Ghostwater Garden

Rassin'Frassin'Bird...

I have a Curved-billed Thresher doing great damage to my garden.  Stupid bird is tasting EVERYTHING.  And if one leaf doesn't taste good, maybe the next one on the plant WILL, right?  And so on.

I suspect it's a juvenile, trying things to find out what is tasty and what is not.  I just wish (earnestly, and with much vehemence) that he would figure out what's not before he's destroyed the entire plant. 

Woe is my succulent garden.  Woe.  

Any low desert gardeners out there with ideas?  Should I hang CDs around, will that work? 

Bloom Where You Are Planted

Jodi at bloomingwriter invites us to describe our location with a gardener's eye.  Hmmm. This is an interesting challenge.  I've been in Phoenix for less than a year.  What do I know about Phoenix?

I guess the best thing about being in Arizona? 

I will never need a greenhouse.  In fact, I have a fabulous orange tree in the backyard to act as a nursery/shade tree for the plants I am starting up outdoors. 

I have been harvesting seeds from anything I see that's interesting since I came down here.  Next weekend I am going to mix up a bunch of half native/ half bagged dirt and start out a bunch of trays.  I have no idea what might and might not sprout. 

I am very much 'adventure' gardening this fall. It's all unknown.

Some of the seeds:
Cat claw vine
Palo Verde
Several other varieties of Palo tree... there are a bunch of them out here
Mesquite
Red  'yucca' (actually an agave)
Several other bushes and a few low growing annuals or perennials...

It will be interesting trying to identify the stuff as it comes up!   

I had no idea

How painful this would be.

I bought a cactus.  It's dying.

Sigh. 

Mild Weather Here in the Valley of the Sun

Still adjusting to both this climate and my new work responsibilities.  This post is just a 'hey, thanks for stopping by' to all my faithful friends out there.

I do intend to write about my new adventures in the land of air so dry it sandpapers your windpipe, but these exciting missives won't be forthcoming for at least a few more weeks. 

Meanwhile, go out and garden.  I'll be around sooner or later.

Soil Issues

What passes for bagged topsoil/garden soil in these parts?

In Michigan we'd call it 'mulch' - all chopped-up bits of wood, with some dust thrown in the bag to increase the weight. 

Do the people in Phoenix really grow flowers and vegetables in this stuff?  All I can imagine is that wood breaking down and starving the plant of nitrogen. 

I guess I need to find a good source of compost.  And if that looks like shredded wood, I'ma gonna run screaming. 

Handicaps I expected, but dirt I was thinking I would be able to buy.   

For Every Thing, A Season

The wheel of the year has turned twice since I wrote about the Star Magnolia, and again the talk is of moving.    This time, the move is imminent.  Tomorrow I finish packing the trailer and call for the driver to pick it up.

Then I pack up the dogs and my mom and my houseplants.  Er.  Let me rephrase that:  My mom and my dogs and... er.  anyway.  Mom and I pack up the dogs and the houseplants and pile into the van for the cross-country road show.    Spring has finally come to Michigan, creeping in from the corners all flushed and overheated.  We've been welcoming the sun these past few days.   I won't complain about the heat.    Good  Ol'Michigan.  Rowdy seasons are always a trademark. It's hard to say goodbye with spring busting up out of the ground.

But this move will be a good one.  Arizona's sunny clime will be kinder to me than Michigan's beautiful green forests and blue lakes ever were.  I need the sun to stay on the chipper side.  Michigan is one of the cloudiest states in the Union.

The sewer saga finally resoved itself, with the help of several scads of money liberally floated across the waters.  Handiman Dan will be back one more time to do a final grade of the lot and pick up his mini-dozer and shovel.

Tomorrow I turn the page, and start writing from a new perspective.

Down the Drain... or not...

So in the middle of madly packing for a 2000 mile move to Arizona, my plumbing decides to back up.  They've torn up my yard and replaced all the clay drain tile, pulled the toilets and power snaked, and tomorrow they are coming to bypass the clay that remains under the house (a mobile home, with about 18 inches of clearance between ground level and the bottom of the floor joists.)

