There is one animal here that I had never seen and really wanted to — the gila monster. Yesterday, we saw one right in front of our house. It ran right across the porch and kept on running. It was a juvenile and ran so fast that I didn’t get the greatest pictures. We were so excited!
Summer monsoons are our favorite time of year here, but this year, they have been quite a bit different.
For the last ten years, we have seen monsoons always start within a day or two of July 4. This year, they seemed to start much sooner. We got a few good rains in early June and thought “This is the early monsoons!” Then nothing. The folklore here is that early monsoons mean a weak monsoon, and we feared this was the case.
But then in mid July, we started getting good rains. We have had in the neighborhood of 1-2″ in a 24 hour period at least three times in the last month. That’s really good rain for us (and the rains have been strong enough that we’ve had to repair our road a couple times already, and there have also been a few lengthy phone/Internet outages).
However, the pattern of the storms this year has been quite a bit different. In past years, the classic monsoon pattern has been for clouds to build up over the mountains to the west of us, to move from west to east, and to dump rain (somewhere, not necessarily on us) in the later afternoon or early evening.
This year though, storms have come from every direction, and the movement has sometimes been from south to north or north to south or even east to west. There have been several times we’ve watched the radar to see storms making a strange swirling pattern around some random center. Also the timing of the rains has varied. Several times we’ve had rain in the very early morning (2am) or even in the mid-day. In general, I’d say we’ve had less frequent rain here at the house, but in bigger quantities when it comes. The storms have been more violent, and we’ve had hail a couple times.
And as of today, August 6, the monsoons are still going strong. Knock on wood that they have a few more weeks.
All of this has felt rather unusual.
I’m not sure what all this means, but I’m recording it here for posterity and future analysis.
(On an semi-related note, as a part of my local oral history project, I recently listened to a long-time resident here talk about the 1970s and 80s here, before the drought, when the rains here were much more plentiful. Presumably there were still monsoons, but also more rain throughout the year. Perhaps we’ll return to that some day, or perhaps not.)
I sometimes hear people here (and elsewhere) saying that they never get around to finding the _____ (peace, relaxation, you can fill in the blank) they hoped to find once they had time to do so.
I have made an effort to find time to “stop and smell the roses” here, but with work and various other activities, I admit it is not always easy. Now that summer is here, I am done working at the college and in between a few other work projects. This week provides a great snapshot of how life here is when I achieve this.
On Monday, I worked in the garden in the morning, harvested some produce, and prepared some food for a lunch with friends that ended up stretching out to fill the whole afternoon. Most enjoyable!
That evening, I got a call from a neighbor whose apricots were ripe. We often pick for them and then can and split the results. Tuesday was spent doing some office work and laundry and also writing a few postcards to voters (exciting to be working on an Ohio campaign this month) and letters to friends. After that, we went and picked apricots.
Wednesday was a town day with a visit to fill a book box, a trip to the gym, and a tie dye activity at the library with some kids. In the evening, we went to visit a friend who had called to say he had several hundred pounds of onions he’d just harvested. I’m hoping to sell some and preserve some.
By Thursday, those apricots were calling, so I spent the day canning. I also baked for my sales tomorrow. (I’m not doing the farmer’s market this year, but am doing some by-invitation-only sales to a few folks.)
Friday morning was harvest and then off to Portal to sell and do some work at the library. Then more canning of apricots.
We finished off the week by going to Nogales to participate in a Families Belong Together march. We were part of a group who blocked the port of entry in protest of US immigration policy.
Lots of important, gratifying, and meaningful activities. I wish every week were like this!
First of the shishito peppers are appearing
The monsoons are our favorite time of year here.
When we first moved here, we were told that there used to be an “early monsoon” and a “late monsoon,” but in the ten years we’ve been here, there has only been a late monsoon, typically beginning around July 4 and lasting for a variable number of weeks.
It’s been a hotter than usual spring, and two days ago, afternoon clouds gathered, and we got an (unforecast) downpour. Then yesterday, we had the same. I was driving between Bisbee and Douglas, and the rain was so torrential that I had to pull over. Brad said there was rain at home too. There’s always a debate about the real start of monsoons, but I feel like they’ve started. Could this be the “early monsoon”?!?! I guess we’ll see.
Unfortunately, monsoons also bring lots of lightning. And dry lightning means fire.
Yesterday, there was a fire on the mountains behind our house.
The memory of the really big fire here a few years ago is still fresh in everyone’s mind, and so the fire crews were out super fast to try to prevent this from spreading. Big planes dropped loads of red flame retardant.
The forest service also sent several crews of hotshots. By the time it was getting dark, the fire was greatly diminished.
At night, you could see a bunch of fire spots blazing, but it wasn’t out of control. By morning, it was mostly contained. There are still a couple fire crews today, but it seems like things are fine now.
We are hoping for more rain and less lightning and wind as the monsoons ramp up.
Here is the garden map so far this year.
We succeeded again in having lettuce growing all year round, and for the first time, we also had garlic throughout the year. We are still finishing last year’s crop as we harvested the first bed this year. The scapes were great this year, and we made a very delicious pesto and also pickled some.
The fencing has really worked out well, so we are trying a few favorites that we’d given up on in the past couple years like sweet potatoes.
