Thinking About Green
I spent five years in the Charlottesville, Virginia area while my children were small and I miss the deep greens and all the trees. For the last two and a half years we were there, we were living on our own little two acres in an old farmhouse, with two huge ash tress that stood taller than our two story house. We had Queen Anne's lace growing in our yard, strawberries in the meadows around us, a small orchard, a stream at the bottom of the hill that kept a little marshy area wet, wooded areas all around. Across the road was a farmer/rancher and his wife, who had six-hundred acres. Although their children were gone, they continued to raise corn and veggies, chickens, pigs, sheep, and cows. Follow the dirt road up into the hills behind the farm and you could find the people who'd populated the area ever since it had been settled. I particularly remember one man, with his heavy Virginia hill-folk accent, who gave my eldest son a fishing pole when he was about five years old. The pole had been cut from some native sapling and was probably over seven feet long; as I'd been raised with fiberglass poles with attached reels and loops to guide the string, I wasn't at all certain how anyone managed to fish with one. Our kind neighbor offered to teach my son how to fish with the pole, but we moved away before he had a chance.
Several years ago, my younger son visited the area with his dad. The rental house in town where he'd been born was still there, but they weren't able to find the old farmhouse, due to the large subdivisions that had obliterated the countryside. I know we were just the leading edge of city folk looking for that little bit of country, who don't always know what to do with it when they find it. But, living in that old house, with unpopulated land all around us, and neighbors whose families had been there for generations, still seems so much better than the bland suburbia that is there now.
It makes me feel guilty to speak of missing the green of Virginia: as if I'm being disloyal to my current home, which I love, and to the even drier climate of El Paso where I grew up. The desert is beautiful, too. It's beauty is in open spaces and the hardiness of the plants and animals that make their home here. Right now, the saguaro cactus are hip deep in green bushes and grasses, so that the nearby hills are covered in different shades of green, the deeper olive of the saguaro contrasting with the brighter green of the bushy plants surrounding them.
We love to listen to the hooting of the owls who nest in the saguaros and the coyotes serenading the moon from the nearby patch of desert. We regularly spot roadrunners near our home and raptors of various kinds perched on telephone poles. Sometimes we spot the small, skinny desert dogs (the coyote), deer, or other desert dwellers crossing the road. Quail, doves, and other wild birds nest in the straggly trees and bushes in our yard, and pigeons have made a nest for at least the last ten years in the same small corner of the eaves of our house. For a couple of years, we've had some beautiful scarlet birds nesting in our pomegranate tree; I don't think they're cardinals, but I can never remember the name of the more common red birds than can be sited here.
We never know when we might spot a bit of desert wildlife. Last weekend, standing in front of my sons' house (which is in a fairly central part of town) with my older son and my husband, we noticed a cottontail about twenty or thirty feet down the street from us, quietly going about its business and completely unconcerned by our presence. On other occasions, approaching or standing outside the nearby community college theater, we've had to stop to let families of javelina pass by, the parents bristly and just a bit scary, as they can be aggressive if they feel threatened, and the babies just as cute as they can be. Once, a number of years ago, my younger son stepped out the front door at night, on his way to taking the trash out. Suddenly, there was a tremendous cacophonous clamor as he and the two coyotes he'd surprised all yelled in fright. (Before I could make it to the door, my son was back inside, excited and nervous, but not harmed at all.)
As a teen, I used to take a bottle of water and wander out into the El Paso desert with our beagle. Although we lived in a suburban neighborhood, we were never far from the desert. If I went one direction, I could be in the mountains, scrambling over rocks and looking back down over the city and across the Rio Grande into Mexico. If I went the other, I wandered flatter areas, with flats of packed caliche between small hills formed where clumps of creosote bush and other desert plants kept the looser soil from washing away. As I roamed, I might see desert jackrabbits, lizards, snakes, and various birds, including roadrunners. In many ways, I was very lucky, for I'd developed the habit of heading off without telling anyone where I was going (and my parents, somehow, never asked). Had I been hurt or gotten lost, or met someone dangerous, there's no telling if anyone would have thought where to look for me. I treasured those quiet wanderings and I wasn't quite sure they wouldn't have been forbidden me if I'd discussed them, but I was taking some pretty big risks. Frankly, even though I took water, it wasn't really enough.
My husband and I spent much of the morning (which was fortunately a bit cloudy) pulling "weeds" from our front yard to expose the pea gravel surface. We would much prefer to leave the plants there&emdash;to us they are simply plant life and beautiful&emdash;but there are rules and regulations about weeds that we must follow. We're going to see if we can get away with leaving a few clumps of a low-growing plant that has gray-green leaves and bright yellow flowers that look like miniature daisies. I've tried planting wildflowers before, to replace the weeds, without much success, but I think I'll try again. I picked up a packet of desert wildflowers at one of the local farmer's markets earlier this year and I'm hoping they'll be hardier than the commercially packaged desert wildflowers. This seems to be an unusually wet year, so far, so we may have better luck.
Several years ago, my younger son visited the area with his dad. The rental house in town where he'd been born was still there, but they weren't able to find the old farmhouse, due to the large subdivisions that had obliterated the countryside. I know we were just the leading edge of city folk looking for that little bit of country, who don't always know what to do with it when they find it. But, living in that old house, with unpopulated land all around us, and neighbors whose families had been there for generations, still seems so much better than the bland suburbia that is there now.
It makes me feel guilty to speak of missing the green of Virginia: as if I'm being disloyal to my current home, which I love, and to the even drier climate of El Paso where I grew up. The desert is beautiful, too. It's beauty is in open spaces and the hardiness of the plants and animals that make their home here. Right now, the saguaro cactus are hip deep in green bushes and grasses, so that the nearby hills are covered in different shades of green, the deeper olive of the saguaro contrasting with the brighter green of the bushy plants surrounding them.
We love to listen to the hooting of the owls who nest in the saguaros and the coyotes serenading the moon from the nearby patch of desert. We regularly spot roadrunners near our home and raptors of various kinds perched on telephone poles. Sometimes we spot the small, skinny desert dogs (the coyote), deer, or other desert dwellers crossing the road. Quail, doves, and other wild birds nest in the straggly trees and bushes in our yard, and pigeons have made a nest for at least the last ten years in the same small corner of the eaves of our house. For a couple of years, we've had some beautiful scarlet birds nesting in our pomegranate tree; I don't think they're cardinals, but I can never remember the name of the more common red birds than can be sited here.
We never know when we might spot a bit of desert wildlife. Last weekend, standing in front of my sons' house (which is in a fairly central part of town) with my older son and my husband, we noticed a cottontail about twenty or thirty feet down the street from us, quietly going about its business and completely unconcerned by our presence. On other occasions, approaching or standing outside the nearby community college theater, we've had to stop to let families of javelina pass by, the parents bristly and just a bit scary, as they can be aggressive if they feel threatened, and the babies just as cute as they can be. Once, a number of years ago, my younger son stepped out the front door at night, on his way to taking the trash out. Suddenly, there was a tremendous cacophonous clamor as he and the two coyotes he'd surprised all yelled in fright. (Before I could make it to the door, my son was back inside, excited and nervous, but not harmed at all.)
As a teen, I used to take a bottle of water and wander out into the El Paso desert with our beagle. Although we lived in a suburban neighborhood, we were never far from the desert. If I went one direction, I could be in the mountains, scrambling over rocks and looking back down over the city and across the Rio Grande into Mexico. If I went the other, I wandered flatter areas, with flats of packed caliche between small hills formed where clumps of creosote bush and other desert plants kept the looser soil from washing away. As I roamed, I might see desert jackrabbits, lizards, snakes, and various birds, including roadrunners. In many ways, I was very lucky, for I'd developed the habit of heading off without telling anyone where I was going (and my parents, somehow, never asked). Had I been hurt or gotten lost, or met someone dangerous, there's no telling if anyone would have thought where to look for me. I treasured those quiet wanderings and I wasn't quite sure they wouldn't have been forbidden me if I'd discussed them, but I was taking some pretty big risks. Frankly, even though I took water, it wasn't really enough.
My husband and I spent much of the morning (which was fortunately a bit cloudy) pulling "weeds" from our front yard to expose the pea gravel surface. We would much prefer to leave the plants there&emdash;to us they are simply plant life and beautiful&emdash;but there are rules and regulations about weeds that we must follow. We're going to see if we can get away with leaving a few clumps of a low-growing plant that has gray-green leaves and bright yellow flowers that look like miniature daisies. I've tried planting wildflowers before, to replace the weeds, without much success, but I think I'll try again. I picked up a packet of desert wildflowers at one of the local farmer's markets earlier this year and I'm hoping they'll be hardier than the commercially packaged desert wildflowers. This seems to be an unusually wet year, so far, so we may have better luck.