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...

We Have Nothing to Fear Except Well-Meaning Incompetence

or

I Came, I Saw, I Flapped About

They make hummingbirds feisty around in here in ways I don't remember Vermont's ruby-throated hummingbirds being. Our black-chinned hummers are highly territorial and will spend more energy driving competitors off from a food source than they could ever gain from eating it (or so it seems).

That's especially true at feeders. A feeder may have six--count 'em, six--perches, but only one hummingbird at a time ever gets to use them (with the possible exception of mates and just-fledged siblings). That's why I don't put out feeders. To have a bunch of angrily meeping birds zipping past at warp speed before I've had my coffee--no. Whether you find all that action entertaining or irritating, peaceful it isn't. That said, hummingbirds are generally better behaved where natural sources of nectar are concerned, and those I provide with pleasure.

Cut back to my first year in this house. I planted tithonia (Mexican sunflowers), an annual that I thought would nicely fill in one of my new perennial beds. Only one seedling survived, but that was plenty. It became a monster of a plant--eight feet high and at least five around. I had grown tithonia in Vermont, where it, too, had been better behaved (Query: Is there a pattern here?), but even though the New Mexican version rather took over the bed, that sunflower was glorious in bloom--157 cubic feet of greenery covered in two-inch, bright orange daisies.

Bumblebees and butterflies loved it; to my surprise, so did the hummingbirds, which would sip from the trumpets on the disc flowers. But they're territorial birds (have I mentioned that they're territorial birds?), and apparently, they're perfectly willing to turn that protectiveness against other species. One day a black swallowtail butterfly was calmly--quietly, peacefully-- feeding at one of the tithonia's several dozen flowers. (Just to be clear, on 157 cubic feet of plant. A large plant. With dozens of flowers. Room for all and sundry.) A hummingbird zoomed up and tried to chase it off, and an aerial battle ensued...

which the butterfly won.

The butterfly won! An insect that can't fly in a straight line to save its life and that has no offensive capabilities, vs. a 60-mile per hour bundle of irritation with a bill that could rip a butterfly's wings to shreds. Admittedly, the butterfly was bigger than the hummingbird and for all I know may well have weighed more. But still...

Cut back several years earlier, to a regular bird feeder I had in Vermont, a basic platform affair with an angled roof. The mourning doves had quite a time figuring out how to negotiate around the roof to get to the food, and I watched many of them fall off the feeder altogether (cheap entertainment at its best). Eventually they became more expert, but they never landed without a lot of fuss and bother. One day I was watching a blue jay at the feeder--blue jays being large, aggressive birds, right?--when along came a mourning dove, back-winging like mad in its effort to land. The blue jay jabbed at it a few times to no effect and ended up with a faceful of flapping feathers in return. It very quickly just gave up and left.

The moral of these stories: Never underestimate the power of a lot of uncertain flapping about. (Try saying that in your best James Earl Jones voice.)

The alternate but related moral: Incompetence wins over aggression every time. (It's the combination that you really have to watch out for.)

And do take your history books with a grain of salt. They're all about people being "competent."