The honeysuckles I planted last year, one commercial bought and the other of which I sprouted myself from cuttings, have begun to flower.

My dream of many years

For years I longed to have my own place for many reasons, one of which was [...]]]> It may seem like no big deal.  It is to me.

The honeysuckles I planted last year, one commercial bought and the other of which I sprouted myself from cuttings, have begun to flower.

My dream of many years

For years I longed to have my own place for many reasons, one of which was to have my own honeysuckle plants. After I bought my house on Jupiter in 1987 I longed to plant and nourish my own honeysuckle so that in late springtime they’d flower – and produce my very favorite smell.

Things I miss from my early childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma (since I don’t remember anything about my earliest childhood, spent in Puerto Rico):  fireflies, cardinals, blue jays,  and the smell of honeysuckle. Of course, on the first three of those I’m pretty screwed, unless I happen to be in the Midwest at the appropriate time of year. But honeysuckle thrives here in New Mexico – meaning at least I could get my yearly fix of their wonderful perfume

Just not at my house.

My early attempts at planting it met with failure. This mystified the nursery types, who assured me it grew like a weed. Yeah:  a dead one.

But I began, with much help and some prompting from my good pal Larry, to study gardening a little more seriously. And so when I set about planting honeysuckle this time, the plants throve.

And this evening, when I went out to water them, I discovered they’d both begun producing strings of gold and white flowers.  Not much smell as yet. It’ll come.

Yay!  Hooray! A red-letter day! This is a milestone to me, the achievement of a longstanding desire. As my friend Saraphina pointed out on Twitter, I get to enjoy my first (personal) honeysuckle summer.

The honeysuckle happiness is helping to keep me going. I’ve not been keeping up here – apologies, O my loyal readers – because I’ve been crunching to met next Friday’s deadline on a novel. Fingers crossed, please. I am resolved to make it!

So around 2 PM I wandered into the kitchen. It’s cloudy and not hot outside today, although [...]]]> Not the Sufi classic of that name, nor yet the Chaucerian tale, but my own backyard. See what I mean? Not only can you find adventure in your own backyard, but enlightenment too. Such a deal!

So around 2 PM I wandered into the kitchen. It’s cloudy and not hot outside today, although humid, and while it hasn’t rained yet there’s been enough thunder to discourage me from cinching Emma up in her harness and taking her for a walk. For light I opened the blinds.

And was astonished to see the backyard full of birds. There were dozens of them, perched picturesquely on stumps and the bushy dead treelimb I left for that very purpose by the galvanized tub of water set out as a birdbath, or wandering around pecking assiduously at something. They ranged from mourning doves through chickadees, a few pretty red-headed house finches, and a horde of what birders call LBJs, for “little brown jobs.” Who are what they sound like, little dust-colored guys, weavers and finches and sparrows, oh my. There was also a big bird – by which I mean robin-sized – that hopped around aggressively. From its size and its long, sharply curved beak, and the fact that my NatGeo bird guide says they live here, I’m surmising it was a curve-billed thrasher:

Not pictured: thrashing

It hasn’t yet begun to rain regularly here, but the last few days we’ve had a couple brief, exceedingly intense rains. That’s bringing up a profusion of new weeds sprouting. In fact I went out and spent some time uprooting some of the more egregious goathead plants. Which I learn are also called puncture vines, appropriately enough. And when the weeds get a bit larger and make themselves better target it’ll probably be time to sharpen up the scuffle hoe and hold an old-style Weed Massacree.

I’m still hoping to get a lawn in. Which also entails hoping the rainy season isn’t passing me by. But I’m really going to have to go into overdrive on writing, so we’ll see what I can do by way of landscaping.

At any rate, my honeysuckles are flourishing like mad things, and the spearmint I put in a month or so ago, having spread out some horizontally, is getting some good height on it. looks as if some’s getting ready for ice tea.

