ONIONS: A BUNDLE OF LEAVES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/11/2014)

          As I was strolling through a slim paperback on little known historical facts, to my dismay, I found out that I am older than sliced bread which was developed in 1928. 

 

Something far older than either me or sliced bread is the onion, lost in the mists of antiquity, six thousand years.  Its origin is unknown, but a plant similar to the wild onion has been found in Turkestan.  It’s certainly from somewhere in Central or Western Asia.  It’s far older than the tomato which comes from a fruit that was grown in the Andes and used by the Incas.

 

          The onion’s strong odor and flavor are the reasons for its widespread use throughout the world and the chief reason that gardeners grow onions in their backyards.  Backyard-grown is always better than store-bought.  Along with being a culinary delight, onions are easy to grow and are spectacularly good for the eater.  They are jammed with nutrients.  As a matter of fact, they’re richer than tomatoes, carrots, and red peppers.  The combination of ease of growing, great taste, and nutritionally rich is hard to beat.

 

          Some of its possible health benefits are the prevention of cancer and heart attacks.  It is also thought to be beneficial in diabetes.  For further information on the health benefits of the onion, type in your browser: whfood.org and then click on onions.  A vegetable that tastes good and is full of nutritional goodies is not to be dismissed, especially in an era of ersatz food, such as “processed foods” or “fast foods.”

 

          As for its culinary uses, the richer leaves are the outer leaves so the best tactic is to peel away only what is necessary of the dry, brown outer leaves.  Some people eat onions raw like an apple.  When I had an office on Westwood Blvd in Los Angeles, there was a Persian restaurant nearby which used lots of onions.  The waiters, as well as being condescending, ate onions like apples during their breaks.  At any rate, Persian cuisine is, along with the French and Chinese, thought to be one of the finest cuisines in the world.  So instead of one more Greek restaurant, pizza parlor, hamburger joint, or Mexican and Thai restaurant, how about a Persian restaurant in Flagstaff?  Failing that, maybe restaurants with imaginative and capable chefs can offer some Persian entrées. 

 

Onions can be grown in three different ways, seed, transplant, or sets.  Transplants have already started to develop a bulb.  Sets are immature onions sold in bunches.  Seeds take a long time and are particularly difficult in cold climates.  Sets are easy to grow and can be purchased from commercial nurseries or online.  The drawback of onion sets is the limited variety of onions available. 

 

          The first thing to do is prepare the bed with compost and organic material and a good 10-10-10 fertilizer before the middle of March.  Buy or order the varieties of onion sets desired.  About the middle of March ― certainly before the onset of April ― plant the onion sets about five inches apart and an inch or so deep.  Onions require lots of water, so it’s smart to plant them in trenches in order to save water.  A couple of weeks after planting the sets, they should be side-dressed with a high nitrogen fertilizer and watered straightaway and repeated every three weeks during growing season which is fifty to sixty days. 

 

          Onions are categorized not only by variety but also by length of day, short day, intermediate day, and long day.  Onions need sunlight, and Flagstaff falls right between intermediate and short day.  It’s safe to plant an intermediate day onion with an added short day, such as the varieties Superstar and 1015-Y Supersweet.  If harvesting green onions in addition to mature onions, pull them early in the season when they’re immature.  Onions mature when the stalks fall over.  After about a week, the mature onions should be pulled and allowed to dry before being stored.

 

          If eaten raw, it’s best to remember the Arab proverb:  “Never deny a man his breath.”      

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

 

THE PERILS AND GLORIES OF TOMATOES

Yhe Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/17/2014)

 

          A hail storm last summer assaulted my garden while meine Überfrau and I were in Phoenix where she had another operation on her eyes for a retinal detachment.  I asked my friend and student, Tam Nguyen, to check on my tomatoes, hoping that the hail didn’t hit them.  She replied, “My heart is sad.  I cry for your tomatoes.”  The chances of something bad happening with tomatoes are discouragingly high, not probable but possible, not necessary but nearly inevitable.

 

          Why bother?  The taste, that’s all, the taste.  Store-bought, corporate, industrial, capitalistic tomatoes don’t cut the mustard.  They’re tasteless and too firm like cardboard, leaving only the taste of flavorless acid.

 

          Actually, they’re easy to grow.  It’s the hazards, diseases, insects, and weather that are the problems, but they’re all manageable, save for the weather.  “For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands” (Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471.)  Grief is a natural component of growing tomatoes.

 

          First of all, containers are useful for growing tomatoes.  It’s easier to control the water and fertilizer and to prevent infestations, diseases, and insects by placing the containers farther apart.  As parents know, afflictions spread like wildfires in kindergartens.  I would recommend the tomato containers and cages sold by Gardeners Supply or other such similar containers found in local nurseries; however, five gallon black containers do a dandy job and are a lot cheaper.  It depends on the degree of one’s fanaticism.  Another advantage to a cage is that with sufficient warning the containers can be covered to protect the tomatoes from adverse weather.

 

          Seeds are the best way to start for several reasons.  As with hospitals and kindergartens, nurseries are more likely to have infestations and diseases than packets of seeds.  Although it’s a lot easier to buy a tomato plant than a pack of seeds, it’s slightly more problematic.  The trick is to inspect the plant in the nursery as though one were searching for leaks at the NSA, even to the point of using a magnifying glass.  New gardeners and non-gardening philistines may scoff at such vigilance, but pay them no mind.  Also, seeds offer an opportunity for tomato varieties more congenial to the high country, as in our short growing season.

 

          Seeds are easy.  Nurseries sell small packets in which to start the seeds.  All they need is a sunny window sill.  After the plants develop their second leaves, transplant them into a pint container.  When they develop into sturdy plants, they can be transplanted outside.  Since the last frost statistically occurs in Flagstaff about June 15, the transplants can be protected by Walls ’o Water until the danger of frost is past.

 

          The soils should be friable with lots of compost and organic material.  While a high nitrogen fertilizer is helpful at first to get the plant established, the fertilizer during the growing season, whether organic or artificial, should be high in phosphorus (K) and potassium (P).  Too much nitrogen (N) will give the gardener an outstandingly beautiful plant with few tomatoes.

 

          Now, comes the grief.  Failure generally appears sometime after the plant has developed and nascent tomatoes appear, a time of high hope and anticipation.  White flies, often coming in on a plant from a nursery, 

will cloud the plant.  The only remedy is sudden death at the hands of Environmental Services lest the white flies spread. 

            

          Other maladies such as blossom-end rot, various wilts, blights, and unwelcome viruses are a part of the grief panel, and for the most part they can be dealt with.  An excellent source of information online is http://ag.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetables/tomatoes.html.

 

          Now, the best all around tomato plant for Flagstaff is the Stupice from what was once Czechoslovakia.  The tastiest is the Siberian yellow grape Galina, the earliest, the problematic, Canadian Beaver Lodge Slicer, and the two dependables, the Montanan Prairie Fire and the Siberian Sasha’s Altai.  This year I’m going to experiment with a San Marzano at the suggestion of Gretchen, a foodie.

 

          Thank God and Drs. Graff and Johnson, she’s doing well.  Ravaged tomato vines are a small price to pay for eyesight.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A GARDENING TRIAGE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.

 

          After thirty-nine days without rain or snow, it’s time to think about a winter watering triage in our gardens.  When trees and plants go dormant for the winter, it doesn’t mean that they can go without water. Their root systems are still growing.  When human beings go dormant with sleep for the night, they still need water.  Indeed, some even set a glass of water next to their bed.  Usually, a winter’s snowpack does the same thing for the garden, but not this year.

 

          Even though we may get a few snow showers in the next week or so, we are still in a drought, and this means that gardeners have to supply dormant plants and trees, especially the evergreen trees, with water.  If we don’t, they will stress, and, as if with human beings, stress can kill and certainly will make the plants and trees more susceptible to diseases.     

 

          The signs of stress in human beings are rising blood pressure, heavy breathing, disruptive digestion, increased heart rate, compromised immune system, tensing muscles, and loss of sleep.  The signs of stress in trees are leaves wilting, curling at the edges, and yellowing.  Deciduous trees will show signs of scorching, a browning between the veins of the leaves.  Evergreen needles may turn brown. 

 

To stay healthy, both human beings and plants and trees need water and rest.  Human beings need to sleep seven to nine hours out of the twenty-four, and many plants and trees need to go dormant during the winter.  So without a snowpack to provide that dormant time water, gardeners have to supply water with dripping hoses.

 

          In a watering triage, the big trees, especially our evergreens and pines, need to go first because they are the hardest to replace.  A thirty year old ponderosa doesn’t grow over night, nor does that twelve year old blaze maple.  It may take a day or two to get around to all the plants and trees in the yard, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the garden.  For the big ones, it’s best to let it drip in concentric circles around the tree to just beyond the drip line, soaking to a depth of a foot or more.

And if no big snow arrives soon, it’ll be smart to do it again.

 

          After the big ones have been watered, the next ones that need attention are the most vulnerable, that is the plants and trees that don’t have well-developed root systems, such as the ones that have been planted in the last year or so.  Of course, there are always the fragile favorites that need special attention.

 

          Some long time gardeners tend to think of their plants and trees the same way they do about their pets.  Both are dependent and well-loved and need protection and care.  Gardeners who water their yards in the middle of winter in the midst of snow shower may appear a little looney, but a little ridicule never hurt anyone when they’re doing the right thing.  As W. Somerset Maughm wrote in The Summing Up “the philistines have replaced the rack with the wisecrack.”

 

          Stress in human beings weakens the immune system making the people more likely to get sick.  Some people with compromised immune systems never seem to get well.  Drought adversely affects the system by which trees feed themselves by taking energy from the sun.  In a way, it’s a form of slow starvation adversely affecting the trees ability to fight off infestation.  The bark beetle’s destruction is an example.  For both trees and human beings good health enables them to fight infection, and good health requires rest, dormancy, and water.

 

          Since we live in a drought prone region, we have to pay attention to our trees and bushes all year long, especially their needs for water.  It is a sorrowful thing to see human beings, animals, and plants and trees mistreated, but there is poignancy with trees and plants because they have no voice.  Their suffering is silent if we don’t attend to their needs.  So get out the drip hoses.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith (2014)

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogdpot.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

         

 

 

              

 

 

 

 

            

 

         

 

 

              

 

PETITE AND KATRINA

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/1/2014)

          I like to lie down, especially with dogs, snout to snout, muzzle to muzzle, cheek by jowl.  When our late lab, Roxie, became immobile in her old age, I often lay down with her in front of the fireplace, my hand in her ruff.

 

          About ten months after she died, our mourning had assuaged enough to get another dog, perhaps two.  Mourning never really goes away.  “Closure” is a nonsense word generally perpetrated by people who want to avoid the pain of grief. 

 

          We were given an opportunity to adopt two labs, a black three year old named Petite, and a yellow seven year old named Katrina.  Petite had been physically and verbally abused and still cowers, but less and less as time goes by.  Katrina had been returned to the kennel with the claim that she couldn’t adjust to her new home because she missed her mother.  "Unadoptable" was the word.  Some people even use that dismal psychotherapeutic term “separation-anxiety”, a term which like “closure” allows people to objectify the painfully subjective and thereby immunize themselves from their humanity.

 

Katrina showed signs of grief when we brought her home, especially at night when the dogs were bedding down for the night.  Dogs have emotions like human beings and grieve like the rest of us.  She became agitated and walked aimlessly around the room.  After six decades as a minister and psychotherapist with people in grief, I knew that agitation and distraction were some of the signs of grief.  Loss is loss, and there is no way around it with platitudes, such as, “You should be grateful since had her for such a long time.”  I remember my mother saying to someone after my father died, “God did not need him in heaven more than we needed him on earth.”

