Sonoran Winter 24 Hours

I like to joke that if you don't like the weather in Tucson, wait a few hours. Last Friday's weather offers a great example.

I thought snow on the Santa Catalina Mountains a few days earlier was pretty neat. It inspired Finger Rock Wash Winter Morning. But the big storm was last Friday, and it offered lots of video opportunities.

We were living in a storm cloud most of Friday. There were no Catalinas, only a white-out, and a dark one at that. Only by evening did the dense clouds begin to lift. By dawn, the sky was clear. Hoping for a nice sunrise on the Catalinas, I mounted my camera on a tripod and left it running there for about three-quarters of an hour while I had my breakfast.

Less than twenty-four hours after it began snowing, the sky was sunny and clear. Baboquivari, the sacred mountain some forty-fifty miles distant, was clearly visible.

Finger Rock Wash Winter Morning

Some winter mornings are especially beautiful. After rain in lower elevations and snow in the higher, and as the sun rises, backlit raindrops glisten on creosote bushes and palo verde trees. Clouds slowly lift revealing the snow-dusted pale granite peaks of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Like they do each morning, phainopepla birds survey their mistletoe berry domains.

Working Terra Bella

Reading Taking Care of Things, Shari suggested posting a clip of Randy and his bulldozer clearing terraces on the hillside that became Shari's Terra Bella garden. The clips begin with my first use of Scottie the tractor-mower and end with my inept use of a rented Kubota. All were taken in 2000, the year we bought the five-acre property.

Wildflowers

I am so proud I could spit. A year or two ago I bought a packet of Southwest wildflower seeds. After weeks of indecision, I sprinkled them in various bare places along the gully hillside. Over months, I forgot exactly where I had planted the seeds. Then a season or two passed and I figured the seeds were duds.

It's winter and with all the winter rains we have been having, the grass and weed season is in full swing. There are thick patches of invasive grasses in many places, and the sticky and seed-spitting varieties of weeds are coming up all over. What makes a weed a weed? Grasses in this part of the world because they don't belong here. Plants that stick and hitch a ride on socks and dogs. Plants that when you touch them, they spit seeds a foot or more. (Watch out for your eyes.) Plants that I do not like so I am constantly pulling them up in the hope they will not go to seed in any unmanageable number.

There are some plants that in my first Sonoran years I considered weeds, but no more. I need to find the name of the one plant that has small fleshy leaves and, as the plant dries out with our dry spring seasons, its delicate, small bushy, lacey, umbrella frame turns reddish, sharing its hue with the bare tan and pink ground. I now classify it as a wildflower, along with brittle bush, seaside petunia, and desert senna. I recognize these plants as they sprout and never pull them.

So I am pulling weeds from various bare places along the gully hillside. I notice there are some oddly configured sprouts coming up. They seem different. There are plenty of identifiable weeds, so I ignore the unfamiliar ones. Thank goodness. As their brilliant green foliage matures, pretty yellow and orange flowers bloom. I realize that at least two species of wildflowers have sprouted from my packet. One of them I recognize. They are the orange flowers: Mexican or California poppies. I have seen entire hillsides and roadsides draped with their beautiful apricot color.

I hope my few flowers go to seed and multipy, but I think I should buy several more packets of Southwest wildflower seeds.

Taking Care of Things

Plowing the east forty, Ballard,
in anticipation of growing edibles.

The lord of a manor ought to take care of the estate. It's an idea that has evolved in me since the first house I bought, and even earlier. I would like to think it is not a possessive or a selfish thing, but a matter of stewardship.

Gardening, the most popular hobby in Merca, can teach the value of stewardship. Yes, the property is mine in fee simple. Yes, I can do with it whatever I want, land use regulations permitting. But working with living nature teaches humility. I am only a small part of the whole. As Shari often reminds me, the land talks to you over time and tells you what it wants.

Parking out the front acreage, Terra Bella.

Living at 5224 in the U-District, we got the idea of digging up the small, unkempt, weed-infested, sad excuse of a backyard lawn and planting a vegetable garden. Mind you, in those heady days of juvenile adolescence, the idea of taking care of anything took a distant back seat to being cool and having fun. Four boys fresh out of high school quickly ran that poor house into increasing states of dilapidation. But we did have our moments of clean-up and show-off. The vegetable garden was one such example. That first year we had a bumper crop of tomatoes the likes of which I have never since equaled.  Then, after that first summer of planting, distracted by the need to to be cool and having fun (a need exhausted only by growing up), we largely abandoned farming and the backyard restored itself to increasing states of dilapidation.

The front acreage, Terra Bella.

The Ballard house was my first possession in fee simple. It, like the U-District house, had a postage stamp sized lot with a backyard that had a strip suitable for growing edibles. Memories of that one successful tomato harvest propelled me to rent a cultivator and plant vegetables. I forget what we planted. Zucchini, tomato, green beans and the like, I suppose. Previous owners had graced the 1912 craftsman house with pretty ornamentals that bloomed over spring and summer: huge lilac bushes, honeysuckle, penstemon, and an apple tree. We planted annuals in hanging baskets on the front porch and in the half whiskey barrel on the back deck.

My move to Whidbey Island was cataclysmic. I had been a city boy. Shari was the Island Girl from the dense greenery of Puget Sound countryside, living on sheep farms, wooded acreage, and in island villages. She was already in tune with creating, maintaining, and savoring gardens: vegetable, fruit and floral.

Shari's garden, Terra Bella.

I became the lord of a much larger manor. My palette was five acres, later increased to ten. Most of it was forested with large, but not ancient, cedars with occasional Doug firs and hemlock. The land had been logged and clear-cut several times previously, but we inherited some pretty large trees together with lots of alder, blackberries and nettles. Stuff grows quickly in Lower Alaska. Some two acres around the house had been cleared and served as a lawn.

