The Garden in Summer

A flash of harmless lightning,
  A mist of rainbow dyes,
    The burnished sunbeams brightening
      From flower to flower he flies.

     John Banister Tabb, Hummingbird

 

 My pink garden is blooming again, thanks to monsoon rains.  We have been seeing hummingbirds in much greater numbers than any season before this. To encourage even more to visit us, I have finally put out this lovely glass hummingbird feeder one of my sisters-in-law gave me when we moved in here. Now if I can only get one to light long enough for me to snap his photo.

 

 

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A Burst of Color

Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower – and what is my experience if it is not the color? ~Georgia O'Keeffe

We planted two trichocereus cactus in our front yard when we moved here and they have faithfully given us spectacular color each year. However, because the past winter was so damaging to so many of our plants we were unsure if they would perform as usual this spring. But once again nature has surprised us with its resiliency and we are  enjoying a burst of color in the garden.  It will be short-lived like most cactus blossoms, but the vivid color will remain in our memories until next year.

A Hedgehog in Bloom

Although they can look fearsome with their spines and prickles, or just plain ugly, cacti are transformed into strange creatures of beauty when their delicate flowers appear. ~Unknown

My hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus engelmannii) bloomed today and already some critter has eaten part of the first bloom. Life in the dessert, I'm afraid.  The beauty is always fleeting.

Springtime in the Garden

"And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest."
-  Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant  

Today has been a lovely day.  In spring we often have very windy days and yesterday was like that--not a day for wandering in the garden.  But today has been calm and sunny and so I just had to go check and see how my garden was doing.  As you can see it is in fine fettle. 

This is my perennial garden. It is to the side of our back patio and I can even see it from my kitchen. We had such a lovely garden back East and I miss it, expecially in spring. Since we planted these perennials, however, I feel happy. There are sages, valerian, penstemon, and guara. I hope to continue planting flowering perennials each year. I can never have enough blooms in my garden.

 Here are some close-ups of my Hill Country penstemon--we planted this in honor of my mother-in-law who misses the Hill Country of Texas now she's in California--my valerian, and some of my sages.

This is the southwestern corner of my back garden.  The little leaf ash has regained its feathery leaves at last.  It is a semi-deciduous tree, but lost all its leaves this winter because of the unusual cold.  The euphorbia in the foreground is a superb plant. Its yellow flowers appear early and last and last until autumn.  The little hedgehog cactus is getting ready to burst into bloom.  We rescued it from along the road on one of our walks.  Javelinas had been feasting on it and dug it up completely.  As a rule we never take plants from the wild, but it would have died otherwise.

Spring Flowers

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.  ~Terri Guillemets

Because we had a very dry winter and it continues to be dry and very warm now into spring, we have very few spring wildflowers blooming in the desert.  Luckily for my soul, we potted up some flowers that are now thrilling us with their profusion and their vibrant colors.

Verbena, African Daisies, Calendula, and Nasturtiums--who wouldn't be filled with joy just gazing at them?  I walked through the back garden today and saw green leaves bursting forth everywhere along with many buds ready to bloom soon.  I love spring!

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there's a seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes a rose. ~Leanne Rhimes

Spring has definitely arrived here in the desert and the rose bush we feared would not survive the record cold this past winter is blooming its little heart out.  We planted it last year in a big pot outside the gate to our back yard and mulched it heavily. As you can see, we worried needlessly about its ability to withstand the cold.

It is a Lady Banks' Rose (Rosa banksiae) and it is a climber that generally reaches 10 to 20 feet in height with a 12 to 20 foot spread. It is tolerant of heat so it is a good candidate for our area.  

In Tombstone, which is about 24 miles south of us, there is a Lady Banks' rose that was planted in 1885 and has become something of a tourist attraction in that town. Supported by an ever-expanding trellis, it is now over nine feet tall and covers an area over 8,000 square feet.  I doubt if our sweet little rose ever grows to those proportions, but who knows?  Someday people may come from all over to view our rose.

Let's Go for a Hike

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock. ~Edward Abbey

Author and essayist, Edward Abbey, developed a love for the desert Southwest as a park ranger at Arches National Monument (now a national park) in Utah.  His non-fiction work, Desert Solitaire, has been compared to Thoreau's Walden.  It has also been cited as an inspiration for some radical environmental groups. While I may not agree with some of his more controversial views on the development of public lands, I do share his love of this desert environment in which I now live.

This week I went with a group of my friends on a hike through Catalina State Park, located at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson. The sky was a brilliant blue and the scenery was breathtaking. Because our winter was so dry there were only a few, small, purple blooms of verbena instead of the usual display of spring wildflowers, but the numerous majestic saguaros provided a splendid treat for our eyes. For those who think the desert is a barren landscape, I recommend taking a hike in this 5,500 acre park of foothills, canyons, and streams.

