Springtime in the Desert

Apparently, my phone can take panoramic pictures.

This allows me to show off my bluebells.  These are not weeds, TBG's protests to the contrary.  A weed is a plant in the wrong place.  These, while not intentional, are not weeds.  These babies have seed packets you can buy in the store.  Fortunately for my garden spending, my bluebells were naturally seeded by the members of the animal kingdom who pollinate and defecate in my yard. 

The yellow flowers are brittle bush, and are also volunteers, deposited not always where I'd choose but appreciated none the less.

I spent the day in the garden out back, pulling out the rose bush remains that perished when the irrigation system crapped out last summer.  There was no there there anymore; my foot kicked out the stumps with ease.  The face lift was noticeable, but there was more to be done.  

I replanted the not-hanging-but-standing-on-a-post basket with the remains of other failed containers.  I examined the sticky little bugs I found attached to and crawling on an irrigation nozzle; I'll bag it and take it in to the master gardeners tomorrow for diagnosis and treatment.  I cleaned off the pretty metal rack that holds the I-can-live-outdoors tools and swept the potting shed floor clean.  

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll plant the roses in the front and ask Mr. 21 to come over and dig me a hole for the rose tree in the back.  I tried to dig it myself; I gave up almost immediately.  

I may even finish the cacti-and-succulents-in-pots situation I'm trying to create at our front door.  I've had the tools and the soil out there for months, without the urge to complete the job. But it's been high in the upper 60's and sunny here and these are them weeks we cherish.  I can be outside and do whatever I want to do at any time of the day, wearing shorts and a long sleeve shirt to protect my arms from the sun and the prickers as I clip and dig and get soil under my still perfect manicure.

We've had a lot of visitors, sharing the bounty.  Look who showed up this morning.

Dealing With a Fallen Saguaro

It must be noted that there are very strict rules about what one can do with a saguaro.  They only sprout arms after 75 or 100 years of growth.  This is what the healthy insides look like.

This is what the dead parts of the inside look like. 

Once the knob calcified around to the juncture with the healthy arm (see above) the whole thing detached itself and landed on my driveway.  It took The HandyMan heavy work gloves, straps rated to 1000 pounds (the 500 pound ones failed), and all his superhuman-since-his-car-accident strength to maneuver it into place.  

This is at the end of what we were dealing with.

It was gooey.  It was sticky.  It was firmly attached. And it stank.  Not just smelled bad.  It stank.  Plus, it left little pieces of thick goo and a rancid looking and stinking streak up the middle of the driveway.  It's too far from the hose bibs to be sprayed away.  We laughed at each other as we said, with ironic synchronicity, Rain will wash it away.

I walked behind as The HandyMan dragged the carcass behind his not-very-fuel-efficient-but-fits-his-needs-perfectly shiny new black truck.

Bear witness to the failure of the 500 pound test strap's failure.  

This video is quiet enough for work.

There is video of the perilous left turn and our general dissatisfaction with the awkward placement of my landscaping.  There was no great place to offload the thing. Rolling it was not an option - the arm that managed to remain attached was in the way.  There was no way for the truck to maneuver it from the road to the front yard and leave unscathed.

Remember that inhuman strength? Remember the frayed 500 test strap?  That piece of the saguaro weighed at least 600 pounds and he's dragging it through pebbles that do not want to join the fun.

Is it exactly where I want it to live?  Probably not.  But that's as far as it was going and that was that.  The Yard Guys are coming soon; by then I should have a plan.  

For now, I'll hope that these clouds and this wind brings some rain.  That stain is really annoying.

The Yellow Season

It starts out slowly.

The Mexican Bird of Paradis decided to join the party for the first time (in 15 years).

She's still a little shy, taking it slowly, too.

The yucca have no problem announcing their presence,

nor do the mature agave.

This was the most mature pup I transplanted during last winter's rains.

The smaller ones have yet to settle in enough to bloom.

I've highlighted them for your ease of viewing.

Even the transplant is sending off pups (the arrow at the bottom of the plant).  I will have plenty to share; all you have to do is ask.

This is the original mama plant.

She's showing off with two flowering stems.  

Then there are the Engleman's prickly pear paddle cacti,

whose flowers start out like this

and end up like this.

That's a golden barrel cactus on the left.

When it all comes together, it's really quite marvelous.

