Spring Garden 2010

Spring arrived in El Paso and the garden beckoned once again. We spent part of our Spring Break week getting everything into the ground. Albert broke up the plot by himself because of my crazy schedule and workload but we both got our hands dirty planting seeds and slips. I'm not at all sure that we saved any money on groceries last summer but I have to say there is something quite satisfying about stepping out the back door and picking your own tomatoes or spinach. No question that we are pesticide and noxious chemical free


We are letting a gorgeous bok choy flower and go to seed, hoping to salvage its seeds to replant. The parsley came back nicely as did some of the other herbs. Sage didn't make it through the winter nor did the basils. El Paso's harsh summer sun coupled with unpredictable winters sometimes just wipes out plants we thought would make it. Gardening in the Southwest is completely different from what I knew as a farm child. We don't bother with planting runner beans to climb up corn, my job when I was little. Corn is dirt cheap here and just not worth the water or the space. This year Albert had the idea to siphon water from the fish pond for a little extra fertilize emulsion. The pond gets fresh water and the garden stays moist. Daily we watch over our eggplant, lettuce, garlic, tomatoes and peppers. The beans and zucchini are just beginning to peek out of the starter pots. Every season becomes a new experiment.

Best of all, the mockingbird returned. The day after we planted everything, he was high in the tree singing every song he knew with such joyous abandon. It almost seemed that he was thrilled to see our garden and us digging and messing around in the yard. Come to think of it, having the garden probably does supply a few more bugs, grubs, worms and such for his family's snacks so maybe his joy was sincere. I stood in the backyard watching and listening and finally chirping back at him just to have something to contribute to the conversation.



Fannie the Wonder Dog does not understand our fascination with playing in the dirt but she happily keeps us company and enjoys the mockingbird who sings for all of us.

The Garden – Part 8

Unbelievable! We have actually had our first harvest from our garden. The spinach seedlings are growing quite well. We did not want to hinder their growth in any way, but with scissors in hand, we snipped the most substantial leaves off and enjoyed them in a lovely omelet. The tomato plants are flowering. The beets are more than two inches tall and the beans!! Well, the beans are stretching up and out. Almost all of them germinated and it looks like we’ll be harvesting beans some weeks later this summer. I cannot believe that we didn’t try this before. It is fascinating every day to see what has grown. What is bizarre is that there are changes from the morning to the afternoon. A plant with unfurled leaves at sunrise, by the time I come home from work has popped open and its double leaves are stiff and sturdy. Soon we’ll have to start thinning the beets. We sowed the seeds down the rows and they are so thick that we must choose which ones to pick for the salad to let the other have a larger measure of soil, water and sun. Perhaps it is a bit like fertility treatments where some are chosen and some are sacrificed. The zucchini has sprouted and is crowding out of its tiny flat of six compartments. It’s another one that we didn’t really believe in and now we have to decide where in the yard to plant what will become sprawling vines. Maybe Fanny the Wonder Dog will have some of the garden intruding on her space. There is no more room within our little fenced confined space. Everything we planted is there growing strong and tall. Years ago in Iowa I used to plant what I called my gazpacho garden. It had tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers and fresh parsley. It didn’t seem to matter if I had to shop at the local grocer as long as I knew those were available to me outside my door. There is something comforting and strengthening in successfully growing your own food. Mmmm. Next year we’re thinking, maybe the front yard too?

April 7, 2009

The Garden – Part 7

March 15, 2009 - The garden is truly ours now. The ground was warm, it was a beautiful afternoon and we decided to plant. All four of us were out there getting dirty. It was a wonderful productive afternoon. We had hot black compost from the bin and our piles of fresh wood chippings to tuck the garden in. Although I have seen it happen all of my life, it is always a miracle, a thing of wonder to me, to see seeds actually sprouting up from the soil. I plant, I water and I wait. But I have such a hard time believing there will really be a plant appearing from that tiny insignificant seed.