Here are a few photos I took on my hike.  See if you don't agree with me that the desert is indeed a place of beauty.

A Few Signs of Spring

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.  ~Ruth Stout  


Today was a sunny, blue skies kind of day, but still chilly.  And the weather forecast is predicting severe weather for Sunday--a high of 47 degrees and a low of 22 degrees.  For those who have suffered a frigid, snow-filled winter this may sound like spring, but for us here in the Southwest, this is far from springlike.  I've done what I could do to springify my indoor environment, so I went outdoors to my garden to search again for signs of spring there. I'm happy to report that although the signs are few, there are some indications that spring is actually on its way.

I found daffodils blooming and some almost ready to bloom.  I have a special love of daffodils because they are the flower of my birth month--March.

Our Lady Banks rose is beginning to leaf out.  I look forward to her blooms later in the spring.

And the salvia in the pot with the rose is leafing out too.  Its blue flower spikes make a lovely contrast with the yellow of the Lady Banks.

I am getting impatient for spring's arrival, but these signs of spring have given me hope that my wait may not be too long.

Spring in My Heart

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

After the record cold we experienced the week before last, I reveled in the warm weather, sunshine, and blue skies that came our way most of this week.  My husband saw a lizard on the wall in the back garden and some of our perennials began to show some green leaves. The false spring was short, however.  Yesterday and today have been windy and cool, with intermittent sunshine and clouds.  They forecast rain, which we actually could have used, as this has been a dry winter, but we only received a few drops.  I looked out to the back garden yesterday and saw two little birds shivering in the bare mesquite tree and clouds rolling by in the background.

I needed something cheery and springlike to brighten at least my indoor environment, so I bought these two lovely primroses at the local Walmart.  They make me smile every time I glance their way.

Being housebound by the ugly weather, I decided to start another project to lift my spirits.  I had wonderful news the other day of the expected arrival of a new little one in our family come October.  More about that later.  But in the meantime, here is the beginning of a sweet baby afghan.  The crochet block is called Friend Family Square and the free pattern can be found here.  I really like the stitch definition and the pattern is well-written.  I am grateful to the designer Christal Friend. 

It is too soon to know if the baby will be a girl or a boy,but I think the colors should work for either.  I made a big granny square afghan for my grandson that had the variegated yarn in it and fell in love with the colors then.  It is Red Heart's Monet.  The other colors are Soft White, Lavender, and Aruba Sea.  

Thanks to my primroses and this afghan in progress, I have springtime inside even when it is wintry outside. And now, I have spring in my heart.

Gardening Woes

When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too.  ~Linda Solegato  

The other day I posted here about our record-breaking cold and my hopes that we would not loose any of our plants.  Well, my hopes were dashed yesterday as I looked out at our magnificent Indian Fig Cactus. The temperature dropped to single digits Wednesday and Thursday nights.  Indian Fig are supposed to be cold hardy, but when I looked out yesterday afternoon, this is what I saw:

This is what our Indian Fig looked like just one month ago.  You can see it behind the Acacia tree.

We are not sure if we can save any part of this poor plant, but we will try.  Gardening requires both a strong back and a strong heart.

What to Do When the Weather is Cold

The one thing I never get involved with is selecting art or pictures for a client. This is a very personal thing. If the clients have pictures, I will hang them. When they do not own pictures I leave the walls blank. ~Albert Hadley, The Story of America's Preeminent Interior Designer

This is our fourth winter in the Southwest and we are noticing a pattern.  When February comes look out for a cold snap.  This year it seems to be particularly brutal.  Our high temperature today was 36 degrees and the low tonight is predicted to be 11 degrees.  Brrr!  My husband covered up a number of our outdoor plants that are marginal at 20 degrees.  Our plants and trees are not as precious as our children, but they do run a close second.  If one of them succumbs to the cold, we shall be very distressed.

We certainly aren't suffering like the Midwest or Northeast.  No snow or ice, but when you are used to winter weather in the 60s and 70s during the day, this kind of cold really inhibits our usual activities.  Definitely no morning walks until the weather warms again.  Today we didn't stir from the house, so we spent the day in cocooning activities. I washed bed clothes, cooked, and crocheted.  My husband rearranged furniture in our bedroom and hung this fabulous peacock, painted by our darling daughter.

She painted it to hang in an art show in which she exhibited last year.  We admired it greatly and she gave it to us last fall when we visited back East.  We've tried it out in different rooms in our home, but were never satisfied with how it looked.  Now that the bedroom has been rearranged, it has found a suitable hanging place.  When I look at it I am reminded of our beautiful, talented daughter and get a big smile on my face.

Sunlight in Winter

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. ~Annie Dillard

One of the major reasons we moved to the Southwest was to escape the gloomy, cold winters back East.  Generally our weather is mild in winter and we get many more days of sunshine than we experienced in the East.  Even on days like today, which has been cloudy with a few brief rain showers, we still have glorious bursts of sunlight.

