A fiesta of festivalling
- kaydee777
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
With the possibility of thunderstorms and heavy rain in the forecast, the weather is looking decidedly iffy for the outdoor print market at Southwest Print Fiesta tomorrow (Saturday) but I’m heading over the mountain and through the woods anyway.
I’ve been crazy busy filling in gaps in my stock with the latest designs, hanging them outback under stormy skies. This year it seems that monsoon season didn’t get the memo that it ends at the end of September. What’s ten days in a world gone mad? The desert earth sings when it rains. If print fiesta is a washout, so be it.
The new colours are all printed with the new designs and a whole triumph of 7 pennant flag strings have been strung. Some are rainbow colours, some not. We cater to the many mansions. In this house.
With slightly cooler weather (still in the eighties, but way cooler than it has been), the food garden is having it’s own fiesta. Daily, there’s a rainbow harvest coming into the kitchen.
There were pomegranate thinnings, spicy Asian mustard greens and Dragon Tongue beans from the front garden, on this day. All of these are destined to be gobbled up raw in a bowl made with the general formula of a grain or cereal (rice, sorghum, rye, quinoa etc), a legume, avocado, raw veggies and probably some pickles or kraut from those laden pantry shelves.
It was the name won me over. I wasn’t sure at first about the Dragon Tongue beans, thinking that with their Dutch origins, they might like gentler conditions than the Chihauhauan desert offers, but they are proving to be up to the challenge. I have become rather fond of them chopped fresh into whatever I’m eating. Sometimes they don’t even make it into the house being eaten during my garden wanderings. Foraging comes naturally to me. Family myths have me being found in the pea fields as a toddler, munching down on fresh pods, or sitting on the red earth of the vegetable garden pulling and eating carrots. The concern at that time and in that place was probably more for the ironstone earth stains on clothing than for eating mud on unwashed carrots or the notion of a toddler ranging alone and unsupervised around thousands of acres of ungated Africa.
The small Dragon Tongue patch is certainly productive, even if the plants look a little frazzled at times. I’m trying to be more attentive about directing water more regularly their way to remedy that issue. Every few days, there’s a good handful of fair sized and very pretty, at times quirky shaped pods to harvest. I have a few rows of very productive cowpeas for dried beans so these Dragon Tongues, listed in catalogues as a shelling bean, are all for fresh eating, pods and all, this year.
Coming late to the fruiting party, there are a few little Madhu Ras Thar desert honey melons (cucumus melo) swelling and yellowing. Harvest is imminent - can we get to vine ripeness before first frost - probably about three weeks to a month away?
With their Cafe Paradiso site, these 2021 Garden of Earthly Delight saved seed progeny did not get the best garden real estate in terms of fertility of soil or sun/shade aspect, but the vines give me endless delight with their sunflower climbing endeavors and twirly bits. I’m immensely proud of these babies. I have eaten one which fell from the vine, a little too early, I think. It was heavenly. Not as sweet as commercial cantaloupe (unripe?) and a perfect size for one person.
Garlic, sown a few weeks back at the equinox, is sprouting and yes, as soon as I get back from SW Print Fiesta I am going to dedicate some good hours to disciplining the grass invasion.
Pollinators are finding plenty of food in the blaze of late season flowering of cosmos, tithonia and zinnia.
I’m collecting seeds like crazy. The Bee Centered seed packets will be replenished for new season offerings.
Outback, a San Marzano tomato vine is suddenly hung with dozens of globe shaped fruit. Fingers crossed they ripen in situ, before frost comes to end the season. It’s either dried tomatoes or green tomato chutney for these, depending on first frost.
Like the tomatoes, the Sante Fe Grande guero chile peppers, the hot blondes of the outback, are also loaded right now. Guero, which means blonde, is the name used in Mexico for most yellow pepper varieties.
These are probably all going to be pickled. I grew them by mistake when I wasn’t paying attention and brought home up two incorrectly boxed plant starts from a big box store. I have decided it was a rather fortuitous accident because it introduced a new pepper variety to my food forest. Living in the Chile Capital of the World (if your license plate doesn’t say Land of Enchantment it will make this claim) there are so many pepper varietals to choose from. Though some sources seemed to think Sante Fe Grande are a mild pepper, I would put mine somewhat nearer to jalapeño than bell peppers. As I learned the first time I plucked one from the bush and bit into it. Yikes! That pepper bit back. Not everything the internet says is true.
The Fucaria Tigrina (Tiger jaws) is just coming into bloom. I changed the summer spot for this potted roommate from the old country, where it’s endemic to the area around Makhanda, and it seems way happier and healthier. I think it was was getting too hot and sunburned where I previously had it on the south facing front porch. This this year it spent the hot season in the partial (afternoon) shade of the grapevine outback. Over the years that we have been roommates, I’ve noticed that this Fucaria usually offers its festival of lights for Diwali, just around the time it must come inside for winter. Poor little tiger jaws aren’t happy in the cold winter nights here in the desert. Me neither. While I am slowly moving away from a plethora of pots in my choices for floral kingdom roommates, there are a few special ones who get to stay. For now. High maintenance doesn’t get a lot of space in my world.
After seven years, and moving into the eighth, of working with this piece of earth, I’m slowly learning from it and in the process having to let go of so much which I thought I knew about plants and gardening.
It’s a thing to do with a life.
And now to take the Dragonfly ‘home” to the place where the artist who made the original Gila National Forest dragonfly petroglyph walked. Once upon a time.