Sadly I find few decent xeriscaping resources online. There’re lots of files available but not many places I can find where questions can be asked and answered. The Albuquerque Master Gardeners’ site seems to be seldom updated and little use. Plants of the Southwest, which as I say I like, misses what seems to me an obvious and valuable bet by not having a forum or ask the experts feature.

So what the hey, I’ll toss some questions up and see if someone, please, will kindly answer. Ann Sasahara, who flies by sometimes (usually to see what adventures Emma’s had recently) is a certified Southwestern Gardening Goddess, so maybe she can offer sage advice.

Specifically: first, how to get rid of goatheads. Not the plants (which actually uproot pretty readily) but the thorns. These so far successfully resist our best brute-force efforts, which consist largely in Emma and I picking them up on our feet. Fortunately I do more of that; my feet are much bigger; Emma’s smart enough to stick to paths that are pretty free of the fiendish things; and when I venture out I wear shoes or sandals, the soles of which usually come back encrusted with the damned things, which I then flick off into a wastebasket with a knife. But despite the fact I seem to be eradicating the plants before they produce more, the residues of past years seem nigh inexhaustible.

Also: a good friend recently assured me that a horticulturalist told her bluegrass, though it takes a lot more water to get established than native grasses (such as the buffalograss/blue grama mix I intend planting), takes no more water to maintain. This strikes me as odd. Judith Phillips, author of the magisterial New Mexico Gardener’s Guide, says that bluegrass is “poorly adapted to the heat” – less an issue this year than usual, since it’s the coolest summer by far I can remember here – and that “bluegrass lawns use more water than any other landscape feature in New Mexico.” (pp. 362-3 of the older version; I couldn’t find my newer, more profusely illustrated and colorful edition.) Which is odd since I thought Phillips did the landscaping for my friend’s old house.

Anyway, what’s the scoop here? I’m actually still intending to put in native grass mixes front and back, but curiosity is biting at my fanny. As it’s so wont to do.

Mea culpa. I was way busy for a spell, writing like a mad thing. This was Good. Then this week I’ve been inexplicably under the weather – draggy, mentally unfocused, sleep habits more messed up than usual – without showing [...]]]> But you probably couldn’t tell it from the dearth of posts here, huh?

Mea culpa. I was way busy for a spell, writing like a mad thing. This was Good. Then this week I’ve been inexplicably under the weather – draggy, mentally unfocused, sleep habits more messed up than usual – without showing any overt symptoms (pain, bleeding from the eyes.) This was Not So Good.

Doing a bit better now. The tennis elbow on my left arm’s mostly cleared, which’ll help me exercise more and get some stuff done.

Anyway – yeah, got a lot written, and am building up momentum again. Went to a great Fourth of July party – there’s not much left to celebrate, but celebrating with friends is an end in itself, and probably an act of defiance.

Emma’s not been so pleased: she who fears loud bangs. These have at last subsided, at least the man-made ones. But now the season of thunder may be upon us. Tyke can’t catch a break, sometimes.

It’s easily been the coolest summer I can remember here. Fortunately it hasn’t gotten real humid, although over the last few weeks we’ve had skies cloud up and tease us with hopes of rain without delivering, at least down here in the Valley. Not to say it hasn’t rained really hard here a few times, but it’s more like once a week, every ten days – high precipitation for these parts, granted, but not the usual concentrated monsoon we tend to get sometime over the summer.

That’s until recently. Yesterday when I woke up (and not terribly early, I assure you) the humidity was higher than the temperature, Dang! That hardly happens even in midwinter when the temperatures are low. But at about 10:40 AM the WeatherScan channel showed the temperature at 66°, humidity 67%.

The walk Emma and I took along the ditch east of RGNC was interesting. Partly cloudy, a bit breezy, pretty cool, really. And so humid it felt like walking through a bowl of pudding.

This morning it rained hard and for a fairly long time. If the monsoon truly is at last upon us, I might trot off up Fourth Street to Plants of the Southwest and snag me some grass seed. And whaddaya know? Just whipped over to their site to grab the URL and lookit what I found: “Here in New Mexico the summer rains have finally started to dot the state… This is a perfect time to sow warm season native grass seed.” They proceed to flog their Blue Grama and Buffalograss mix, which I intend to use out front, and their Dryland Blend of eight native grasses, which is what I want to plant in part of my capacious backyard. So I may be on the right track, here.

