BURNED OUT

A few weeks ago when I was all rapturous about red, when the crimson clover was flowing down the banks of our critter pad, we had are friend Theo Nestor and her boyfriend, Geof over for lunch. It was a predictably mis-predicted Sunday. The 70 degrees, the very sunshine they had promised did not appear. Actually it rained and it was cold-ish, but we ate outside anyway under an umbrella and toured our muddy 6 acres in boots. This was our spring. Always sunshine on the way, always another cloud in the way. I tried to regain my sense of wonder in these sodden days by focusing on red flowers.
But our friend Theo saw nothing but green when she was here.
As we walked her and Geof around the farm showing off our horticultural prowess Theo’s response was simply, “It’s so green!” I think she would approve an exclamation point in this case. The she repeated herself, “It’s so green!” with yet another exclamation point. And repeated it again, “It’s so green!” Stating and restating the obvious is not usually Theo’s manner. Her chant had even Michael and I seeing green for a change. We had become inured to green as it crept into our lives daily, seemingly in droplets. I took Theo’s emphatic “It’s so green!” for us to realized, yes, our world was “ So green!”
The red clover has burned out since then and the sun has returned though standing water here and there is evidence of the inordanently wet spring we’ve had.




But the green has stayed, we’re in the Evergreen State after all. So much green it is near impossible to appreciate. We needed a city person to show us how rich in green we are. The other day as the sun broke and I walked down the road I saw a rainbow and I saw it’s end. It landed in the middle of a green field. There was no pot of gold only rich lush loam with a thick pelt of green.
I have a friend who says he has golden handcuffs, a job he doesn’t love but that pays too well to quit. I can’t say I have golden handcuffs, but I certainly have green ones. I cannot stop planting. I am a slave to this compulsion I call a profession. No more so than this week in which I am feeling as burned out on gardening as the crimson clover is on red. And still there is, outside my normal 40 hour work week of gardening, hours of planting at the farm yet to do. We don’t even have the corn in yet. I know it’s late and west of the Cascades is hardly Iowa but each year I have to try. This year it is ‘Quickie’. Territorial Seed says it will have edible cobs 64 days after planting. I hope they’re better prognosticators than the meteorologists around here. I can already see the pot of water boiling on August 20th.
I don’t want to make too much of it, but why did someone have to show me green. I eat, breath and live green. I am so attached to green I can’t even see the umbilical cord. So I’m making an effort not to ignore green, no matter how many orange flowers our ‘Royal Sunset’ rose puts out this summer. No matter how many blueberries load down our bushes this year. No matter how often I look off to the mountain top to see if there is still a trace of snow. I will try my hardest not to miss all the green.



I wonder if you will too?

A SECRET

It is no secret that Washington State, famous for rain and moss draped coniferous forests, is two-thirds desert. The Cascade Range keeps all that rain close to the coast, the inland part of the state remains incredibly dry and sunny most of the time. That’s why Michael and I went there last weekend to escape the the torrential rains at home, besides the fields are so mucky we couldn’t even plant if we wanted to.

This is what we saw:

SEEING RED

The other day I was stopped at a red light, behind a red Cadillac plastered with angry bumper stickers. I seemed funny to me that the hot-headed driver would cover all that shiny candy apple enamel with what was on his mind. But people want to be heard.
Me, too.
So here I am plastering what’s on my mind on the shiny screen of your laptop.
The only thing on my mind these days is red. I love red. It’s my favorite color. Red. Since I can remember it’s been red. Certainly there’s been flirtations with yellow, then orange. I couldn’t stay far from red for long. So I’m back to red and I’m sticking to it.
Yes, I’m a hot-head, too.
And nothing gets my dander up more than the abuse of red. I mean the theft of red by the Right. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the color red represented the left, the far left. Our enemies, the commies. I had no problem with them using my favorite color for their flag because my leanings were decidedly left.
But I don’t understand when or why the Right absconded with red. I have a vague memory of Nancy Reagan appearing in red after the “Evil Empire” fell. I have a bigger and vaguer memory of it liberating red from the left and starting a fashion trend. Like the scalps of fallen settlers red became a sign of some sort of victory, the blood of our bloodless victory. I think that’s when I started wearing blue.
But I still love red. So I will try no to think about my favorite color being stolen, too much. After all, it’s a free country. And all evidence points to the fact that red belongs to no one.
Not even me, a red lover.
Not even the crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) which is possessed by red and raving swarms of bees, not hot-headed, but happy and busy.





