oasis in the desert

We just got back from 3 days and 2 nights in Bisbee, Arizona, a historic former mining town turned arts and antiques mecca, a place we've visited many times on day trips, which we always enjoyed in spite of the frenzied-tourist pace they seemed to require. Bisbee sits in a narrow canyon with streets and houses built on steep slopes.  Here's a view from near the top of the town; beyond the buildings you can see the top of the huge, no longer operational, copper pit mine that was once Bisbee's economic base.

     We stayed on the other side of the hill and east (left) of the mine, in the Shady Dell (www.theshadydell.com), a real step-back-in-time motor court that's been written up in Country Living, Sunset, Arizona Highways, and probably some other magazines.  All the lodgings are restored travel trailers from the 1940s and '50s; there's even an authentic period restaurant on-site, Dot's Diner, also brought in from its earlier location (and possibly saved from the scrap heap) and lovingly restored.  The food's good, too.

     The little trailer to the left of Dot's is the smallest one at the Shady Dell.  We were in the one just to the left of it, the El Rey, built in 1957, and a little larger, with an adequately furnished small kitchen area and a bathroom containing a sink and a toilet. Originally it had a shower; the whole tiny bathroom then became the shower stall, with a drain in the floor in front of the toilet.  The shower's been decommissioned but the Shady Dell offers very nice showers and bathrooms just a few yards away.  Here's the sketch I did of our little temporary home the evening we arrived.

And here's the dinette table.  Note the melmac plate and  vintage curtain fabric.  The book below my wine glass is an authentic "Guest Log" containing comments from people who stayed in the El Rey before us, some from various places across the U.S., some (like us) from elsewhere in Arizona, and some from Paris, Sweden, and the U.K. It was so much fun to read. One entry, by a couple named Hope and Matt, particularly caught my interest. Hope wrote about where they'd eaten in town, how much they liked the El Rey, and what wonderful conversations they'd had. After her entry, Matt wrote "I'm the boyfriend, and she doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to propose to her very soon!"  It is indeed a romantic spot, and completely unpretentious. Relaxed, low-key, totally comfortable. The folks who work there are (like most of the people we've met in Bisbee) just regular, down-to-earth people who love being where they are.
     The Shady Dell is right next door to the Evergreen Cemetery, and some former guests wrote about taking late night walks there.  We did go for a walk after dark our first night, and were dazzled by the velvet blackness of the sky and the brightness of the stars. It was like the night skies of my childhood in Idaho, when the Milky Way was something we took for granted and there was no city glow (or light pollution - whichever term you like) to diminish the view. It's easy to forget, when you live in or near a city of any size, how many stars there are out there.

     After that little adventure we slept very well in a bed that was definitely not queen-sized but very comfy nonetheless, in spite of the possibility of ghosts just over the fence and a strong wind in the cottonwood tree beside us. In fact, the wind lulled us to sleep, and the next day was even better, but I'll have to post more about that later, in Bisbee, Part Deux.

Mother's Day and Other Mothers

      Sunday was Mother's Day, but my daughter lives 125 miles away and it was her ex-husband's weekend with the kids, so even though she had them for the day (they're fair with each other about such things, and if Father's Day falls on her weekend, he'll have them for that day), it was too far for anyone to go for us all to spend the day together.  So Joe and I took my mother and our friend Caren, whose children live even farther away than ours, out for a festive brunch at a landmark Tucson restaurant, El Parador.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed going there - special occasion Sunday brunches sort of fell by the wayside during the frugal grad student years.  It was so nice to be back.  The food was great (and we all ate way too much of it), so was the service, and as my mom said, "It's like eating in a garden."  There were many families there, many with three or four generations around the table, and everyone seemed to be happy.
 

     At home, in one of the raised beds in the backyard, there's another mother.  For a couple of weeks, every time Joe or I would water that bed we'd flush a female quail. A cursory look revealed no nest, but a couple of days ago I went back there to cut back the chamomile, which I'd planted much too close to a rosebush, and as I swept back the stalks I saw this depression in the soil and twelve perfect eggs.  We just hadn't looked closely enough.  Between the chamomile and nasturtiums that grew three times as big as the seed packet said they would, and with a thorny rosebush to protect them on the north side, these eggs are in a good spot, well-hidden in a well-fenced yard.  Now that we know they're there, we're more careful when watering.  Don't know if it would bother the eggs but we certainly don't want to drown the chicks when they hatch, which I'm afraid may be when we're on vacation.  But we'll alert the housesitter, and I know she'll be careful too.

