Arizona Still Life

Arizona and Virginia are eerily opposite. Virginia is humid, semi-tropical, and almost chaotically lush; Arizona is dry, desert-y, and from a Virginian's point of view, almost austere. (Case in point--a Southern Californian visiting my Virginia neighborhood once remarked, "Why don't people here take care of their lawns?" He was used to the pristine, manicured, leafless neighborhoods that an arid climate allows--I told him a Virginian with that goal would either be rich enough to afford a landscape crew or on the brink of insanity). My Virginia garden isn't just visually "noisy." It's often literally loud and it's in constant motion--most months, it's difficult to separate the birds' chatter from the hum of frogs and insects--and the slightest breeze sets the trees going--leaves rustle and trunks groan. Arizona--at least the southern part--is probably windier than Tidewater Virginia, but nevertheless it's incredibly quiet. The distinct calls of a coyote, a quail, a mourning dove punctuate the silence, and long periods can pass in which nothing moves. And the sky is blue, and cloudless, and huge.

This is the view from my mom's back porch in Sun City, Arizona, an expansive retirement community northwest of Phoenix. I grew up in Glendale (also just to the northwest of Phoenix), and my five sisters and brothers and most of their kids and grandkids still live in Arizona. It's a second home to Salix and me, and we spend as much time there as we can.

As you can probably see in the photo, my mom's extended back yard is a golf course. When I was growing up, most people had lawns, but I'd say now that most--or at least many--don't. You usually see expanses of grass like this only on golf courses and in parks, and even on the golf courses, the grass is mainly on the fairways with relatively small rough areas (and lots of rocks). Most homes have desert landscaping.

This is a shot of the back of my mom's house from the golf course. The two tall palms are in her front yard, and the back porch looks out on the 13th hole--it's an ideal location if you like golf, especially since the tee box is close enough to the house that we don't have to worry about stray shots (even mine!).

One of the reasons Arizona seems so still to me is that cactus are imperturbable. Even the smaller ones like agave and aloe seem unruffled by the wind. I didn't like cactus growing up--probably stepped on one too many--but I've come to love them as an adult. Still, I've had trouble identifying a lot of these desert plants (I'd love to be edified and corrected if you recognize any . . .) This cactus in the corner MIGHT be an Espostoa lantana, or snowball cactus--it's "woolly" (meaning lots of fine needles), and it's 12-15 feet tall.

In the other corner of her yard, a kind of Cereus cactus grows between the two palm trees. Cereus have beautiful white flowers, and typical of many cacti, they bloom at night. Most cacti aren't flowering in October--that will be substance for a later posting.

This is a barrel cactus in her front yard--if you look to the left side of the photo, you can see a little yellow baby sprouting.

The iconic cactus is the Sajuaro (Carnegiea gigantea). The Sajuaros can grow more than thirty feet tall, and like many cacti, are very slow growing. It can take decades for a sajuaro to develop its first arm. They are protected in Arizona (for example, you can't just knock one down to put up a house). This one is across the street from my mom's house--the house is a one-story rancher, so this one looks to be about 20 feet. You can see holes where martins or maybe small woodpeckers have nested.


Of course, not all of the plants in Arizona are cacti. One of my favorite shrubs is Caesalpinia mexicana, or Mexican Bird-of-Paradise. My mom's is about 7 feet high and maybe 10 feet wide--rabbit and quail nest underneath it. From about April through September, it's covered in bright orange and red blooms that give way to seed pods in the fall. Here's one last bloom among the pods:

And here's a closer shot of the leaves and the seed pods:

My mom will cut hers back to about a foot when the weather cools down (the plant dies back in the cold). It self-seeds very easily--I've started several plants, hoping at least to grow them as annuals here, but they don't like the humidity and they don't live long. Still, our Virginia summers are getting dryer and dryer--maybe one more go this spring!

Lots of flowers in Arizona bloom almost year-round, like these oleanders on the golf course:

Bougainvillea clambers up walls and across roofs (in Virginia, it's a good year when mine hits 6 feet before the temperatures dip).

This flower is a fairly common landscaping plant--it's all over the golf courses. But no one knows what it is and I haven't been able to find it in my books or on the internet. I have the sense that it's something really common--anyway, I love the gray and yellow combination.


This is another common plant in the neighborhood--it's a large shrub, often trimmed into a flat hedge or a ball shape, and the flower looks like an abelia, and again I have the sense that I should know what it is . . . but I don't. And again, I love the combination of the purple flower against the gray-green leaf.

Bush honeysuckle grows kind of like bougainvillea (as opposed to the kudzu-like invasiveness of honeysuckles here), and the residents often trim it into neat arrangements against walls . Here's the lovely orange blossom with a little visitor:

And a closer view:


The palms are the tallest trees one sees; most of the trees are quite small by Virginia standards, many of them never growing as tall as the ranch-style houses they surround. This little oasis on our golf course is framed by palms, juniper, and mesquite.

(By the way, I love golfing on nearly tree-free courses. Sand and water don't bother me that much--but put a tree in sight, and I'm going to hit it. I spend most of my time on Virginia courses looking for my balls in the woods . . .)

Here's another mesquite tree on the golf course:

And one at my sister Kelley's more rural home in northeast Phoenix:



My mom and I think this next one is a kind of juniper. The curved trunk makes it look like a bonsai (I realize of course that bonsai trees are stunted tall ones--still, when I first arrive in Phoenix, I have the impression for the first couple of days that not only is everything quiet, but the trees also seem miniatures).

So I'm exaggerating a little bit: there's lots of movement in my mom's back yard, and this little morning trek from the Cereus cactus through the Bird-of-Paradise shrub to the tall cactus on the other side is a daily occurence.

And when Virginia visits Arizona, things don't stay quiet. The occasion for our visit was my mom's 80th birthday party, and we all dressed in the style of the decade of her birth (well, most of us). Here's my mom with her brood, save one brother who arrived fashionably late.

And here's the latecomer with Salix, clowning in Amelia Earhardt's goggles (I call this one "Superfly").

I was busy enough with the party, then with catching up with sibs, then with a side trip to Southern California, that I didn't visit any of the great sites like Sedona or the desert museums--I'll do that at Christmas. In the meantime, I'm working on another post on Venice, California gardens--and trying to find time to get work done in my own!