I

TIME AND MATERIALS

“ Time waits for no one,” it is said, or at least sung.
I like to imagine Time at the bus stop, lighting one more cigarette, impatiently looking up the street for the bus which is not necessarily late but which keeps Time waiting. I guess it’s a rather grim image of Time to hold, considering I am that beleaguered bus, stuck in traffic, loaded with passengers, just ever so slightly late on all accounts.
“ But late, goddamn it. Late.”
Maybe I should imagine Time as a bookish girl at the same bus stop,reading a very thick Russian novel, lost in her reading, totally forgetting about the bus or waiting. Maybe that’s what Mick Jagger meant.
Time doesn’t wait because it don’t need to; it’s time.
It’s only me turning time into a character waiting for a bus.
Turning it into a commodity to be spent, used. Doled out for this or that. As something to run out of, or want more of.
“I wish I had more time.”
But it’s May . And I have very little time it seems. Every moment seems so preciously usable. Time has boiled down to days, hours, minutes in which to get things done.Time has become as material as the flats of annuals to be planted, the bags of fertilizer to be spread and the packets of seeds to be sown. Time is the miles travelled, the hours slept, the days worked.
It seems a bit abusive to whittle grandiose time down to packets, bags and flats. To measure it, dole it out. To slice it and dice it until there isn’t a moment to spare. It’s not Time that’s in a rush. Time’s not impatient; I am. I am always trying to be 10 steps ahead of myself. I think I need to be this time of year. But do I?
That’s why I decided to sit in my parked truck and sing:
“ Ti-i-i-ime is on my side.
Yes, it is.”

ARIZONA:CODA

Michael and I left our friends and our desert retreat behind and drove back to the hot valley of Phoenix from the northern reaches of the Sonoran desert last Monday. Some how we had a brief few hours before our take off in Phoenix. And Phoenix like London coincidentally has their botanical garden near the airport. It was hot with no cool pools to plunge into to. But we had plunged forward in time. The prickly pears that were only in green bud up north were in full bloom here and the early ephemerals were already fading under the heat of the blazing sun.



I, hopefully not erringly, have decided this must be Agave titanota, not a Sonoran native but prevalent in the Phoenix landscape. As you can see with Michael , my 6 foot 2 measuring rod that that is one impressive inflorescence.



On the Desert Wildflower Loop there was an endless number of things in bloom, as colorful as a summer garden here.



These impressively simple shade house were built for cactus. Yes, there are cactus that need shade.



Sorry I did catch the name on this cactus as beautiful in new thorn and bud as any blooming cactus.



This was the prickly pear (Opuntia phaeacantha var. discata) we only saw in bud farther north.



The hot red young thorns of an organ pipe cactus (Cereus thurberi).



The dramatically thorny diamond cholla (Opuntia ramosissima).



Few of my pictures turned out of the dramatically architectural new entry gardens at the Desert Botanical Garden, the only botanical garden in the world to be devoted solely to desert plants. Though this shot of Dale Chihuly’s glass agaves gives you an idea of what I am talking about. If you’re there don’t fail to visit this garden. It has gone through spectacular developments since I was there 15 years ago. I will not fail to visit it each time I go to Phoenix. Even if I only have a few rushed hours like we did this time.

SECRET WATERS

We were led deeper into the desert canyon. Night had fallen halfway through our hike in, a newly crescent moon had little power to dispel the deep natural darkness, far from city glow. We had meandered back and forth across the wide canyon bottom, crisscrossing the river that meandered, too, among the boulders, sand flats and rock bars.
Luckily we were being led by friends, people we trusted, who knew the place. It was their secret place. Far from civilization, a jet crossing the sky with the falling stars was forsaken and miniscule. We set up our primitive camp in the dark. Lit a fire that became our catacomb of light, ate burritos, drank whisky and smoked cigarettes. Things that friends would do on a dark night in the desert, while trying to pull constellations from the awe inspiring endlessness.
We slept like angels, or “rocks “ as one of us said the next morning.
I was the first to wake, as I often am. The sun was not yet visible but it’s light erased the stars and their encompassing blackness, brushed our camp with visibility. The air was cool so I lied in my sleeping bag, though my eyes sprung great distances, finally able to fill the darkness with information.
We were in the Sonoran desert alright, in the golden haze of brittle bush (Encelia farinosa) covering the surrounding bluffs stood emblematic saguaros (Carnegiea gigantea). The air was sweet and resinous from creosote bush (Larrea tridentata). The old stone mountains, fallen mountains, falling mountains, enfolded the river. Granite laced with quartz and mica, bubbly scoria in red and black, and slick basalt trundled down in slabs, chunks and granules.



