Mess with Mother Nature and You May Be Sorry

Until I visited the Tucson Botanical Gardens I had not realized how many climates around the globe are similar to that of the Sonoran Desert. In the Cactus and Succulent Garden, planting areas are devoted to plants from hot, arid climates on six continents. Only Antarctica is missing from the line up.

These climatic similarities encouraged importation of species from other continents, other ecosystems, to the cities and towns of southern Arizona. The earliest importers were probably Franciscan monks who brought olive trees to southern California in 1769. The planting of olive trees soon spread to Arizona, and today one often sees olive trees in Tucson yards, where the fruit may be seen littering the ground, rotting away.

This seems a terrible waste of a valuable resource to me. I wish I could organize an urban hunter-gatherer group to harvest olives as well as the fallen citrus fruit I see in neighborhoods all around the city.

Sadly, Pima County outlawed the planting of olive trees in 1984, so all of the olive trees one sees here are at least 32 years old. Planting new olive trees was banned because olives’ pollen is a powerful allergen for some people, which rather spoiled the reputation of southern Arizona as a haven for allergy sufferers.

Later, the Department of Agriculture, particularly its Extension Service, was an avid and enthusiastic, if ill-informed, promoter of various non-native species all over the country. One in particular, the African sumac, was touted as a leafy, shade-giving tree for Arizona, and was widely adopted for that reason. Unfortunately, the female African sumac also is a manic seed-producer. Also, its roots spread extensively, crowding out native species. Many people are allergic to its pollen, as well, and the tree is now considered an invasive species. In our yard alone there are six African sumac trees, at least two of which are female. This one is right outside our front door, loaded with yellow blooms whose pollen has had me sneezing and hacking for two weeks now.

Personally I’d prefer six olive trees. Even if they made me sneeze they would also compensate by producing delicious fruit.

We humans have made many irremediable transplants from one ecosystem to another. Pythons from Burma, sericea lespedeza from Japan, Flying silver carp from Asia, and others have taken hold in the United States, wrecking highly evolved ecosystems from the Florida Everglades to the plains of Kansas to the Great Lakes and even the deserts of the Southwest.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

Cleanup Time

An amazing amount of backyard deconstruction has occurred at our house in the past year. Gone are the brick planters that pooled water against the second casita, rotting its siding. The siding is gone, too, and has been replaced. Gone is the very large, hideous fountain. Gone is the rotted Arizona room. Gone are the pointless brick columns that stood in the middle of a long line of prickly pear cacti. Gone, too, are the prickly pears. Dismantled but not gone are the brick pathways.  

(As you can imagine this has required Grant, Blair, and now Dennis, to labor intensively with sledgehammer, chisel, mallet, crow bar, spade, shovel, wheelbarrow and other tools.)

Most of the debris has been hauled away – seven large dumpsters full, to be exact. Still, some lumber, sections of eucalyptus tree that are too large to split, and all of the bricks remained.

Dennis and Grant sorted the bricks and pavers into three huge piles: unsalvageable, clean, and mortar-covered. Over a three-day period the men moved the clean bricks to an area by the driveway, one wheelbarrow full at a time.

Then we had a discussion about what to do with the mortar-covered bricks. Maybe they could be cleaned to reuse as siding on the main house addition, which is currently sided with ugly yellow vinyl. A You Tube video showed a man cleaning mortar off bricks using a hatchet. At a dollar a brick he cleaned twenty bricks in the time it took to make the video. This seemed worth a try, so we bought the cheapest hatchet we could find and a pair of Kevlar gloves. A large section of the eucalyptus tree is serving as workbench.

Again, Dennis wheelbarrows the clean bricks to a new pile near the driveway. (Obviously there's a long way to go before this job is done.)

Yesterday a truck delivered another large dumpster to our driveway. Today was backyard cleanup day. Grant and Dennis started early this morning. They loaded the dumpster first with eucalyptus trunk pieces. Then they loaded the unsalvageable bricks (yep, that wheelbarrow was in the action again). The old lumber was hand carried. 

By four-thirty the job was done.