     It's dangerous bringing young into this world, even in a sheltered space like our mother quail's nest site.  A couple of years ago a house finch nested in a big Boston fern that hangs in our front entryway.  We watched the four eggs, and then the babies when they hatched, until one morning they were all gone, mother and babies, well before they were ready to fly away on their own.  All we could think was that an owl or a hawk or a raven had flown in and gotten them.  But that same spring a dove laid her eggs in a nest in the pine tree in the front yard, at about my shoulder level, at the edge of the labyrinth, so on every circuit I got a good look at the whole family as I passed less than arm's length away from them.  It seemed like a more hazardous spot than the finch's nest because it was so exposed, but these babies grew up  safely and flew away on their own.  And now the wheel of the year has turned round again, to bring us flowers and nests and new life, and it is beautiful beyond words.

up close and personal

I started to pull into my driveway about an hour ago but stopped when I saw this handsome fellow stretched across it (I figure he's about 4 feet long).  After ascertaining that he's not a rattler, I ran in the house to get the camera and the snake obliging waited and posed for several shots.  I'll wait till he moves to put the car in the garage - I'd have felt terrible if I'd run over him.

I still didn't get all of him in one picture - missed the tip of his tail.  Just checked the driveway - he's moved on.

      After several days in the 90s, we must admit spring's coming to an end (and to think we were in snow 8 days ago in Prescott!)  The cactus flowers are splendid.  Here's a blossom on a Santa Rita prickly pear in the front yard.  The cactus pads themselves are distinctly lavender, though with the shadows that doesn't show up too well in the photo.  This plant was struggling to survive in a corner by the back fence when we bought the house; in the ten years since we relocated it, it has really thrived.

So many of the desert flowers are yellow that it's nice to find some variety.  These Mexican primroses are the palest pink (the little lavender tufts belong to verbena, which can be invasive so that some people think of it as a weed, but I like its plucky opportunism).  The rocks are part of a low retaining wall Joe built to keep the sloping back yard somewhat contained and off the patio.

The hummingbirds love these sage plants; there are several on the back slope.  This is the biggest and was here when we moved in.  We can watch the hummingbirds at it from the table - a nice way to start the day.

     Now that the semester's over there will be more time for gardening and just enjoying being outdoors (espeially in the morning while it's relatively cool), reading, sketching, daydreaming.  I did spend a while doing that the other day, relaxing, sketching, and definitely daydreaming!

These rose-scented geraniums live in a pot just outside the back door, on a stand just above waist-height, so it's easy to run your fingers over them to release their fragrance.  I've read that if you put a few leaves in a jar of sugar, within a few days you'll have rose-scented sugar.  Sounds lovely so long as it's not too strong.  I'd always wondered about rose-flavored foods and have recently tried a couple that I didn't like much because the flavor was too intense, like when people wear too much or too heavy a rose perfume (though just enough is delightful).  I do like rosehips, though, rosehip tea, rosehip jelly, but those are from the fruits, not the flower petals.

And this quick watercolor pencil sketch is of the white petunias I recently planted around some taller plants in half wine barrels, a sort of living mulch that also adds color.  I did that last year too, and so although this year I only bought white petunias, I also have a healthy crop of lavender and purple ones that reseeded themselves.  That's always a welcome surprise!

Spring, Winter, Summer, Spring

It was snowing on Thursday night as we drove into Prescott, Arizona; the brief storm deposited about an inch of fluffy crystals on the town.  After checking into the Hotel Vendome (built in 1907), where we had a lovely corner room at the back of the second floor, we went out for a short walk around the historic downtown.

Prescott was Arizona’s territorial capital and is proud of its history.  The town is built around a central plaza, site of the old courthouse and of many community events.

The pinkish-amber glow of the streetlights made photography problematic, but it was wonderful to be out in the crisp, cold air after the snowfall.  The moon was waxing (it will be full tomorrow) and its cool glow added to the overall effect.

Next morning there was still a little snow, but it didn’t last long.  Spring was well underway before the snowstorm, with ornamental fruit trees in bloom along the sidewalks, highlighted with icy crystals for just a couple of hours early in the day.

     I was there for the spring colloquium at Prescott College, where one of my students was presenting her master’s thesis.  Prescott College is a small liberal arts school with a strong commitment to the environment and social justice which is reflected in the physical campus itself as well as in the work done by its students and faculty.  It offers both residential and distance learning; I had never actually been to the campus before.
      What one first sees from the street is unprepossessing—a series of small, low buildings that appear to have been converted from other uses—but the central core of this very small campus is more interesting.  The two main buildings—the library and student center (with classrooms, meeting rooms, food service, etc.)—face each other over a xeriscaped courtyard, all of  it above a small creek, Butte Creek, that is the focus of a restoration project by the college and its neighbors.

