Bloomin' yellow

Yellow's bright. Yellow's cheerful. Yellow is a change from yesterday's somewhat bittersweet recollections. I suddenly realized that I have a whole bunch of yellow blossoms in my potted garden and a few outside in the real ground. Here they are, beginning with old reliable, the snapdragon, which survives our winters quite nicely, thank you. Most of the snaps have been with me more than one or two years; at this point, I select new plants at the nursery for specific colors. The yellow, by the way, does not need any hand-holding.

The coreopsis is a rugged critter that pops up in pots without being invited. This is a rear view, to show what a wonderful thing is back-lighting to bring out color. The sun was beaming down through those petals.

I am definitely not a rosarian. My approach to roses is to buy miniatures in the supermarket flower department, repot them and make sure they get periodic water. That's it.

My Martha Stewart specialty butterfly weed is two years gone; this blossom is the first on a plant nestled in with the gallardias. I'm not sure whether it's the local native, from seed, or from boughten seed. If the latter, it should be more of an orangey-red; our Arizona butterfly weeds bloom quite golden.

I'm sure all the columbine growing in the potted garden is native -- I wouldn't think to spend real money for the yellow variety, as the natives seed and spread quite readily. Of course, deep in my heart of hearts I would really enjoy a sky blue columbine, but those come from the high Rockies. Such a graceful flower; it has always been one of my favorites!


My prickly pear blooms a pale yellow, unlike some which are more of a peachy color. Still pretty, though.

And, finally, the yellow on this pinon pine "blossom" is a heavy dose of pollen, meaning these are the male equivalent of flowers. Our pinons are short needle conifers and an important source of pine nuts.

You can't go home again

In the movie version of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's real but bleak Kansas home is depicted in black and white; once in the Wonderful Land of Oz, suddenly the world is in bright colors. This visit and revisit to the house of my Grandparents Gardner on Baseline Road in Phoenix south is quite the opposite, as you shall see.

The story began during one of my Aussie bro's periodic visits, this time in the mid-90s while my mother still lived in Sun City. After all those years Down Under where traffic follows English rules, the bro avoids driving in the States. However, he had practiced a bit among the golf carts and such in Sun City. In case you didn't know it, I have a streak of Loki (as in mischief) in me; I goaded my sib into driving south on 97th Avenue which was a quiet rural section road all the way down to Baseline. Once on Baseline, we both figured we might as well try to find the old family home, if it still existed. We headed east, past Central and soon, there it was, behind a stand selling tropical trees. The stand's operators gave us permission to photograph the house. BTW, one of the original date palms towers at the left, complete with a crop of fruit.

Here is the old house as we found it, surrounded on all sides by the glare of the desert, with but a handful of straggly trees.

In contrast, this is the house as I remember it from my childhood. Those huge plants in front are red-flowered cannas, arranged in a great circle around a lowered, grassy expanse. My grandmother G. is behind the plants, to the left. The acreage, most of it in citrus, enjoyed a good water allotment from the Salt River Project and on irrigation day, we grandchildren could play in the water in that circle.

More of Grandma G.'s garden at the front of the house -- rose bushes and honeysuckle vines. These pictures are from about 1932.

Harvesting a huge fig tree, which was to the east of the house. As I recall the tree from a couple of years later, there was a great hollow in the center, which made a grand playhouse or cave.

My grandfather in front of one of his several date palms. In the background, citrus trees.

This is the rear of the old house that bro and I saw that day in the 90s. As bleak as Dorothy's Kansas.

In my grandparents' day, it was shady behind the homestead, with a pleasant lawn and furniture for relaxing. The big branch you see was an ironwood -- a Sonoran desert tree. In Phoenix summers, we spent much time out of doors, especially in the evenings. In fact, in the hottest weather we moved our bedding out under the stars (and mosquito netting), hoping that the summer rains would not drive us back inside. I became fascinated by astronomy as a child because the seeing was so spectacular.

I wonder when the owners or tenants of the house gave up their water allocation. What a difference it made. That stump right by the house is the sad remains of the ironwood. There was no sign of the grape arbor, which I liked to climb. The folks sold the property long before I returned to Phoenix for college in 1944 and we heard gossip that it was occupied by a hippy tribe during the 60s.

My grandfather relaxes in one of several standard folding sling chairs -- a predecessor to today's standard white plastic model. Below are more of his date palms that grew at the rear of the house, including a good view of the citrus acreage.

At some point, the interior of the old house had been painted a shiny, icky tobacco brown. Heaven only knows why; almost no other color you could pick would emphasize the heat as thoroughly as brown. Long ago, the dining table was at this end of the long living room; here we ate big family dinners complete with aunts and uncles and played cards of an evening. (Though Methodists, the grandparents allowed cards.) I was amazed at how low the brown ceiling. The door at the left rear is the bathroom -- cold in winter, requiring one of those funny old round electric heaters with the element in the center.

In days past, this cement square surrounded a 3-4 foot deep structure where well water was always present, along with a bullfrog or two; ground water was not used for drinking. Below are remains of old outbuildings, of which there were several, in much better shape! Missing: the well house, built in Dutch style with a windmill on top.

What a different world that was! Try to imagine, if you are able, the ladies "putting up" peaches and plums. In August, over a hot stove in the hot kitchen. Try to imagine how comfy it was the day Grandpa G. put together his first swamp cooler made from a fan in a wooden box, with a hose trickling water through a batt of excelsior. And think about licking fresh strawberry ice cream from the churn on a hot Sunday. It was a good life if you were a kid and not worried about the Depression, as all the grown-ups were. And what's there today? I suspect houses, lots of houses, many in foreclosure.

Steps from Here to There -- and Nowhere

Stairs, like railroad trains and highways, are links between Here and There. Once in a very great while the There is obscure; usually, we're talking about the usual Up and Down. Example: these RR ties made into steps from the street up the incline to a yard here in Prescott.

Similarly, the pair of steps here (above and below). What caught my attention was how the stairs were integrated into the driveway. An interesting local innovation.

Back last month on my trip to Cajun country, which is also oil country, I scored these shots. I find stairs mounting a great tank (above) to be absolutely elegant and was pleased to get a replacement for pictures I took last year in Flagstaff, lost when my hard drive crashed. However, the tangle at the bayou oil collection point below is a bit of a puzzle. (One problem with Prescott is that we really have no interesting industrial stuff to photograph, except maybe old mines.)

But best of all in my stairway folder is a set of steps that deliberately go absolutely Nowhere. At all. Found at the National Ornamental Metal Museum, a favorite hometown showcase of the Famous Niece from Memphis. Names of cities and companies are featured on each rung; we couldn't figure out if all were steel mill towns/companies or not, though that's what we suspect.

In praise of car collectors

When I'm wearing my egghead hat, I often get pretty snarky about America's love affair with the automobile, especially when watching highways and developers encroach on my favorite places outback. However, I learned a lesson or two in the 70s when I was lucky enough to travel into Eastern Europe during the Soviet hegemony. People I met in Prague and Budapest and Warsaw treasured their small vehicles -- as a form of freedom.

And, deep down inside, I think that is what we Americans also love about the car. It frees one from the confines of fixed routes and schedules and crowds. Another form of freedom: at one time, it was possible for the home or farm mechanic to take his machine apart and put it back together again, in better shape than when it came from the factory. One reason, perhaps, why our engineers were both pragmatic and talented; they got good practice as youngsters on Gasoline Alley. I fear that today's modern computer-controlled ride defeats this informal training, which we will regret.

And so I applaud the collectors of our automotive past. They appreciate an important piece of our history in a hands-on fashion. Perhaps the only places left where folk still understand the internal combustion engine are private garages here and there, the Car Talk boys on NPR -- and Cuba, where the 60s collectible car remains all that is available.

