable growing.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].