We enjoyed eight years on the aptly named Terra Bella Lane. Working the land became a full time pastime in addition to reworking the entire 4,200 square foot, eighteen room, three level house. We purchased Scotty the tractor mower to cut fields of grass, weeds and nettle fields. Over time, some three acres were parked out. We took out a shabby truck garden and rabbit cages that framed the grand driveway entrance. With the help of Randy, his son, their bulldozer, backhoe and lowboy, the hillside was terraced, the back acres partially cleared, and its swamp dug out to create a pond. On the terraced land, we deer-fenced about a tenth of an acre, used landscaping blocks and railroad ties to build raised gardens where Shari planted, grew and maintained everything from strawberries to espaliered apple trees and even grape vines. On the second five acres, I spent many an active summer day clearing paths to access, define, and enjoy our domain.

The pond in back, Terra Bella.

The second owner later, we had a chance to visit our old domain. Shari's and my purchaser was a trust fund baby with motorcycles, a civilian AK47, and houses in California and Mexico. He had neglected the garden and the park setting.  Everything reverted to an overgrown state, then he sold the property at a substantial loss. There was some hope. The young families that were living there when we visited were beginning to reclaim and rework the garden.

We moved to San Simeon where our little acre of the Sonoran Desert has become our domain. Thanks to the desert climate, we get plenty of opportunity to sit outside and contemplate nature. In my time as a lord of a manor, I have noticed how infinitely enjoyable it is to sit outside and watch things grow, listen to bird calls, and watch bugs fly and lizards do push-ups. Sitting inside for the same amount of time, even inside an attractively appointed space, is just staring at walls.

Ever wonder why we long to look out windows, and rarely in?
Looking out front, Terra Bella.

The illustrative story that comes to mind is from Terra Bella. Not long after we bought and fixed up our five acres on Whidbey, we invited my family for a day visit. It turned out to be one of those precious sunny days for which Puget Sound is justly famous. Inside the house, the conversation awkwardly turned to tape recordings. That is, the "same old, same old" subjects of conversation that dominated family dialogue for decades. It occurred to me to move the party outside onto the lawn. So we laid out picnic blankets on the parked-out acreage in front. People sat and relaxed. The need diminished to have to say something to keep a conversation going. Silence was not awkward. It was natural. And if someone did say something, it was relevant.

Gardening is working to evoke nature's beauty and abundance. For good reason, it is the most popular hobby. Gardening is a metaphor for everything in life. I wonder why we as a society have not learned good stewardship from gardening.

My idea of a nice living room.

Old White Bands & Fans

Anyu used to complain about old people at the Senior Center. Anyu was my mother. She was in her eighties at the time. She preferred being around young people.

As I enter my full Social Security retirement year, I am beginning to get a deeper appreciation of what she meant. There is a time lag between one's age and one's self-image.

It began auspiciously enough on New Years Eve with dinner and a dance with live rock and lounge music. The lead singer and the band members were old and grey. They played just fine, with all the enthusiasm of youth, but in my memories of rock musicians, there is no association with regular looking old people. Shari and I left early, but that was primarily on account of our table being outside and it being a cold and rainy night. We do have winters in the Sonoran Desert, but it was also past my bedtime.

Then last Saturday night, Shari and I went to a dance place to hear and dance to traditional and modern Louisiana French music by a group named BeauSoleil. The venue was the El Casino Ballroom, a 1200 capacity institution south of downtown, in Latino community neighborhoods. We had never heard of the place, much less been there.

I had no idea there were so many people in Tucson. The parking lot was filling up when we arrived early and the food trucks were lined up outside. We showed proof of admission payment and earned our florescent orange, hospital-style wrist bands. We entered a vast open area surrounding a huge dance floor in front of a stage. In back was a broad, raised bar area.

Everyone was white, old and grey. I kept looking for younger people or some ethnic diversity. Nothing. People kept arriving and finding seats among arrangements of folding metal tables and chairs. They were more of the same. Many were eccentric old hippies with thinning long silver ponytails and colorful clothes on plumped and aged bodies. There were a couple of motorized wheelchairs. Most were, well, folks who looked like they were in retirement.

In short, everyone looked like me: grey haired, wrinkled old white people. It was a bit nightmarish.

Shari and I like to go to summer picnic concerts at the Tucson Racquet & Fitness Club. There we can enjoy bands playing various different rock genres. One was Christian rock. It was okay until we made out the lyrics. A small crowd sits on the grass field by the swimming pool. Yes, the band members are all old white people, which is a little jarring, but the venue and music attract lots of young families with children. What we enjoy most are the little munchkins dancing and scampering around.

The crowd at El Casino lacked youth. Shari spotted one Latino couple and there were a couple of young bartenders. Otherwise, it was all people our age or older. They seemed like regulars familiar with the venue. The band members who cranked out energetic Cajun music were older, white, balding, and pudgy, just like the crowd.

Actually, it was a heap of fun. The dance floor was delightfully crowded with couples and singles, some jitterbugging, others hopping, shaking, and writhing in various rock-appreciation styles practiced and perfected over decades. People with no sense of beat were happily and unabashedly moving on the dance floor with their partners, and old trippy-hippies skipped around the perimeter like fairies.

It's just that I'm not used to crowds of older, grey haired people playing and dancing in a rock music setting. They remind me too much of the jarring feelings I get when I look in a mirror. I have this out-dated mental holographic image of myself as a kid, chastened only by the occasional creaks and aches of aging joints and sagging jeans on a sagging butt and gut.