I admit that I'm hiding from current events. I'm much happier thinking about the flora than about the Supreme Court. I'm trying to ignore the fact that a former President of the United States is on trial for rape, nor am I allowing my brain to wonder whether Trump or Bill Clinton or John Kennedy was the worst sexual predator to occupy the Oval Office.... and then there's the whole Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson situation.

 

That's a rabbit hole with no obvious exit.

There will be more pictures of flowers tomorrow.  It's that or ponder the fact that Joe Biden is old.

Weeds?

I can certainly see why you'd say the were weeds.

Scruffy doesn't even come close to how unkempt it looked.

But the flowers are beautiful

                                        

and delicious

But when it's cleaned up

I think it looks more like a flowering meadow. 

It's Raining, It's Pouring

and strangely, neither the old man nor the old woman are snoring.  We are both surprisingly productive.

The rain has been steady, without a lot of bluster.  Usually cloudy days make me sad; somehow, this rain has been different.  

It shows up at the oddest times.  5:30 in the morning, when even the sun knows better than to disturb my sleep.   10:30 at night, after a beautiful, clear, blue sky, sunny Arizona day, just when we walked outside to prowl the property before bed.  From 8 to 11am,  just enough to thwart any hope I might have had of going to Grandma's Garden.

The plants are delighted. During a dry spell, I walked up one street and down another in our neighborhood,  amazed at how healthy everything looked.  That prompted me to walk past my yard a few times, casting a critical eye on what it was now possible for me to do without pain.  I drew X's where things needed to go, knowing that I would enjoy trying to remember exactly the right plant to be placed there without leaving myself a note.  

And I was right.  

There was sunshine enough to dig in the dirt, which, softened by the incessant and persistent and most of all steady rainfall, was delightfully decadent to dig through.  Granted, there were large stones and pebbles and lots of grit in my trowel, but I was transplanting flora which had proven their ability to survive, if not thrive, in that exact same soil.  

I dug away, with abandon.  The yellow Mexican Bird of Paradise has been the same size since it was planted in the ought's; it gave up its residence without much of a struggle and looks pretty happy outside my office window in its new home, under a volunteer palo verde.  

I dug out stumps of barrel cacti gone bad, toppling over from geocentrism and an inability for their roots to keep up with their lean.  I suppose I could get Not-Kathy to devise another sling for them.

I have empty spots due to their demise and the death of the big tree.  I also have rapidly reproducing succulents. My trowel and I disengaged pups from the mother plant

and redistributed them broadly and widely.

It wont' take long until they grow big and tall and wide, and make pups of their own to fill the field.  

I forgot how satisfying it is to dig in the dirt, and not have it fight you with every turn.  It feeds my soul.

Flowers in the Desert

They begin to close up as evening falls.

They are fecund.

And then the sun comes out, and one by one

they begin to open, exposing the pollen in all its glorious stickiness.

You can see it in the blossom lower left above.

and all over below.

These are very unfriendly plants.  Even the javelinas don't eat them.

Those curved spines are very sharp and very strong.

After all, their job is to protect beauty in the desert.  

I'd say they are doing a very good job.

Que Saguaro, Saguaro

Remember the decapitated saguaro?  It stands about 5' tall now, so taking a photo of the severed top was a challenge for me.

It's intricate and hard and crusty and spiky.

And, poking out from the pleats,

 

right at the edge of the cut, breaking the skin apart with surprising strength

some looking sadder than others

but most of them are full and thick and happy

Each one will be an arm.

This is going to be a very interesting plant.

Or, as TBG said, que saguaro, saguaro.

A Snippet of Beauty for Hump Day

 Yes, you can grow roses in the desert.

An Apology

(After an hour of frustration with Comcast, I'm finally able to post this.)

Last week I posted about the lackluster performance of my roses. I feel that I must apologize to them.

They are showing up everywhere.  They are outside our bedroom window.

They are in the front courtyard

and in the backyard

And it's not only the roses that are strutting their stuff. The lemon tree is flowering 

which is a hopeful sign that there will be Meyer lemons aplenty this summer,  and the yucca I rescued from the middle school's discard like many years ago is, for the first time, blooming. 

The soap tree blooms are now sad and dessicated, though.

I ought to remember : You can't fool with Mother Nature. She operates on her own timetable.