     Here you can see terraces built to prevent erosion and also to hold organic gardens. Like the courtyard walls, these are constructed from slabs of recycled concrete that might otherwise have gone into landfills.  In addition to being functional, they also look great.

 This little crossing is made entirely of recycled materials.  The sculptural quality of the handrails comes from used rebar twisted into fanciful shapes.

     The bathrooms are fantastic, the most polished parts of the campus (in every sense of the word) with walls made up of slices of rock and even little artifacts found with the rocks—note the little bottles embedded on the right side of the picture.
     Joe and I both had a good time there.  The faculty, staff, and students are all very interesting people and we attended some informative and thought-provoking presentations, including one by a professor on the tradition of sacred trees in Norway and Sweden.  And my student did a fine job with her thesis presentation. 
     On Sunday morning we headed home, but with a stop in Scottsdale for a long and long-overdue visit with one of my old friends (we're not old, of course, but we first met the summer before third grade!).  What a lovely way to end our trip! It was nice to cool off in mile-high Prescott before returning to the low desert, where the temperature is predicted to reach 90 in Tucson today (for the first time this year), followed by a roller coaster weather ride the next few days—we’ll soon be back down in the 70s.  As this weekend illustrates, weatherwise—and in other ways, the Southwest can be a land of extremes.

Seasons, Turnips, the Zen of Picking Peas, and Love

    The season is changing rather suddenly from spring to what in most places would be thought of as summer – but here in the Sonoran desert we know better. Summer will come in like a dragon soon enough, breathing fire and making the air shimmer with the heat. We’re still enjoying relatively mild weather in the high 80s, and the garden’s been telling us it’s time to shift gears.  The Swiss chard will last through summer, as long as we keep it picked and watered, but most of the greens are finished and gone, as are the turnips that furnished us with delicious greens as well as lovely purple-topped white globes.  These are the last of them.  Next year I may plant twice as many.

    The snow peas are still going strong.  I froze a large batch last weekend and will do so again in a few days.  They have to be picked daily—it’s best to do it in the morning (it’s best to pick everything in the morning), and it’s not necessarily easy.  The pea pods are pretty much the same color as the vines and leaves, so they’re hard to see, and it seems like the harder you look, the more difficult it is to find them.  You have to look from different angles; when you think you’ve got everything in a certain section, take a few steps to one side, look again, and you’ll probably find more.  You need to get up close, but you also need to stand back and relax  your eyes.  Then you’re more likely to spot them—when you’re not really looking, when you go into a meditative state that lets you slow down and appreciate the plant as a whole, but without sharp, acquisitive staring. Then they become visible, light shining through them as through stained glass, and you wonder why you didn’t see them before.

    Growing and picking any kind of peas is not for the greedy or impatient; it is an exercise in sublimating greed and impatience for something quieter, softer, more beautiful.  It’s a little bit like looking for love, which is a lot more likely to show up when you stop pursuing it and focus on appreciating what you already have—like gardens and sunsets and mystery novels and zydeco music, or whatever it is you already love—and it often shows up in the form of someone who’s likely to appreciate those same things with you.

    So here we are, enjoying what’s left of spring and anticipating summer.  Joe needs to get the cooler going, but not today. We have fans that will meet our needs for a little while longer.  I’ve planted the squash and pumpkins—it’s hard to imagine those little seedlings will soon turn into ill-mannered vegetable hooligans who'll muscle their way past the pathetic boundaries we try to impose on them.  They take up far too much room, but we forgive them because we love the gifts they bear. For now, I get up a little earlier to make sure I can pick the day’s crop of snow peas before I go to work, and I try to slow down and breathe softly as I do so. And with every pale emerald pod that I drop into the basket, every green half-moon with its tiny row of jewels running down the inside, I feel profoundly grateful.

Flowers everywhere

Every morning Joe and I get off the bus on the south side of Speedway and walk north through the underpass that links the University of Arizona arts complex to the McClelland Building that houses the business department (our offices are in buildings nearby and far less grand), and for the last two weeks, when we come out of the underpass, we’re hit with a rush of intoxicating fragrance from the blooming acacia trees that makes me forget, at least for a moment, that I’m on my way to a long day of work—mostly rewarding, sometimes frustrating, but work nonetheless.  The high winds of the last couple of days have shorn the acacias of many of their blossoms, but this picture shows how they can touch even the plainest, most functional building (in this case a parking garage) with a loveliness made even more precious because it is ephemeral.

