Sidetracked Charley

  The Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak Fire is at last contained. That does not mean out. It means that the perimeter is 100%. Crews are not trying to restore areas they rearranged in an effort to establish that containment; put fences back and erase some dozer lines. And then there are the containment lines they put in for the fire which did not get there. Sounds silly but when you know the extent of the sickness of our forests due to drought it is necessary.  This far and no further lines are out beyond the established perimeter and are based on preventing the worst case scenario. Some nights that is where my goes, out beyond the perimeter and to the worst case. Even with all the wonderful rain I know the drought is not over. We need more than one good monsoon year, more than one fantastic year of snowpack. But while it does no good to obsess about that it is silly to not do what you can do to make things better. The sunflowers are a last blooming. They are a month behind. Every...

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world  the master calls a butterfly . - Richard Bach When it appeared, or I accepted, that we were going to be in this horrid shift in the paradigm for longer than was comfortable I just wanted to scream. No white knight was going to ride in and slay the dark lord and his minions.  There are games like Monopoly and Chess I came to loathe early on because the end was always so painfully long and torturous. Being burned at the stake has its appeal because it is said you lose consciousness when the fire gets to your knees and friends of the victim help out by bringing more firewood to the pyre. But we are living in the political model of the inquisition.  I could not turn away from the news because I figured I had the Watergate experience to do battle in this far worse situation. But I was going to have to figure out a way to survive it. The steps I took seemed so small at first. It began with watercolor note...

I really have been an accidental gardener. I moved around too much to really put down roots outside of containers. And if I chanced, for a short period of time to have a plot where I could work the earth I was haphazard in what I would grow. Or attempt to grow. Now and again I would be wildly successful at something like horseradish in North Carolina. That started a war with my neighbor. She was also not fond of my shredded computer paper mulch. Frankly, I found that funny because all the birds favored it as nesting materials for blocks around. I learned to cook Zucchini because it was the only plant I was successful at in my rocky patch in Sandia Park, New Mexico. I even wrote a cookbook, and for years did a cooking column titled Goats Don't Eat Zucchini .  And they don't. But skunks eat corn. They even know when to do a midnight raid on your about ripe corn. In Questa I discovered why chicos. It is a labor intensive corn product made with corn a week from ripe or before...

Dog Gone Alley Last year the big expansion of the "garden" was the poppy bed on the front of the deck. This year the new flower beds have been in Dog Gone Alley, a double gated entry to my backyard, and dog camp. It seemed a perfect place to put at least one raised bed for flowers. And as it has better sun for Iris than other locations I decided to make it an Iris bed. To which I add Italian Garlic (garlic has gotten lost in my hoop house) and most recently globe thistle. That left me with the other side of the walkway through Dog Gone Alley. I resisted doing another raised bed and instead yesterday went for the natural sowing method often used for wild flowers. I scattered seeds of Mexican Hat over the varied low vegetation (dandelions and a couple other creeping weeds) topped with potting soil and then mulched with straw. I also mulched the other side. And while I still had lots of mulching straw in the bag I bought (I bought two so much more to mulch) I mulched ...

Red Sunflower There is a point in August when the wind comes from a new direction and carries with it a hint of cool weather coming. This year I was down on the Bosque north of Albuquerque when fall arrived. Thus proving it didn't have anything to do with my higher altitude in Black Lake. And it isn't just a coolness to the breeze but the smell of fullness or ripeness. Fall smells different than spring or summer.  Changes in color on the bosque I returned to my Black Lake home to find the wild asters in bloom, late cowslip. The rust colored sumac in seed is missed. We missed the wildflowers of the spring because of the winter drought which continued into early summer.  Mare and foal in the fall  I have felt off step through the summer with my edible garden efforts. Root crops did not produce and I lost my Spanish garlic crop for some reason. Greens and chard fed me well but Broccoli and Brussels Spouts were disappointing. But the flowers in my beds mad...