Coming Around Again

or Circles and Lines

I.
Butterflies never really seem to have a plan.  The monarchs and other migratory species must have one, deep down, to be able to make it between points A and B every year.  Generally, though, linear progress and butterflies don't seem to go together.  At first glance it's all flutter and drift with them, even when they're feeding, sometimes even when they've come to rest.  I was surprised the other day, then, to see a cabbage white flying in circles around the garden—purposeful circles, even if they were a little ruffly.  Normally they flutter in over the wall, flutter back out on a puff of wind, flutter in, lay eggs on the arugula, drift for a few seconds, flutter back over the wall.  This one, though, made six or seven strong (if ruffly) laps before alighting somewhere near the rue and disappearing in the foliage.  I still have no idea what that was all about.

II.
Later that day, a hummingbird made the rounds from one desert olive to the others, circling each tree before moving on to the next.  No ruffles or drifting for him, no sirree:  this was all aggressive reconnoitering, as if he were looking for rivals; he came close to assaulting a goldfinch before remembering himself.  (Hummers:  not easy neighbors for the small fry.)  He, too, made several laps, but then kicked into warp drive and winked out.

Cotula 'Tiffindell Gold'

III.
We've probably all sung rounds at some point in our lives:  "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Hey, Ho, Nobody Home."  Singing them is a kind of sport, like kicking a ball around with a group of friends.

Only usually without lives hanging in the balance.

Rounds can be artistically satisfying, too.  I love the sense of growth as one voice "waterfalls" into another, and the liquid seamlessness once all the voices are engaged.  I also love the sense of sharing, as you exchange parts of the melody and hear how the same tune sounds from another voice.  Rounds don't really go anywhere, of course, except back to the beginning over and over, but you can stop whenever you like, and in the meantime the harmonies that result are sweet.

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium)

IV.
Time in the garden moves in circles and lines.  We look forward to the seasons' turning and the return of old friends among the flora, and enjoy the ritual quality of seasonal chores:  trimming back dead growth at the end of winter, tidying away the faded tulip leaves in spring.  But we also want to see signs of progress:  to see gaps fill in and trees mature, to have our gardens bear fruit and ripen.

Western sand cherry (Prunus besseyi)

V.
I've been thinking about cycles and progress, rounds and growth, as I embark on my third year of blogging this week.  Tomorrow Microcosm will turn two.  The passage of another year astonishes me.  The first felt like a gigantic milestone; this one hardly feels like a marker at all.  Maybe having written about the garden twice through the cycle of seasons, I'm not keeping each one as straight in my mind.  Or maybe, having shared ideas and gardens and comments with readers and with fellow bloggers, it's harder to remember where one voice leaves off and another begins.  All of those actions blend seamlessly together.

Individual posts of Microcosm remind me more of ruffly butterfly circles than they do of obsessive, no-frills, take-no-prisoners (except for maybe an accidental goldfinch) hummingbird flights.  Garden blogging as a whole, though, reminds me of singing rounds—complex ones, like "Sumer is icumen in", with its multiple canons sounding at the same time.  In both forms ideas come around again as the seasons or the phrases turn; they share a sense of exchange, and of unexpected harmony resulting from separate melodies.  They also share a sense of community that is a little apart from "real" life but that still reaches out to it.

'Mesa Verde' iceplant (Delosperma 'Kelaidis' aka 'Mesa Verde')

Garden blogging follows the cycles of the garden, of course.  As with the garden, though, I'm also finding myself hungry for growth.  Not in viewing numbers—I am so happy with you, my community of friends!—but in style, perhaps.  Do any other bloggers feel that way?  (And if so, does it pass?)  I don't have any particular plan in mind; things are all flutter and drift here.  Maybe I'll try a joint venture or two, or some exploration of plant biology or the history of my little plot of earth, or some New Mexico ecology.  Or maybe a fictional account from the perspective of a cabbage moth making ruffly circles around a very small garden.  (What was that all about?)  Something to fill in the gaps, to grow and bear fruit and ripen.  In the meantime, sumer is icumen in.

