Radical discontinuity

It’s been a hard week for the Garden of Earthly Delights and the shala. First a farmers market neighbour who is also a neophyte beekeeper in a nearby village came to remove the compost bin bees.

Fortunately the bees were very gentle, since mid afternoon on a warm day (think mid 90s F/34C) wasn’t the ideal time or conditions. This was young beekeeper’s first time removing a swarm. He wanted to see what he was doing.

There were some beautiful combs and lots of honey, he said. I kept my distance throughout the procedure.

Apparently the mission was successful. The former compost bin hive have spiffy new accommodations (far left in above image) in a small village about 30 miles away.

Then I paid a whole lot of money to building contractors to tear the house apart. Well really it was only the kitchen ceiling, which was sagging horribly and threatening to fall down around my ears, damaged from leaks sometime in the past, that time when it used to rain sometimes in this hot and parched place.

So we went from this (above).

To this.

And this: my studio under wraps.

To this, FINALLY after six days. Yes that’s the condition the contractors left the walls in. They also ran over budget and over time because…old house. Or something. Absolutely every thing throughout the house is now covered in a fine layer of gypsum powder dust, including stuff inside cupboards. I’m slowly cleaning and washing literally everything and repainting the kitchen walls, while trying to pick up the threads of my peaceful, creative and contemplative life which was so radically disrupted for more than a week.

During the time that the demolition crew were having their way with my house, I tried to get out from under their feet as much as possible. One day I got myself a giant bottle of kombucha and picnicked under shady trees at the historic Damsite overlooking a very depleted Elephant Butte lake.

The lake is sitting at around 7% capacity at start of irrigation season, thanks to the severe snow drought in the southwest in what was one of the driest winter and spring seasons on record. Everything is so tinder dry, it’s quite scary. The heat has also brought on an early algae bloom which gives me an uncomfortable skin rash when I launch a kayak. (It’s more toxic to dogs) That, combined with the NM state parks this year having trebled their entrance fees for local day use in summer, means I’m not a happy paddler on this lake, at the moment. See above for expensive renovations as culprit for the impecunious state of being. Well that’s part of it. The rest is all the fault of an unmentionable abomination, a blight of Biblical proportions which has fallen upon the land. Bah humbug etc.

Because I irrigate deeply and regularly, the Garden of Earthly Delights continues to be delightful and earthy, grounding, balancing. I was able to breakfast, like the spoiled green goddess that I am, on avocado toast, in peace and beauty in Cafe Paradiso each morning, before the chaos agents arrived to wreck havoc. It helped a lot, because the havoc wrecked was truly horrible. This is maybe why we make gardens: to support, restore and give us resilience.

Having found the historic Damsite sad and dry, on another day I took a picnic up into the Gila forest and did some shinrin-yoku (forest bathing).

Though the little creeks I like to walk bare feet in are currently dry, the forest was cool and so restorative.

Trees leaned in to shelter and embrace me as I lay back on my picnic blanket on soft springy pine needles, surrounded by tiny wildflowers and woodpeckers knock knock knocking on heaven’s door. (Mama take this badge off of me…)

After a while I found I was staring at a piece of acrylic rope completely embedded in one of the trees.

Someone must have strung a hammock here, once upon a time, long before me. The tree has almost completely swallowed the intrusive foreign element and got on with the business of being a tree. Plants never cease to amaze me with their resilience and adaptability. Plants always seem to be able to make a plan. Some days plants are my best teachers.

It is currently peak Argemone albiflora (Prickly poppy) season.

They sway their “cowboy fried egg” blooms for long stretches in the poor soil along the roadside , dancing with the intense yellow of what I think might be Viguiera dentata (Goldeneye sunflower)

I feel very lucky and am truly grateful to have such easy access to wild and natural public lands.

They help to keep me sane and balanced. I had planned, this year, to focus my travel adventures on wildflower hikes (starting with the Death Valley superbloom) but life and astronomical petrol prices intervened. I missed the superbloom window. Now life is giving me small, unexpected, wildflower wonders and the book on best NM wildflower hikes is largely unread next to my bed. There will be time…

I discover other little bits of enchantment.

And a fearsome looking black bistly critter in the Garden of Earthly Delights.

I don’t think this black and bristly (apparent) nectar feeder is a Cochliomyia hominivorax (New World Screwworm) fly, though there has been a recent case of an infected dog in this enchanted land. Cattle farmers are tense and worried. My cattle farming heritage empathizes. I feel the fear, it permeates the air of this rural region. Drought. Pestilence. Disease.

I remember living in a place (about fifty years ago) where all laundry had to be ironed to kill the eggs of putzi flies (Cordylobia anthropophaga)which were laid on line dried laundry. If one didn’t iron, the lava would hatch out and burrow into human flesh. Been there, done that: had real fly lava burrowing, wriggling revoltingly under my skin, and have the abscess scars to prove it.

I can surely handle the radical disruption, the almost indecent exposure of the entrails of my sanctuary, my shala, of my kitchen ceiling being torn apart. With a little help from the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees.

And an almost black hollyhock.

Just look at this dark and sultry beauty sprung up among the peppers in a place I really don’t remember planting hollyhock seed! Last season this was an arugula and spicy Asian greens patch. Yes, a few years ago I did have a seed packet which promised black hollyhocks, but I’m sure it wasn’t here that I sowed them and I’m sure I would have remembered these luscious lovelies. Muy misterioso.

Sometimes it feels like the Garden of Earthly Delights has intelligence and sentience all its own, moves things around when I am not looking. I am happy to be junior partner in the joint venture, if that’s what it is. A lot of successful wild and exhuberant freeform gardening seems to lie in allowing way more than controlling, partnering rather than dominating, I’m discovering.

And of course I couldn’t get by without a huge amount of help from my friends (real and imaginary) who write books.

Recommended Reading:

My favorite astrophysicist has published another unputdownable page turner Take Me To Your Leader : Perspectives On Your First Alien Encounter by Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2026, in which he strongly motivates for an astrophysicist to be the first human to meet with alien visitors to the planet. For a nerd and a genius (who doesn’t need to explain that dumb is spelled with a B) Dr deGrasse Tyson certainly has a compendium knowledge of pop culture depictions of aliens, ufos, extraterrestrials, flying saucers and all that stuff. In this title and in his inimitable generous and good natured way he explains, most entertaingly, why almost all these imagined encounters, beings and/or technologies get the science wrong. He also gives great guidance and useful tips on what to do or not do should one be lucky enough to encounter an alien. If I had to pick a single desert island companion, it might just be Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is indisputably one of the nicest nerds around. I would classify this book as speculative non fiction. The science is sound. The research into pop culture depictions is impressive and impeccable. The imagination informing the narrative is genius. A highly entertaining read or even better Dr dGT performs the audiobook himself in his gravelly voice resonating with joy and laughter.

Just knowing that a mind and a heart such as Neil deGrasse Tyson inhabits Earth, restores my faith in humanity, gives me will to face another day of the gulag growing ever fatter and more putrescent.

.