     Part of the east wall of that same garage is blanketed in yellow and white Tombstone roses, known outside Arizona as the Lady Banks rose.  They’re tough and hardy as well as lush and gorgeous, thriving in our heat and, unlike so many other plants that grow in the desert, devoid of thorns.  I haven’t planted any in our yard because I haven’t decided on the right spot yet, but I will.  Maybe not this year, though.  It’s getting late to plant roses.
     Some of you may remember the song from the ‘60s that contained the lines “Flowers in her hair / Flowers everywhere / I love the flower girl . . . “  Well, it’s like that in Tucson now.  The sour orange trees, common landscape plants here, are so heavy with blossoms you could almost get drunk on the fragrance, and total strangers stop to marvel together at the pure sensual pleasure of the experience. No, we don't actually call it that (at least not when we're speaking to strangers). It's usually something more like "Aren't the blossoms beautiful?" or "Doesn't that smell amazing?" But the effect on us is much more visceral and intense than such mundane language can express. 
     On our patio at home, the Meyer lemon I bought two years ago, that had one blossom when I bought it and produced none at all last year, is so loaded with buds and blooms I think I may have to prop up the branches.  It’s in a half wine barrel right by the kitchen door, and a rose geranium stands on the other side of that door, so there’s always something sweet-smelling as we go in or out.

     This year I got totally carried away planting nasturtiums.  We have the long vining type on a trellis at the back of one of the vegetable beds, several plants that have gotten much bigger than the package promised in one of the herb beds, pushing up against the chamomile at one end and the pineapple sage at the other, and a big round cluster of several plants of the Cherry Belle variety in the red quadrant of the Medicine Wheel garden.  When Deirdre and the boys were down during spring break, she and I taste-tested them (I love their peppery taste in salads, to look at and to eat) with the boys.  Isaiah, who’s going on eleven, is becoming a more adventurous eater and liked them, while Eli, who’s five, made a face and spit his out.

I remember seeing, in a magazine, chopped nasturtium petals in egg salad, very pretty and, I imagine, very tasty.  Think I’ll give that a try this weekend.

Welcoming Spring

     We’re currently on spring break at the university, and as much as I’d like to hang onto what passes for winter here in the Sonoran desert, spring indeed appears to be upon us, both by the calendar and with the glorious weather we’ve been enjoying the last several days.  I hope for a few more rains, though, to encourage more wildflowers.  California poppies and African daisies have exploded along the roadsides, the cassias have turned into huge fluffy bubbles of yellow blossoms, and the hummingbirds in the backyard must be deliriously happy with all the Mexican honeysuckle and zauschneria.  The nasturtiums are also leaping into bloom, and the yarrow I transplanted last year, that disappointed me for months, has come into its own and seems ready to burst into bloom soon as wel. 
     It’s been a busier break than we’d planned, though I’m glad to have had the time to handle some unforeseen obligations, even though it’s meant sacrificing the days of relaxation I’d been hoping for. But yesterday we left all that behind, and our little garden as well, for a hike with friends in nature’s much larger garden.

     The Wild Burro Trail winds into a canyon north of Tucson, following a wide wash through that part of the Tortolita Mountains.  It’s classic southwest desert, and a good place to show non-desert dwellers how full of life the desert really is, especially after a series of rains that have left it greener than usual.  Unfortunately, a large new Ritz Carlton resort recently opened alongside the early stretch of the trail – my apologies to anyone who thinks I’m mad to suggest a downside to such development.  Fortunately, it’s possible to pretend it’s not there, if you can manage to avoid looking left while walking the few hundred feet it takes to put it behind you.
    The Wild Burro appears to stick to flat ground, but we didn’t stick to it.  At an intersection Rie pulled out her map and we decided to take a loop hike on the Lower Javelina Trail.  We discovered that the word “lower” in that name is misleading, as we climbed higher into the rocks, and then climbed some more.  At some point we decided it would be farther to turn around and retrace our steps, so we followed in the steps of Samuel Beckett’s character – maybe it’s Malone - who says, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And it was just fine.  Rie and I went ahead; the men lagged behind, no doubt discussing weighty matters, and after a couple of false hopes were dashed, we finally got to a high point and then started down, just at the moment when our knees were letting us know they hadn’t had a vote on which trail to take.

    We took a "scenic" route driving back, past lots of new construction and locked gates, to our friends’ much lovelier and more welcoming home in a non-gated community, where we lunched on excellent homemade black bean soup and salad. Keith and Rie’s yard is a lovely example of xeriscaping – I wish I’d taken pictures there.  We exchanged a few books (we're all voracious readers) and made plans for another low-elevation morning hike and lunch in three weeks, before the hot breath of encroaching summer forces us up into the mountains (where today we can still see a little bit of snow clinging to the highest peaks!).