Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

In the heat of August seek promise in green fruit
September 28, 2003

“In August, I always lose some plants. The heat kills them, or the dry wind.” I had just come inside the house, overwhelmed by the wilted plants at 4 p.m. on a 100-degree afternoon. Deborah asked which plants had died. I answered that a couple of plants we installed this spring had become “crispy critters” and that two other species that had performed well for a few years were slowly disappearing. “I feel so helpless. I assume that it is the buildup of alkalinity from the water that is choking the life from them.”

Some plants presented evidence of chlorosis, the yellowing of leaves. Parts of other plants had leaves that were withered and crispy, as if a blowtorch had seared them. It is painful to watch plants being defeated by our climate and soils. I have been a “xeriscaper” my whole life – as were my parents since their arrival in Midland in 1944. We have always done our best to “choose plants that match what garden and climate offer,” as Lauren Springer urges her readers to do in “The Undaunted Gardener.”

Springer’s book is a status report on what she terms “the developing continental horticulture.” Conditions in the arid heartland of the center of the United States are not like that of the humid East Coast and the Mediterranean southern half of the west coast, or the rain-drenched Northwest, where publications concerning American horticulture have historically originated. Only in the last twenty-five years have mid-continental horticulturists begun to publish the results of their experiences with our unique conditions.

August is a tough month. We humans do not like seeing the results of the implacable force of things beyond our control. “How can God do this to us,” I have heard people say. “This place is hateful – it is an unrelenting oppression of our desire to have green and welcoming landscapes.”
I believe it is important to search out the successes of the garden during the month of August. Negative feelings can lead to feeling that the effort to create an inviting landscape is an almost impossible task. As a result, I often spend time wandering around my garden looking for the plants that are flourishing and to celebrate their successes.

One of the ways to identify new promises soon to be fulfilled is to look for green fruit that will ripen and feed our local birds and creatures. I love Mexican Persimmon, for example. It is one of the toughest semi-evergreen shrubs that are available. It is able to survive on one or two waterings a year. Under those conditions it is slow growing, but with extra irrigation it performs well. I have five plants – four in a clump that receives the minimal irrigation, and one that receives four or five waterings. The fruit is an one-inch sphere that will turn black in the fall, and when ripe it is a delightful sweet nugget of delight that begs to be picked and eaten at the plant. In the spring it has a delicately perfumed tubular blossom that is small and a pale green yellow. When the plant matures, it has a wonderful slick silver bark that presents an image of strength and resolute confidence.

In the shady areas of Gone Native, I have planted over a dozen American Beautyberry shrubs. In August its clustered whorls of fruit begin to fill at each of the nodes of the branches, forming circles of a dozen purple berries that ripen by late August or early September. I have one white-berried cultivar of the species that matches the hardiness of the original. The leaves of the plant will begin to yellow and some will drop off as the berries near their ripening stage, which can be somewhat disconcerting until the fruit does turn its glossy purple. I look forward to the resident mockingbirds fiercely defending each clump of shrubs from the arriving migratory fruit eating birds.

When I first began the plantings at Gone Native I bought several packets of “windbreak seedlings” from the Midland Soil and Water Conservation District, including thirty Eastern Red Cedars. The district has sold over 100,000 seedlings to the residents of Midland County, and wherever a person travels in the county, the results are easy to find. Thirty-foot tall trees that were planted as tiny one-foot tall whips of promise now surround many houses. Some of my red cedars are in a grove with Arizona Cypress from the same source, and during August the bright blue berries of the junipers (or cedars as Texans say) swell and glisten. I have seen dozens of American Robins come to feast on the berries, and some will remain throughout the winter. Gone Native has five species of junipers, and the red cedars are the most reliable berry producers.

When the first Hispanic vaqueros and cocineras moved to west Texas, they brought Jujubes. Jujubes are thorny trees that sucker and form thickets, so it is not a tree for suburban landscapes. They produce a hen-egg-sized fruit that is dark reddish brown and has the taste of dried dates. I have a grove of jujubes that slowly increase every year, into a never-irrigated pasture. The foxes that visit Gone Native gobble the fruit as soon as they hit the ground. I should (though I never find the time to do so) process the fruit to make empanadas with them, as a way to pay homage to the peregrinations of Chinese immigrants to the country of Mexico. Not only did Chinese immigrants come to work on the railroads of Mexico as they did in the United States, but these Asian immigrants also began many botanicas (herbal medicine stores) throughout Mexico.

There are more plants bearing the promise of harvest for human and wildlife. The Chinese Pistache nuts began to turn pink in August, the first color of this wonderful tree that brings the best fall foliage colors to the southern Llano Estacado. Soapberry and Chinaberry fruit are bright green facsimiles of cherry clusters during August. Chinaberries turn yellow, while Soapberries will gain a translucent amber skin enveloping a dark pit. The thrice-lobed nutcases of Mexican Buckeye slowly turn brown in August, to reveal their black nuts with white-eyes gleaming. Pomegranate fruit is beginning to split, revealing whitish seeds and pulp that will turn red with the coolness of fall. False Grape, Virginia Creeper and seven-leaf creeper all have green berries on their twining growth that adorns adjacent trees and shrubs like Yule-time garlands. I will look daily for the formation of bloom panicles on Evergreen Sumac, veritably drooling in anticipation of November’s delightful sumac tea that tastes like lemonade.

The dog-days of August, made interminable when windless doldrums of scorching heat repeat identical conditions daily, are a time of learning to look inside of oneself to learn to rely on hope. The fruit on trees, shrubs, and vines wait for the cool nights of fall, secure that it will come. A person must learn to put the temporal discomfort and discouragement aside and be as confident and sure. The summer will end and we will survive. We should remain focused on the promise of relief and not allow ourselves to be diminished or vanquished.