It's been a week without toilets - I had a bucket but when the second phase of plumbing work didn't fix the issue I leased a portajohn. You'd be amazed how happy I am to have that thing in my driveway.

Anyway, if you are wondering where I am - that's the current picture. 

We are slated to have the truck loaded and on the road on Monday the 23rd.

Wish me luck, crew.  I could use a little right now!

Update - April 19, 2007 - I HAVE TOILETS.  17 days later, I have working sewer lines.

Currently I am in Arizona --

-- working on a contract job.   Boy, are they busy buildling out here.  Lots of work. 

It looks like we are going to move.  How's that for gardening contrast?  Zone five Michigan to zone eight Arizona dessert.   I'm already looking at the learning curve. 

Makes me think of those pioneers that have gone before me.  Hey Annie, how are ya doing?

So this is notice of a bit of an hiatus.  If you don't hear from me for a while, likely I'm busy packing, unpacking, and surviving the summer heat.  And come next winter growing season, I should have the bones of my next garden started.   I'm already picking up seeds and pods.  There is even a vine that looks like it might be clematis that grows down here.  I haven't got a solid ID on it, but I have hopes that it will be a future resident in my garden space. 

The current garden will be left to its own devices.  We aren't planning on trying to sell the house/wreck, not after the last attempt.  Rather we hope to pay it off and have a 'vacation' home for a while.  If/when we get enough chump change to tear it down, we will then decide whether we will build/ place another home, or sell it off as lot and garage. 

Arizona has an arresting beauty.  It's pretty odd driving around right now, because a lot of the plantings used in the residential and business areas have masses of foliage that was frost blasted in that deep freeze that blew through down here last year.  Many of the larger trees look dead, and may actually be dead.  Won't know, I suppose, until the next green season. 

The light down here is incredible. 

On Seeds...

Carol at May Dreams Gardens seems to be our meme machine.  Go Lady, Go!

She has asked the club of online gardeners what kind of seed buyers we are.  Many have seen fit to answer this query in full, but I am going to focus on one question:

            Do you buy more seeds than you could ever sow in one season?

Oh, my.  That would have to be yes.  And I don't mean I buy packages of tomatos and only sow some of the seeds. 

I mean that seed packaging and catalog pictures are like candy to my eye, and my eyes are always bigger than my garden can accomodate. 

For last year's vegetable garden - it's first, I have seeds that I bought in winter that never were planted. We didn't get the dirt we ordered into the beds until well past the days that you should get in spinach and lettuces.  So those I will be putting in this year.  After a year in storage, I can hope that some of them will sprout, maybe up to half.  Doesn't sound unreasonable.  Does it?

But what can I say about these others... A package of Ferry Morse seeds, bought on sale at a local home and garden show, way back in ...er... 1998.  Unopened.  Anybody got any idea if Maltese Cross has a long seed shelf life? 

Or better yet, a package of Nasturtium Gleam Mix from Pinetree Garden Seeds - packed for 1996.  I know that they don't hang around that long.

Sage from '96.  Parsley from '97.  Lobelias from '01 and '02. Every year has its sad representatives of potentiates that were never given a chance. 

And then there are the envelopes.  Letter envelopes that rattle with hand-me-down seeds, none dated.  A red dianthus?   How lovely.  Morning Glorys?  I bet those'll grow.  Marigolds, Balloonflower, Hollyhock, Nigella...  and one large envelope labelled with the full botanical:  Campanula cochlearifolia  -  That's an alpine, isn't it?  That seed might surprise me, maybe?  Maybe?

There are now little seeds dusted all over my desk, escapees from their various prisons. 

This year.  This year of the weird warm winter - where only now has the frost decended upon us and made us remember that spring needs winter to really be treasured.   This year I am going to be the seed queen.  I am going to get the starts set up and going.  I'm going to plan it all out so that it will be a variable production line of starts under lights and then in windows and on the sun porch and ...

You believe me, don't you?