And what a pleasure it is, as the days stretch out and the garden beckons, to engage my voice with yours.

A Long Reach

or Dispersed on the Wind

I.

The smell raised hackles on the back of your neck you didn't even know were there.  Fire—fire—powerful, immediate.  Smoke pooled on the roads and dimmed streetlights; its acridity caught in your throat and stung your eyes. The city's emergency lines were flooded with calls, and officials must have had a sleepless night before ascertaining that no fire was burning in town.  The smoke, so fresh that you could taste the pine in it, had blown in from the White Mountains in eastern Arizona, more than 200 miles away.

Since Thursday, the night when we first encountered its smoke here in Albuquerque, Arizona's Wallow Fire has burned more than 180,000 acres and is still zero percent contained.  What it must be like closer to its source I shudder to think.  Yet even though the fire has grown, for us the effect has dimmed.  We've had haze and ash, but not that powerful sense of presence.  It was only the first night that wind conditions were right to give the smoke such a long reach.

Sunrise through smoke (and an upstairs window screen—sorry about that...)

II.

I'm always amazed at how deeply into an ecosystem a single plant can reach.  Take Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa), for example.  It's a native shrub of the rose family that grows on mesas and gravelly slopes from Texas to California, a range of maybe 500 by 800 miles, spanning a stretch of country that does not molly-coddle its plants with such luxuries as, say, water.

Apache plume with color-coordinated spider

Apache plume can endure just about anything, including cold, heat, drought, salt, excessive calcium, malnutrition, alkalinity—anything except for wet feet in winter (and really, who can blame it).  It blooms with varying degrees of enthusiasm from April until Octoberish, its flowers and seed plumes gracing the plant at the same time.  The seeds generally cling tightly but eventually disperse on the wind (especially if you run your fingers through them as you walk past).

This little shrub stabilizes slopes, prevents erosion, provides forage for deer and other browsers, offers nectar to insects, and gives shelter to small birds.  At a conservative guess, a good score of species depend on it for their survival.  A couple of winters ago I saw a small flock of ruby-crowned kinglets taking cover and lunching on some incidental insects in an Apache plume here in town; they barely moved the leaves as they worked out their complicated seating arrangements.  They had such bright, interested eyes.

III.

I've been thinking about things that have a greater reach than you expect as I've been writing this, my 100th post, on the eve of my blog's one-year anniversary.  When I started writing I wanted Microcosm to be three things:  a creative outlet, a reason to look more closely at everyday beauty, and a way to connect with people with similar loves and interests.  On all three counts it has more than met my expectations.  I have loved the whole process of looking, thinking, photographing, writing, crafting.  Having ("having") to look closely and see things afresh for an admittedly self-imposed but still twice-a-week deadline has given me a passion for looking closely that, if anything, has grown beyond its starting point.

Somehow all of these thoughts, dispersed on the winds of cyberspace, have found readers.  And you, my dears—you have opened up your lives and gardens in turn and offered a camaraderie that is beautiful and precious.  Bless you.  After all, you've been with me as I've mused about the nature of weeds, gone dreamy-eyed about hot-air balloons, fretted about the coming of winter, and waxed rhapsodic about spring migration.  What reward can I give you? 

None, except that of appreciation, and my companionship in return.

Sometimes I wonder how much more interpretation a scant 400 square feet of garden (including patio space) can sustain.  I've begun to wonder that with every single post—what can I say new about flowers or leaves or stems or fruit?  What does the patio have to offer today that I haven't already shared with you?  Somehow, Mother Nature always comes through.

You'd be surprised what a long reach she has.

Seeing the Forest and the Trees

or Mountains:  A Good Idea

No matter how much I enjoy Albuquerque, I also like leaving it now and then.  After spending a lovely weekend with my parents, who were down during the Balloon Fiesta, I went holidaying last week, wandering down to the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico for a few days.  Just to be outside again, not just out on the patio but really outside in The Great Outdoors, has "filled the well" in ways that have me purring with contentment.  Cities are all fine and good, what with the modern conveniences and all, but fresh air, sunshine, and dazzling landscapes are even better.

