By Ryan Weaver
The Alpine Sun
     ALPINE — Hundreds of visitors participated in the 8th Annual Sage and Songbirds Festival last weekend, which included home garden tours, an educational festival at the Viejas Outlet Center and 

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a twilight jazz concert featuring "Ladies Sing the Blues."
It all grew from a garden.
     When Maureen and Wallace Austin moved to Alpine, they transformed their backyard into an oasis that they could enjoy along with the local critters. The National Wildlife Federation certified them as Alpine’s second Backyard Wildlife Habitat.
     The garden was featured in local and national magazines. It grew, not only from seed, sunshine and water, but from the Austins’ focus on organic growing.
     The Austins knew there was a better way to garden than that offered on Saturday morning gardening shows, which were interrupted by inevitable pesticide commercials. Chemical sprays often kill everything for the sake of a few less holes in the leaves, including caterpillars that will, then, never become butterflies.
     Rather than drive native creatures out of their garden, the Austins encourage inviting them. To become a certified backyard habitat one must provide food, water and shelter for the seasonal guests that do not necessarily destroy gardens, but often beautify them.
     In order to educate others on natural gardening, Maureen Austin founded the Center to Help Instill Respect and Preservation for Garden Wildlife (CHIRP). Alpine residents began to learn and practice this principle and many sought and received certification.
     As a result of CHIRP’s success, Alpine became the first certified Community Wildlife Habitat in the United States on May 1, 1998.
     CHIRP now has over 200 members and it seems fitting that the nation’s first Community Wildlife Habitat should be the home base for the annual Sage and Songbird Festival, which was celebrated last weekend under sunny skies.
     The festival showcased six Alpine households with exceptional gardens.
     Proud owners allowed visitors into their personal paradises, and were happy to accept a constant stream of compliments and to answer the questions of aspiring green thumbs.
     Among the most triumphant gardens was that of Keli and Dan Cadenhead, whose rejuvenated garden atop a hill in Peutz Valley has taken roots in the ashes of a landscape devoured by the Cedar Fire of 2003. 
     Their resilient cacti and Blue Agave survived and continue to grow beyond their own scorch marks, towering over the newcomers in the garden.
     There’s something profound about the Cadenhead oasis, lying in the midst of formerly blackened, but now green, hills. It somehow makes it clear that a garden is more than plants—it is life.
     This knowledge isn’t lost on local gardeners.
     Take the Boulters, for example. They have come into their knowledge of gardening through trial and error, and are earning every inch of blossom and bloom in their yard. 
     They are reminded that gardens are living organisms every time a matilija poppy from the nursery takes a bow and withers. For a plant that Maria fell in love with when she saw it growing naturally on the side of the 52 freeway, it has been a surprisingly picky — and expensive — addition to her yard. But Maria remains optimistic that the sixth try will be the charm.
     All of the showcased gardens were an eclectic mix of local plants and exotics, planted and removed throughout the years according to the owner’s convenience and taste — and proving that Paradise really is what one makes it.
     CHIRP exists as a tool to help people create their own paradises. The festival, which moved from the heart of Alpine to lush Viejas this year to accommodate more visitors, featured a Garden Mart, along with educational tips and live entertainment.
     On Saturday, as the vendors were closing up shop and the sun sank behind the stage, an audience scattered across the grass in lawn chairs applauded the opening act of the Ladies Sing the Blues concert, Cynthis Hammond.
     Sue Palmer sang next, and finally, Barbara Jamerson took to the stage, immediately warming her audience and bringing them to their feet with her charisma. As she sang You know you’ve got it if it makes you feel good, everyone in the crowd knew that she “got it.”
     Although the Sage and Songbirds festival is over until next year, the Chirp Habitat hut still offers free admission to the walk-through butterfly enclosure. Gardening naturally allows caterpillars the chance to transform into the Painted Ladies, Mourning Cloak, and Gulf Fritillary butterflies that are local to Alpine and are on display in the hut.
     If a butterfly happens to land on anyone’s nose, be sure to take a picture, because CHIRP is offering three $100 prizes and a grand prize to the winners of its first annual photography contest.
Any picture featuring the festival is acceptable.
     For more information on how to join CHIRP, to create a certified backyard habitat, or to become a member of the first community habitat in the United States, one may call the Habitat Hut at 445-7675 or visit CHIRP.

