On Stewardship and Petunias

The Sonoran desert is a unique environment.  Many think of it as a place filled with things that are too-tough-to-die, a place with incredibly hardy flora and fauna -- wouldn't it have to be? -- and that there's little we could do to impact it. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Every native plant and animal is exactly where it has to be and this challenging environment is exactly what it needs.  If it rained more most of the life in this area of the Sonoran desert, the Arizona Uplands region, would be replaced by other vegetation and critters.

Home, sweet home

Well, except for humans.  We like to move into an area and turn it into our own personal idea of paradise, regardless of how it conflicts with the reality of a place.  It could be that we want our yards to look like they did back on the east coast with manicured lawns, rose bushes, and pest-free vegetable gardens.  Maybe our motivation is our recreation, like golf courses.  Humans seem to want what they want regardless of where they are, and so long as they can afford it, the reality of the environment in which they find themselves, fast disappearing resources and the needs of the native plants and animals fall off their radar.

Worth the cost?

Today we're saying goodbye to an old friend that I've spent a lot of time appreciating from my kitchen window and across my neighbor's fence.  The arms are being amputated one by one.  The body will be sectioned and removed in manageable hunks.  It's probably older than my grandmother's great-grandmother's great-grandmother, and should have lived until my daughter was a much older woman than myself.    In a few hours this stately saguaro, icon of the Sonoran desert, will be gone, apparent victim, in this climate, of the excessive amount of irrigation water required to keep the petunias at its base alive...petunias the appropriate color in the appropriate spot for feng shui garden in one of the most beautiful deserts on the planet.  In a climate where the plants are so good at storing and managing their resources (a hydrated saguaro is about 90% water), too much of what we like to think of as a good thing will kill a plant that is much easier on, and infinitely more critical to, this environment than we humans are.

Symbiotic relationship between the White-winged Dove and the saguaro...
food and a nesting site for pollination services rendered

Phyrrhuloxia at the feast

And so much more than this huge multi-armed saguaro will be lost.  There were probably close to 100 nest cavities in its flesh, providing wonderful safe temperature-regulated places for our desert birds to raise their young.  Gila Woodpeckers and Gilded Flickers excavated every one of those holes, but they were eventually occupied by many different birds as well, from Screech Owls and Pygmy Owls, Purple Martins, Ash-throated Flycatchers and Brown-crested Flycatchers, House Sparrows, and American Kestrels.  Many other birds, from doves to hawks, build nests in the crook of the saguaro's arms.

We felt so lucky to have such a magnificent "bird condo" so close to our yard and loved being part of the extended habitat (birds only care about fences for sitting on).  It is doubtful that our yard will any longer be the flight training ground of the Gila Woodpeckers youngsters, being called between our two younger, and cavity-less, saguaros by their diligent parents.  The screech owl that flew from that saguaro to our mesquite like clockwork every evening just minutes after the sun set behind the Tucson Mountains, coughing up a pellet of indigestibles from last night's hunt, pooping, and having a rouse to realign his feathers before silently flying off in the darkening evening to find dinner will be very missed.  We used to say that he lived next door and we were the outhouse.    

Nectar beyond the pollen is the lure

Of course it's not just about shelter.  That saguaro, with its many arms, bloomed magnificently and with regularity each spring, providing desperately needed nectar in the dryest part of the year for any bird or animal who could get to the blossoms, most importantly bats by night and White-winged Doves by day.  If these primary pollinators were successful, large juicy fruits would ripen a month later, once again providing sustenance to all animals, including humans, who could reach them.  Each fruit, filled with an average of 2,000 seeds, would have these chances at procreation scattered by the birds and mammals that ate them.  Of the four and a half million seeds the average saguaro will produce in its lifetime, it will be lucky to reproduce itself once or twice, though the seeds will not be wasted, but eaten before or after germinating by innumerable insects and animals.

A sad and premature end

Even after falling a saguaro can bloom for another year or two, relying on its store of water and its continued ability to produce energy through photosynthesis.  When the inevitable happens, these huge rotting plants provide food and shelter for millions of insects and many mammals, and return it's nutrients back to the environment.  Except, of course, when they are carted off to the landfill, the sad and wasteful fate of our neighboring saguaro.

I am more aligned with the Native American notion that we don't really "own" land, but are simply temporary stewards of it.  Unfortunately, I have little faith that we humans will recognize what we have before it is gone.  I'll take a saguaro over petunias any day.  And the senior saguaro next door will be greatly missed, though most importantly, perhaps least of all by me.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Back and Gone Again

Old sign in South Tucson

I'm not usually highly distractible, but I must say that the last two and a half years of planning, building, and settling into a summer cabin in the Colorado Rockies certainly has tested me.  It was a great project, and as much as I love the Sonoran desert, a great place to escape the worst of the heat.  Now that the cabin is completed and we've settled in and spent four months in it over the summer, I'd like to think I'm back to my favorite place on earth and ready to give it my full attention, but we are about to head back north to spend Christmas and New Years at the cabin.  One of my resolutions for the coming year is to be wherever I am at the moment FULLY, but for now I wanted to take a little walk down memory lane.

We recently replaced an aged and expiring computer.  When they transferred over our data all my pictures from years ago, prior to my beginning this blog, became wonderfully accessible.  I wanted to share a few of them with you.  They are all reasons I love Tucson and the Sonoran desert.

The wonderful old Barrio Viejo market turned B&B where I used to stay

Some of my Moon Take Night Make Day hikers and part of the
reason I have been a volunteer ranger with Saguaro National Park
for almost ten years

A Virgin of Guadaloupe shrine in Barrio Hollywood

Ancient pictographs along a favorite trail

The screechless Western Screech Owl, a frequent visitor to our yard

The saguaro cactus, icon of the Sonoran desert

A not atypical sunset out our back door

How Christmas looks when we're in Tucson

These are just a few of the reasons I love Tucson, a place I have lived for ten years this month.  It has brought me many good things, including my loving husband, and is my chosen place on Earth.  It is my spiritual center and my home.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and terrific New Year, surrounded by those that mean the most to you and in a place that you love.

Heat and Prayers

We're back from a month in the Colorado Rockies.  The triple digit heat is a bit of a shock.

When we left in late May it was certainly warming up.  The paloverdes had finally bloomed, making the desert feel as if pale sulfurous yellow clouds had descended to within a few feet of the ground.  The stately saguaros were starting to bloom, satisfying the white winged doves who'd arrived a few weeks before to fulfill one of their purposes in life of moving saguaro pollen from one cupped flower to the next.  The first strings of puff-ball baby quail were being squired through the backyard by their proud and watchful parents.

Our blessedly cool and rainy winter and early spring created a window of opportunity for plentiful reproduction.  Over a month ago we saw our first fledgelings, almost as big as their parents who they chased down and begged for food by trembling their able wings accompanied by nagging cheeps.  Yesterday I was treated to a display of dove love, a mating session in the mesquite outside my kitchen window.  As soon as the brief tryst was over one of the fledglings from the first clutch flew in to join mom, just in case she had something to feed him.  

We are habitat gardeners, but I'll admit to trying to dissuade the doves from nesting in other than natural spots -- in other words, I'd far prefer they use a tree or cactus than my back porch beam or the porch light.  Since the doves build their nests, a loose pile of twigs, in about seven minutes flat, you have to catch them at it.  Well, we got doved.  Yesterday when I walked out the front door to get the mail something near my head exploded.  It was a panicked momma dove vacating her nest, the one she'd built on our porch light.  I got a step-stool to check for eggs and sure enough, there were two, so mama dove gets to stay.  I'll admit it's a sweet spot for her -- shaded and safe from predators other than the winged variety.   We'll hope for a minimum of dove drama -- no naked babies falling from the nest please -- and hope for two healthy chicks that fledge successfully.

In late June we're heading for 110 degrees.  The saguaro are almost done with their blossoms though you see a stray one here or there, and heavily into fruiting.  Green fruits the size of small pears split open, revealing their juicy crimson interiors riddled with tiny black seeds, over 2,000 of them per fruit.  At a time of the year when rain has been non-existent for months, the sweet wet fruit is irresistible to anything that can get to it.  Birds have the easiest time of this while the fruit is on the cacti, but once it falls to the ground it's appreciated by most desert critters.  Birds and other animals, having eaten the fruit, move on and eventually -- through the process of elimination -- disseminate the seeds where one or two, out of millions produced by a saguaro over its long lifetime (which can be well over 200 years), might survive to maturity. 

It's a harsh environment, and one is reminded of that constantly watching the strings of baby quail get shorter by the day.  Near the summer solstice the light is white over the parched landscape.  Plants employ all their strategies -- dropping leaves, dropping whole branches, shriveling to the point of looking as if they'd been in a wildfire -- to survive until the monsoons arrive.  These summer rains the Sonoran desert is so dependent on are born from our searing heat and tropical moisture.  We've had a little pulse of the moisture in the last couple of days, and heat we have in abundance, but not enough moisture to humidify our scorched atmosphere enough to have something left over to wring out.  This is where the praying kicks in -- praying to Mother Nature to give us what we need so badly, the healing release of a hard cooling rain, the hope for survival.  

Joshua Tree -- Two Deserts, One Park

We spent three days in Joshua Tree National Park last weekend, not far over the Colorado River into California.  It's a huge park, a million acres, big enough to house two distinct deserts.  Entering the park from the south, it was 27 miles to our campsite in the White Tank campground.  During the drive we climbed 800 feet, from an elevation of 3,000 to one of 3,800.  We also left behind some of the most familiar plants of our Sonoran desert -- the palo verde trees and the ocotillo.

We slept in the transition zone between the Sonoran and Mojave deserts.  A five minute walk to the northwest put us firmly in the Mojave, amidst the Joshua trees.  A stroll to the south, beyond the enormous boulders ringing our campsite, provided a vista over the wide valley of the northern reach of the Sonoran desert.  It was like hangin' ten in a different desert every time you turned around.

The icon of the Sonoran Desert is the saguaro.

The icon of the Mojave is the Joshua tree, a fascinating plant to be sure.  I was as much taken by the sheer numbers, the forest of them, as by the plant itself.  But for me the iconic part of the park was the massive outcroppings of boulders, stunning in their size, changing constantly in the light.

By night, and they were long and magical winter nights, we slept outside under the stars, marking the progression of time by the changing positions of the constellations overhead. Time awake was spent counting shooting stars and listening to coyotes call across the distances or the hoot of a lone great horned owl.

By day we hiked.  Forty-nine Palms Oasis was our most adventurous hike, three miles round trip up and over a rocky ridge and down into a deep canyon where a steady water supply creates an oasis that is the antithesis of the surrounding landscape, and a magnet for water seeking wildlife.  Views from the trail were spectacular, the rock pile mountains dotted with red barrel cactus.  Rounding the ridge line before descending into the canyon the upper section of the oasis was visible over a smaller ridgeline, the dark green of the palm fronds like a shadow at the base of a mountain.

Arriving at the oasis was as much an auditory adventure as a visual one -- Gambels Quail clucked unseen in the grasses and the thatch on the California fan palms rattled with the constant motion from its sheltering occupants who were calling to each other, perhaps warning others of the two-footed interlopers.  Cottonwoods and tangles of mesquites shared the space, their snarls of desert mistletoe guarded by phainopepla protecting the ripe red berries whose one note calls reminded me of a child learning to whistle.  Areas of standing water were crowded with grass and willows and reeds.  We heard tumbles of rocks on the hillside above the oasis, behind the palms, but never saw the big horned sheep that were the likely culprits.

The next day we made several shorter hikes in some of the more visited spots in the park.  We took the gently rolling trail to the aptly named Skull Rock, educated along the way by the many interpretive signs.


Barker Dam was next and despite their seriously deficient rainfall last year, getting less than half of their normal four inches, there was still a bit of water at the base of the dam, built 60 years ago during the short lived effort at cattle ranching in the area.

We headed over to Hidden Valley, one of the rock climbing hot spots, but before hiking we had lunch in a picnic area nestled next to some of the park's iconic boulders where we were entertained by some park residents, clearly habituated to visitors, and this Western Scrub Jay was quite interested in the proceedings.  Walking Hidden Valley after lunch we couldn't decided which was more amazing -- the landscape or the people climbing up it.

One of my favorite walks was at sunset down the wash south of our campsite.  After a day of walking around families with over-excited children, the wash provided the quiet solitude we prefer.  The low sun lit up the boulders and cast long shadows across the wash.  There were no interpretive signs, but we learned more about that part of the transitional desert on that walk than on any other.  Some "knowing" requires no words.

The Unexpected Gift

A year that has brought us record breaking early heat has also brought an unexpected gift. The best gift you can get in the desert. Rain.

In the land of five seasons, the current one being Foresummer with its primary characteristics of drought and increasing heat, a long slow cool rain is the last thing you’d expect. Desiccated cactus, panting birds, and triple digit temperatures, yes. Water falling from the sky, no.

For most places a rainfall total of a few tenths of an inch would go essentially unnoticed, but here it can be a life changing event. Desert plants and animals are patient during drought and fiercely opportunistic with the smallest measure of rain. Saguaro feeder roots rest an inch or two under our rocky soils and the slightest rainfall is instantly put to use restoring water provisions, swelling the cactus’s girth overnight. Ocotillo take the opportunity to push leaves out of their thorny canes within 48 hours, transforming themselves into huge bunches of green pipe-cleaners. Resurrection fern, a crumbly paper bag brown plant masquerading as dirt most of the time, will unfurl into emerald green carpets in a few hours. Birds, encouraged by the vegetation growth they instinctively know follows rain, will decide to start second or third families for the year while the air is perfumed with the scent of the creosote.

Though the mesquite branches are now bowed, laden with rain, we desert dwellers know that in a day, maybe two, the sun will again feel like an assault and the ground beneath our feet will appear to have never experienced the gift of rain. But we’ll see the subtle effects -- greener trees, plumper prickly pears, new strings of baby quail. It will be enough to see us through to the next season, the summer monsoon and its embarrassment of riches.

Overachiever

There’s one in every crowd – the overachiever for whom the best is not good enough. You know them. The high school valedictorian who graduated with a 4.25 GPA. The marathoner turned triathlete turned ultra triathlete. Richard Branson.

Every April we begin watching the saguaro for the little flat green buttons on the prickled pleats of this cactus. We know these smooth discs will grow into knobs that will, some time in late April, open in the dark of night into iridescent white cupped flowers. These flowers will be filled with cool sweet melon scented nectar, manna from heaven for everything that can get to it during this parched dry pre-monsoonal season. Bats and moths visit by night. Bees and birds by day, particularly the white winged dove which follows the saguaro blooms up from the southern Sonoran Desert in Mexico. Enticed and rewarded by the fragrant nutrient-rich liquid, partakers leave their host dusted in pollen, carrying it to the next flower they visit, fertilizing flowers for fruit and seed production, the benefits of which they will reap in June.

A few weeks ago as we left for a ramble in the Tucson Mountain foothills, we spotted our first open saguaro blossoms, usually soloists this early in the blooming season; occasionally with two or three in a saguaro’s crown. A few miles later we spotted in the distance what looked like a saguaro wearing the white flag of surrender, or a brilliant white tee shirt a wind had caught and tangled in its thorns. When we got closer we realized that this overachiever of saguaros had cloaked itself in well over a dozen blinding white blooms crowded cheek to jowl in remarkable display of overabundance.

There must have be some extremely sated birds resting in the nearby mesquites.