In the Bleak Midwinter . . . .

While that title will ring painfully true for many right now (even a couple of my friends in Portland, Oregon, who were so excited a few days ago about snow, are complaining about cabin fever), here in Tucson we've hardly had anything worth the name of winter. I actually miss it, though I can't complain about sitting outside right now, enjoying 74 degrees or so.

I've had this adenium obesum in my kitchen window for a couple of years, and every winter it drops leaves for a period of relative dormancy (and I try not to get too alarmed), but it's never bloomed before. There are still a couple of buds left to open to add to the already pretty showy cluster of blossoms - I am so excited!

But I'm even more excited about what I picked from the garden yesterday! We've had pepper plants survive for up to 5 years by protecting them from frosts, but never tomatoes or eggplants. (The larger peppers are Cubanelles, the smaller ones very hot jalapeños.) In fact, raising tomatoes here is problematic at best - some years I don't even try, and I almost didn't this year. The Big Boys and wonderful heirlooms that grow well elsewhere . . . well, I've never had any luck with them here, but cherry tomatoes . . . sometimes. Sometimes not. Everything on this platter was planted early last spring and the plants are still going strong. It's very strange and no doubt, like so much of the rest of the strange weather this year, related to global warming, so my gratitude for this beautiful harvest is necessarily tinged with unease. But I can't not appreciate the beauty and abundance.

 This is the blossom of the Golden Sweet Snow Pea, an heirloom variety from India. I purchased the seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds, a small, family-owned seed company with very reasonable prices and packets sized right for small family gardens like ours, and a selection of seeds and other garden-related items one might not find elsewhere, like these gorgeous yellow snow peas! I picked a few this morning and there are lots more on the vines that aren't quite ready.

 A friend gave me a small plant of this strange and very prickly euphorbia whose last name I don't know. Hard to believe it's in the same family as poinsettia. Anyway, I have several larger pots of it now (just break off a piece and stick it in the soil) and they're all getting ready to bloom - just look at all the little pale green buds.

And the Meyer lemon, that's had a rather rough and unproductive year, is also bursting into bloom. I've been watching the buds and today found the first open blossom.

So the weather is crazy but lovely and I'm trying to just enjoy what we have and not think about the heat that's coming or the lack of rainfall here this "winter." I wish winter wasn't hitting so hard in other places, and if you're in one of those places, I hope things let up soon, and I wish you warmth, comfort, and good company.

It's Still Winter!

What a lovely, sunny weekend we had! On Sunday I thought to myself "I guess spring is here," and although spring inevitably turns into the kind of summer where you probably can fry eggs on the sidewalk, I was okay with that. Then yesterday (Wednesday) the rain came (along with a brief midday fall of big fluffy snowflakes that melted as they hit the ground) and the temperature plummeted, and this morning my back yard looked like this!

There are blossoms on the rosemary, but what you're seeing here is snow, and snow filling the bowl St. Francis holds, snow on the octopus agaves behind him, snow on many things in the yard but none on the ground or the patio. A friend who lives in Boston scoffed at my delight in our little bit of snow, saying "It doesn't count as snow if you don't have to shovel it!" And having grown up in Idaho, I have plenty of snow shoveling memories, but hey, don't rain on my mini-blizzard!

There was no freeze warning so we didn't cover the vegetable or herb gardens, but I think they'll probably be all right. The birdbaths were frozen (sparrow skating rinks, anyone?), our neighbors' solar panels were white, and so were the Tucson Mountains to the west of us, not just on top but all the way down as far as we could see. That just never happens!

     The prediction for the next several days is for high temperatures in the 50s and low 60s, then they'll probably climb back into the low 70s, something I could live with for a long time. Right now, I'm glad we have a fireplace to enjoy for a few more evenings. Later on we'll go back outside and light up the chiminea, which is currently taking a break.

To Everything There Is a Season

Of course, seasons in the southern Arizona/Sonoran desert aren't quite like those in more temperate climes. We've had winter; maybe we're still having it. The garden shows the effects of a week of overnight temperatures in the low 20s the second week in January with quite a bit of die-back on things that will recover, like cassia, purple heart, and some other perennials, and some that won't, such as wild poinsettia (which has, however, probably reseeded itself), sweet potato vine, and nasturtiums.
    The goldfinches went away, but other birds stay year-round, like Mr. Costa, who feeds on the other side of our kitchen window (his real name is Costa's hummingbird; we've gotten quite well acquainted but I still like to address him with respect).

