Living in Nature’s Landscape

I’ve been watching the quiet declaration of drought conditions with an eye more curious than fearful.  The US drought monitor classifies the current conditions as moderate drought, or D1, which is pretty low on the scale. The gardeners around me, however, range from “not on my weather radar” indifference to head-shaking, ground-staring, “I knew this day would come” pessimism.  It would make a fascinating study of human personality, I think, but also, I wonder if it reflects their gardening interest.

For me, transplanted easterner that I am, I don’t yet know what to make of it.  Do I water obsessively or give up on anything the wet side of Opuntia?   The gardeners whose gardens I admire most do neither–or at least, neither is their priority.  Instead, they live within the landscape, the nature that underlies the urban landscape of Metro Denver.  They pay attention to structures, winds, hollows, moist pockets and a sense of the biota that surrounds them.  The ecology of the space does not escape them, even when they attempt to bend or defy it.
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Eating Locally: the View from February

Summer in a Jar!

Dinner last night was homemade pizza, featuring homegrown basil pesto, tomatoes from my garden, and red peppers, picked from the garden and roasted till the skins fell off. Dessert was a cobbler of farmer’s market Colorado peaches, and blackberries from my incredibly prolific vines. No, you’re not in a time warp, it is most definitely February in Colorado!
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Wildflower extravaganza right now!

Highway 76 in Sept.

We feel we must go to Arizona or California in the spring or to the tundra in July to see masses of wildflowers…fiddlesticks!
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