One thing New Mexico doesn't have a shortage of is dazzling landscapes.  (Fresh air and sunshine are fairly plentiful, too, now that I think about it.)  Many of them are best appreciated from afar, and it has been pleasant to be focused on the distance rather than close-in, looking upward and outward more than is my wont and marveling at vast expanses, wide open spaces, and big hunks of mountainside.  Vistas.  Drama.  Rugged cragginess.  Scenery in general.  Geography may not offer the action and intensity of, say, a football game, but it's a perfectly satisfying spectator sport on its own.

As a participatory sport, of course, it's even more rewarding, and I enjoyed getting up close and personal with a fair amount of geography on hikes at the Catwalk National Scenic Trail, the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, and the Fort Bayard National Recreation Trail.  When I say "hike," though, I want it to be clear that I have never been a capital-H Hiker in big boots and a big hurry.  I certainly admire those who can clamber over rough terrain at three miles per hour, but I don't understand them.  I go to the opposite extreme, and if I make it through a mile in less than three hours, I get irritated at myself for rushing.  If anything I'm a naturalist, though even that's still a bit grandiose.  I just like being in the mountains looking at things.

And "looking" is far too small a word for the attempt to experience a landscape—to absorb the "stilliness," as a much-loved aunt likes to call it, to take part in the quietness and vibrancy, the simply lovely and the jaw-droppingly sublime, to follow the contours of a land and delight in (most of) the lives that dwell in it.  To me the joy of hiking through a stand of ponderosa pines is not actually hiking through it but stopping to catch a whiff of its vanilla-scented sap.  (A good hiking trip demands that you spend at least part of it rubbing sap off your nose.)  And as long as you're there with your nose in a tree, why not pause to admire the rich variety of its colors, the canyons and mesas that age has carved into its bark?

In fact, I think that the entire point of hiking is actually to pause—to listen to the chuckle of water on stones, to mourn the death of a butterfly, to wonder at a sapling growing in an unlikely place.

The thing is that when you get up close and personal with geography, it turns into a microcosm again—you just see a lot of miniature worlds in sequence that add up to the world in general.  Each seed head and flower has its own self-contained beauty; each fallen log and rock is its own little ecosystem, even while it is part of the larger system of the forest.  Its existence means life to some small creature; its loss would be catastrophic to the insects and lizards and lichens and birds that depend on that particular rock, that particular trunk, for sustenance and shelter.

Every so often the obvious up and hits you and makes you wonder why you're so slow to catch on.  It really shouldn't surprise me that a lot of microcosms create the world, but I've been wandering around anyway saying, "Wow!  The forest is the trees!" as if I'd just discovered something profound.  In any case, it's been wonderful to see both this week.

And I still have a little smudge of sap on my nose.
________________

A post-script to a previous post:  Look what my parents brought me last weekend...

A Little Hot Air

or A Study in Contrasts

There is a stretch of highway between Vaughn and Roswell, New Mexico, where you do not see a human habitation for about 75 miles.  The dirt-road entrance to a ranch or two, sure; some water tanks with a herd of Black Angus and maybe a longhorn or so grazing nearby; and at the little outpost of Mesa, a defunct gas station; but nothing else.  (The outpost of Mesa consists entirely of the defunct gas station and a sign that says, "Mesa.")  The land is flat and treeless, with mile after mile of needlegrass and cholla and prickly poppies.  Larks linger at the side of the road and flutter up like dust as you drive past.  You can see the curvature of the earth in all directions; the sky is a stronger feature of the landscape than the actual landscape.  It is an empty land, one that people usually drive through as fast as possible.  I love it.  It is a place where I feel like I can breathe, where the relief of not being closed in by buildings or walls or trees is absolute.  (I begin to suspect that I am mildly claustrophobic.)