A female black-chinned hummingbird also showed up yesterday and was able to feed without being chased off. Mr. Costa and another male have frequent, swift, noisy battles, sometimes right over our heads, but the female got lucky. Apparently early European explorers believed hummingbirds didn't have feet because they only saw them hovering to feed at flowers, with their feet tucked up against their bellies. This feeder has perches all around and the hummers like to sit on them to drink their nectar - and I've seen their feet close up through the glass. I wouldn't buy a hummingbird feeder that didn't offer them a place to rest - they burn up a lot of calories buzzing around the way they do!

Verdins also like hummingbird feeders; we saw one yesterday morning, the first in more than a year. They are among my very favorite birds, so tiny, fluffy, and colorful with their yellow heads and red epaulets.
     It's hard to know what season it is from one day - sometimes one hour - to the next lately. This morning when we took our walk it was definitely winter. This female phainopepla with her feathers fluffed out for insulation, on bare branches against a gray sky, perfectly captures the feeling. She's there in the same spot every morning, surveying her territory, I guess, and trying to stay warm.

 Up around the corner and about a block away we spied two red birds facing off in the middle of the road - male cardinals. They're very territorial; apparently one was trying to horn in on the other's turf - like the phainopepla in her tree, this fellow owns that half block or so. The green leaves on these mesquite branches aren't new growth, by the way; they just never fell when it got cold.

But spring is coming. New leaf buds are forming at the ends of the fig branches, and new blossom buds on the Meyer lemon, though it took quite a hit from the frost, in spite of being covered. There's bok choy ready to pick in the garden with chard right behind it, and all the herbs except the basil (of course) weathered the cold well. Even though all the nasturtiums in the hanging baskets bit the dust, new ones have popped up, apparently from seeds that hadn't germinated earlier. This interregnum between winter and spring is quite a nice time, really. Winter in the morning and temperatures in the low 70s by mid-afternoon, at least today, and tomorrow, though we'll be back in the low 60s with night temperatures in the high 30s by next weekend. I'm in no hurry for the weather to warm up too much. Someone told me the other day that when people complain about the cold, he just offers three words in response: "June, July, August." Yep.

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember

   When the year grows old—

October—November—

   How she disliked the cold!

Those lines by Edna St. Vincent Millay remind me of growing up in Idaho and of my grandmother, who in her later years seemed to get much colder than the rest of us (today my mother says the same thing, and that it's just part of aging).  Yesterday a friend posted pictures of her house in Ontario, Oregon, just a few miles on the other side of the Snake River from where we grew up.  The snow on the roof and blanketing the yard was so clean and fresh and beautiful. 

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

   The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

   Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

   And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

   Were beautiful to her!

     Both of those stanzas express my own feelings - it's not either/or, inside or outside. I love it all, and I miss winter, real winter, though even here in Tucson we don't have to go too far to find snow to play in, just up Mt. Lemmon on the northeast edge of town, or for a weekend, Flagstaff is only 4 hours away.

     

Things change as the year grows old, and I love watching those changes.  There is a beauty in decrepitude, in fading, in the graceful death we see in nature.  The fallen pomegranates in the picture at the top shrivel and dry but first they nourish the ants and the other little things that live in the soil, and the soil itself.  This picture shows three stages in the life of a morning glory: the shrunken, dried blossom, its earlier bright blue beauty unimaginable unless you've watched the plant and know its processes; a plump green seedpod that will soon mature into a crisp fawn-colored case for the precious product the plant has lived and died for - the hard black seeds that will grow into next year's flowers.

     Our milder desert winters aren't all about death or, as in the story of Persephone and her pomegranate, about putting the world to sleep for half the year.  The cooler temperatures revitalize some things and fall is the best time for planting others, like native plants - cacti, mesquite and palo verde trees.  It's also the best time to start a vegetable garden, and I love being able to grow my own salad and cooking greens, snow peas, turnips, and other things.  We're much more limited in summer, which can feel more like a survival marathon, especially when the monsoons don't come, as they didn't this last summer, when the only crop that really did well was okra.

     Roses thrive here - that came as a surprise to me - and this bud was just beginning to open yesterday.  It's on the climber my friend Charlene gave me when she moved from Tucson, and it's been very happy up against the old gray fence that separates the area where we hang out the laundry and store unused plant pots from the rest of the yard.  Unfortunately, the red climber she gave me at the same time didn't do so well and I finally gave up and took it out a few weeks ago when I gave the roses their September pruning, though the white JFK is doing very well.  This climber produced flowers all summer but they faded quickly, going from bud to falling blossoms in two or three days.  But now they last over a week and some are pushing two weeks, and as this next picture shows, there is still great beauty in their decrepitude.