 

          As a young seventeen year old recruit in the army, I was one homesick puppy sitting on my foot locker missing home.  An old career regular army Sergeant/ Major, ramrod straight and tough as old shoe leather, came by and tapped my shoulder with his swagger stick and said, “What’s the matter, soldier?”  I said that I was homesick and wondered why the rest of my platoon wasn’t.  He replied, “They don’t have no homes to miss.  You outta to thank God that you’ve got one.”

 

          For a few nights I lay down beside Katrina, placing my hand in her ruff.  Her agitation gradually subsided.  Gretchen cradled her head in her lap.  We sometimes still see her staring off into the distance in one of those thousand yard stares, but less and less.

 

          Katrina is beautiful with black eyeliners, a coat of curly waves of caramel, back-sided with yellow and a nose resembling a big piece of milk chocolate.  Petite is gorgeous, sleek and black and elegant with a nose like a big, fat black olive, and I wonder why anyone would strike her and curse her.  Impotent people strike and curse smaller and weaker creatures because they’re compromised human beings, not fully evolved.  Their impotence is so disabling that their only experience of power is to strike at those who can’t strike back.  The abused are often afraid and terrified of their abusers, but, the fact is that abusers are actually the cowardly weak ones.

 

          Gretchen reassures Petite, enfolding her in her arms, and as I watch, I see the tensions in Petite’s body lessen and relax, enough so that she feels at ease with me.  A drunken male abused her.  It’s disheartening to see a creature cower, but rewarding to see them flower.  Each day as Petite leaves Gretchen’s arms, she comes still closer to me, diffident and hesitant, but still inching closer, sniffing the tips of my fingers.  Katrina and Petite follow Gretchen around like ducklings.

 

As we all know, life is often a series of losses with relocations, deaths, and disputes so it’s always important to attend to our gains.  We’ve gained with Katrina and Petite.  They bring joy and life and love into our lives even though we still step in something now and then.

 

P.S.  Be sure to water the yard during this dry spell, especially the trees.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

         

 

 

 

           

 

THE EYES HAVE IT

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/9/2014)

 

          The first thing I noticed were the eyes, piercing blue-green, no nonsense eyes, eyes that mean business.  And what better place for those eyes than to head up The Arboretum at Flagstaff.  The Arb has several missions, each with its own advocates, and someone has to allocate its resources to accomplish those various missions. 

 

          Lynne Nemeth’s eyes reveal a complex and single-minded human being.  She hails from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, one of the most charming places in the United States.  She comes from people who were steel workers, farmers, and gardeners with the toughness of blast furnaces and rolling mills and the earthiness of people who till the land, reap its harvests, and turn the harvests into food.

 

          With a master’s degree in music from the University of Maryland, she is amongst other things the cantorial soloist at the local synagogue Heichal Baoranim (Temple in the Pines) which means that she leads the signing and chanting in services of worship.  The skills required of a cantor and those of an executive director are pretty much the same, pulling together different voices and skills into a harmonious union to fulfill a purpose.  As any musician can tell you, conducting voices means dealing not only with the voice but also the person behind the voice.  So the conductor, as with the executive director, deals with organization as well as people.

 

           The big difference between the two is money.  The cantor doesn’t have to raise money, the executive director does.  In short, Nemeth needs the strength of a steel worker and the touch of a gardener.  As we sat down to lunch at Café Daily Fare, she handed me a folder containing various promotional materials and an envelope for contributions and pledges.  She said, “You might like to give something to The Arboretum.”  I thought, “The Arb’s in good hands.”

 

          Nemeth has been associated with “Non Profits” for a long time, really working for “Non-Profits” has been her career, so she understands the need for money.  “Non Profits” need money.  Working for “Non Profits” also means something else.  She has been putting her shoulder to worthwhile wheels, wheels that carry a moral weight.  Her life has counted.

 

          As I listened to her, I concluded that she’s still making her life count as the executive director of The Arboretum whose purpose is “the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of plants and plant communities native to the Colorado Plateau.”  Since Flagstaff sits near the edge of the Plateau, The Arboretum can tell us a lot about where we live.

 

It does two things, research and education and some crossovers between the two.  The research is varied, beginning with collaboration with various governmental agencies and private foundations familiar to Flagstaff. 