Between enclosure and confinement lies a very fine line. The line moves unexpectedly sometimes, but fortunately, my garden usually sits on the right side of it.  Surrounded by walls, the garden offers privacy but also (if you look through the right place between buildings) a view of the Sandia Mountains, downtown Albuquerque (through a different notch between buildings), and of course, that gorgeous New Mexico sky (straight up, all you could possibly want).    It is a safe and pleasant place, a nested place, where beautiful rituals of home are enacted:  morning coffee on the patio, the New York Times crossword puzzle, the daily tending of the container plants, the leisurely amble around the path just to look at things, the leisurely amble in the other direction just to look at things a different way.

With the International Balloon Fiesta fast approaching, the walls of privacy are for the moment broken down.  Albuquerque is one of the world's best places for hot air ballooning, so we see balloonists off and on all year; in the days leading up to the Fiesta that begins this weekend, however, they all come out to play at once.  The most popular flying route is along the Rio Grande, and my home is just close enough to the river that some of the strays who want a more urban ballooning experience (?) go overhead.  (And for some reason nothing makes you aware that you're still in your bathrobe like having a balloon crew sail past within shouting distance.)

The garden rituals take on a different tone; an awareness of the outside world punctuates the sense of small and familiar things.  I wander around the path (in one direction or another) inspecting a leaf here and there (the tips of the sand cherries turning red), a late blossom (feverfew leaning to reach the sunshine), an empty pot (the spider web still stretched inside it, a leaf suspended in mid-air), new growth (ipheion, already putting out leaves for spring), a loss (the Mt. Atlas daisies gone).  And in the midst of all this beautiful downward glancing (shattering a seedhead in passing), the puff of fire above, the exhale of propane burners holding a hot-air balloon aloft (a mildly asthmatic dragon come to call), a boat with a jester's-motley sail, an entire silent carnival floating past, hinting of adventure and discovery and birds-eye views and going yonder, yonder, yonder.

Despite the previous sentence I wouldn't exactly say that I go dreamy-eyed about balloons—not enough to hanker after any of the stained glass or painted silk or dried gourd replicas of them that fill the shops in Old Town this time of year (and that make an odd counterpoint to the Pueblo pottery, silver, and turquoise in the shop windows beside them).  But seeing them from the garden makes my heart leap; the contrast between groundedness and flight, between nestedness and adventure, is so striking.  There is a bittersweetness to the contrast that is beautiful in itself, and that reminds me somehow of that morning coffee—intense and strong and invigorating on a cool September morning of primary colors, of pure, shining tones, when sunshine feels good again and the wind is fresh, and home and adventure, space and enclosure, both beckon with equal pleasure.

But oh, the yonder sounds like fun.

On Not Spitting into the Wind

or Matching Games

I'm sketching this post from my favorite chair by the kitchen window, the one that lets me overlook the garden.   A storm is brewing, though so far it's all sound and fury and no rain, like so many of our storms.   It's impressive enough, but it would be nice to be drenched as well.

Still, the wind is impressive.   It has bent the supple branches of the desert olives nearly double and bowed many of the perennials nearly flat to the ground; the sand cherries are whipping around like dune grasses.   We get very little severe weather here in Albuquerque—or, put another way, the severity of our weather mostly happens over the long haul.   We may live perpetually on the edge of killing drought, but at least we don't have tornadoes, blizzards, floods, hail, or ice storms.

What we do have is wind.   Every so often I catch glimpses of why some of the early pioneers went mad from the relentlessness of the winds.   Spring is the only season when it's really excessive, but it blows plenty often the rest of the year, too.   The true test of a plant out here—and possibly of a person—is how well it holds up against those fearsome blasts of wind.   As a general (and obvious) rule, the more native the plant, the better able it is to cope.   Our oft-scorned native redroot amaranth, with its small, widely spaced leaves, still looks fresh and whole, even in the middle of a storm; the broad, beautiful leaves of my much-loved burgundy amaranth are shreddy and battered.   The wildflower yarrow stems spring back into place almost as soon as the wind stops; my "Coronation Gold" yarrow bent at a 45° angle after our first big wind storm and has leaned lower and lower ever since.   The sweet potato vine and chard in the micro-garden are getting ripped apart; the purslane looks as good as new.

Like all of us, plants shine best under certain conditions—the key is to match them up properly.   I'm reminded of a day-trip I took a couple of years ago to Abó, an old mission site that is part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.   It lies on a dirt spur road off U.S. 60, in the middle of low hills and scrub desert.

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

In the parking lot at the visitor's center that afternoon were two vehicles other than mine—a bright red Corvette with California plates and a New Mexico sky blue, 1950's Ford pickup with those wonderful  rounded wheel wells and hood.   In that place the Corvette was like a pair of stiletto heels on a hiking trail—out of place and a little silly.   It looked expensive, but in a worrying sort of way; I found myself wondering about its clearance and thinking about the windshield getting dinged up on the dirt road.   The Ford, on the other hand, radiated the cool of an old pair of Levis—classic, comfortable, even honest.   It was a harmonica blowing at sunset, chiles roasting over an open fire, feet up on the porch rail at the end of a long day.   Some things just go, and that Ford belonged out there in the desert in a way the Corvette never could.   It's all about being suited to the circumstances, about reflecting the actual reality around you rather than the hothouse atmosphere of another place, of wishful thinking.

The storm has passed for now.   I do a quick look around to assess the damage.   Some of the drumstick allium seedheads have broken off (which is fine, as I'm rather tired of them), but the native Mexican hats look invigorated, ready for another round.   Both flowers "bloomed where they were planted," a phrase which is all very well in its way.

But it works best if you get yourself planted in the right place to begin with.

The Little Foxes

or

About This Blog

Solomon once complained that "The little foxes are ruining the vines." That statement has always puzzled me in a way--do the big foxes leave them alone?--but the gist of it rings true. It's not earthquakes or volcanic eruptions or plagues of frogs that we generally have to worry about at harvest time. No, it's the little pests that we never notice the rest of the year, small beings whose lives have nothing to do with ours (but who appreciate our planting all of those grape vines for them), that destroy the careful labor of months.

Little things have a way of eating into our lives, whether for good or ill. Mosquitoes drive us in from the yard, paper cuts make us howl--and one ripe grape fresh from the vine can send us to straight to heaven. And, like those punch-drunk little foxes, small things have a way of putting larger issues in perspective. The Song of Solomon is not, after all, primarily a book of agricultural advice.

This blog, Microcosm, explores the minutiae of everyday life and their occasional relationship to things in general. Literally, of course, a microcosm is just a "small world," and sometimes a small world is exactly that--a tiny, self-contained sphere of activity. But in its greater sense, the diminutive world of the microcosm represents something in the world at large, and it is that sense of nesting worlds, nesting meanings, that I'm interested in exploring.

I'm prompted to write by my own small world, especially by two aspects of it. The first is the small, courtyard garden in my townhome. In it I'm attempting--however haphazardly--to create a miniature ecosystem that will harbor a healthy complement of plant and animal life, feeding us all in the process. The chain reactions set in motion by one small change--the addition of a small water dish at ground level, or the placement of an "ornamental" rock to provide shade and shelter--have astonishingly (disturbingly?) far-reaching results. And if anything was tailor-made for someone hunting for symbolic meaning, a garden would have to be it.

The second factor prompting this blog is the presence in my life of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). This illness has reduced the external part of my life to a fraction of its former size and focused my attention more intensely on those things right in front of my nose. While I would vastly prefer to be well, I do appreciate the gift of focus that illness has taught me--the deep enjoyment of small pleasures.

So I am writing to share some of that enjoyment, especially as it pertains to that greatest of all pleasures, gardening, together with any musings and speculations that might come along for the ride. I am also writing to explore the beauty that can reside in smallness--the ways in which small lives, small worlds, can yet have great meaning. Welcome to my microcosm. I hope that you, too, will find enjoyment, interest, and meaning in the small pleasures unfolded here.