I derive a tremendous amount of energy from the sun here. I love to observe it streaming in the front windows in the early morning and watch its progress throughout the day as it beams in one window after another.  My favorite time, however, is about an hour before sunset when it pours in our back patio doors and makes pools of light and shadow on the walls and floors.We do get fierce winds, too, but the sunlight makes up for it, in my opinion.

Say "Ah!"

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!" ~ Joseph Campbell

Lake Tahoe, California

Lake Tahoe, California

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park

Trees make me a believer.  I am drawn to taking pictures of them on all my travels.

A Hint of What's to Come

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley 


The weather today has been heavenly.  The first day in a long time that I could go outside without a sweater or a jacket.  The sky has been blue with fluffy white clouds and it was warm.  I sat outside and just soaked up the sun.  The landscape is still looking like winter, but the air feels like spring.  My mind tells me that we will inevitably have more cold weather, but I am refusing to listen to reason.  My spirit tells me that the promise of spring will soon be fulfilled.

The Garden in Winter

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.  ~Minnie Aumonier

Here in southeastern Arizona, we are generally very fortunate in winter to have relatively warm temperatures and sunny skies while much of the rest of the country suffers with snow and ice.  Lately, however, it has been cold and gloomy often enough to make me dream of balmy breezes and tropical isles. The weather forecast keeps promising us a warming trend, but I have yet to feel it in actuality.  I have been wearing sweatshirts and sweaters and a double layer of socks indoors and only venturing outside when absolutely necessary.  My only solace has been the blooming paperwhite narcissus in my kitchen garden window.

Today I decided I had hibernated long enough and took a stroll through our back yard searching for some signs of life and beauty in the midst of winter.  I didn't find anything in bloom, but the mesquite is still green and the deciduous trees have a stark beauty as they lift their bare limbs to the sky. 

The garden is resting, but I detected the faint sound of music from  the trees as the wind blew through them giving me hope for an eventual concert in the spring. 
 

A Turista in Arizona

We have lived in Arizona a full year now--July 2nd was our anniversary. We have been so busy settling in and traveling back and forth to California to get my husband's mother established after her move from Texas that we have had little time to do much local sightseeing. The two week visit of my niece and nephew gave us the perfect opportunity to visit some nearby sites of interest and we took full advantage of their willingness to get the flavor of our area.

We went to Tombstone, The Town Too Tough To Die, on July 4th. We had visited there about 11 years ago on our first trip to southeastern Arizona and were not too impressed, but efforts of local civic groups have greatly improved the town and it is well-worth the trip now. We toured the historical section by foot and trolley, but could also have gotten a ride on a stagecoach. The Butterfield Stage used to stop here. Not a method of travel I would have favored, but it was the Greyhound bus of its time.

Tombstone is perhaps best remembered as the site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral which involved the Earps, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons. We watched an outdoor presentation of the famous fight and then had a delicious dinner in the Longhorn Restaurant.

Another day, we traveled to Sabino Canyon near Tucson. The area is in the Sonoran Desert and gives visitors a close encounter with the flora and fauna that live in this challenging environment. My favorite plant in the Sonoran Desert is the saguara cactus, pictured below.

Climbing up from the 2800 foot elevation of Sabino Canyon, to the almost 9000 foot elevation of Mt. Lemmon provided breathtaking scenery as well as a breath of cool air. We picnicked in a delightful roadside park on our way up.

My husband and I were a bit disappointed in the Tucson Zoo, but the kids seemed to enjoy it very much. It is the middle of summer and so not surprising, I guess, to have so many animals hiding in their cooler lairs, but it all seemed a bit run down. After visiting the San Diego Zoo, however, most zoos seem to suffer in our estimation.

For my nephew's birthday, we went to Patagonia Lake. It is a scenic, leisurely drive about an hour from our home. They have boating, fishing, swimming, and picnicking. A cool, serene get-away for the hot desert summers. We will definitely return another time.

Mining was and still is a big part of the economy in southeastern Arizona. We went on a tour of an open-pit copper mine to see first hand what was involved and what it did to the environment. The Asarco Mission mine in Sahuarita, Arizona is currently owned by a Mexican firm, Grupo Mexico. It is in bankruptcy and an Indian company is trying to negotiate a buy out. The tour was very interesting and gave us a lot to think about. It contributes heavily to the local economy in both jobs and money to local retailers. Supposedly, environmentally friendly methods are now employed in extracting the copper, but as interesting as the pit is, I wouldn't want it in my back yard.

Finally, we went rock climbing in Texas Canyon, a fantastic area of giant boulders and very near the Amerind Foundation, a private museum of Native American history, archaeology, art, and culture.

As much as we were able to see in these two weeks, we have scarcely scratched the surface of all that is available to us in our fascinating new home state.