The main garden:
This is an experiment of densely planted mixed circles, including greens (chard, kale), cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and more. So far it’s all doing well.
Cucumbers, shishito peppers, and green beans
Cukes are coming along
Watermelons — lettuce beds are under there somewhere and getting hard to harvest
Cantaloupes
Cover crop bed with pumpkins mixed in
Beautiful sorghum
And the screened secret garden:
Last weekend, we went on a hike in Price Canyon (which is south of Horseshoe and north of Rucker, about 20 minutes from here) and were delighted to find Price spring running. It was beautiful and a hike we’ll do again. It’s amazing that there are such different kinds of ecosystems so close to us.
With good early spring rains, the poppies are blooming here, and we’re looking forward to warmer temperatures. We had enough rain that my garden greens are thriving even though I’ve neglected them. I’m hoping to have more time in the garden soon!
Every once in a while, we’ve had cows get on our property even though it’s fenced. Sometimes a delivery driver leaves the gate open or something else random lets the cows enter.
Last week I looked up from my bed to see a large black momma cow and her baby grazing on our otherwise unmunched grass and felt dread at having to chase them off. (Cows here are very skittish, and chasing them without benefit or horses or dogs is challenging.)
But last year, Brad came up with a new solution to the challenge that works great — a drone!
This solved the problem in minutes, rather than the hours it used to take. Much safer too.
drone’s eye view
We are now finally free of all of our landline phones. When we moved to Arizona, we had three. And for a variety of reasons, both business and personal related, it took a while to get rid of all these, but now it is done.
When I drop email, you’ll know my metamorphosis is complete! :)
** 10/16/22 update – The rain has continued, and we got about .25 ” this weekend. (Other areas nearby had more, some over 2″.) This is by far the longest the monsoons have gone on in or time here. Recording this for future reference.
10/24/22 update – first freeze this week
Well, it’s been an odd year here for a variety of reasons. As I’m looking at the blog, I realize that several interesting things have happened that haven’t been written about so I’m doing a catch up post with some highlights.
This year we are thinking more than usual about how much we value the life we have built here. It is a beautiful life in an amazing place.
There are many wonders to living close to the land (and far from other people) as we do. Among them our connections to the seasonality, awareness of the night time sky, and of course, sightings of wildlife.
For the 13 years that we have lived here, we have seen signs of what I was sure was a badger. Very sharp and long scratch marks in the dirt, occasionally clawing at a wooden door. But we never saw a badger.
Finally this morning, laying in bed, I heard something that sounded strange. I got out of bed, and right in front of the house, I saw it — the elusive badger. It was beautiful. Not too large and with a bold stripe running down its back all the way to the tip of its nose. It moved slowly and seemed uninterested in me as it looked right into the glass doors in our bedroom and then slunk over toward the other house and eventually out into the bush. Pretty great way to start the day.
Here’s a quick update on other things here: it is very hot and dry and windy as it often is in the spring. They are talking about a bigger than usual monsoon, which is rumored to start in mid June. We’ll see.
Being unsure what the future holds, we have cut back on the garden. Instead of our normal 10 or so beds, we are focusing on one bed and trying the intensive gardening idea that I have read much about. The idea is to plant a whole bunch of different things all densely in one bed. Since we usually have so many beds going, this hasn’t really made sense in the past, but this year I thought it might be a fun experiment. We’ll see how things go.
It’s so hot and dry, that the birds, especially the quail, are scratching up everything that’s watered. I know it doesn’t make much sense to plant things before monsoons, but it amuses me and keeps me busy so I do it anyway.
In the meantime, garlic is ready to harvest.
Here’s this year’s list with bold for my particular favorites. This was the most books I’ve read in one year in a while. I did join a book club this year, which expanded the things I read. I read several climate change related books, and some mindless crime drama to escape the horror of the world. I also read a fair amount of nonfiction related to local food and farming as a result of a work project I did on the same topic.
It got into the 30s here last night, but apparently not quite cold enough to freeze the garden. We still have tomatoes and melons on the vines and are hoping for a couple more weeks before the first frost.
Fortunately, it’s still in the 70s during the days. It’s pleasant enough to have the windows open during the day, which is quite nice. (In the summer, we close them to keep the hot air out.)
With all the garden bounty, we have been eating well and also canning, freezing, and otherwise preserving all we can. It will be nice to have all this food throughout the winter.
And we have about 400 heads of garlic and lots of greens in the ground for winter.
It is September, and the monsoons are still going. This is the longest they’ve lasted while we’ve been here. Portal just broke a record for rain set in 1967. The mountains are green, and the grass is getting waist high. There are tadpoles in the puddles, frogs jumping around, and turtles all over. It is truly marvelous.
The garden is doing well. We have had the best tomato harvest in years, and I am canning and freezing sauce and salsa for the rest of the year, as well as enjoying fresh tomatoes with every meal.
The weeds are phenomenal as well. I’ve spent many hours this weekend trying to clear out beds to start on fall planting. And this is the year of the caterpillars. (Each year, there is something that seems to thrive to an unbelievable degree. This year it is caterpillars of every color and stripe, including hornworms.)