 

          As the caretaker of 31 rare and an endangered species and a seed bank for native plants, The Arb is involved in the restoration of the Schultz Fire devastation.

 

It’s participating in the Southwest Experimental Garden Array with NAU by hosting two separate gardens.  By establishing ten different experimental gardens at various altitudes, the project plans to study the effect on the genetics of plants due to various elevations and thereby mimic the possible effects of changes in climate.

 

          Of course, The Arboretum hosts several well known educational programs for both children and adults, such as hikes and camps for children, and bird walks, raptor shows, and wildflower walks for all ages.     

However, it is not all serious stuff.  There are celebrations and festivals for herbs, mushroom*ms, and penstemons along with concerts and wine tastings.  What better way to taste wine and listen to music than in the midst of a beautiful garden?

 

          However, The Arboretum is up to something else.  In partnership with National Weather Station in Bellemont, it’s developing “Flagstaff Habitat Profiles” which will be maps of growing conditions in the Flagstaff area.  These maps will include types of soil, precipitation averages, wind speed and direction, and temperatures.  Now, gardeners will know what’s best, and with The Arb’s knowledge of flora that works in Flagstaff, the maps will make more likely that elusive goal of successful gardening in Flagstaff.

 

          I paid up.  

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily News.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A KINDER, SHAGGIER GARDEN

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (12/22/2013)

 

          When we moved to Flagstaff from Southern California 11 years ago, we inquired about landscaping after we’d settled into the house.  With various moves throughout the years, I had developed six gardens from the ground up.  I thought that at 75 I would like someone else do it, especially since I was still recovering from a triple by-pass.  Getting the bids was a mistake.  They were exorbitant, and nearly everyone came with drawing boards, diagrams, T Squares, graph paper, curve templates, and rulers. 

 

Landscaping is an art, and artists don’t start with the tools of mechanical drawing.  They start with imagination and then use the tools.

As Walker Evans said, “Photography isn’t a matter of taking pictures.  It’s a matter of having an eye.”  The camera takes on the personality and character of the photographer.  As with the camera, landscaping begins in the eye.  We recreate ourselves in how and what we see and how and what we fashion.  

 

So I set about developing my seventh garden from the ground up, a decision which helped my recovery.  It has taken eleven years, and it’s still not finished, nor will it ever be.  I once asked an artist friend of mine, the late primitivist painter, Louis Monza, when he knew he had finished a painting.  He replied, “I paint my dreams.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night I’ll jump out of bed to sketch a dream I had so that I wouldn’t forget it and then begin painting it in the morning.  I never finish.  I stop and go on to the next dream.”  Life and painting for him was the space between the beginning and the end, a space for becoming rather than being.   Paraphrasing Heraclitus (540-480 B.C.), “No one can step into the same garden twice.  The garden’s not the same, and the gardener’s not the same.” 

 

Landscaping is a reflection of our environment as well as the creation of our eye.  Often we attempt to force favored plants from our past onto an environment where they won’t thrive.  I tried with a couple of plants but soon realized the futility of it all.  Since our environment is so spectacularly beautiful, I decided to cooperate with the inevitable rather than combat it.  We’re best off taking our cues from flora around us.  As the 17^th century theologian, Jeremy Taylor, said, “If you are in Rome, live in the Roman style: if you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.”  

 

In terms of design the late landscape architect, James Van Sweden said, gardens should “move in the breeze and sparkle like stained glass” and “catch the flow of time and wind, of shadows and seasons.”  We landscape for the winter as much as we do for the spring, summer, and autumn. The architecture of a leafless Gambel oak in winter, a ponderosa pine with its boughs laden with snow, a red Oregon grape holly in a field of snow, and a leafless oak etching a steel blue sky, are as much a part of a garden’s landscape as are the burgeoning delights of spring, the lush exuberance of summer, and the deep fluttering colors of autumn.    

