Desert Gardens

Unfortunately as more people move to Tucson, more desert gets bulldozed, leaving a flat and easy surface for house building. People, who came here only for the sunshine, put up walls to protect their homes and yards from the desert itself. Homes don't have to be that way. They can be beautiful, provide privacy, and also provide shelter and food for the creatures that make this area their home-- if the yard around the home is left desert.

It's not hard to understand why some avoid desert plantings given they almost all have thorns or some kind of protective ouchies hard on tender skin. You do not wander carelessly through this kind of backyard. When you walk into it, you do so with eyes wide open and watching where you put your feet. If you have to handle any plant, you wear heavy gloves or long-handled clippers. Natural desert, however, doesn't need much water. Living, natural vegetation is better at holding the sand when the rains come heavily-- and they do come heavily. It also keeps the temperatures cooler than concrete.

Our yard, which you see in all these photos, is part of a small development where every house has an acre or two and they were built to give each other privacy. A few of the lots have been cleared-- horses are permitted here-- but most are like this one-- natural habitat.

When I go outside and sit on the patio, I can almost forget I am near a big town, nearly ignore the sounds of muffled traffic, and instead hear only the quail and other birds with their distinctive sounds as they flit from tree to tree and come down to the small watering hole or eat from the quail block.

Some of the cactus you see in these photos were probably planted by previous owners but most of it looks to have been natural. The trees are mesquite, palo verde and ironwood. In the recent drought, we lost some of the ironwood trees and it's their bare branches you see sticking up. Ironwood trees are gorgeous and have pink blossoms later in the spring. They have barbs as well as tiny slivers that while almost invisible are not going to be unfelt if you handle anything near it.

These photos were all taken in the backyard in the last day or two. It looks like there are no other homes nearby but if you look closely in some, you will see other roofs.

From the backyard, the purple mountain is Pusch Ridge at one end of the Catalina Mountains. it is about two or three miles away. Many of the bigger animals that visit this backyard, come down La Canada del Oro, a nearby wash, that reaches into the mountain. The small ones live nearby mostly in holes in the ground or nesting in trees at night.

The few plantings we have added to the natural desert are xeriscape, meaning needing little water. For the main part of the yard, it's more a case of stay out of the way because we could do nothing to improve on what it already is in terms of privacy and a relaxing place to sit and meditate.

A coming blog will be some of the critters who live or visit this piece of desert.