Autumn gold: an interlude of domesticity

Ganesha, Guardian of the Garden has been put on surveillance duty, counting out the gold.

There haven’t been any especially colorful autumn forest bathing adventures this year. The warmth/tardiness of frost, which I and a whole host of butterflies are thoroughly enjoying, has messed with the potential for much colour drama in the leaf department. Besides, I’ve been held captive by the busyness of Doing Important (and sometimes not so important) Stuff at home. The Garden of Earthly Delights has, however offered some little patches of compensatory neon brilliance, mostly in the yellow green and gold ranges.

Pomegranates are growing now into the satisfying hedge I imagined, seven years ago, when first they were invited to come share the land with me. This week, their autumn golden glory foregrounds Turtleback Mountain made Pierneef palette rosy by last rays of the sun. Does anyone besides me know, remember or care about Pierneef landscapes any more? Just look at that mountain!

Making the most of the apricity of a recent sun warmed afternoon, I potter in the south western sector, admiring the kale, collards and cilantro seedlings, planting barley and radishes, spreading hand chopped cornstalk mulch, . At least some good will come from the failed attempt at mielies this summer.

The radish seeds were purchased for a rather unsuccessful spring planting. I envisioned bunches of glistening globes on my farmers market table. In reality, aside from a few I munched fresh pulled, the spring radish farming venture only earned me one chocolate croissant in barter. Temperatures got hot really quickly. Or something. I’m attempting a different end of cool season planting. Hoping for a harvest the week before Christmas.

I’m realizing that the starting point for me in a garden is often really insubstantial: impulse woven from fragile threads of imagination and hope. Being still enough, patient enough to receive guidance and feedback while simultaneously knowing when to fold or when to play the card that’s dealt. Then sometimes I look up and find myself looking at a composition of line, shape, form and colour totally unexpected.

A piece of garden viewed from inside out: what I see from my yoga mat inside the shala. All that’s lacking is a Nieubethesda Owl House owl.

With last cool season’s reasonably successful cereal rye, I thought to add barley to this adventure in nutritional semi self sufficiency. I’m looking to grow more of my own grains to augment my staple of rice, which I have neither the space nor water resources to grow myself. Sorghum has been a summer achievement, in spite of the challenge of greedy avian roommates competing with me to assess harvest readiness. Winter grain crops have especial appeal as they can occupy garden space not being used for any other food production during that season.

Every year that I tend this piece of earth, I learn more about the differences in seasons and what they mean in terms of dormancy or growth. Seed packet notes and online resources, the climate data and planting guides, charts and tables are only a starting point. The direct experience of watching the light changing every day on this particular piece of land, exploring its shadows and sunspots, aridity, shelter and exposure, teaches me so much.

Garlic is coming on healthily in three different places since I gave up trying to sell it and put in into the ground instead. There’s currently an excess of delicious, slightly spicy Asian greens, probably mizuna and mustards various (I got my saved seeds a bit muddled) with some arugula interspersed. The unseasonable warmth still has a few mosquitoes after my blood, and the bounty of late season butterflies mean more eggs and more caterpillars to compete with me for these greens this year. Though I dread it, a bit of frost does bring a healthy balance.

Somebody is also chomping down on the fava beans which had excellent germination. I suspect locusts. Sigh. Birds! Where are you when I need you to be insectivorous? It could, however, be cottontails who are feasting on the favas. I see a lot of them when I’m wandering at dawn in the arroyos a few blocks west, but suspect (hope) the proliferation of yappy dogs in the human development between are a deterrent. My fence is certainly not rabbit proof.

Outback, Foxy Ferox the maybe aloe ferox didn’t learn from last year, and is once again putting up a flower spike just as we tumble towards the red line on the thermometer beyond which there be dragons and ice maidens. Of course I’m going to once again rig up wire cage structures and blankets around this frost sensitive babe for those nights when temperatures promise to plummet. Both Foxy Ferox and I struggle with the chill of Chihuahuan desert midwinter nights. Apparently I am in the coldest of the North American deserts. Nighttime lows, that is. Brrrrr…but the brevity of the cool season and year round quality of light makes it worth it. And I do have a lot of blankets.

I survived the Great Turkey Massacre by inventing a vegan (incidentally gluten free) mushroom and cabbage quiche or frittata. It’s basically a crustless baked vegetable pie with mashed tofu and chickpea flour batter binding and giving body, instead of egg. The tofu might be optional and any vegetables will probably work. I used what I had on hand: onions, garlic, a few little, late season chilies, green cabbage finely chopped and mushrooms, topped with the last of the season’s home grown grape tomatoes.

Fearing they might freeze, I stripped all the tomato and guero chile plants one afternoon recently. It didn’t frost that night, in my garden anyway. Meteorologists who issue freeze warnings get things wrong sometimes too. Oh well.

This blog, besides being a record of kissing the joy as it flies** in a life of quiet obscurity, is mostly a garden journal: a record of the conversation with elemental things.

In an effort to understand recent unusual activity on this blog, I’ve been wandering back through more than seven years of words, photos and notes. While I still don’t know who or what is crawling somewhat creepily, stalking even, through my words and pictures, the gift of that intrusion is that I see how much I and this little patch of Chihauhauan desert are now in an almost totally different place from back there, then: physically, philosophically, aesthetically, elementally.

A wasteland of goats heads thorns (Tribulus terrestris) and dust has been transmuted.

An alchemy has happened.

Mutability is the milagro.

May all beings live in eternity’s sunrise**

We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable.'

We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible.'

We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.'

With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description;

and hence we blend them together and obtain The One.

Chapter 14 of Tao Teh Ching

**These words adapted from Eternity by William Blake (1757-1827)

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise