What's To Love about Tucson

Oh, lucky me! I live in Tucson in the winter months.  It’s warm and sunny. I sit in the back yard, soaking up sun like a lizard, while folks in Kansas are shivering in their boots.

But wait, there’s a down side. On January 31 I began sneezing. By late afternoon my nose was dripping constantly. Nope, it wasn’t the flu as I feared. Instead, as Grant quickly determined, the African sumac has begun opening its tiny blossoms.

African sumac is one of the few trees that thrive here in the Sonoran desert, and for that reason it is widely planted in Tucson. It is evergreen and has thin, blade-shaped leaves. It also produces tiny blossoms by the thousands.

There are three of these trees in our yard, all of them very close to the casita we call home. They aren’t very pretty here, with unruly branches going off in different directions.

I’m terribly allergic to the trees’ pollen, enough so that I wondered whether I’d be just as well off in the bitterly cold Kansas winter. Fortunately, I discovered that an antihistamine stops almost all of my allergy symptoms. So I’m still here, basking in the sun and trying to decide what to do with a generous gift from my book club friend.

They're organic and grew in someone's back yard. Deciding how to use the lemons is a problem it will be fun to solve, with the promise of tasty treats in the warm Tucson winter weather.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Is This a Duck?

People make mistakes. Sometimes they don’t matter, but they may have consequences ranging from financial loss to emotional pain to loss of life. Most mistakes are small, though, and some of those may become guidelines to life “from now on.” In short, we learn a lesson.

We made lots of mistakes when we moved from town to the country. We really didn’t know the first thing about living in the country. Although both of our fathers had owned farms, in neither case did the landowner live on his land.  Oh, we were naïve!

We had a pond dug close by the creek that runs through the bottom of our property. It rained and the pond filled up. We trudged down the hill to admire it. Dennis remarked that it would be nice to have a duck floating on our pond and the next day bought a white duck. The duck was happy swimming in the pond. It looked good, too.

The pond was far from our house, essentiality in the middle of a woods inhabited by coyotes, raccoons, and other hungry wildlife. The duck didn’t even make it through the first night. When we went down to the pond we found only a bill and two yellow feet.

From then on we avoided buying a duck. In fact, when we are about to decide to change something we ask ourselves, “Is this a duck?”

I still regret that the white duck had to pay the ultimate price for our naivety.

Copyright 2017 by Shirley Domer

The Truth We Cannot Ignore

How does one write about death? How does one reveal one’s innermost fears and concern for loved ones who are struggling with life and death issues?

We make it through Christmas with baklava and Indian food and good times with family.

We visited Tucson Botanical Garden’s butterfly pavilion.

We fed the ducks in Reid Park.

We shopped for furniture, but didn’t buy.

But always, perched on our shoulders like a vulture was the knowledge that someone we love is desperately ill and may not survive. Oh, I know, to be born is to die, but when it comes, it is as if no one had ever died before.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Taking on a Big Project...or Not.

It’s been more than a month since I arrived in Tucson but I haven’t written a word in this journal. It isn’t that I haven’t thought of writing, it’s just because I’ve been too busy. For one thing, when I arrived the back yard was strewn with large, flat rocks. The idea was that we should figure out how to arrange the rocks and create a walkway connecting our three houses and a patio from them.

Dennis took one look at the rocks and announced that it would take us all winter, if not longer. We immediately decided this was a job for professionals. Luckily our neighbors recommended a good company that gave us a reasonable bid and started the next week!

The yard had been graded, so the crew wasn’t starting from scratch. The first day they raked and pounded the earth with a big machine that compacted the soil. Thump, thump, thump went on all day, shaking my bones.

Stone-laying began the next day and by the end of two days, the two-man (and sometimes four-man) crew had made good progress. The big house is on the left and our Casita A is on the right.

Soon the master craftsman announced that we needed more stone. The supplement arrived the next day, joining the sand heap and the filler* heap on our driveway.

These stones are massive, the large ones taking two men to position them. No wonder the stone-layers wear not only knee pads, but also trusses to protect their backs!

Layering sand as a bed, adding each stone, trimming the stone to fit, leveling and pounding the stone has to be done on one’s knees. Then the filler between the stones must be added, compacted, and wet down, again on one’s knees.

In just nine days the job was done and the happy homeowners, Grant and Blair, were sitting on our new patio. Now we can get on with life.

*We went to a rock merchant to buy the filler, which is a ground-up type of stone that hardens when it is wet down. The workmen did this using a hose, but each additional rain hardens the filler more.

Copyright 2017 by Shirley Domer

Paradox

Our trip back to Kansas was interesting and dull, painful and relaxing, tiring and relaxing – a paradoxical trip in these and other unexpected ways.

Range after range of mountains appeared along I-10, then disappeared behind us as yet another (or two or three) came into view. The affection I had acquired for this basin and range landscape came as a surprise to me as the ranges appeared farther and farther apart.

Eventually the mountain ranges became wooded hills and the desert flora changed from ocotillo and cacti to scrubby cedars.

After an overnight visit in Albuquerque with Jim, we headed east toward Tucumcari, a town of abandoned motels, gas stations, and other deserted, collapsing buildings. When we crossed into the Texas panhandle the outlook became even more depressing because of vast, reeking cattle feed lots and fields ornamented with huge irrigation mechanisms sucking the last drops from the ever-shrinking Oglalla Aquifer. I couldn’t bear to photograph what we were seeing.

At last we crossed into southwestern Kansas where we came upon the green fields of wheat my eyes were so hungry to see again.

At last we pulled into our driveway and my heart sang to find sweet William (wild phlox) and pink tulips blooming in our little memorial to friends who have passed on.

Traveling with an injured foot, I had spent a lot of time with it propped on the dashboard, which resulted in a painful crick in my neck that lasted three weeks after we arrived home.

So, here we are, weeks later, cataract surgery behind me, crick in the neck gone, rain several times a week, and green all around me. As much as I love the wooded scenes surrounding our Kansas home, I’d love to look out the window and see Tucson’s Santa Catalina Mountains aglow in the setting sun.

Life is, indeed, a paradox.

Copyright 2017 by Shirley Domer