And as the garden is getting more predictable, we are also growing some flowers.
Last year, I grew some bushel basket gourds with the hopes of making them into drums. The gourds didn’t really get big enough for drums (I’ll try again this year), but I thought I’d use them to practice in the meantime.
I got a bunch of books from the library to get inspirations for what I might make and to learn the techniques. It’s quite a process.
First, the gourds need to dry outside for several months. They go from being very heavy to being quite light as they dry.
This is what the gourds looked like when they were done drying. Those black spots are yucky mold.
The next step is to soak them in hot soapy water overnight. You have to weight them down so they don’t float up.
Then you scrub the outside of the outside of the gourds with a metal scouring pad to get all the skin and mold off. When I got done and dried them out again, they looked like this:
Next I cut open the gourds. Depending on what I was going to make with them I either used a hand keyhole saw or drilled a hole in the top with a hole saw. This is that the insides looked like.
I scraped and separated the seeds to save for this year’s growing. Then I scraped out the other dry stuff out and sanded the inside to get it smooth. Then came the fun part, finishing. I stained the outsides with some soy-based wood stain.
For one of the gourds, which would have a visible interior, I decoupaged the inside. I used tea bag envelopes and tags, since I was making a tea holder.
To finish the outsides, I used acrylic paints and then varnished thewhole thing.
Here’s the end product. The one of the left is a tea candle holder.
Given that this is the first time I’ve done anything like this, I am happy with the end results. I have several more “practice” gourds and am looking forward to experimenting more with these.
I just got off the phone with our 83-year-old neighbor, who has been for some time back home in Wisconsin. We talk on the phone regularly, and it’s always a pleasure to hear from him. He is one of the sharpest, most thoughtful people I know, and I am lucky to count him as a good friend.
Back when we first came here, if you’d had told me that I’d be such good friends with this person, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s been one of the surprises of living in a small rural community.
While there are things about living here that drive me crazy (it’s almost impossible to have privacy…I’ve heard stories about myself repeated back through the grapevine until they are nearly unrecognizable, and as one distant friend said recently “our public lives intersect with our social and economic ones in ways that in cities you can have different spheres. There are not many ‘anonymous days’ in rural communities.”), there are other things that are delightful.
One of them is the riches I have found in unexpected people like our neighbor. It makes me think that I might make more of an effort to connect with diverse* people if I ever lived in a city again.
* While I often lament the lack of “diversity” here, I am coming to understand that diversity can mean different things. While we sadly lack racial or ethnic diversity, we do have a collection of folks that span a crazy spectrum of political ideologies, backgrounds, and ages.
It looks like it’s going to be a great year for favas. There’s nothing like fresh favas; they’re not at all like the dried beans. They taste like pure green freshness.
A seed meeting yesterday gave me extra motivation to spend time in the garden today.
Here’s what’s growing now: lettuce, spinach, tat soi, arugula, garlic, onions, and of course, fava beans.
Yesterday, we took a 16.5 mile hike from our doorstep back through Horseshoe Canyon, then to the south and back out of the mountains through Jackwood Canyon.
Strangely, though it is so close, we’ve never been through Jackwood Canyon. I suspect that the gate into it from 80 is usually locked but I need to verify this. At any rate, it was a very beautiful hike.
You might remember that we did another long “from our house” hike in preparation for the Grand Canyon. That one ended up being mostly off trail (there supposedly was a trail but it was so seldom used as to be gone) and was very difficult as a result. Looking the maps, you never really know whether a trail will be there or not, and our area is remote enough that many trails have disappeared over the years. This time though we were pleasantly surprised to have a good trail for the entire trip. Much nicer!
We started off from our house and went back into Horseshoe Canyon, a hike we’ve done many times. About 7 miles from our house (5 miles into the canyon), there is an old homestead house. About a half mile past that, there is a branch of the trail/road that goes to the south. This goes to Jackwood Canyon.
Much of the hike followed an old forest service road. While most of it would not be passable even with 4 wheel drive, it was perfect for hiking. The trail/road went south through some beautiful grasslands. It wove behind the mountains and eventually cut through a pass, so there wasn’t even a huge climb.
lunch
We almost made it the whole way without seeing a soul, but about three miles from the end, we were approached by a pickup driven by an old cowboy. He stopped, and we said hi. He started out with a look of deep suspicion on his face (the normal expression here when regarding “strangers”). As we told him where we hiked and where he lived, his expression changed to looking as though he thought we were a bit crazy. Eventually, by the end of our conversation, he had a slight smile and seemed to think we were ok. He proclaimed us “quite fit” and wished us well.
We finished the hike in Apache, where we’d left a car. That’s about 6 miles on Highway 80 to Sunrise.
Oh, and there were lots of cows in Horseshoe.
Here’s a map of the hike.
As I usually post each year, below is a list of the books I read in 2017.
The books are listed in the order I read them with my favorites in bold.
I had a goal to read 50 books for the year, but I cut myself some slack on that for a couple reasons. First, Brad and I both did Nanowrimo in November, which took a chunk of time. In addition, toward the end of the year, I started the Red Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson (thanks to MA); these are fairly big books, and I opted for finishing that instead of cramming in a few shorter reads at year end.
What were your favorite reads this year?
As always, I’m on GoodReads. If you’re there, let’s connect!