We planted rows of bush beans. One garden supplier has gotten clever and has packaged smaller amounts of different varieties of seeds for the “backyard gardener.” That’s us. The Obamas and the Stover/Wongs will have our harvest in somewhere between 60 to 90 days. We hope. There are beets, spinach for now. Chives and marigolds for fun and for natural bug control. My neighbor shoved some garlic cloves down and is asking to plant carrots and celery. We bought some tomato plants since they take forever from seeds and they help make it look like a real garden. There is a glorious pineapple sage that I could not resist. It sits regally above the scrawny tomato plants

March 22, 2009 -- When I wrote most of the above, we had spent two days playing at being gardeners. Albert got ambitious and cut up scrap lumber to build a rough fence because Fanny the Wonder Dog is indeed fascinated by the garden. She pulled up and ate the first plant that Albert put in the ground. Now she can look but no nibbling, no digging. She hangs out with us and wonders what the heck is keeping us so occupied but she’s thrilled that we’re all playing in the dirt together. The miracle has happened. The beet seeds that are the size of sand or coarsely ground pepper have sent up their flags of life. Crowds of little two-leaved seedlings are poking out around the soaker hose which also marks the rows. Biology is amazing. I still cannot believe that a real plant with a fat red beet at the bottom of it can possibly come from a piece of grit but there they are.

March 24, 2009 -- Even though germination is supposed to take 10 -12 days, I still am the great doubter. The beans have appeared today. Not all of them but a fat coil with flat leaves is curling up as though fighting its way out of the ground. There were four different varieties of bush beans all mixed together so I guess this really will be pot luck, but one variety seems to be getting a head start on the others. This afternoon there were even more. And the spinach is appearing now. Unbelievable. We really are urban gardeners. We have a garden. Things are growing!

The Garden – Part 6

February 28, 2009

What a grand adventure today! We’ve been budgeting for the garden along with all the unexpected house disasters that can befall an almost 80 year old house. One of the items on the have-to-have list is mulch. Mulch is a requirement for a desert garden to succeed. There is so little moisture in the summer and the sun bakes down so hot, that delicate plants can shrivel into nothing. A thick blanket of mulch helps hold the moisture next to the roots where it’s needed, it keeps the soil a cooler temperature and thankfully it blocks the weeds from taking over the garden. Today we heard the distinctive grinding sound of a wood chipper. Across the street, our neighbors had hired someone to take out a tree and cut some dead branches. The workers were stuffing the branches into the chipper turning them into wonderful desirable wood chips. Albert went across the street and asked what they planned to do with the chips and they replied that they would be taking them to the dump. With a little negotiation and ten bucks, they agreed to bring the chips over to our house. We organized a fire brigade of every trash can we could find; handing the can up to the man who shoveled the chips into the can then hefted it over the side. My son and his girlfriend helped and within less than twenty minutes, we had little pale brown mounds of mulch all over the backyard. They will go on the garden after the plants are visible. We’ll tuck in every plant. Right now there is a gentle warmth issuing off the piles of chips, a reminder of nature at work. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Wood chips to my garden to help make food to feed us this year. In “The Gifts,” Richard K. Nelson spoke of his son being, “joyous and alive” a “boy made of deer.” We will be a joyous family made of wood chips and earth from our back yard garden.

The Garden – Part 5

February 23, 2009

The garden is a cacophony of sound today. The sun is shining and there is a slight breeze. This day is a blessing since our nights have dipped below freezing. We are still clutching our seed packets afraid they will freeze if we plant too soon. The sprinkler from next door is cheerfully watering our sidewalk. I move the clothes drying on the line away from the spray. The seed pods on the mimosa still rattle in the wind although a few have dropped off to the ground and into the pond. The branches of the chaste tree creak in the wind. They still look naked and bare with no sign of life. I anticipate the first of the purple buds that echo the color of the sunsets.

The crazy clumsy black birds that love our yard and trees are having a chat. After poring over the nature guides, I am convinced that this awkward bird must be the Chihuahua raven. Chihuahua state is our nearest neighbor in Mexico over the border. His typical call is a raucous “kraack” but today he is in a jolly mood and is going through his entire repertoire. Where has he been to learn his songs? I hear the distinctive “bob white, bob-bob white” of the quail. The “whippoorwill” is on his program today too. These are meadow birds, birds of the fields, but this urban scavenger has learned their songs and brought them to the city. I wonder what the country birds are singing these days?

