Category Archives: Nature

The Promise of Pretend Rain (46)

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Summer in Palm Springs requires a kind of stamina, I think. You discover ways to cope with the searing heat. Again and again you count the months remaining until it will be over. We are not quite there yet, and I haven’t given up hope for a stretch of cooler days still between us, but temperatures here are set to keep hugging 100 degrees for at least a few more days. Last summer we had thunderstorms, and I got excited at the thought that global warming might bring a monsoon season to our valley here. When I left town for my annual work retreat in June, I dragged all of my potted plants and trees into a clump and set an automatic sprinkler on them. When I got back, I left the odd little jungle in the corner of our courtyard garden. I liked looking at all that green in one place. Then one day when I was sitting on the patio something went awry with the water pressure, and instead of my 4-foot tall circle of water the sprinkler shot up twice that high. I closed my eyes, and the water hitting the umbrella sounded just like pouring rain. I could hear it pounding on the roof, hear it running off my neighbor’s trailer. When it was done, the wooden fence was soaked, and if I looked at only that one corner, that almost quarter of my courtyard, it was exactly as though the world had been drenched, made new by rainstorm. It felt incredible. In spite of the drought, I couldn’t resist letting it run another time or two before I reeled myself back in. I wanted that feeling again, had no idea we could manufacture it. It made me want to fill the courtyard with plants and drench them like that every day. It made me wish I could just keep letting the sprinkler run amock. And remembering this unintended luxury, I will tuck it away for a possible repeat this summer, one desperate day in July or August. Maybe just knowing it’s an option will ease that sense of desperation in the endless brutal heat.

Frog Fun (45)

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Last night I chased our resident frog around the courtyard. I didn’t mean to, but I surprised him on his evening rounds, and I’m sure it seemed like I was following him, the crazy woman with the hose. I like to water earlier, but sometimes I just run out of daylight. Then I miss seeing the bursting colors of the nasturtiums, or the new shoots on the fan palm starts I brought from our Avenida Ortega home, kin to our huge beloved tree there. And I don’t get to enjoy it in the same way after everything is clean and wet, sitting outside in the midst of it all, soaking it all up, relieved and expanded like the garden itself. I always feel a little silly out there watering in the dark, but I can manage because the courtyard is small and light spills from the windows. It was just enough to let me glimpse our frog hopping out of my path. I was afraid I was terrorizing him. By the time I’d worked my way to the front, I could see he’d circled back around to the shed. So, I thought, he wasn’t too afraid after all, or he would have gone into hiding. Maybe he understood my apologies. Or maybe the wet yard was irresistible. I wonder now if I’ll need to make a point of watering more often at night. It must be frog heaven. When I was done, I found him sitting on my cat sculpture underneath the Palo Verde, nestled up against her neck. I left the two of them resting there together, companions in the wet dark.

Night Sky Delight (44)

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The eastern sky is washed in dark pink, our version of a sunset here, so near the San Jacintos. The clouds stretch north, too, as far as I can see on tiptoe. I am weeding the driveway, but I stop to look. There are two of the huge round kind I have only seen in these skies, big puffy smooshed almost-spirals that look like spaceships. The pink pales, and I go back to pulling weeds until the twilight plays tricks on my eyes. Later I remember I have left my shears sitting in the gravel. When I go back out to get them, I see the new crescent moon beside Venus in the west, a hands breadth above the mountains. I stand still, the dangling shears a weight pulling on my arm, my lips parted. They are surprising and bright above the darkening ridge. Back inside, I grab my laptop to do more work. I am carrying it to the living room when I have the impulse to look for them again. I bend my knees to peer out through the 4-inch slit of open window in my front door. They are still there, shining now through the silhouettes of the Palo Verde branches. I am like a little kid, scrunched down, nose pressed up against the screen. I stand there in the narrow hallway, giddy, computer clutched against my chest, watching the two of them for a long time, magic beings in the night sky.