They’re good people at PotSW, very knowledgeable. If you’re interested in xeriscaping or “sustainable” gardening, you might check them out. I also need to check with them because they advise covering grass seed with mulch, which some garden-savvy friends say is odd because mulch is usually meant to prevent things sprouting, such as weeds. (And let’s face it: what are xeric plants but weeds?) I want to make sure I understand the how-to sheet I got from them a few years back on planting native grasses, and ask them how much mulch I need to use and what kind they recommend. With luck they can also give me a hint on how to purchase the requisite amount of mulch without going broke.

Anyway. I’m chugging along, trying to get back to speed. Then keep accelerating.

Hope things go well with all of you.

And, oh – my birthday’s coming right up here before too long. August 3rd. Just so you know.

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, [...]]]> So I had the German Bomber Channel on for electronic wallpaper a little while ago, and they were showing their Engineering an Empire show on Rome. And I was struck by a wonderful vision. (Thud.)

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, lean, distinguished-looking professor points to some projection or exhibit and in his characteristic deep, slightly nasal, slightly metallic voice asks, “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

And I’ll pipe up in my best Professor Hikita accent, “It’s your hand, Buckaroo!”

Enough whimsy. Okay; like that’s gonna happen.

Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot written. Annja’s current exploit’s really picking up steam, and The Dinosaur Lords are going great guns. Plus I did a lot of necessary world-building on DinoLords, which helped the writing a great deal.

The key there was that I actually wrote story, not just typed notes and drew maps, both of which I also did. I know way too well what kind of a trap that note-making thing can be: a whole novel, The War for America, wandered off into the swamps and bogged down because, in large part, I devoted so much time to writing reams of notes. That and not having an actual synopsis, but rather an idea in my head where I wanted to go. Not so good an idea. It turns out that, while I have a great gift of improvisation, I need a certain amount of structure both to activate it and to direct it usefully. Who’da thunk it? Anyway that’s why I’ve got upwards of 700 pages of novel and am not half done – and have, I judge, upwards of a million words of notes. Seriously.

(Someday I’ll go back and finish that. If events don’t overtake it first. Which is a major possibility.)

Anyway, the key is, I need the notes (and maps) to do the writing; I just can’t let them overwhelm me. And I know why that really happens: note-writing is safe. I went through a real crisis of confidence in my writing ability starting in the early 1990s – to the extent I’ve ever had confidence in it. Only in the last few years have I painstakingly been able to break down those doubts. Of course, I always have to stay vigilant lest I find myself hiding in the safe dark crevices of scribbling descriptions and backstories of characters and cultures that may never see the light of print…

On other fronts … got the north side of the yard scraped clean with my trusty scuffle hoe. Big whoop – it’s roughly 315 square feet. But it needed done, and it’s a start.

Last night it rained, pretty vigorously. That’s cool, of course – quite literally – and also a great boon to my honeysuckle, which seems (two whole days after planting) to thrive, thank you very much. Of course I also noticed some weeds front and back showing suspicious patches of green, despite my having hit them with Round-Up. I had to remind myself that’s fine, if not a Hundred Flowers, I can let a hundred new weeds poke their little heads up, for the same purpose Mao Zedong had in mind: to cut ‘em all off. AFter zapping ‘em thoroughly first to kill the roots, of course.

The rain also made it easier to pull weeds, especially big tumbleweeds, whose thick, woody roots can be a real pain to cut even with the scuffle hoe honed to near-razor sharpness. They also give it up real sweet when the ground isn’t cement. So I did some of that during breaks from writing.

I’ve gotten some good writing done today: feels good. I see from the email I’ve had a new book come into the nearby library branch – Castle, by David Macaulay. Reckon I’ll do a tad more Annja, then harness up Emma and take her for a long-delayed walk – her foot seems to’ve healed up nicely. Somewhere in there I’ll drop off some books I’m finished with and grab the new one. Then come back and write some more!

