Every Botanical Garden in Orange County, Mostly by Public Transit

You cannot wake up too early if you want to take public transit to an Orange County botanical garden from Raven City in West LA. Seven-thirty was eight minutes later than the catch-your-bus app wanted Abner to leave, but he has to have his overnight oats with a healthy dollop of peanut butter.

Is it really healthy? If it’s one just one dollop. Use a teaspoon not a tablespoon. Then maybe. Portion control, Abner!

He exhorts himself out of the house after multiple here-I-go’s to his wife. Their cozy bed will still be there upon return. Right now, Abner has a quest to complete. His high school English teaching days are medium-long behind him. Three years? Four? I could do the math if I had to. When Abner recently heard it was the last day of school before winter vacation, he thought where does the time go instead of oh thank God.

What he thanks God for now is the freedom and wherewithal to conjure up and follow through on quests such as visiting every botanical garden in Orange County, mainly by public transit. Why Orange County? He could make you a whole speech about that.  He could play you “This Land Is Your Land” on his bongo drums. Why public transit? Because cars are bad for the environment. This doesn’t mean Abner never drives. He drives plenty. But not when he can take the bus instead.

Once upon the sidewalk, there is some dithering about what route to take. The app says take the 6R down by LAX but oh please no he hates going that way. It’s always boring in a way that taking the 33 Venice is always exhilarating.

Let’s go with exhilarating. This decision leads to Abner sitting on a curb in DTLA, feet in the street, the bus not coming for another hour. He is plopped down on the ground like the bearded barefoot guy surrounded by his trash-bagged belongings in an otherwise empty parking lot down the block. Abner saw that guy while reconnoitering for a bench or café. There is no bench anywhere near Flower and 23^rd, nor is there a café.

So be it. This is what Abner wanted, the morning sun warm and strong on his face and nothing to do but notice things. The rumble of a USC commuter bus. The scuffle of someone’s sneakers in the crosswalk. Buses that aren’t his bus: the 4X Torrance, the 910 J. There’s LA Trade Tech across the street, the School of Construction, ¾-size houses, one sky blue with the Dodgers LA logo on the front, the other brick red, not made of bricks though, made of what? Slat things. Abner would learn the proper term if he attended the School of Construction.

Here comes his bus, early. The 460 to Disneyland. That’s happy but he is not going all the way to Disneyland. He’s getting off in Norwalk.

Remember Norwalk, Abner.

            Norwalk, Norwalk.

            I know you’re excited but remember -- Norwalk!

Okay I think that’s imprinted pretty good on his brainpan. We’ll find out! The 460 to Disneyland launches onto the 110. It’s exhilarating to ride a bus on the freeway. A bird too big to fly is flying.

On the inside is Abner, not in his favorite place all the way in the wayback because those seats are taken but the middle is good enough and good enough is great. Behold the palm tree forest of South Los Angeles. Palm tree, palm tree, palm tree, palm tree. Behold the glory of moving when the oncoming traffic is going nowhere, Hah.

What Abner notes most of all is NOTEWORTHINESS, how the entire experience feels fantastic even though all he is doing is riding on the bus, the most mundane of all activities but to him it is a drug-free drug. Everything is of import or potential import. He draws stars in his pocket-sized notebook to emphasize phenomena in a handwriting like a broken seismograph he will later not be able to decipher.

Getting off that bus and waiting for the next one at the Norwalk Transit Center – good job, Abner, you remembered! -- he identifies plants entrenched in soggy wood chips:

oleander

yellow lantana

fairy iris

The when-is-your-bus-coming app says it’s a good thing Abner is so enraptured by identifying oleander because the next bus isn’t coming for an hour, but then here comes the bus. Everything is happening sooner than Abner thinks it will. A note of foreboding, perhaps, but probably just a blue note to keep things edgy, not a for-whom-the-bell-tolls type of bell, not yet, probably, not today.

This next bus is the 577 which soon prompts one of Abner’s all-time top favorite questions: Where the fuck am I? Somewhere south of Hawaiian Gardens but where is Hawaiian Gardens? What is Hawaiian Gardens? Sounds like double paradise, but really it is one of the blandest, drabbest places in the universe OR IS IT? Abner doesn’t know. He’s hurtling through space. Probably Hawaiian Gardens is not bland if you live there and have problems and take solace in your friends. What does Abner know? He is like a subatomic particle, jumping from one interaction to another, only finding meaning when he…

WHAT IS THAT? A giant refinery or power plant or something. Just north of Long Beach. He will have to find out someday but there is no time now, he has to get off this bus and wait for yet another one. This next bus stop is so drab and bland it makes meditating upon soggy wood chips feel like riding the Matterhorn. A long line of buses, none of them his, almost completely block the view of Long Beach City College across the street, although he does spy a marquee announcing an upcoming performance by Charo.

He turns around and identifies Arizona cypress and short leaf pine making their way skyward behind a cinder block wall. Tree contemplation takes up a richly rewarding minute or so, after which he gives in and zones out on his phone until his bus pulls up. This ride is different. It starts with one passenger berating another for smelling bad. Yes it’s true, the other guy is slumped over, barely conscious, and rank, but since when is this news on public transit. Passenger One is seething, though. He gets right in Slumpy’s face, tells him, “Next time I see you, you better have taken a shower.”

Slumpy’s response, as observed from the very furthest reaches of Abner’s peripheral vision, is I’m just about passed out here man so whatever you’re saying is not likely to sink in.

This is the first of several harshnesses on the bus ride down the Pacific Coast Highway, where sunshine glimmers upon the tide and bicyclists soak up the glory. On the bus, though, other passengers have other issues. A woman in a motorized wheelchair boards and the driver patiently straps the wheelchair into the designated wheelchair area -- but then this passenger doesn’t have her fare and this is an issue for the driver.

Abner is surprised because the driver was so solicitous and caring when strapping in the wheelchair. Abner always feels such a rush of warmth for humanity whenever drivers perform this kindness, which is part of their duty but still, he has never seen a driver accommodate a person in a wheelchair with anything other than kindness. He was nodding his head in affirmation when suddenly the driver is now making a fuss about the fare. Abner just gets up and pays it. Other people have paid the fare for him before. Sometimes you’re short. It happens.       

The bus rolls on and now, where there used to be a woman with elaborate facial tattoos and a verse from Jeremiah on her neck, now there is a woman who – is she foaming at the mouth? Not in a I’m having a seizure way, but – and it’s not that Abner is painting her portrait, this is a composite sketch based on three super quick glances, but what is going on with her mouth? Something is wrong, that’s what. Which is how it is. Squalor, splendor: Southern California.

Meanwhile hey what about welcome to Orange County! Because yes, Abner has crossed the line, gone beyond Long Beach this time. The first time he set out on his quest he got as far as Long Beach and had to turn back at 2 pm because he whiled away the morning watching Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life in bed with his wife. Now look at Abner, making progress! Orange County along the PCH: sun, surf, bicyclists, volleyball nets, camper vans, more bicyclists, container ships at sea, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Marina, yacht sales, Fashion Island, and here we are finally in Corona Del Mar, home of the Sherman Library and Gardens.

But first, pizza. Abner has to acclimate himself to the even brighter sun here in OC. It’s twenty percent brighter than LA. It’s ultra-gleaming. He also has to take in the luxury automobiles. He counts Porsche, Porsche, Aston Marton, Lamborghini. And not just any Lamborghini, a lime green Lamborghini, in case you didn’t notice my Lamborghini.

Abner calibrates with two slices of robust pizza at Johnnny’s The Bronx Pizza. Fortified, he powers on up the street, noting schleppy green fencing around the Sherman Garden’s under-construction perimeter but keeps an open mind which is good because once he’s inside, this place is great.

There’s a patio with a shock of bamboo and a macadamia tree and a connoisseur’s shelf of begonias. Abner plops himself down in a rocking chair in the sun and basks and basks and basks.

A jolly woman appears from behind the admissions desk and tells him, “You’re doing exactly the right thing.”

So affirming. Abner assures the jolly woman that he will get up, eventually. She says, “There’s no hurry. Enjoying the moment, that’s what it’s all about.”

It was totally worth four hours of public transit to sit here in this rocking chair and look at those butterflies up in the macadamia tree, which Abner originally thought was frankincense but it’s okay to be wrong. Being wrong is how you learn. It’s one of those pale-thick-semi-folded leaf trees you think might be frankincense but are actually macadamia. The point here is that Abner doesn’t want to get up, but he does. He has a plan. Look around once without taking any notes. Then go back around a second time and okay, take some notes. Then a third time and see what else you notice.

It all works great. Here is a garden of succulents and agaves, like a mosaic but really some other type of living art unfolding over time. There is a big gnarly tree Abner thought might be a yucaia but nope, wrong again, yucaia is not even a type of tree or in fact anything. Oh well, more learning! This is an especially big and extra-gnarly pepper tree, adorned with wishes from visitors written on squares of paper dangling from colorful ribbons. Wishes for world peace. Wishes for family well-being. Abner wonders if all these wishes are getting the pepper tree down. The lower branches do seem burdened but the upper branches are lifted up and a toy train goes around and around the tree making a noise around one curve that sounds like there might be baby goats nearby but nope, it’s just the toy train.

In the next part of the garden, five beds of anemone, lupine, and cyclamen blossom in glorious early January Southern California purple. Abner takes pictures, but the living presence of all those purple flowers, you can’t really get that on your phone. Sometimes you just have to feel the beauty of the moment and let the moment stretch out and become part of your mind and body and then also pass out of your mind and body and just be with the purple flowers, like a bee or moth or soil or sunshine.

            And in this way Abner continues his quest to visit every botanical garden in Orange County, mostly by public transit. He takes a Lyft to and from the Metrolink station in Laguna Niguel, because otherwise he would have been late. And he drives to Laguna Beach with his wife, basking in her presence beside him. Otherwise, it is all public transit, all the time -- each trip a revelation, each garden a bouquet:

Friends of Hortense Miller Gardens, Laguna Beach

bricks turned sideways

in a brick wall

            let through

ocean breeze

Cal State Fullerton Arboretum

            aluminum baseball bats

            from nearby diamonds

                        clank in the shade of strangler figs

            near where Abner will soon meet a coffee tree

Niguel Botanical Preserve, Laguna Niguel

            all plants Mediterranean

            except the rose garden

                        tended by a volunteer for 20 years

            in memory of a friend       

Laguna Beach Branch Library

            butterfly and fairy garden

            sounds enchanting

                        Abner hasn’t made it here yet

            maybe he will someday

Mark Gozonsky writes the newsletter Homemade Newspaper. He is the subject of a forthcoming documentary about his quest to play tennis on every public tennis court in LA, which he wrote about for the Los Angeles Times. He is currently on a quest to visit every public library in Connecticut.