Gardening is one of those things in my life that keeps me grounded, no pun intended. The garden is always out there, even when I don’t make complete use of it. There have been years recently during which little was planted, and less harvested, due to unfortunate circumstances, some of them beyond my control. And then there are years like this one, when the motivation was there, the soil was turned, and the seeds were planted. All else being equal, it then comes down to the weather. The weather came down hard in 2020.
Our 2020 garden started well enough. My wife and I replaced yet another raised bed frame, work that brought the entire garden back into production for the first time in far too long. We started three varieties of basil, two of tomatoes, and three types of bell pepper, and an assortment of flowers suitable for warmer weather. We set out these transplants a little later than usual, but not so late that it should have brought a disaster down upon the garden. Unfortunately, the summer of 2020 decided to take over from spring ahead of schedule, and seriously overstayed its welcome. April was as hot as we would have expected from June, and May followed suit. As June melted into July, we waited for the temperature-moderating influence of the summer thunderstorm season, the so-called desert monsoon. It quite literally did not happen, and we endured one of the hottest and driest summers on record. The ridge of high atmospheric pressure responsible for the heat, as well as suppression of storm development even when the moisture was present, persisted. August became September, and we stayed “unseasonably” hot; the previous record for days with triple digit temperatures in a single year was broken on September 30th.
The garden baked. The drip irrigation system kept the plants alive, but the heat stress prevented them from being productive. On hot and breezy days, the plants simply couldn’t take up water fast enough to offset losses through their leaves. It was all they could do merely to survive. Tomato and pepper plants can’t produce viable pollen under such conditions, so no fruit was set. The flowers struggled and either bloomed sporadically, or not at all. Only the heat-loving basil did at all well, becoming the single success in the 2020 garden.
Sounds pretty hopeless, and from a certain perspective, it surely was. And yet the garden succeeded on a level that had nothing to do with our intentions or expectations.
If my wife and I were still part of the workaday world, the full success of this year’s garden would have been missed. But now we’re both done working for a living, and with the Covid-19 pandemic a clear and present danger, we stayed home. One of the things that has helped keep us from going completely crazy during this episode of isolation has been the natural history in our suburban lot. We have several very large mesquite trees on the property, and that well-watered vegetable garden. We put water and seed out for the birds, and hummingbird feeders are maintained that also attract Gila Woodpeckers and fledgling Verdins in addition to the Anna’s and Broad-billed Hummingbirds we had in mind. So, we live in an oasis centered on a garden. Being home all the time, we were given the opportunity to watch how this oasis, while not forthcoming in terms of tomatoes, made this hellish summer a little easier for local birds, reptiles, and insects.
Resident creatures that eat insects found plenty to work with. For them, the garden was amazingly productive. Lucy’s Warblers, Verdins, and Black-tailed Gnatcatchers foraged in the tomatoes, which were lush even if they didn’t set fruit. Abert’s Towhees and Curve-billed Thrashers scratched and shuffled through the mulch, seeking grubs – and finding them. When, during a “cold snap” (quotes denote sarcasm here) the tomatoes set a few fruit, a Phainopepla and a young Northern Cardinal took advantage. The Verdins apparent appreciated those tiny tomatoes as well, especially when damaged fruit attracted insects. The fruit being abnormally small and few in number, we left them for the birds.
When flowers did manage to bloom, they attracted and fed the few butterflies we saw this year. More common visitors were honeybees, solitary bees, and flies. Some of the tiny dipterid insects drawn to the flowers, gnats to you and me, were small enough to be caught and eaten by the Anna’s and Broad-billed Hummingbirds that were drawn to our feeders. Bug snacks for everyone.
No matter what I intend, I rarely harvest basil often enough to prevent flowers from appearing. Common garden knowledge holds that allowing basil to bloom ruins the quality of the herb. I’ve never found that to be particularly true, but usually remove flowers anyway to encourage new leaves. Even with that motive, I don’t always keep up with this chore. I was especially lazy about flower removal this summer. It was so hot all the time that I had little interest in being out in the garden working, even early in the morning. This suited numerous insect species, including honeybees and ants, that found in the basil flowers a source of much-needed nourishment. When I fully realized the resource I was removing, I stopped snipping basil flowers altogether, and let the ants and the bees take full advantage. And when the plants set seed, the Lesser Goldfinches came in to feast. At times, so of these small yellow, green, and black birds were working the basil patch that it would seem a tiny wind storm was taking place in that garden bed.
Birds weren’t the only backyard residents sustained by the insects calling the garden home. The resident lizards (four species) were also in good shape. The dominant species in our yard is the collared lizard, some of which grow to be eight inches or so long, and of respectable girth. These lizards are territorial, and the back yard around the garden was divided into four small kingdoms that I was aware of. The biggest of the bunch lived on the back porch, adjacent to the garden. Most mornings we found this lizard foraging for insects in the loose mulch on the tomato bed. He was an accomplished climber, and many times a rustling heard high in the vegetation would turn out to be George, and not a bird looking for a six-legged snack. George? It just seemed like a good name for him. I may have been suffering from a bit of cabin fever at the time, but the name stuck. He became quite fearless, showing no real concern when I went around in the early morning, watering things that weren’t on the drip system. Unless he thought I was about to douse him. George hated being wet.
All the bird life in and around the garden, along with the birdbath, attracted the attention of the resident Cooper’s Hawks. Of course, the hawks sometimes made kills during their visits, feasting on the other birds in the yard while also raising three hungry offspring. This wasn’t always the most entertaining aspect of our little desert oasis, but that’s nature for you. Always beautiful in its way, but not always pretty.
We spent the summer from hell stuck at home, watching the garden of 2020 fail and succeed, depending on how you decide to look at it. In years past a garden this unsuccessful would have been a source of great disappointment, and nothing more. Wrapped up in day jobs, we would have, at best, glimpsed the full story during an evening, or on a weekend. And to be honest, we were aware that much was going on in the garden that had nothing to do with us picking peppers. Being here full time made it possible to deepen that awareness. The garden failed as far as our direct intentions were concerned but sustained a kaleidoscope of life that enriched our lives and provided distraction when it was sorely needed.
Under Desert Stars 