The gardens
     For many visitors, the highlight of this year’s Sage & Songbirds festival was the tour of six local home gardens. These people have forged Edens out of the semi-desert soil of Alpine, and there was something in the passing breeze, in the sweet lingering odor of the flowers, in the noise of moving water, in the vibrant colors of their gardens that inspired a noticeable sense of peace.
     These gardens motivate visitors to create their own sanctuaries at home, perhaps borrowing ideas, but not stealing them, because individual personalities inevitably shape a garden more than anything else.
     Mary Weaver, a Pine Valley resident and Descanso Elementary school teacher, was so inspired by John and Donna Lockhart’s garden, that she said it changed her life. "I feel like crying," she said when she stepped into the guesthouse, because her future flashed before her eyes. It was her birthday, after all, and a good time to consider these things. She said she saw a time when she would be able to visit her grandchildren and stay for as long as she wanted in her personal granny flat, which is now a mandatory part of her children’s future homes.
     The Cohen’s estate proved to be pay dirt for those inspired by travel. Roaming through the Cohen’s garden is like taking a tour of the world. Lita, who was born in the Philippines, has stocked the yard with statues of Greek gods, lions and giraffes, bronze children, spouting dolphins and a sphinx.
     An oriental style gazebo faces the infinity pool, which was made to look like the ocean. Dribbling over everything is a constant flow of water. To Lita, water is longeivity. The wonder of its sound and cool presence creates and atmosphere conducive to sitting outside and enjoying nature, she said. It certainly lures Herman, her 81-year-old husband, outside almost every day, and it usually lures him into a nap as well.
     This friendly couple loved opening their garden to visitors for the festival and spoke of its beauty as it changed through the seasons in sadness, because they have it all to themselves and are unable to share it as much as they’d like. In some gardens, the true natural beauty of the place does not emanate from the plants, but from the owners.
     The magic of some gardens sprouts in the fertile pools of the imagination, as is the case of Chuck and Sue Murray’s miniature garden railroad. Their tiny western town, named Purgatory, is so realistic that even the weakest of imaginations can find adventure there for a while, especially while watching the locomotives make stops in the separate townships, travel over trellises and through tunnels on its daily service route.
     Chuck helps guide the imagination on occasion. While sitting in the gazebo he built to oversee operations, he pointed out the Indian woman in a canoe under a bridge where the train crosses. When a visiting boy saw it, Chuck said, "She used to have a husband, but the gator on the other side of the bridge got him."
     That gator is nothing compared to the live lizards that roam through Purgatory and become dinosaurs.
     Purgatory almost burned to the ground in the Cedar Fire along with the roses in the yard, but managed to survive. Others weren’t so fortunate.
     Take the Cadenheads, for example. The fire blustered up and around their hilltop Peutz Valley house, destroying the porch and most of the garden, but miraculously spared the house. If only buildings grew like gardens, the 80 neighbors who lost their homes in the valley would already be sitting in their own paradises.
     Keli’s garden has grown back, reminding us that, if a garden can spring from the ashes of destruction, how much more so can life flourish in our own backyards.
     Private gardens demonstrate creative touches as individual as their creators — like the pot of “spilled” petunias in the Boulter’s yard, or of the meandering nature paths Sheila Dine built into her garden. They can be anything their owners want. Planting the garden itself can be therapeutic, peaceful, and rewarding, but also fun.
     It’s a hobby that takes on a life of its own. Literally.

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