We still don’t know how to dispose of the remaining gigantic eucalyptus trunk sections. Each must weigh a thousand pounds or more. That aside, we're about ready to have a water management expert come to recommend a plan for water conservation. After that we can have the yard regraded. We're almost on our way to reconstruction.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

Tucson Botanical Gardens: A Haven

Now that the long string of holidays has come to an end we can settle down to exploring Tucson. At the top of my list was the Tucson Botanical Gardens, located on Alvernon not far from our casita. I had driven past the Gardens’ entrance many times, but, like many places in Tucson, the garden itself is hidden by a tall stucco wall. I admired what I could see of the tree branches that reached above the wall, especially a citrus tree loaded with grapefruit.

I want not only to learn more about desert flora, but also to find a place to walk in a natural setting. The elderly have to keep moving, but I haven’t been walking for exercise since coming here. Walking in the neighborhood doesn’t appeal to me because I’d rather walk in nature. For a country woman transplanted to the desert place the Botanical Gardens could be a haven.

How large were the gardens? Did they have interesting pathways? This morning I answered those questions. The gardens are far more extensive that I would have guessed. There are pathways weaving everywhere through the plantings. Dennis and I bought a membership so that I can walk the garden paths day after way, watching as the season evolves.  Learning the cycles of these unfamiliar plants. Exercising my heart, lungs, and legs. Renewing my spirit among other life forms. I have a hunch I have a lot to learn from them about survival in the desert.

Another hunch is that I’ll be posting lots of photos taken in the gardens. Here’s the first, an organ pipe cactus, the second tallest native to the Southwest.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

The Three-Step Kitchen

Our casita has a three-step kitchen. As I enter the kitchen area, my first step takes me to the refrigerator on my right. The second step takes me to the stove, and the third step takes me to the sink.

If I turn to my left, there’s the kitchen peninsula where I prepare and serve food to the dining table beyond.

Our Kansas kitchen is so big that I’ve worn a path around its wooden floor. There are cabinets and countertops aplenty for various small appliances, baking pans, pots and skillets of all sizes, supplies of ingredients, and utensils for every purpose, as well as plenty of table service pieces. I also keep seldom-used things such as a pressure canner on a shelf in the basement. The basement also is home to our big freezer and five long shelves we use as a pantry. Baskets of potatoes, sweet potatoes, shallots, and garlic also reside there.

The Kansas kitchen where I have cooked for forty years would hold four of our casita’s kitchens. Instead of having basement storage galore I now have a tiny shed attached to the casita, that already holds a dog food tin and a recycling tub.

Clearly I would have to dramatically change my cooking routines. This kitchen would have to be minimal and streamlined but also sufficient to prepare all the foods we love.

I worked out a couple of guiding principles for equipping this tiny kitchen.

1. Everything should be as small as feasible.
2. When possible, equipment should serve more than one purpose.

 Then I began to list the things I could not do without. (That was easier than starting from what I’m accustomed to.) Surprisingly, this approach is working out pretty well. For example, I bought one medium-size stainless steel bowl that serves several purposes. It makes a decent salad bowl, I can mix granola in it, and it is large enough for raising bread dough. I can even use it as a dish pan if I won’t want to fill the sink for a big dish-washing. 

I'm sure you noticed there's no dishwasher. We couldn't use one anyway, because we have only six plates, eight soup/cereal bowls, two serving bowls, and a 24-piece set of flatware. We have one-, two-, and 3-quart saucepans, a 10-inch iron skillet, a plastic mixing bowl, a 9”x13” and an 8”-square baking pan, 2 bread pans, 1 set of measuring cups, four spatulas (too many), wine opener, wooden spoon, soup ladle, turning spatula, some knives (too many, really), and a few cooking staples such as flours, grains, beans, and dried fruit. A stand mixer, though large, is essential for baking and well worth the space it takes up.

Luckily for me, Blair and Grant bought a small freezer and I can store some supplies there. The freezer will quickly pay for itself through our stocking up when frequently used things, such as coffee, are on sale.

The best part of a tiny kitchen is its convenience. Everything is close at hand. The small space also aids in character development for it demands tidiness, something I am belatedly and reluctantly learning.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer