February 8, 2023 - Who is coming up?
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February 8, 2023 - Who is coming up?
Dispatch from a Tucson, AZ yard
It is early February. In my mind it is early spring. Really, it is more like late winter. Like an Ozu film i guess, all kind of the same and individually wonderful. The low temperature this morning flirted with freezing, but by afternoon it will almost reach 70°, enough to get the brooding chicks in the shed to run amuck under red light. I thought it would be a good time to start my yard dispatch, a blog style update post (record keeping, really) to monitor, discuss, and ruminate on the comings and goings of plants and animals in an urban lot a mile north of downtown Tucson.
I’m exploring the feasibility of this avenue as a convenient and joyful internet experience, to be determined. I think I’ll provide insight from my garden as well as documentation of like minded landscape(ish) projects. I’m writing this for myself, mostly, but thought I would do so in a public(ish) platform in case anyone was interested. I like to learn from others, perhaps someone could learn from this.
Before I begin. Hello, my name is Erik and i am a landscape designer in southern Arizona. I’ve studied landscape architecture and environmental geography, i like diy punk things, i’m interested in craft and making, and i make money mostly as an adjunct lecturer at a state university teaching architecture and landscape architecture foundation studios. Thank you for reading my words and looking at the photographs i make.
GARDEN DISPATCH // February 8, 2023
Sphaeralcea ambigua, the Desert Globemallow, is growing fast. I coppice these back hard to the ground several times throughout the year. They volunteer readily all over the garden and have a tendancey to take over. They seem to respond well to the hack back. These were hovering around 6” off the ground a month ago and are now putting on significant growth, seemingly doubling in size overnight as their flower stalks develop. They have fuzzy hairs, trichomes?, that can get into your skin when pruning, but this peach fuzz also makes the new green growth resemble that sticky icky from back in the day, especially right before they flower.
A few specimens in the yard are starting to pop out orange flowers. These early flowers tend to be really dark orange, vibrant in hue, i think they are really special and sometimes find myself gasping aloud in the garden. “damn, what an orange!”
Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium, Desert Buckwheat, is a favorite of mine. I first fell head over heals for the Eriogonums while working in Los Angeles. They do this thing where they hold onto their little flower bouquets long after they bloom, drying out first to a dusty pink and eventually to a dark rusty brown. The colors remind me of the Power, Corruption, and Lies album artwork and for some reason i associate the California buckwheats with post punk dancing in a fog juice filled living room, like in a squatted english estate, buckwheats outside the sweat dripping window.
Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium can be found in habitat near Molino Basin campground around 4k feet elevation on mount lemmon. I try them everywhere in the garden, with limited success. The garden is around 2.5k feet so it is hotter and drier. I try to water them whenever i see clouds hugging the base of the catalina mountains. They are doing a thing, but slowly and with some die back. Fits and spurts. But some have started to bloom in the last week or so.
This Eriogonum is one i stole from myself. Well technically i guess i borrowed it from my friend Michael while installing a California native garden at a house he built in Los Angeles. I don’t remember what species it is, i think it was something i ordered because they were out of all the other buckwheats and this one was available. A ground cover form. I’ll need to dig through invoices and receipts and see if i can find out what it is exactly. I felt bad for taking off the job, sorry Michael!, and bringing across state lines back to Arizona, sorry department of agriculture or whoever runs the checkpoint!, and for planting it selfishly in the sonoran desert, sorry buckwheat! But, all that belly aching and a year or so later and this plant is happy as a clam! It gets hand watered with collected rainwater on occasion, is nestled up against an East and South fence, so plenty of shade and nice littering of arborist woodchips. So far it is the happiest buckwheat on the property.
Plus, a hip designer bought Michael’s house and tore out all the natives we planted, so this little princess actually survived. You’re welcome? I’ll find out what you are and make a note in the future. I hope to propagate more of this variety.
Lycium andersonii, Anderson's Wolfberry, is flowering! Hopefully will fruit out and feed the thrashers that party in this part of the yard. Last year this whole plant succumbed to a leaf curl that decimated every last piece of green on the plant. Been flushing this basin with rainwater from the tank every week or so, this wolfberry is responding well. I like to see, i especially notice it when i am trying to photograph the flowers, that they grow only on the branches that get significant light (through cracks in the fence, etc.). Ha, i always new flowers needed sunlight, this is a pleasant empirical reminder.
[1 part] soaked hydrated lime : [1 part] fine sifted sand : [1 handful] blue gramma grass trimmings and seed heads
Plastering over some exposed adobe bricks i threw together. They were deteriorating in the rain, so thought i would experiment with some cover. It looks nice and is curing quite strong. Maybe i’ll do this elsewhere on the greenhouse. We are thinking of turning the greenhouse into a composting toilet area. A clean white plaster would make for a nice yard shit experience, no?
The compost heap is doing well. The secret is to keep the non biodegradable stickers on your fruit peels. I keep telling you friends, this is critical. The little mice that live at the bottom of the heap appreciate the stickers and work extra hard to tunnel and aerate the pile while searching for them. These are traded like commodity gold, their uses are endless. But what do you do when you spread the compost and you see the little stickers next to your asparagus starts? You take a deep breath, ahhhhh, and imagine a little mouse using a chiquita organic banana sticker as a shield while sparing with a Nausicaä style horde of rolli-pollies. Don’t deny the redwall LARP. It is all going to be chill.
Hello. No it’s all good, i just have no idea who you are? Were you invited? Did you find a flyer at the coffee shop? Yeah, it’s all ages and some crust punk has a can somewhere you can throw a couple bucks into if you want, but no pressure.
That is it for today’s garden walk. And I still have a couple sips of tepid coffee left at the bottom of the mug. yip yip.
peace,
erik