If you've got a squawbush, make lemonade

There! I've said it. In case you wondered, the term squawbush is currently not PC. You will not see the term in any modern botanical key, though when we first came to these parts, it was the common name and I have several wildflower handbooks that use the word. My complaint is that in expunging the word from the common vocabulary, a link to the past is deliberately obliterated and only the annointed are allowed to make a connection between great grandma's healing formula using the forbidden word and today's three-leaf sumac. Not good.

Of course, I never knew why the shrub sported that unfortunate moniker in the first place. The term lemonade bush certainly makes a lot more sense: put one of those berries on your tongue as soon as it ripens to red; you'll get a sour zap you'll long remember. In fact, the berries have been used for many years to make a lemonade-like beverage.

The plant is indeed a member of the sumac family, home also to our renowned poison trio -- ivy, oak, & sumac -- known by their three-leafed habit, but also their white berries. Apparently the red-berried lot are ok; if you want to make a sumac wine, you must use the staghorn sumac.

Here you can easily see the three-leaf groups, as well as the berries (above and below, in close-up). The berries are covered with fine hairs. In my experience, the berries quickly lose their flavor soon after they have ripened; much of the juice is on the outside of the fruit, amongst those hairs, which is understandable once you realize that the interior consists almost entirely of a big woody seed. The seed is flavored by tannin. Ugh.

Even if you're not inclined to make lemonade from the three-leaf sumac, there's another good reason to have a bush or two in your yard: this one of a small handful of Arizona native plants that turn a reliable red in the fall.

BTW, if I ruled the universe and found it necessary to drop a word from the vocabulary because it offended some groups, I would ease it out gently, so as not to loose continuity with a past in which people were not as delicate in their language. For example, the popular botanical keys might say, once called xxx, but now known as www or now preferably called www.

Linkages: It turned out that there was an antique/collectible auto show on the Square Saturday which was not announced in the paper, else I would have been there with my trusty Canon. Fortunately, Prescott eNews posted a slew of pictures from that event and the Folk Arts Fair at Sharlot Hall. (Sorry -- it was somewhat hot so I stayed home and produced a letter to my Alaska granddotter who has just clicked with her reading. All about the pelicans I saw in Louisiana.) Also: if you're into hummers (the bird kind), you should take a look at the Magnificant Hummingbird (yes, that's the critter's proper name), which sometimes makes it up to southernmost Arizona.

Landscraping Prescott

At this point, of course, the hills scraped bare for the Lowe's project are a done deal. Spilt milk. Very yesterday. But they remain visible sores on the land as seen from up the hill behind my house. Not only can I catch a glimpse of the Lowe's debacle, but also the hillside beyond, cut to make room for the super Wal-Mart, plus earlier work to flatten the earth for our first major mall, to the right. But when I moved my camera angle just a tad, the trees now framed a view that includes the new bare ground created to run trucks and supplies for the revamped SR89/SR69 over/underpasses (left, below). I find myself wondering if the folk who are enjoying "forever views" from the ridge tops occasionally see what's happening below. The barrenness will probably last close to forever!

But I think that saddest of all are the sites scraped bare just before the building boom crashed. I'm wondering, for example, about the proposed small shopping center at Willow Creek Road and Gail Gardner Way. At one point, the sign said that a major chain restaurant was to be erected there. No more. I walked through the land the other day, not realizing that there was a no trespassing sign. So arrest me.

Of course, with the economy in the tank, how long do you think it will be until ground is actually broken for a shop or two? Most likely, we'll be stuck for some months (or years?) with the raw earth and plenty of dust blowing about. At this point, I'd prefer seeing buildings, as much as I don't think we need any more retail in our small city.

There were more than a few wild plants on this parcel a couple of years ago. The apache plum at left is just across the property line. But this is dry country. It takes many, many years for such a beautiful bush to develop.

Yet for some strange reason, the developers left this lone pine tree standing in the middle of desolation.

Linkage: If you're like me, you wonder about the safety of cyclists on those recumbent contraptions; carry that concern one notch higher -- The Artful RV blogger found a couple pedaling along in a tandem recumbent with an attached baby carriage. Friend k, down in Florida, has photographs of her amazing hearts of flame now in bloom. Talk about R.E.D.!