Earth Day 2022 dawns with a discordant jangle of high winds (think 60-70 mph gusts) and severe fire threat warnings for my area. A little mountain town not that far away, where I once worked as a librarian, last week lost 2 people and over 250 homes in a wildfire. And that isn’t the only fire currently burning across the tinder dry western United States.
Yes, I’ve been gardening all wrong for the Chihuahuan desert and a heating planet. This is mainly because my garden style has required a lot of supplemental watering.
I’ve been living like a Honu (Hawaiian green sea turtle) in the desert in the middle of a huge continent. Living as if life sustaining water were abundant and always going to be so.
I have a plan, however, for the garden. A paradigm shift.
A five year transition plan is on the drawing board, metaphorically speaking. Seems it might involve lots (more) rock collecting, lots more spikey and thorny beauties. Thankyou Boyce Thomson arboretum for showing me the potential.
For this season, since I spent winter nurturing the beds and collating the seeds, I will continue to grow food and pollinator attractors in most of the garden spaces and continue to water three times a week during season, unless there‘s a blessing of rain.
At the same time I will start redesigning and introducing more xeric perennials.
And of course I will continue to make like a turtle and soak myself regularly in mama Gaia’s hot, salty, womb waters which seep from the earth in this place where I currently root down and rise up.
Happy Earth Day! To celebrate I made a fancy breakfast of cinnamon, pecan sweet potato rolls (vegan). Wish you were here! All of you. It’s a first with this recipe for me and quite frankly, my dear, they are delish! That’s a slightly lemony brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla glaze on top. Invented on impulse with what was on hand.
May all beings thrive in sustainable abundance.
May all beings know peace.
Soundtrack in the junk attic head today. ( as an aside: Oh how we danced!)
Burning Down the House - Talking Heads, 1983
Watch out, you might get what you're after
Cool babies, strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house
Hold tight
Wait 'til the party's over
Hold tight
We're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house
Here's your ticket pack your bags
Time for jumpin' overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far,
Maybe you know where you are
Fightin' fire with fire
All wet, hey, you might need a raincoat
Shakedown, dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty five degrees
Burning down the house
It was once upon a place,
Sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work,
Baby, what did you expect?
Gonna burst into flame
Burning down the house
My house's out of the ordinary
That's right
Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house
No visible means of support
And you have not seen nothin' yet
Everything's stuck together
And I don't know what you expect
Staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire