posted 5 years ago
Hi Pearl! Kristen said the soil is sandy/ loamy with clay and some caliche. She wants something with a purpose, preferably vegetable and/or herbal and ornamental only if it feeds bees or hummingbirds. She said she's willing to water it and add amendments. She's worried about the lack of sun and it getting colder in winter. The trees growing on the other side of the fence are mesquite. There may be an hour or so of sunlight overhead filtered through the mesquite trees but I haven't seen any sun hit the ground directly except for the far corner in the afternoon, but maybe that's only because it's been overcast most days I've been here. I told her the sun I see hits the fence two feet up in the afternoon so she might want to start planting there for vegetables, maybe in containers on tables. She also REALLY wants to make an herbal spiral, but I don't know if this is the best location for that. The irony is that she knows more than I do about gardening and permaculture, but I have more time. She's working two part time jobs that total 50 hours a week, so she hasn't had the time to really work this stuff out.
As for north and south moves... I just moved from Michigan where I spent most of the past five years back to Texas a couple months ago, and now here to Arizona. I really love it in Michigan and might move back there but don't plan to real soon. One of the things I couldn't help but notice is that 30 degrees might be one of the worst freezing days out of the year in the south, but its one of the best warmer days in Michigan winters. Everyone is in such a better mood, takes a layer or two off and comments on the nice weather - whereas in the south in Houston, it being such a cold miserable day, everyone is bundled up, more tight lipped and less friendly, just wants to hurry back into the warm indoors. My first summer in Michigan it was still snowing in May, which was completely shocking to me. I kept saying, "But it's May! May 15th!" And they kept saying, "Yeah" like what did May 15th have anything to do with it - absolutely nothing! I experienced plenty of other things I took for granted, unknowingly assumed without really thinking about, etc. - everything from not realizing mosquitos, ants and ticks were alive and well up north, even surviving the winters somehow, to common bear sightings crossing through towns, on back porches near trash cans and bird feeders, etc. and public warnings to "separate yourself from your food" while summer camping, which apparently is the kind of common sense that's uncommon for tourists and even some locals. My first year there I told Kristen I was going to set up a booth at the Mesick Mushroom Festival, and she said, "Wait. You mean they actually have a festival for fungus?" I laughed and told her it sounded funny when she put it that way, "festival for fungus" but that yes, they did, that morels were considered a fine culinary mushroom, and sold for $50 lb. People from all over the world come to mushroom hunt in the woods. I used to go for walks in the woods of Louisiana for hours at a timewhen I lived there as a teenager, so being surrounded by the woods and hills of Michigan after years of Houston city congestion and depression was very therapeutic for me. Now the mountains of Arizona call to me. Hiking to a particular mountain peak configuration is in my near future. I hope you enjoy where you are now, and make or already have good, solid friends, and share some of the local lore, habits and habitats with us.
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