A Little Desert Concert

A little desert concert.

 

 

By now the rains should have come.

Instead we are oppressed. 

The sun baked the last bit of moisture from the Earth last week and now there is nothing left for Him but to broil the dirt to crust, crispy, snap-beneath-my-feet-brittle, dangerously at risk of burning.  Even the cholla cacti are wilting, their limbs shriveling and bending towards the ground. If I were a candle I’d be a pool of wax on the floor, spreading into the tiny crevices in the bricks.

 

I awoke this morning to cloud cover, huge billowy, silver things, blocking the sun as it broke the horizon. A bit of relief. We are still supposed to hit the high 90’s today and are looking to have that continue for at least ten more days, so they say.

  

I don’t generally keep abreast of the weather either on the news or through the weather app on my phone.  Usually I just look out the window or step outside. Unless I am melting or making plans.  Seeing that most of the country is experiencing a heat wave like ours and that there is no relief in sight I cancelled dinner plans with Del and Steve.

“You’d be miserable here.  I can’t keep the place cool.”  

So I’m cooking at their house instead.  Buddy and Po get to accompany me since Rick, DelRae and Steve’s dog, is such a good host.  They all get to have a play date.  With the heat, I expect they will all just lie around panting.  Still, what’s better than lying around sweating with your best friend?

 

Yesterday it hit 100.  I know this because I was sitting in the gallery talking with Elaine when Ray called.  She put him on speaker phone.

“It hit 100 today.”

“Call back when you’ve got some good news,” I replied.  We all laughed.

 

The rhythm of the Earth has changed as our drought deepens. By 4:00 in the afternoon my garden plants are drooping, each leaf touching the ground as their stems weaken.  They are so heat stressed that I wonder if they will fruit at all. I water them twice a day, now, sometimes three times. All grasses shriveled and having already decimated the potato crop, the rabbits are now devouring my tomato plants. I cannot keep up.

 

Somewhere between 11:00 and 2:00 life goes underground and doesn’t reemerge until the angle of the sun in the sky has grown wider. Rabbits move deeper into their dens in search of cool earth.  The birds mute and disappear into the limbs of the trees or the piles of brambles strewn across the land. Even the wind takes a holiday.  Nothing stirs. The Earth is holding her breath.

It isn’t until after 6:00 that life begins to move again. Then I watch as the nectar in the hummingbird feeders drops quickly with the sun.  They will need a refill before dark, the parched hummers making up for lost hours.

 

But, before the Earth turns into a kiln, in the cool of this morning, the birds are creating quite a ruckus.  To be more precise, the female Rufus hummingbird is stirring the pot.  She arrived last week, quite demure. Tired from her long commute she sat calmly at the feeder drinking her fill while other birds enjoyed the juice alongside her.  Not today.  Today she is yelling at everyone and chasing them out of her “kitchen.”  I’ve got at least ten black chinned hummers and she is driving them all away, having claimed the feeder that hangs in the shade of the Juniper as hers. Rufus don’t share. Yet, I enjoy the high pitched complaints the birds are making as they each, in turn, attempt to lay claim on “her” feeder, now pink with age.

 

The distant train whistle is equally soothing.  There’s something about the train as it moves through the valley that soothes me.  It’s far enough away that I have become almost deaf to the low rumble of it’s engines and the plaintive horn is a gentle reminder that the world keeps moving forward somewhere beyond the boundaries of my land.

 

I can tell when the electricity goes out in the dome by the sound it doesn’t make. If I have had days with no sun my solar system shuts off and silence is redefined. When everything is running I hear a very low hum. It is barely audible but it is there.  Most people can’t hear it.

The ears must be trained. One only hears the workings of my system after weeks of living in the quiet, alone, with the natural sounds of the Earth. The imperceptible vibration that electricity gives off and the low buzzing is a constant companion in town. I didn’t realize how it bothered me until it was gone and my nerves calmed.  So I can’t explain why the train is soothing, except that I don’t live with it as my neighbor, not anymore.  

 

Buddy and Po are acting a bit like Mrs. Rufus and have been riled by the ravens all morning.   Three juveniles keep flying in, landing on the ground, or perching on a tree or the fencing looking for discarded mice.  Having vanquished my mini marauders over a week ago I have had nothing to throw to the castaways. Mom and Pop don’t feed them any more. I am certain the trio can see me sitting on my loveseat blogging,  neither they nor the dogs pleased with my renewed writing.  From fifty feet away they stare through my windows and yell for more food.  Buddy and Po jump to their feet demanding to be unleashed upon their black feathered foes.  I am too slow to respond to their demands and they stare, like the ravens, accusingly. I am remiss in my duties. Do I detect a little canine smile as I set aside the IPad and move to the door? It’s quite a game, this, and considerably noisier than the train.

 

On our walk, blessedly cool under the clouds, the ravens follow at a cautious distance. The titmice, (is it titmice or titmouses?) tiny little birds that cluster in trees, flit in and out of the Junipers, warning the others with high pitched little peeps that “those dogs and that human” are back. Only one mockingbird is out this morning. He sounds like the Mountain Jay that is perched on the fence post, sentinel, silent, staring as we pass. The flies have not yet awakened.  Where they rest is unknown to me.  As the sun warms they will begin to swarm and buzz and bug.  I have recently brought out the fly swatter. With it I can contribute to the cacophony of living in the country.  Rufus’ high twitter, raven cawing, dog barking, fly buzzing, train whistle, titmouse peep and mockingbird taunts, gentle buzz from the solar system, my fly swatting, like the cracking of a whip, is Nature’s rap music.

 

Settle in. 

The clouds are burning off.

It’s gonna be a hot one.

But it’s still morning and the concert has only begun.

                                                        The half eaten tomato plant.

                                                                The withering cholla.

                                        Female Rufus sits on her swing guarding her feeder.

                                    Black-chinned hummers eat their fill at the feeder near the house.