That May when Utah Valley Moved to Portland

I have lived in the high Utah Desert for five years now. Sheesh! That used to be my deadline max! “I give it 3-5 years”, I used to say when we first moved here. Funny how time just sneaks up on you like a pair of wild wrinkles around your eyes.

I have lived through snow dumps and icy roads, through high winds that pick up furniture and large trash containers and carry them down the street, as an unwelcome present to your neighbors. I have seen bigger hail than ever before, and even bigger rainbows than ever before, too.

But never in five years have I seen so much rain for this long in this Valley! We have had nothing but daily rain for the past three weeks. Some days, I even forgot the count of time since last I saw the sun in the sky! For three weeks, I keep telling myself: “This weekend is the weekend I am putting my garden in”. And for three weeks, I have been putting it off, because there is nothing but a mud pit out there and no break in the skies, and colder than cold temps, too.

To the many laughs and chuckles of my East Coast and Romanian family, I even threatened I would go out and buy some rubber rain boots, just so I can sink myself freely in the mud and plant my tomatoes, nonetheless! “Rubber rain boots in the desert?!” – they smiled dubiously. And I am glad it didn’t come to that!

This past Saturday, I found a window of sunshine in the sky to finally plant my garden. It’s not a big one, as usual, but we did have to move a raspberry bush, and add new soil to the veggies, which made for a pretty decent workout. Now, it would be grand time for the rain to come back and nourish what is finally in the ground, as opposed to all the weeds that have gobbled up all the water so far! But if only rain (and weather) would listen to me!

 

The veggie beds before: ... a pile of weeds and nothing besides, really ... 

 

... and the veggie beds after: new veggies lined up like ready little soldiers, planted firmly in the new compost soil.

 

Our strawberries are sugar sweet this year! I thought, like grapes, they'll be sour from so much rain, but not these: they're a handful of sweetness with fresh, clean mountain air mixed in. 

 

This is easily the greenest I have ever seen this yard.

I am done threatening the skies and just glad and grateful  that we have a green and fresh yard to look at this Memorial Day weekend. And the tomatoes, peppers, beans, eggplants and cucumbers are glad for finding a home, finally too! They had mold in their containers from this much water! Now, they’re happily feeding off of the new compost. Life begins a new cycle!

Still a Rocky Business

... or: I've Never Felt This Much Pain Before. Ever.
 

You might remember, many moons ago, that I broke my (figurative) back trying to clean up our very rockful yard. That was 2010, my first year of living in Utah. I was trying, back then, to just have some grass grow. And three years later, I have not stopped trying. And cleaning out rocks.

Ever since, I have done nothing but dig up more and more rocks over all the yard work sessions I have embraced. Every single year, I try to make stuff grow – it’s dig up the rocks, make room for the plants. And some things make it (to encourage me to plant more!), and some die the next spring. *Sigh*. I have looked recently through some old pictures of my yard, here, at home, and it’s amazing how many bushes and plants just ended up in the trash after a winter. But, to my encouragement and complete amazement, some things have been as old as I have been in this house, too! So, life happens. Apparently. Occasionally.

The soil here sure is tough! As tough as these mountains, for sure, if not more.

With every spring, like with any rite of passage, my husband and I attempt to tame the surroundings of our house. Last fall, we “invested” into having our front yard rockscaped. Yes, you might be asking: “What?! More rocks?!”. Oh, yes, I say: if you can’t domesticate it, let it take over, at least! Yes, we had tons and tons of rocks and gravel and boulders delivered and now our front yard blends in beautifully with the desert mountains around. And this shrunk our planting playground, to something that we deemed “manageable” for us. 

Some of the "supplies" for this year's extravaganza ...

 

As much as I love our rocky front yard, though, the Southerner and Carpathian in me demanded some green. So, we decided to grow stuff in the back yard, instead. We left the back grassy (or … weedy) and we installed some landscape and our usual veggie garden, ourselves. 

Glimpses of our front yard rockscape

I thanked God for giving us a not so hot May this year, because I am no longer cut for digging up boulders in 100F weather! For the past three weeks or so, we have been seeding, watering, trimming, mowing, installing mulch and edging, planting trees, bushes, flowers, a veggie garden, and, of course, digging up more junk in the process.

It must be that I am getting old and I am sadly out of shape, because I don’t remember having hurt this much from physical labor ever in my whole life! It’s an overwhelming and all encompassing type of pain: all muscles hurt (and the ones I just discovered I had!), all joints, my palms and the soles of my feet, even my nails and my toe nails hurt! It takes my whole body to put up a fight against what I have to dig out in order to have room to put something else in its stead. And this body is not used to this kind of fightin’, let me tell you! I think I have one very short hair on my head, that's getting ready to fall out that might not be hurting. But that's it

Another downside of living where we are is that, unlike in a normal place in the world, here, contractors don’t call you back! For one reason or another, the only three people that did call us back were the guys who installed our fence, the ones with the rockscaping, and the little man who got rid of our gophers, God bless him and his whole family forever!

Other than that, we tried to call a grass company, and a tree company and a landscape maintenance company, and …nothing … No calls back, no shows. So, we’re on our own if we don’t want to live in a jungle and if we want to eat some tomatoes this summer or smell some roses.