Isn't it wonderful how they change colors?  I wouldn't have imagined this would happen, and yet right now there are half a dozen like this.  It's like having three or four different rose bushes all in one!  The only constant is change, they say, and we must embrace change or die.  The only way to keep this rose from changing would be to deadhead it before it comes into full bloom, and that would certainly be a shame.

      When I lived in Idaho we were very conscious of the seasons and the harvests, much more than most people are now, I believe.  And when I took my mother on vacation up there I was sad to see that almost all the orchards that filled the Emmett valley are gone, as are the fruit packing sheds where my grandmother worked during the Great Depression, and off and on for years afterwards.  Here's what's left of one of the only two of those sheds still standing, that was once filled with the sound of conveyor belts and women's talk and laughter as they sorted and packed the fruit for which the valley was famous.

At first it made me sad to see it like this, but when I stopped and got out of the car, walked around and went inside, it was also peaceful.  I remember going there with my grandmother, and one of her friends picking out a red Delicious apple and polishing it on his sleeve for me. I remember the simple pleasure of honest labor, and of hands moving quickly and gently over the fruits of the earth, and it makes me smile.

      Apples and some other trees aren't the best choice for our particular micro-climate (though there are wonderful orchards over in Wilcox, less than two hours away) but citrus trees love it.  I noticed last night (after the opera - a delightful student production of Britten's Albert Herring that had the audience laughing out loud in appreciation of its broad humor) that the kumquats are nearly ripe around one of the parking lots, and I'm having fantasies of "liberating" some.

Our little Meyer lemon tree has two big, beautiful fruits nearly ripe.  We expected more given the explosion of blossoms it produced, but we're grateful for these and will, when the time comes, put them to good use.  That's what I hope for all of us as autumn turns to winter, that we will put our time and ourselves to good use.  Stay warm.  Appreciate the season.  Be well.

the loveliest time of the year

This is my favorite time of year, because of the weather here in southern Arizona and because, for another four days, I'm still on winter break. I love being at home, engaging in the gentle art of puttering.  We've had some rain and more is predicted (though today it's been sunny), and I can see the effects in my garden: nasturtiums that I feared might never germinate are up and looking healthy, the slow-growing fennel is finally showing its distinctive ferny leaves, the second row of mesclun is tall enough to begin cutting, and the roses I recently transplanted are budding.  Because we had so little rain earlier this winter I don't expect many wildflowers, though.  Our first winter here, 1992-1993, there were fierce rains in January that resulted in severe floods.  That seems like so long ago; our world and our climate have changed a great deal since then.

    Still, I am grateful for what we have, for example, the kale I picked this afternoon.  I love kale, both for its beauty and its vitamins; it's as decorative as it is healthful.  My favorite kale to plant is the "mixed wild garden kales" from Nichols Garden Nursery (http://www.nicholsgardennursery.com/) - it's like a bouquet in the vegetable garden with the variety of colors - some all green, some silvery, some with purple veins and stems - and leaves - some deeply fringed like delicate lace, some sturdy and solid.  You can see a little of the variation in this photo, where the vase of kale leaves is flanked by a pair of ceramic geese my daughter bought for me when she was in seventh or eighth grade. Anyone who has raised a daughter will remember the difficulty of those years, and yet I also remember moments of delight and communion punctuating that early adolescent stress, and every day, when I look at these geese who still live on my kitchen windowsill, I remember the love and closeness we have always shared.

      Today I also baked corn muffins to go with tonight's soup, in a pan that was on sale for half price at Williams-Sonoma a couple of weeks ago.  The recipe that came with it was for a dessert-type cake, but I love the way my cornbread recipe (which can be found in the post from 10/21/09, "Soup of the Evening") turned out in it,  especially the honeybees - after all, they are the right color.  I baked them at 375 degrees (25 degrees lower than usual) for 20 minutes.
      Such simple pleasures really are, as it said on a dishtowel I saw many years ago, "life's treasures."  Although I now live in the sunny southwest, at this time of year I remember snowy Idaho winter days when we wondered how long it would take the snowplow to get to us in our house near the end of a dead-end street. I remember the smell of soup simmering on the stove and of bread baking, and games of gin rummy at the dining room table (at the tender age of five, my daughter was already a natural card-shark) along with bedtime stories and the rest and relaxation that winter offers us, along with the anticipation of spring.  Sooner than we may imagine, new life will burst from the ground.  Let us rest, though, while we can, so that we can greet spring's green awakening with enthusiasm and joy.