Steps in the Gully

The three steps; plus a broken Oaxacan pot relocated from
the backyard. See Monsoon Stories from Monday.

Our private gully is an inspirational place. Outside is where I like to work in the mornings and just sit and stare in the evenings.

Shari taught me at Terra Bella on Whidbey that the land talks to you. It does.

The steep hillsides in our gully invite terracing. I began working with the acacia and palo verde trees, pruning them and digging berms around their trunks so I could water them. Circular berms developed into terraces.

Two parallel trails traversing the east side were separated by a steep slope, tricky to walk up or down because of the loose rocks. I had been planning steps and even a sitting area there.

The farthest garden tap — for now.

Some months ago I installed a water line and a garden tap there, which is my declaration of intent to develop. To develop means planting. Planting requires water. Water requires a ditch to in which to bury a PVC water line. You dig the ditch before you start fine tuning the trail. So the garden hose by the steep area was the first step.

Two weekend mornings, a trip to the mega-hardware emporium for concrete blocks and concrete mix, and three steps proudly await the hillside wanderer, anxious to alight upwards or carefully assist in the down climb. In the process, the land talked to me. After months and years of thinking about a flat area big enough for a bench, I realized it was not the place. People can sit on the steps, just like at Montmartre.

The last two weekend mornings, I pushed the edge of cultivation another forty feet down the eastern hillside. Forty feet means four sections of PVC pipe and a garden tap by a gnarly palo verde that used to be bigger until dry times made it lose several branches.

Forty feet of digging a terraced path.

I know it used to be bigger because of the big dead branch on the ground and three baby saguaros growing under where the branch used to serve as a latrine for the birds that feast on saguaro fruit and pass the seeds. That palo verde, like others in the gully, needs pruning and occasional water.

Connecting the steps to the farthest garden tap are forty feet of terraced trail cut into the hillside.

Every rock is precious. I sort them as I dig. Bigger rocks are piled together. They will be stacked to serve as a shallow retaining wall. The smaller rocks I salvage by shoveling the dirt onto a screen and sifting it. This rubble, the caliche is particularly good stuff, will become the surface for the trails themselves. Foot traffic compacts the jagged little rocks into a solid matrix that discourages little critters from digging their burrows.

I was apprehensive about heavy rains damaging terraces, but it turns out the desert is quite hardy — as long as one accounts for the flow of water. Stagecoach ruts from over a century ago are still visible in the graveyard down the street, and, going back some two thousand years, the network of foot-worn Hohokam and O'odham salt trading trails down to the Sea of Cortez are still visible in aerial photos.

Many more weekend mornings await. There are a few areas in our land that have overgrown agaves and aloes. O need to dig up shoots — mini-plants sent out by the main plant — and transplant them. And it's autumn, so it's time to plant a few mesquite trees.