Juuulietttttte!

Juuulietttttte!

Howdy blogettes and blogarios,

this little collection of thoughts, images and ideas are supplemented with clips, snippets, and scenes that run through my head when i recall these recent life moments. like you perhaps, i was a teenage blockbuster movie pass holder and spent countless hours devouring tapes and discs with my twin brother in the texas summer suburbs. most any idea that i have has an internal backing track of some film scene or another, many of which i can’t even label or recall if needed, but the images, sounds, and feelings they evoke are verdant and color my perception like the sherbert-y hues that paint the what were white walls during these wild a$$ he11 spring sunsets we have been having every evening these last few weeks. to not beat around the creosote bush, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet is as cool to me now as it was when i was 10 and the po-mo baroque aesthetic still has me under it’s neon diffused spell. i grew up in key west FLA (before texas) so the fantasy fest vibes and orchid growing drug dealing priest all felt pretty grounded. Luhrmann’s only home run IMHO, but kinda like an accidental 90’s Robby Müller that would later go onto spawn Yorgos Lanthimos (a not fully thought through analogy, but i think there is something there). but R+J is legeet the sheet, i’ll stand by it. goes without saying that everyone in it is very hot, and it is by far the hottest they have ever been or will ever be, leave a comment below if you can prove this otherwise. anyways, what i am trying to say is that someday i hope to have a garden as cool as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliette (1996) dvd version.

the days are getting longer and the light is welcomed. sus serenades Hanshan with (i don’t remember what she was playing during this shutter click, exactly) but probably the song from 2001’s teenage brain smasher Amélie. some films hit harder than others. saturated colors might have something to do with it. if you were there you know.

the hens are busy laying buckets of eggs, while to be fair the silkies are both a bit broody and not really contributing at the moment (which is perfectly fine, they do them). BUT there is a strange ritual that i was lucky enough to capture in pixels (see above) where the black-headed easter egger (dumb breed name, i didn’t make it up) pecks the fine feathers from Krystal’s beard plumage resulting in a bald and exposed black gobbler. she seems to tolerate the face pecking and maybe enjoys it. it’s a thing. anyone else experience this? is it to highlight and call attention to her irridesecent blue ear? i dunno, but that is my guess, its a style thing.

if you haven’t already, enjoy the Mark Lewis scene above. very dramatic. when did documentary films get so boring? after Grizzly Man (2005)? pure speculation, but proabably when digital recording methods replaced 16mm/35mm, then everyone just rolled forever tossed out the script and captured “real life” (boring). i did see a good film recently that contradicts this phenom, 2022’s “Taming the Garden” by Salomé Jashi. James Benning vibes, i’m in!

Rhus ovata putting on new growth, excited to see! and it’s red! Doing well in the shade of a mesquite on the north side of a 5’ wall in Tucson (Cukson), AZ.

kids, leave the stickers on your fruit when you compost. can’t stress this enough. don’t sleep on this. critical to the success of all your plants.

couple years in on the mulch rave, the beat is building, in like 75 years things are gonna start to get goooood.

mulch reminds me of this fox. entropy. just ask robert smithson and/or a roly-poly (the correct spelling, apparently, i duckduckgo’d it).

tufted evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) is volunteering in the mulch, these are about 4’ from their maternal source. this is great news, not only for the late night party pollinators, but for Jullliiieetttttte, too, as this is her favorite plant.

sus gifted me this saguaro for new years 2021, shortly after we started tending this garden. trying to crowd it out with shady characters, you know, like in the desert. this established Larrea tridentata runs its fingers through the saguaro’s hair, like a caring nurse plant. it’s a beautiful relationship these two have, lots to learn from our photosynthesizing friends.

speaking of entropy, what’s up with those bricks my guy? life is a work in progress. gotta do what you can do to try to keep the property value from buzzing off, especially when you have a garden this poppin’.

Sasha visited in time for Juliette’s coming out party. She’s getting into sculptural sourdough and this is her offering. Epic. OOLA meeting is now session.

we had a shindig. offerings were made. corks were popped into the globe mallow. friends and neighbors ate Sponch. colorful eggs were searched for and found by children (THE NEXT GENERATION). and juliet slept through the whole thing.

in my mind it looks like this.

but it really looks like this.

but when she awakes (any day now) it will look like this.

barrel cactus seeds in the lee lee dehydrator (colorway is super fly). R+J (1996) influence is everywhere, it cannot be helped.

found this screen shot on my phone (this is how a Landscape Architect makes a home depot shopping list). it explains the greenhouse southern wall, which was needed to keep the chickens from knocking over all my little cactuses.

it looks like this in real life.

that is about it. but before you go….

remember that there are tortoises in this world and that some are already out and others will be coming out soon. and knowing that, every little thing is going to be alright.

peace and love and juliet,

-erik