The Garden – Part 4

February 16, 2009

My Uncle Tommie always planted by the moon. He kept a Farmer’s Almanac http://www.almanac.com/ I mean the old fashioned paperback kind that has been around since 1792. He also had a calendar that marked each day as to whether it was fertile and good for planting or a barren day according to the position of the planets. It marked good fishing days too and he loved to fish. Something must have worked because he was a phenomenally successful fisherman and his garden was the most prolific of anyone in the neighborhood.

This past weekend, Saturday and Sunday were both fertile days and excellent for planting. Saturday we went shopping for seeds. It is still too early and cold for any vegetable plants to be sold at the local garden shops. Shopping for seeds is an exercise in speculation and dreaming. It is so easy to be seduced by the luscious pictures on the packages. It is so tempting to over-buy because, “oh wouldn’t it be wonderful to have . . . .” Albert tried to be practical and wanted to buy seeds for vegetables that are most expensive to buy at the grocer. The problem is some of those vegetables are expensive because they are much fussier about their light, water and soil requirements. That’s why the ripe veggies rack up the bigger grocery bill. We compromised with an assortment of beans, greens, onions, beets, squash, cucumbers and herbs. All of this is a tiny plot about 6 feet by 10 feet. What were we thinking.

Sunday morning dawned sunny and beautiful with just a hint of chill in the air. That afternoon we decided to finish working the turned soil in the garden patch. By the time, we garbed ourselves in gloves, gathered shovels and rakes and actually began to work, the warming sun had crept behind the clouds. What had been a promising bright morning was now overcast and gloomy. In the desert, gloomy is not a bad thing because it is rather unusual and it means that the sun isn’t cooking the back of your neck but today is even too grey and dreary for the mockingbird to appear. Spring is so brief here in El Paso. If we don’t get the seeds planted soon, it will be far too hot for the new seedlings. They will wither and dry up in the harsh sun. So now is the time for planting. Too soon, they freeze. Too late, they cook. It is a delicate balance.

Nothing got planted on Sunday. It took us until dark to finish breaking up the hard clods of dirt and separating grass from the soil. There is an interesting thing about grass in the desert. My experience is that it grows best where you don’t want it at all. Once we start watering the new seeds, every bit of grass we don’t remove will become a plant-strangling Audrey that will choke out our delicate seedlings. The bed is soft and level now and our shoulders and backs ache with the effort. The last step will be to plant the seeds and scatter compost from the compost bin over the seeds to tuck them in. We also need to devise a way to keep Fanny, the Wonder Dog from lolling in the plant bed. Wherever we work, there she must be too. If it interesting to us, then she knows our feelings would be hurt if she doesn’t show an interest. That means a fence, or something.

The next fertile days are Thursday and Friday. Can we get everything in order by then? Next weekend are barren days. The only possible weekend is the 28th. The Farmers’ Almanac doesn’t take into account that some farmers teach for a living and have no daylight hours on weekdays for their farming. The bed is ready, the seeds are ready, the soaker hose is ready. What we need now is a good planting day, no freezing nights and some sun. And time.

The Garden – Part 3

February 8, 2009

Yesterday would have been a perfect day to work in the garden but I was incarcerated in a training meeting all day. By the time I arrived home, the sun was going down. Today, the morning started out beautifully. However, it became the kind of day that makes us hide in El Paso. By noon, the clouds were scudding across the sky. It became grey and blustery with the wind carrying dust and grit from the mountains across the border in Mexico. I had been enjoying the back yard. Today was laundry day and the t-shirts and towels were snapping over our garden plot as the wind picked up. I should have known, the animals told me. Our wolfy-looking dog was hiding in her house and there were no birds, not even our friend the mockingbird. They knew that the weather was changing. After peeling down to summer-wear, now I pull an alpaca sweater over my head before dashing out to get the laundry off the line.

