Antidote

This week Janis truck and I visited a nearby compost factory, or what most would refer to as a horse farm.

Under a blazing (hot even for this desert at this time of year) sun I shoveled beautiful soil enhancing nutrients into totes.

Hunter, the canine overlord supervised somewhat timidly from his allotted piece of shade.

Gordy, one of the rather well rounded factory workers, was only interested in possibility of edible opportunities, as his girth testifies. This sweet fat equine being obviously loves his food. The garden will love the end result.

Beans was full of it and waiting to be schooled in the ring. I watched a bit of his training. He has a great line in rearing, kicking and bucking. Worthy of a movie stunt horse he was. Don’t believe his butter wouldn’t melt docile looks in this picture.

The piles of horse manure around the place are big. I hardly made a dent with my one truckload.

I also scored another old iron bedstead which was just lying around at the horse farm. Not sure where exactly it will be deployed. Right now it has joined a collection of rust and desert detritus artifacts which hang around in Cafe Paradiso.

Even without this nutrient injection the garden is becoming blooming marvelous.

There are blossoms everywhere.

The kitchen window vista is currently a particular delight with purple Iris germanica (bearded iris) foregrounding a frothy Santa Rosa plum. Yes the wildlife refuge and bird resource winter dead brush undergrowth is intentional and is still there within the property boundaries. It’s a few weeks too early to clear by the calendar, but not the temperatures which are consistently ten degrees above average. This may be why the iris are blooming a month earlier that previous years.

I redistributed the purple iris last summer so now I have purple blooms at the south front porch, on the west side as well as the outback. All are just beginning to bud and bloom.

Almost every way I look outside from inside I currently can see purple iris flowers. They obviously like it here.

Eruca sativa (rocket or arugula) and spicy Asian winter greens (I’ve gotten them muddled) celebrating abundant life, have exploded in a joyful beatitude of bee buzzing blooming beauty. Take that Death Valley! This little piece of northern Chihauhauan desert has flowers too and alliterative vocabulary to describe it as well.

Pollinators really love these delicate arugula blooms.

Sometimes I see huge fuzzy buzzy bees bumbling around making mayhem in the delicate forest of brassica superbloom happening right now both front and back.

My first foray into growing barley seems to be budding, (not sure exactly how barely does this blooming thing) along with the fig tree outback which is promising a harvest even bigger that last year.

Lizards have become super active, following the ants maybe.

It’s not called the Garden of Earthly Delights for nothing.

A Bulbine frutescens clump has suddenly put forth masses of dancing torches of flower spikes. Bulbine is one of my new favorite horticultural obsessions. I understand this plant to be native to, or trace it’s genetic origins to the geography I was born into.  I was inspired to seek out the orange cultivar after encountering it flowering in the beautiful garden at the Frangipani Hotel (cottage) I stayed at on the East Cape coast of the old country this time last year. Bulbine is the torch I carry for the earth of my birth. Or one of them. Like the iris, I have plans to redistribute this bulbine widely around the garden, but choosing the right time to subdivide is proving hard. I’ve obviously missed my window for now. Who wants to mess with a beautifully blooming clump like this?

The orange flowered bulbine cultivar which I think was called ‘Hallmark’ on the Whiskey Creek Zocalo plant nursery label, seems more winter hardly than the yellow one, which I purchased from an online plant vendor as Bulbine abbysinica (Drakensberg bulbine) and which goes almost dormant when temperatures at night drop down to freezing. This didn’t happen more than three times this whole winter. While I’m not a cold lover, it is a bit unsettling how warm this winter has been. Oh well let that thought join the queue of unsettling things I could dwell on.

Foxy ferox shows signs of joining the imminent flower frenzy outback with another inflorescence. Soon there will be lacy coriander, brilliant orange calendula and purple iris flowers here.

Cranes are flying north again in huge vees, filling the skies.

Seasons change.

I’m happy pottering below. Literally. What a lot I got.

Though my seed starting skills are still at fumbling amateur level, I am morphing into something of a food focused plant vendor at the local farmers market.

Shovelling horse manure in golden sunshine is one of the best antidotes that I know to those other horsemen, they of the apocalypse fame.