The river formed a pea green pool before our soft sandy camp. Willows, once again verdant, leaving a wet winter and voracious floods behind them, clung to the banks at crazy angles. Willows appearing so tender against the prickly backdrop of teddy bear cholla, prickly pear and ocotillo. Out of place willows, right at home on this river bank in the depths of the desert.
I was shocked by how stark the desert isn’t.
Of course the Sonoran desert is the wettest desert on earth. And during these few precious April days we spent lolling in the chilly current or napping naked on sun warmed rocks, it was obvious.



I scribbled notes about the water, the mystery of water. Water bubbling up from hidden springs, water draining from distant snowy mountains. Water always in movement, taking as well as giving as it worked its eroding way, constantly rubbing the canyon smoother and smoother. Desert water, oases, precious water, the same element I often begrudge at home, dread even during the flood season. I will not share these notes grasping at thoughts that tried to turn up a profundity; it would destroy a secret. Besides my wonder was sun-stroked and lazy, took more pleasure in the company of friends than any earnest thinking. Took pleasure in chilly dips, and hot rocks.
Took pleasure in wildflowers...
The desert was in bloom, generously, bee-buzzingly in bloom. This, more like our summer, was someone’s spring, a desert spring warm enough for swimming and sleeping under the stars with no fear of rain or damp morning fogs. Yet absolutely and floriferously spring. Tickling both the poet and the botanist in me. I become acquisitive, need to see every flower, learn it’s name. I was happy this trip to add many new plants to my list, new genera, new species, even a new family.



Prostrate Ratany (Krameria lanceolata), not only is this a new genus for me it is also a new family of plants, the small one genus family of Krameriaceae. This genus is semi-parasitic, drawing water from the roots of other plants, a rather sinister strategy for survival in this arid ecosystem where all adaptations are about getting and conserving water.



This rambling milkweed (Sarcostemma hirtellum)was a little more familiar, I had assumed it was an Asclepias, but it is a new genus for me in the milkweed family.



I am still learning the cacti, this barrel cactus ( Ferrocactus cylindraceus) is just a juvenile about the size of a soft ball. They can reach up to 11 feet.



This strange little flower which which lure flies with a foetid sent and captures and holds them for the night to make sure they cover with pollen is Watson’s dutchmann’s pipe (Aristolochia watsonii)



One of my favorite desert succulents dudleya (Dudleya saxosa) is a variable species. This is the first time I’d seen one with pale lemon flowers with white stripes.



Bladder sage (Salazaria mexicana) is a new genus for me. You can see how it gets its name from the ballooning seed pods.



Cactus have some of the most spectacular flowers in the desert. This is the small but glorious strawberry hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus engelmannii), named not for the strawberry pink flowers but for the strawberry like sweet fruits that follow.



Prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) still waiting to bloom. I could have stayed another week, or month if necessary.



Even if the sinuous algae was beginning to choke this puddle of a river being sopped up by willows and evaporated by an ever hotter sun, I could have stayed. We all could have stayed, sleeping under the stars, finding midday shade for naps, diving into the deep cool pools and climbing out onto the hot rocks until the waters had secreted themselves again into the arid appearance of the desert.

Snowbirds

I’m off again.
To Arizona this time, with Michael.
They call us “snowbirds” there, even though we’ve seen no snow here this year.
I’m taking this opportunity to post one more photo from Elba, that reminds me a bit of snow,and of birds.



This beautiful flower is a roadside weed. I saw it on strada dei Mulini, a dirt road that leads down from Rio nell’Elba to Rio Marina. The water mills are ruins now which makes the walk rather romantic, even when alone. Of course in this altered state, first sunny day of spring, Italian ruins, I fell head over heels in love with this weed. I couldn’t even find it in any wildflower books of the island or the mediterranean. It wasn’t until I stumbled on it accidentally in an English gardening magazine touting weedy annuals for easy gardening that I found out this lacy beauty was Orlaya grandiflora, or white lace flower. With all my preoccupation with green and yellow. I was startled by the white.




I was as startled by this other weed on the mill road, Borage (Borago officinalis). I know no blue as celestial. No matter how many times I see these flowers I can’t help but stop, and I’m a hard one to stop.