But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Desert life’ Category

Buy My Book, So I Can Afford Pest Control

A study in lunacy, Kirby-style.

Saturday morning and I’m staring at dirty dishes from breakfast and inventing excuses for not washing them– “It’s against my religion; dish soap causes cancer; dishes come cleaner if food is allowed to set.”

I hear a startled yelp from the bathroom and my husband emerges from our bedroom, toothbrush in hand.

“What wrong?” I ask.

“I was bending over to spit out the toothpaste; I spit, and a centipede came out of the drain.”

This, of course, would have been the end of the story for people in full possession of their sanity. At Casa de Kirby, however, we don’t kill beneficial insects.  Centipedes, who snack on house-destroying termites, fit the definition of “beneficial.”

I hand him a plastic food container. “This should be big enough.”  I scoop an envelope off the table and follow him. Operation Centipede Rescue is on.

In our bathroom, my husband is leaning over the sink. He positions the container, trying to get the centipede to climb in and be relocated.

The centipede putters around the sink, antennae tapping, like a blind, bewildered old man.  (Centipedes don’t have much in the way of eyes; more like a little cluster of nerves that sense light.) Despite being blind, it manages to avoid the container. I try to nudge it into the container with the envelope. Success! Its front end  heads in the right direction.

Now, halfway in the container, the centipede inspects the smooth plastic surface, and then turns around and heads back down the drain.

This is where saner people would have squished it.

Instead I get the long-handle brush that I use to clean the fish aquarium.  Justin and I poke at the obstinate bug and it marches farther down the drain.

This is where saner people would have turned on the water full blast and washed it down the drain.

Instead, Justin sighs and heads out to the workshop.  He returns with a wrench.  “Get me something to catch water,” he says. A minute later and he’s removed the drain trap. (I married McGuyver.)

The fucking centipede is still in the drain, its antennae wiggling inquisitively, but not budging, not even when pushed with the brush.  This goes on for a while until Justin finally gives the drain pipe a hard whack and the obstinate bug tumbles into the plastic bucket below. Soon after, the creepy-crawly is outside (and probably none-too-happy, as it hasn’t rained in six months and centipedes like moisture).

Why bother with all this? Especially for a creature, that by my own admission, is “skin crawling up and down my back” creepy?

Well, there’s plain old karma and mercy.  Then there’s the fact that a six-inch-centipede in a drain, may have originated from said drain, and so flushing it doesn’t exactly keep it from marching right back up the drain. I’d rather not revisit its creepy face when I’m brushing my teeth.

And this was a really big centipede, at least seven inches.  With our luck, it would have clogged the drain.

Besides, squashing big bugs is nasty business.  First there’s the chitinous crack, followed by a spray of gooey ichor.  Next, there’s the splattered bug parts, legs (ugh, hate bug’s legs) and other crunchy bits to remove.

Mercy is just a lot less messy.

Baby Quails, Ahoy!

Location, location, location. Perhaps that’s what a quail thought when she decided to make her nest under a rock in the rock garden. Maybe it was the sturdy construction, or the lovely view, but something must have canceled out the negatives for this nest location–first and foremost, the constant presence of a two-legged predator. I don’t eat quail, but many of my brethren do, so I can’t fault her for being a mite suspicious of my motives.

She moved in during the height of my battle with (more…)

Just Add Ranch Dressing

Lettuce.  Not just for salads anymore.

I haven’t done much container gardening until recently.  Possibly because, indoors, I have a brown thumb and consequently, I associate any kind of container gardening with death. In the last couple of years, I’ve been expanding my garden palette beyond just perennials. I don’t, however, want to allocate valuable growing space in the ground to annuals, which leads me back to the dreaded pot.

My previous attempts with potted things, outside, have been limited to the usual, “blah” suspects–petunias, snapdragons, pansies, etc.  Lately, I’ve been working more with leaf color, with less emphasis on flowers.

Last year’s lettuce seeded itself all over the place, including where I wanted to plant tomatoes and peppers.  I hate to waste anything, so I dug up the volunteer lettuce and stuck it in a pot.

The result is a pretty neat container plant.  Next year, I think I’ll seed some darker lettuce right into my pots.

(Click images for larger view.)

Desert Garden in May

Life’s a beach.

Of sorts.  Casa de Kirby sits in the midst of a vast sandy desert. Lots of sand and sagebrush.  No rain. No large body of water, unless you count the Rio Grande, which, nowadays, isn’t so grande.

Provided you can stand the complete absence of moisture–hasn’t rained in months–it’s not a bad place to call home.

Being an avid gardener, when I first moved out here, I was horrified by the soil.  Soil is a generous term.  It really is beach sand.  The funny thing is, it turned out to be a great growing medium, especially for drought tolerant plants that demanded “well-drained soil.”  You don’t get any more (more…)

Step One, Dig a Hole

Gardeners bury their mistakes.

Whenever I talk about gardening, there is always someone who is quick to say, “I can’t grow anything; I have a brown thumb.” Now, I recognize that this may be an attempt to shut me up.  “Dear Lord, don’t let her start blathering about ‘soil’ again.”

But to the small percentage who say this with genuine chagrin, my reply is: “So do I.  All gardeners have brown thumbs.”

Here’s the thing.  Gardening is as much about death as it is life.  As with any hobby (or profession), success is achieved largely through a willingness to learn from your mistakes, and sometimes, to simply ignore them.

I’m a geek.  I love science-y stuff.  In college, I took Botany and Biogeography.  I know how photosynthesis works and understand the C4 pathway. But often, when a plant dies, I have no fucking idea why. And die, they do.

I gave it the perfect conditions: just enough water; well-drained soil; a touch of compost.  And it still got dead. In this way, gardening mirrors publishing.  You can have the perfect story for the perfect market, and it still gets rejected.  The only difference being, that unlike publishing, I don’t torture myself over Mother Nature’s rejection of my attempts to meddle.

I dig up the dead thing, chuck it in the compost pile, and plant something in its stead. Game over, insert quarter, play again.

And if all else fails, water the weeds.