Tomorrow I suspect I need to head east to pick up some supplies. I’ll probably pack the notebook PC along and have breakfast and write some in my customary VI. I may also check out an afternoon matinee, something I ought to do a whole lot more of (there’s a lengthy list.) I want to catch Forbidden Kingdom on the big screen, although I’m dying to see Iron Man. Still, we’re talking Jet Li and Jackie Chan; and I suspect the formr’s closer the end of its string than the latter…

It wasn’t when I got her initially. I just wanted a dog. It’d been a year and a half since I lost Bear, whom the wonderful Pat Rogers so aptly called “the little golden dog” – who acquired a large and active fan following who [...]]]> I have a black dog. This is very important to me..

It wasn’t when I got her initially. I just wanted a dog. It’d been a year and a half since I lost Bear, whom the wonderful Pat Rogers so aptly called “the little golden dog” – who acquired a large and active fan following who continued to query me for months after her death as to where she was. Enough time had passed for an emotional reset. And to prepare myself I’d read the amazing and useful The Other End of the Leash by ethologist Patricia McConnell. So when I happened by the animal-adoption fair being held at the nearby PetSmart, my main concerns were a nice dog who’d get along with me and the cats and not eat too many house guests or neighbor kids – after one or two, people start to talk.

But more of that tale later. It’s just that the dog I’ve grown to know and love and rely upon to defend the redoubtable Milán Pack and territory against the wicked (lately, mostly young moms strolling past with prams and little dogs on leashes – as every schoolchild knows, among the leading perpetrators of home invasions!) is black. A very deep, glossy black, except for a white blaze on her chest that’s seldom visible.

So why, oh my, when I open the back door, is what I get back a khaki dog?

This just happened. Again. It’s about 1:30 PM Friday. I’m trying to get some writing done and maybe at last plant the honeysuckle I’ve nurtured in a pot on the kitchen counter all these months in the backyard, before heading out to dinner with some Wild Cards Mafia types – including Denver’s own Carrie Vaughn, of Kitty and the Silver Bullet fame – and then to ASFS to hear Ian Tregillis read from the first novel of his upcoming Milkweed Triptych trilogy. I love that name, by the way. Anyway, I read the ending (I mean, silently, to myself. Without even moving my lips much) as part of the Critical Mass authors’ group, and it completely rocks, and Melinda says Ian’s a great reader, so I’m much looking forward to it. Anyway.

So in the exceedingly unlikely event you’re holding your breath waiting for it, the answer to the above question is: because the adorable tyke likes to lie in the dust. And roll in the dust. And just generally root around in the dust. And there’s much, much dust available in my sizable backyard for her to choose from. It’s a vast wasteland out there.

And it’s going to get more so, as I’m also fixing to take my trusty scuffle hoe – man, it’s just Double-Entendre Theater 24/7 when you’re talking about that thing – out back and denude it further. This action is preliminary to planting a native-grass meadow using a seed blend I’ll buy from Plants of the Southwest, a kinda-sorta neighbor, being located a couple mile up Calle Cuarto, and general cool place. Especially if you’re into xeriscaping (the name might give a hint, there.)

Hopefully, the grass will actually root and grow – yeah, I know; insane optimism is what I do – at which point the problem of Khaki Dog Syndrome – or the Brown Dog Blues of the header – will be solved. Or at least alleviated, since I’m not seeding the whole 50′ x 70′ expanse.

In the interim I’m at a bit of a loss. Emma doesn’t like to be examined or fiddled with – she’s near phobic about it, in fact. She’ll tolerate my working at her with a dog brush. But naturally that does no good. I’ve thought of going at her with a broom but that would probably terrify her, which isn’t the object of the exercise. Or I could use the hand vac. I bet she’d flippin’ love that.

Ah, well. Suggestions will be appreciated.

Meanwhile, back to writing that I actually get paid for…