Gray Day Gratitude (43)

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Thursday morning there is the barest touch of chill to the air. I change my T-shirt for the long-sleeved pink top Mami bought me, the one with the psychedelic swirl of words on the front that she and Auntie Gardi have, too. Mine has big holes at the wrists, and I know I will have to take it off again in less than an hour. But I slide my arms into it, loving its soft suppleness, the pleasure of the fabric covering me against the momentary cold. I am guessing this may be the last time I get to wear it. It is an odd thing, this living in the desert, this craving for cold when the rest of our hemisphere is yearning after warmth. But I am not ready for this to be the last time yet, the last time I pull on a long-sleeved top, the beginning of half a year or more of heat. I count on my fingers, eight months of it if this is truly the last cool morning. (Banish the thought.) I want to stave off summer as long as I can. I relish the cool air through the open sliding glass door. There are big dark polka dots on the pavement, evidence of an attempt to rain before I woke. I sit propped up in bed to write, cozy now in my soft pink shirt. I can smell that first rain smell, moist dirt and concrete. Black clouds hug the San Jacintos, and I hear mockingbirds in the distance, a scattered quartet. I breathe in the new rain smell and smile at our good fortune. Maybe today will be a rare gray day.

As the World Turns (41)

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yellow palo verde blossoms and buds

The mockingbirds seem to be celebrating the equinox today, marking this turning of the world. I have heard them singing day and night, more of them than I can ever remember. So, I think they must be heralding in this changing time. Yesterday I walked beside the creek bed with Audrey and Bear. I left them near the bridge and walked back along the path in the late dusk. The big frog choir starting up held all my attention, unconscious of my head cocked toward them as I walked. And I could hear a large gathering of birds beginning to roost in big bushy trees on the other side of the wash, their high-pitched calls coming across to me in waves as they settled in for the night. But when I left the path, it was the mockingbird songs that followed me home through the neighborhoods. They sang from the fan palm to the east, the telephone pole behind me. And when I was almost home a mockingbird was singing across the street in the tree whose name I do not know but whose smell takes me back to childhood. I felt the warm silky air against my calves, my face. This would be summer weather, I thought, almost anywhere else in the world. But here we have a chorus line of deep-voiced frogs and spiky ocotillos blooming red and the bursting of yellow Palo Verde blossoms everywhere you look. We have warm night air and mockingbirds singing their hearts out in the almost dark. Here we are in the throes of late, late spring. Happy vernal equinox. Happy solar new year, everyone.

Surprised (37)

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I’ve never lived before in a place where there are so many citrus trees. Here there are grapefruit, oranges, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. One grower at the farmer’s market even has a cross between a Mandarin orange and a kumquat, the size of a slender plum tomato, sweet skin and tart fruit. People pile up mounds of grapefruit on their lawns for passers by. They send home friends with bags of lemons. I am blessed with a kind man from my old neighborhood who still brings me grapefruit and Meyer lemons even though I’ve moved away. The trees are everywhere, but unless they are bulging with unpicked fruit I don’t tend to notice them. I do wonder who started the tradition. I notice people are quick to complain about all the golf courses but never mention this hidden forest of citrus trees we seem determined to grow here in the desert. But in February I can’t imagine being without them. In February, their fragrance finds you everywhere. It catches you in odd places, not a citrus in sight, the ambrosia wafting on some secret current of air. And every year I am surprised, again and again, breathing deep, as though the scent alone might sustain me. I look around. Is it that little neglected lemon tree beside the empty home? I’m never sure I really want to find the source. There is an added delight in the mystery, I think, knowing the sweetness has traveled unseen and who knows how far across the neighborhood to find you.

Mouthful of White (35)

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I am riding home from the farmer’s market when I see a raven flying toward me with a mouthful of white. I stop to watch. He lands in a fan palm beside the bike path. I wish I had my binoculars. I want to know what he’s holding in his beak. When I first saw him, I was afraid he had a bird, but now I don’t think so. It looks like a huge clump of cotton but less dense, a shock of fluffy white against the smooth shiny black of him. I wait. I think he will put this big prize in his nest, but he only sits there. He makes those smooth guttural sounds I love so much, and another raven answers. I look over and see her sitting two trees down, matching white stuff in her mouth. On the first palm, I see a spot that juts out, and I think it might be a nest. I keep waiting. Then I realize I’ve interrupted them. I apologize and ride away. For a moment, I cry—because I am the intruder, because they are afraid of my kind. Later, I hope I didn’t dim the glory of their bright snowy find.