So today instead of soaking up the sun in my back yard, I am gazing out the window at a gloomy day, a rarity in El Paso. We count on the bright sun so much of the year that we never seem quite prepared for the occasional rain. The bottle brush is tossing in the wind. Within a few weeks its fire-engine red blossoms will be ready to burst open. The rose leaves are appearing, the iris has returned from its brief winter sleep and the chaste trees are covered with buds. The mimosa rattles like dry bones keeping last year’s pods a little longer. The winds will eventually tear the pods away to grow little mimosas elsewhere.

The acacia tree is leafing out. We need to put a supporting strap around the multiple trunks. Last fall we had to remove a major branch that grew too heavy with the brown pods that stain our driveway. The tree was never pruned properly and now it is paying the price with unhealthy branches. Insects always find the weakest point and the tree bleeds sap where they are worrying it.

The acacia is even more tenacious than the non-native mimosa. I am always amazed at the fecundity of desert plants. The majority of my friends have one to two children, perhaps three. The acacia is prepared to spread its seed to all corners with thousands upon thousands of brown bean-like seeds. How many will actually germinate? Three or four, even one hundred are a tiny proportion to what it produces every year. I hope the wind blows to the west when it is time for the acacia to fly. The tiny seedlings are much hardier than any garden vegetable. A tiny plant only an inch above the ground requires pliers to pull up. The tenacious roots will have already dug deep seeking any moisture before the delicate lace-like leaves appear above ground.

Tonight will be cold.

The Garden - Part 2

The Garden - February 1, 2009

I came home from a long Saturday filled with a cafeteria packed with hormonally challenged tweens to find that Albert had spent the day digging up a substantial rectangle of the back yard. This January day had warmed to seventy degrees, a hint of spring coming soon. I came in the back gate and he proudly led me over to the plot. There was a soft pillow of turned earth. The grass was gone and the soil had doubled and was fluffy in volume from his work with the spade. The digging up of the plot, Albert’s removal of the grass, was a commitment. His secret surprise knowing I would come home exhausted. The tension and noise of the day lifted from me. As we stood there watching the beginning of the garden, like a gift, a mockingbird flew boldly down and began shopping for bugs or worms in the newly turned earth. He took our presence for granted as he saucily hopped about this way and that, cocking his head and flipping his tail.

The garden had suddenly become a symbol of our choice to join our lives; the mockingbird an auspicious sign for the project. He took me back to summer mornings when as a child I would wake to the male mockingbird’s entire repertoire of songs. His joyous song filled the dawn as he sang every song he knew while his little ones grew in their hickory tree nest outside my bedroom window.
In El Paso, we don’t see many mockingbirds. Starlings and doves, yes, the scourges of city life. Doves are as plentiful as pigeons in New York City and I cannot love them. Perhaps if there was a market for dove guano? They seem so dull and dense with their tiny beads for eyes. But the mockingbird returns my gaze with a lively, intelligent air as if there is a private joke between you. He has no fear of humans and takes it as his right to join you and share the moment. And we do.

The scent of the earth rises warm, strange and yet familiar. I pause a moment and ponder the sum of chemicals that may buried there. But we have let the soil rest for two and a half years and there will be compost, and mulch. And there will be mockingbirds. I watch him fly away and wonder where his nest is. It doesn’t matter. He knows where we are. He has found our garden and he will be back. He will bring his mate and later his young. Next year they will bring their young. The sun that had warmed the soil has dipped behind the house. It will be dark soon and we turn to go back into the house. We could talk about what to plant first, but we don’t. Not yet. We both savor the moment. Our decision to grow food together has become a reality. It is a beginning.

The Garden - Part 1

The Garden – January 27, 2009


Nothing quite compares to picking and eating fruits or vegetables, warm from the sun, that you have nurtured and grown with your own labor. The proponents of raw food diets must be acting from some vestigial need to forage to survive. Somewhere deep in my childhood memories, growing a garden is satisfying, sustaining and connects me to whatever tiny bit of land that is within my reach. In every place I have ever lived over eight states, from the kitchen window herbs of my first apartment to a shared backyard in Mystic while my baby was growing inside of me, I have grown some of my own food. And so in this dry, brown desert winter of this corner of the Chihuahuan desert, the idea of a proper garden in our backyard was born.

While most of the rest of the country is digging out of snow and ice, grateful for a weak winter sun, El Paso is warming fast. Although it could still freeze at night, many days warm into the upper sixties and low seventies. Dressing is an exercise in layers. Warm jacket and gloves early, turtleneck and vest in the morning then peel down to tee-shirt by early afternoon. By evening it all goes back on again. The rock wall and the house hold the afternoon sun, but the air quickly chills.

Except for the evergreens, the trees and shrubs look dead but they are resting, saving themselves for spring. Spring is an odd season in El Paso and lasts only about two weeks. There will be no sign of life in the trees and then suddenly they explode with hard little leaf buds. Days later the leaves appear, and within a couple of weeks it can be so hot that you forget that it was just winter. Students strip to tank tops and shorts and I have not yet packed away the woolen sweaters.

Growing food in the desert is not easy. It requires extensive planning and cooperation with the local climate and soil. The desert can be productive but it is not meant to be a hospitable place for humans. It is much better suited to armadillos, geckos and roadrunners. It may appear that humans have tamed the desert, but it is an illusion. As you drive through my neighborhood, you see lawns starting to green up. I see the green grass and my mind travels up the Rio Grande, up to the Elephant Butte reservoir in New Mexico and high up in the mountains near the Colorado border where drastically reduced snowfall is the source of water those greedy lawns are drinking.

Our yard is still brown and crispy from our imposed diet, about six inches natural annual rainfall supplemented by judicious sips for survival. After we bought this house two and a half years ago, we re-claimed one third of the front yard for native desert plants, called xeriscaping here. This winter we are preparing to switch the front lawn to blue grama, Bouteloua gracilis, a perennial native prairie grass. While the seeds are germinating, the lawn will luxuriate in water daily for two weeks, then begins the spartan diet for all of our front lawn. When drought comes, and it will, with its water restrictions, our desert sages will be covered with a blush of purple blooms. The penstemon will wave in the wind, while our neighbors’ lawns wither and die. Some will stealthily water illegally in the night. Our smug desert plantings will conserve their energy, folding their leaves in the night and opening wide for a hint of morning dew.

The garden will be in the back, sheltered from the intense southwestern sun which bakes the front of the property. When I look at the back yard, I don’t see the brown crunchy grass. I see lush tomato plants standing tall in their cages, towers of green beans, deep red peppers and royal purple eggplants peeping out from bushy green, playful squash curling and writhing under the chaste tree and more.

For now, the dying wintered grass is tan and ashy. I watch the movement of the sun, deciding which plants will need the morning sun, the noonday heat and the shade of the late afternoon. No random, ramshackle planting. Tall plants too close to others will cause deadly shade. Which ones need a generous drip system and which ones are better thirsty? For now we watch and consider, moving the plants from section to section in our minds. Next month we’ll plant. January is too soon but the ground is warming fast.

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xeric – adj. - (zěr'ĭk, zîr'-) adj.
characterized by, or adapted to an extremely dry habitat. xer'i·cal·ly adv., xe·ric'i·ty (zě-rĭs'ĭ-tē) n.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 27 Jan. 2009. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/xeric>
being deficient in moisture; “deserts provide xeric environments” [ant: hydric, mesic].WordNet® 3.0. Princeton University. 27 Jan. 2009. Dictionary.com. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/xeric>

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xeric - \ZEER-ik\ : characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture
Did you know? -- By the late 1800s, botanists were using the terms “xerophyte” and “xerophytic” for plants that were well adapted for survival in dry environments. But some felt the need of a more generic word that included both animals and plants. In 1926 that group proposed using “xeric” (derived from "xēros," the Greek word for “dry”) as a more generalized term for either flora or fauna. They further suggested that “xerophytic … be entirely abandoned as useless and misleading.” Not everyone liked the idea. In fact, the Ecological Society of America stated that “xeric” was “not desirable,” preferring terms such as “arid.” Others declared that “xeric” should refer only to habitats, not to organisms. Scientists used it anyway, and by the 1940s “xeric” was well documented in scientific literature.

“Xeric.” Merriam-Webster Online. Accessed on January 27, 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Dec.26.2008