Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Irrigationless gardening
November 11, 2004

I feel like I did something right! In September I put out composted cow manure on all of the planted area of the Gone Native Arboretum. In October I broadcast millions of wildflower seeds – collections from the wild, purchases from Wildseed Farms near Fredericksburg, and several sacks of assorted seeds from friends. I did something right, because it has been raining! The rain has taken the nutrients from the manure into the soil, and the rain has germinated many of the seeds.

Yes! Rain! Glorious rain! This fall, garden flowers everywhere on the Llano Estacado are blooming better than they have for years. Billions of wildflower seedlings are sprouting in the pastures of local ranches. It is so wonderfully gorgeous and lush that a person can not help but be swept up emotionally by the sight – everybody seems a little happier and friendlier. My oh my – don’t you just love this fall? Hasn’t the days been perfect – even the rainy ones?

On October 27th I gave programs at a school in Odessa, and decided to stop at the Arboretum for lunch. The morning had been misty, so I walked out into the pasture to check the rain gauge nestled among one of the cattledrive prickly pears. In a cup of its huge pads is a perfect slot for my rain gauge. It is on the highest ridge of the property (5 feet higher than the lowest place), and long ago I killed out all of the mesquite on the ridge. Only 15 hundredths of an inch had collected, but everything was covered with sparkling droplets – millions of tiny jewels glittering on every leaf and thorn.

One of the joys of gardening with “drought adaptive” plants is to play a silly game – Can I plant something and never have to water it? What a crazy idea! It does not work too well when it is droughty, and the last ten years have been “pretty sad.” But this year – beginning in the spring, rainstorms have teased Deborah and me so often we have to play! Part of the secret (besides planting during a rainy spell) is location.

That seems obvious, but the selection of the location is the challenge. It helps to know what the plant’s native habitat is – does it like shade, can it put up with wind, does it wilt under reflected heat, does it have shallow roots that need to be covered with mulch or a slab of rock – the questions are endless. Texas sage, also known as barometer bush, cenizo, or leucophyllum is a perfect plant for the game. Available on the market today are nearly 20 varieties of eight species of the genus. Three of the species are found in Texas -- growing on the hills from McCamey south to Del Rio and Laredo, west of Orla, and down in Big Bend in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert. Other species come from various localities in northern Mexico.

I planted 11 this summer – 11 small plants in 4 inch pots. The plants were only 6 inches tall, but I planted them after the first showers started in late August. Eight have survived. One must have been eaten by a jackrabbit, for it just completely disappeared. Even though a neighbor’s yearling bull has been wandering the neighborhood’s streets and vacant lots, I have not found him coming into our pasture – so it can not be him. He is out so often, or has been out so long, we have decided he is a recent immigrant – a sacred cow from India. The bull just wanders around, staying out of everybody’s way, grazing placidly in the cowpen daisies like Ferdinand the Bull.

Two of the dead Texas sage that did not survive the “no water” challenge display evidence of two different styles of death. One is covered with dead brown leaves, but the other is nothing but bare sticks. The bare stick one became that way overnight – so some grasshoppers must have eaten it – but grasshoppers do not usually eat leucophyllum – it is so hairy it must be like eating a little wad of cotton. The one with dead brown leaves is between some well established bristlegrass bunchgrass. The grasses grow in the bottom of a rut left 23 years ago by the water well driller as he drove through the pasture. (It was wet in February of 1981!)

Water collects in the rut, obviously. The soil is compacted, because of the weight of the big truck. The shallow rooted bristlegrass germinated in dead leaf litter that washed into the rut during heavy rainstorms, and feeds off of whatever is washed in to decompose in the rut after each rain. It is some of the “happiest” bristlegrass I have seen for years! Bristlegrass is the number one native bird-preferred seed producer of our native grasses. It has nice big round seeds in between hairs – over 200 seeds on 6 inches of panicle. Birds will slowly pull the shaft of the seed panicle through their beaks, and the seeds just roll into their mouth. Painted buntings leap up and “de-seed” the stalk as they return to the ground – jumping up and down like tiny children pretending to be rabbits.

The leucophyllum with dead brown leaves rotted. Yes – rotted, without ever receiving human instigated irrigation. When I tugged on it after checking the rain gauge, only a few larger roots came up with it – and it seemed to pull apart from the rest of the roots like hot taffy being stretched. I sniffed the roots and could catch a whiff of “composted plant material” – not rotten, but a rich fecundity of mushroom scent, moist dirt (and yes, moist dirt does have an addictive smell that gardeners love), and snails. (When you crush a number of big garden snails after they eat every seedling of your winter greens, the juicy mélange of gooey “foot” and guts smells like a cross between banana pudding and cilantro.)

Oh lordy – the rain has gone to my head – I am delirious – trying to describe smells as I kneel in the mud, my nose pressed to the ground, my rear end high. I must look like a piglet, wallowing happily and contentedly grunting.