 

Better a lawn of native grasses bending to the wind than a flattened lawn with a military buzz cut.  Water-thirsty lawns and their dreadful substitutes, gravel yards, bear no resemblance to the dense green of our forests, the sweep of our meadows, and the crystalline blue of our skies.  Consider for a moment what a gravel front yard reveals of the householder!  The forest, the meadows, and the mountains are shaggy with surprising twists and turns.  Straight lines straiten the imagination while twisting and turning paths draw us beyond what we see and know.  Neat geometrical lines leave no place for our minds to wander beyond our frustrations and limitations allowing us to relax and renew.  It’s the meandering path that leads us beyond. 

 

Happily, at our door we have The Arboretum at Flagstaff (928-774-1442), where gardeners have living resources to help in landscaping their gardens for authenticity in the high country and with fidelity to their eye.       

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

GARDENING AS A MEMORY

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (10/20/2013)

          Our memories are pretty much what we make of them.  Our histories are recorded in our unconscious process, some so deeply embedded that we can’t recall them.  The stuff of our memories is what we've chosen to remember out of our histories, and those choices are shaped by the meaning we've chosen for ourselves.  Some people select the motif of victimization to guide the creation of their memories.  Others are survivors or prevailers.  Some choose indigations, others fragility or triumphs, and so on.
         
          Saint Augustine (354-430) in his Confessions (10.11.18) makes a similar point, we "gather together ideas which the memory contains in a dispersed and disordered way and by concentraing our attention we arrange them in order" so that they can "easily come forward and are no longer hidden and scattered."  It's called bringing things to mind, but we only bring things to mind that fit the way we have shaped our personalities, be it pilgrim, victor, conniosseur, adventurer, and so forth. 

          Alex Martinez brings things to mind lying in the grass next to a bed of his mother's gladioli.  He remembers the gardens of his childhood, not merely his parent's garden, but also the gardens of his neighbors.  Happily,  his neighborhood was a polyglot of Midwesterners, Italians, Lebanese, and Mexicans so he was blessed with a variety of gardens and kitchens.  The men worked with their hands to earn their money, and since there was not a lot of excess money, they grew much of their own food.

          When Alex gardens, he always has in mind on the gardens of his childhood which means that Alex gardens with joy, if eccentrically.  He grew up in Tucson.  He has a fig tree in one of the rooms in his house.  It just about covers one wall, but he eats fresh figs, right off the tree.

          Now, Alex is no nut case.  He's a retired school superintendant with a doctorate from the University of Arizona and a retired captain from the U.S. Navy.  He remembers his childhood and adolescence gastronomically which is some ways is better that photographically.  When he eats a fig, he remembers the Lebanese family that lived across the street.

          For the most part, the men in his neighhood were World War II veterans and had been trained and educated on the famous G.I. Bill of Rights.  So they were men with stories to tell.  A childhood with story tellers is hard to beat.

          In addition to a fig tree, Alex also has Meyer lemons growing inside his house.  Indeed, one day while hanging out with him, sipping wine and munching on crackers and cheese, a Meyer lemon sat at the head of the breakfast table as though it were a member of the family.  There are other citrus trees placed strategically throughout the house, next to windows with lots of daylight.  His genius is that he sees his house a living greenhouse as well as a domicile.  If, perchanve, one were to visit him and his wife, Lisa, an artist, sooner or later, more likely sooner, Alex would drag the visitor off to his orchard.  In short, Alex is proud of his garden.

         Now, his domiciled garden is only half of it.  Along one side of his house is a small apple orchard with different varities.  With an eye to the future he is allowing them to grow to a certain height before he tops them so that their shape will be akin to that of an umbrella, protecting the nascent blossoms and fruit below.  This way he figures that the apple trees will be less susceptible to the vagaries of Flagstaff"s springtime frosts and freezes.  He figures things out.


          When I first saw his property undeveloped, I despaired for him because he is my friend.  His house sits on a small hillock with a backyard that falls off precipitously, plunging down and then rising again to form a wooded ravine. Rather than letting it go, he has begun building terraces, up and down, for flowers and vegetables.  However, I didn't understand his genius and the depth of his joyful memories.  With his memories, Alex celebrates life in his garden, inside and out.

Copyright (c) Dana Prom Smith 2013

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.