Don’t get me wrong: I love doing this stuff, but a bit of help with at least cleaning up the soil and prepping it, aerating it, or something, would have been appreciated! Not to mention a little help in building a porch, as well. Well, that "help" is us. And I am pretty darn proud of what we accomplished on our own, especially since we’re mostly indoor, geeky people rather than outdoor, farming type of people! Our back yard is still noisy (can’t do anything about the road right behind it!), but it’s peaceful to look at. It’s (finally!) green and natural and “organized”.

And as much as both Aa. and I are saying that  we’re “really done” this year, I still see room for growth in it. We might have won the battle against desert and emptiness, but we are still to win the one against the blazing sun! We are still patiently waiting for the trees and bushes to grow so we can get some shade with our burgers.

As for filling in the room for growth, hopefully, another family will do that. Other than the maintenance that I am sure will follow, and replacing some of the things that will die, I really do want to be done, too. At least for a little while, till all the sores in my feet and hands are healed.

Here are some shots of what we have managed to accomplish, with very little help, in the past three years. To us, it seems like we just conquered The Everest!

Enjoy, and come visit, sometimes.

  

Blooms in the back yard

 

 

 Three years now: a lilac tree and a Japanese maple were some of the first things we planted in the back yard

 

The very first thing we ever planted around the house was this clematis plant, to the right of the front door - it's been the happiest thing yet! 

Various angles of the back yard, all done!

 Fresh roses in the front yard

 The veggie garden

 

Strawberries (2 years), raspberry (1 year) and grapes (3 years)

 

Visitors: first time I ever saw an oriole - so beautiful! 

Blast from the past: this is what we started with!

 Night - night! 

A Weird Season

You all might remember my year of wealthy harvest last year. Especially in the realm of tomatoes. This year, however, it’s very – very different.

Here we are, at the end of July, and I had about … 5 tomatoes out of my garden and one green bell pepper. Some green onions for a salad or two. As for our herbs, I did make a couple of batches of cilantro and basil pesto, and Aa. has made dill bread I think twice.  And that is that so far.

The tomatoes are good and tasty, but not as incredibly sweet as last year, and definitely not as huge as last year – they are small and dense. The pepper was tiny. Maybe the size of a golf ball! 

 Small harvest (in so many senses on the word): tomatoes, one pepper and pears ...

Everything just barely started to grow about two weeks ago. I water the garden every night, but the drought has just been way too serious this year for my water to be enough. The tomatoes are about 3 feet tall now, and very thick, but they don’t have tons of fruit nor blooms! So, they have enough water to grow, but not enough of a good combo of shade, sun, natural rain water and healthy air (I’ll explain in a few) to really produce.

Cabbage, kale and cucumbers just now spreading out ...

The funny thing is: we used the same spot in the garden for the veggie beds as last year, but we bought more good soil, with manure in it, and we tilled! With a tiller! Tilling is something I don’t believe in, especially with a  bonified tiller, but we did it this year, just because Aa. believes our soil is way too dense for anything to grow in it. And yet, the results are not as impressive as last year.

Every time I water for at least an hour at a time, my whole yard sucks the juice dry in seconds after the hose stops. It’s really quite depressing to watch. I guess, this is life in the real desert. And I have said it before: why the Mormons thought this is God’s blessed land, I have no idea! It’s definitely not easy to keep anything green here. We’re back at hunting down tomatoes at the Farmers’ Market this year, but, surprise-surprise!, the farmers are not that fortunate, either! 

The whole garden - to the left of the tomatoes, there are peppers and herbs (yes, that small!), and in the front bed, in the middle, between the cucumbers and cabbage: eggplants... 

Another thing that’s been plaguing us this year has been just the filthy air. I have been surprised at the air dirtiness in Utah since I moved here – none of those “clear mountain mornings” Willy Nelson sings about in his cowboy songs – but this year has been the worst, I think, in my two years of being here. Part of the problem is the wild fires that have scorched the desert all summer long. We have had so far around 600 wildfires statewide. You have no idea what the air smells like and breathes like when all you have around you is brush smoke and ashes!

I have never heard of trees exploding from extreme heat till I moved here. But apparently that’s what has happened this year in Utah: once a wildfire starts, even in the desert, the dry trees and dry roots and brush self ignite and burn extremely fast! And the proverbial desert wind carries the plunder in a hurry! They burn for weeks. My migraines and sinus garbage have been insane this summer!

I know that ashes are supposed to be a natural fertilizer, but I am not sure the simple (lack of) air quality has not been extremely poisonous to plants this year! 

 The sky above our house, earlier this month, while fires were burning all around us ... 

I look at my garden and it tries as hard as it can to stay green. In sort of a forced grin, it thanks me for the little water I give it. But the stuffiness in the air and the dryness of the sand torture it.

As I have said – some of the things just started to expand in the past two weeks (we have had some random, very, very short lived and rapid summer showers), so maybe all is not hopeless yet! There will be slow growth and some lost plants, I am sure. But I am still patiently waiting to see how strong and stubborn life really can be, even in the absence of life’s juice and clean oxygen!