Air Apparent

or Dividing the Pie

I have certainly known cats who got frayed around the edges when their owners were absent for a few days, and were only knitted whole again when the owners returned.  So I'm not endorsing the following New Yorker-ish sentiment.  I'm just repeating it, as something heard years ago that came back to me in the Adirondack chair this week:  Dogs aren't the only animals who suffer when their owners leave; cats, too, go through a difficult phase of adjustment...as they divvy up the space formerly thought of as yours.

Now that the older plants in the garden are well-established, the new ones have begun to "take," and I'm irrigating less, the three other elements seem to be divvying up the space formerly thought of as water's.  Earth... The ants continue piling it up in heaps, in all of the gravel beds.  Those beds are expanding in the sunny areas in any case, as I plant more drought-lovers that prefer poor soil and rocky mulches.  Fire... the sun is taking a toll now on the more delicate greenery as we top the 90°F mark, even as it brings the warm season grasses and Mediterranean and high desert plants to life.  Anything that makes it through the coming baptism of heat and light without water to quench it is a garden stalwart indeed.

Air.  I've been trying to foster a greater sense of airiness in this small, walled space—to get away from the dense layering of wetter, eastern gardens (even using xeric plants) and allow the plants (and me) more room to breathe.

Silky thread grass (Nassella tenuissima), desert olive (Forestiera neomexicana), and prairie flax (Linum lewisii)

The more I learn to know and love plants adapted to the desert, the lighter the textures in the garden become.  I'm beginning to have hopes for my strategy of low ground covers (if they ever fill in) with a few taller, airier things that have space to move freely in the wind

and to toss a little sunlight around while they're at it.

It's taken me almost five years to re-invent the wheel (not that I'm done yet); the planting style I'm aiming for is one more or less recommended in my favorite books on New Mexico gardening, though not in so many words.  It took a while, though, for a particular set of garden dreams to vacate my brain, and then a while longer to divvy up the mental space that formerly belonged to them and make new ideas at home there.

I've never felt so much like a cat.

Revving Up the Engines

or Why Gardening Is Like Drag Racing.  And Cats.

Licorice mint (Agastache rupestris)

Just because you're not moving, that doesn't mean you're resting.  You might even be lying on a comfy sofa, but reclining isn't the same as relaxing.  Instead of feeling the tension melting out of your neck and shoulders, your muscles softening, jaw slackening, mind drifting, as you float one easy breath away from sleep, you could be gathering your resources for some course of action—planning a new project, nagging yourself about an old one, debating possibilities, thinking through ways and means.

Tulipa sylvestris

 I was watching Sir Marley a while ago.  He had designs on a mourning dove—a nice, fat one resting under the bird feeder in the vague stupor mourning doves do so well.  Sir Marley stayed perfectly still, but you could see him working the math problems in his head:  measuring distances, calculating trajectories, accounting for wind speed.  Once all the equations worked out, he began, in the mysterious, motionless way of cats, to gather himself together.  Energy at the ready, spine taut, he slowly shifted his weight.  Ever so slightly, his back paws began to twitch.  From stasis he went instantly for the POUNCE.

And missed.  (Vague stupors 1 - Math problems 0.)

Likewise, drag racers at the start line may just be sitting there, but they're not idling.  Their engines are revving up, roaring like Sir Marley only wishes he could.  When the starting signal flicks from amber to green, off they go like a shot, burning rubber all the way.  (And that's everything I know about drag racing.)

Blue flax (Linum lewisii)

At least where gardening is concerned (and in this climate, where the ground doesn't freeze), I've stopped thinking of winter as the dormant season—the gathering season is more like it.  Just because the garden isn't leafing and budding, that doesn't mean that it's at rest.  Winter is a time for plants to draw resources together, to build them up bit by bit, to rev up the power and get it humming, so that when spring comes, bam!  They can take off like a shot.

Those tiny leaves at the base of the licorice mint and the flax are the botanical equivalents of a cat's back feet.  They haven't begun twitching yet—the plants are still doing the math problems, measuring the angle of the sun and the hours of daylight, calculating chlorophyll-to-carbohydrate ratios, plotting their growth trajectories—but in another few weeks, they'll begin in their own motionless, mysterious way, to gather themselves together for the pounce.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here surrounded by gardening books, old catalogs, and internet printouts doing my own plotting and planning.  Don't think my feet aren't starting to twitch.

Mine aren't the only ones...