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!).

The Rain in Spain - or Arizona

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree.
It falls on the umbrellas here
And on the ships at sea.

Some of my favorite nursery rhymes are those I learned as an adult, when I became a mother and allowed myself to indulge once again in childish pursuits. And a lovely wet day like today certainly tempts me to out and stomp in puddles!  The  weather prediction for today was strangely specific: rain by noon and clearing by 5:00.  The rain arrived precisely on time but hung around a couple of hours longer than expected.  We'd driven down to Tubac, about 50 miles south of Tucson, and when we started home at about 5;45, a dark curtain of rain completely obscured the hills to the north. By the time we got to Tucson (after a shopping stop halfway), the rain appeared to have just stopped; the gutters were still running.  This picture wasn't taken today, but the snow on the mountains earlier today looked just as it does here.

 

When the desert smells like rain, there's nothing that can compare.  Metaphors and similes are inadequate, flabby and weak. Still, some of us can't help trying.  This is something I wrote a couple of years ago, when a hard summer monsoon left the normally dry Santa Cruz River running  hard and muddy.  I'd forgotten about it until the recent rains and a morning spent perusing old files brought it to the surface, rather like some of the things I saw floating down the river that day.  Today's rains, and those in recent weeks, have been gentler female rains, and the gardens are appreciating them.

 AFTER THE STORM

An inch of rain has fallen since last night,
and still it falls
like silver from a jackpot. 
If I close my eyes
I smell forest
and the sea by my old home,
resin, salt, cattle in long wet grass,
and just outside the door,
buttercups up to my knees. 

Today the desert feels like that,
as if its starved soil could be rich and black,
its splintered fences  overgrown with berries.

Today the river’s bleached baked channel
runs full, as once it did,
when women did their washing there,
when children tumbled on its banks
and startled silver minnows in the rushes,
before clumsy upstart cities
sucked up the water,
before freeways,
when there was no sound
save for the sighing river,
women’s voices,
children’s laughter,
warm soft winds in trees and rushes,
the short sudden flutter of wings
and the burbling call of quail.

 

This is what I saw from my backyard about a week ago, a pale rainbow in a still-gray sky, fences dark, soaked with rain, desert trees with just a few leaves from last fall and new leaf bumps ready to pop out in spring green.  And then I looked down and saw the pot of gold not quite at the end of the rainbow.

 

These cheddar cauliflower heads are twice as big now; I plan to harvest the biggest one sometime this week. I've never grown cauliflower before, but its cousins--kale, bok choy, broccoli rabe--have all done well so this year I got brave, and it seems to have paid off.  We'll get about 6 heads from the 25 seeds in the packet, enough to claim success, I think. Certainly enough to try again next year.

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.

The Silent Woman

Being "a little under the weather" on New Year's Day has now stretched out to a week.  Sore throat and no voice, but aside from some tiredness, I feel okay.  No fever or flu symptoms or anything like that.  I did make a big mistake by continuing to talk, but I had a good reason--a friend out from New England. We're only able to get together once a year or so, and since I wasn't contagious I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  And what do friends do?  They talk - and talk - and talk.  By the time she left I'd really done a number on my vocal cords so now I'm following the orders a laryngologist gave another friend and not talking or even whispering at all.  I write notes if I can't make myself understood with sign language and Joe gave me a whistle for when I need him and he's in another room.
       The quiet is really rather nice.  Restful, conducive to meditation.  It's just the two of us here, now that all the holiday visitors are gone, and my silence  has led Joe to whisper when he speaks to me. It reminds me of when my daughter was in kindergarten.  She had a lovely young teacher, Miss Booth, who spoke very softly, so all the children tended to speak softly too, and her classroom was a peaceful, happy place.
      My temporary silence feels rather liberating, perhaps because I know it's temporary, and so I am savoring it, but silence, both literal and figurative, is not a respite for many others who suffer an enforced silence to which they can see no end.  A few days before Christmas we were at the market and on the way out a young man stopped me and handed me a sheet of note paper laminated in plastic.  On it he had written his story, which began with these words: "Please read this.  I cannot speak."  He had printed it out, laboriously, to make sure it was legible, and what he wrote seemed factual, not filled with overly emotional language, and all the more powerful for the writer's restraint.  His muteness (he was not deaf) is due to a physical condition; his landlord sold the building and the tenants were forced to move; and like another 85,000 people in this country last month, he'd lost his job.  It sounds melodramatic and made up, perhaps, but somehow I believed him.  I read it all the way through--he'd written on both sides of the paper--and looked up to see tears running down his cheeks.  He seemed ashamed.  I gave him some money--I wished I could have given more.  When I got to my car I looked back.  He was trying to show his paper to another shopper who shook his head and walked away, just as I have said "I'm sorry," and walked away from panhandlers.  But those other panhandlers, beggars, people in need--whether they needed food or shelter or booze or drugs or whatever they wanted the money for--had voices.  They could get another person's attention, even if only for the seconds it took that person to process the situation and reject them.  To be voiceless is, for the most part, to be invisible.

       Women, of course, have been effectively silenced by various societies for centuries, and still are in many places.  The famous tavern sign may be a source of amusement today, but a few decades ago the women's movement pointed it out as symbolic of an attitude that supported repression. Whole populations, no matter how loudly they weep and wail at home, go unheard by most of the world today.  During the years of genocide in Rwanda, for example, almost none of my students at the university even knew that nation existed, much less what was going on there.  More recently, in the context of teaching how to construct an argument, one of my classes was discussing the local issue of whether water tanks should be left in the desert to try to prevent the deaths of illegal border crossers, another group of people who seem to have no voice, at least no voice that anyone listens to, either in their own country or in ours. A young woman sitting right in front of where I was standing started to pass a note to her neighbor but I intercepted it.  It read simply "Let them die."  I kept silent then because I didn't trust myself to control my reaction.
        Silence can give one time to think.  A character in a film I saw recently said that things become clear in the quiet. If my silence was permanent, I know it would become a burden, but right now I treasure it.  I don't want to turn on the TV or radio.  I even appreciate this brief vacation from conversation, or perhaps from having to contribute to conversation.  I can listen more carefully because I am relieved of the responsibility to reply.  And yet I know that people have the responsibility to reply to others, and that to reply responsibly, first we have to listen, even to those who seem to be silent.