I wanted to tell him that some people would say that the lawn actually belonged to me, not to him.  I could have told him that I did have a piece of paper saying so, and that I pay an enormous sum in mortgage every month for the privilege of mowing this lawn and removing every last weed.  But I didn’t tell him anything.  For one thing, he would have probably asked me how any land can belong to an individual, a deeply philosophical question for which I have no answer.  For another, he does not understand English.  Neither do I  understand his language, which, for want of a better word, I shall call red-winged blackbirdese.

The male red-winged blackbird is a beautiful creature – those orange-red  epaulettes are especially striking (and he knows that, for he takes care to fluff them up every once in a while). He is as vain as any male model would be, and he is territorial and aggressive.  He also a hoarse cry that makes you wonder if he has chronic laryngitis.

Red winged blackbird in my garden

There was a time, not long after we built this house, when I lamented the lack of any birds in my garden.  There was just a bland green lawn in the backyard, and a few young trees here and there.  Not too many plants, certainly no butterflies, and no birds.  A few years later, the butterflies are still not too common, although there are plenty of bumblebees, honey bees, dragonflies and those pretty blue damselflies that make you wish you had your camera with you.

In time the birds have come.  The pond has its resident mallard ducks (with visiting geese, hooded mergansers, gulls and egrets).  The garden too, has its admirers -  the deep-blue necked grackles and the orange-breasted robins, there are the occasional goldfinches,  pheasants, starlings and hummingbirds. I’ve heard barred owls hoot at night and more rarely, heard a barn owl or two. But the birds I am guaranteed to see every time I step into my backyard are the red-winged blackbirds – specifically, the male blackbirds.

The females look like overgrown sparrows and if you see them at all, it’s when they are timidly hopping on the very bottom of the backyard lawn, right by the rushes, never venturing too far.  The males, though, will come right up to a  few feet away from you and pretend nonchalance.  As self-appointed sentries of our garden, they like to sit at the very top of our young, 20 foot-tall maple trees and screech at anyone who passes close to them.  Sometimes, they will even fly down to the nearest tree beside us and let us know that we are trespassing on their property.

You can see why they would write a rhyme saying “Down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose” – these blackbirds do look like they would peck my nose one day.  Still, don’t you think that nursery rhyme was unnecessarily cruel? Where was PETA and SPCA when you needed them?  They baked 420 blackbirds in a pie?  I’m only glad the birds could fly out and peck people.

We now have at least three families of blackbirds residing in our garden, none of whom, I assure you, came from any pie.  (Any pies I may make will only have blackberries, not blackbirds.)  But I still worry – only now, I worry that the blackbirds are driving away all the other birds.  In hindsight, I think when I wished for birds in my garden, perhaps I should have been a little more specific.

This week, I summoned up some outrage and went to speak to the blackbird.  “Seeyee, Conkaree“, I said in a poor imitation of its call.  “This is my lawn and I am going to weed here now.”

“Seeyee”, the blackbird replied. “You are living in my land and you don’t even bother to learn my language properly.”

At least that’s what I think he said.

It wasn’t not too late for snow, admittedly, snow has been known to occur in these parts even in May.  But Spring was well on its way, with the crocuses long bloomed and spent, and tulips blooming along my driveway.  The lilacs too, were blooming in profusion, spreading a fresh fragrance that made everyone who passed by to stop and smell them. That meant the new neighbor (who fell in love with them and bought a few lilac plants herself) and the neighbor’s dog (which presumably showed its appreciation by not peeing on the tree).

My Lilac tree in full bloom

Perhaps I hadn’t had enough snowfall last winter?  Just the two or three Snowmageddons weren’t enough? The two feet of snow that greeted us after a Christmas vacation and took weeks to clear out completely? The snow that made us succumb and buy a huge, gas guzzling snowthrower this year? How could I be wishing for snow?

Yet, there I was, rather disappointed to find that it wasn’t a snowflake but a winged weed – a dandelion seed that was winging its way across the window, poised to seed my garden with hundreds of beautiful yellow weeds.

After that, the temperature seesawed – first it rose all the way to the mid-nineties, then it plummeted to the forties on some days.  We didn’t get snow, but we also didn’t get a real Spring.

Now it’s officially summer, but I am hoping we will still get a few days of Spring.  I am wishing for temperatures in the sixties or seventies.  Anything, I think, but the dog days of mid-summer.

In the fall, I am sure, as I realize winter is approaching, I will look back fondly on summer days when the garden was in full bloom.

What was it Shelley said about looking before and after (and pining for what is not)? He must have read this post.

Which was a good thing, for having realized it, what were we going to do?

Promptly proceed to panic, of course.  Which we did.  But after a while, we decided that panicking was pointless, so we tried the following panic- control methods :

Method 1 :  Think  Positive

“The good news is, we brought the GPS.”

“Yes, we did.  But I think we left it in the car.”

“Well, that’s the bad news.”

“Maybe the GPS wouldn’t have helped anyway.  Maybe we would get lost with a GPS, like that Oregon couple.”

Method 2 : Lapse Into Philosophy

This always helps, when all else fails.  So we asked ourselves deep philosophical questions -

“Are we going in the right direction ?  Is this the way we are supposed to go? ”

Even more philosophical discussions followed – ” What exactly, is the trail?  How do we recognize it?”

There was nothing much to go by, really, except for what seemed like a small gap in the snow between the plants.  That was when the trail was feeling a little confident.  At other times,  when it meandered near the lips of canyons or seemed to fork confusedly, you were less sure of what the trail really was.

An icy spring on the trail

Method 3 :  Show Scientific Curiosity

“Do birds alert humans if there is a Mountain Lion on the trail ahead of us?”

“Do you think the bears would be hibernating?”

“It is too cold for rattlesnakes and tarantulas, isn’t it?”

Scientific curiosity, we soon found, is not very good at panic control.

Method 4 : If  All Else Fails, Ignore Logic

“I wouldn’t panic,” I say, “If you look closely, you can see the footprints of the couple who went before us. ”

“Yes, but how do we know they made it?”

“But we saw them coming back when we set off. ”

“What if they had turned back mid-way?”  (The trail looped back at the end, so we couldn’t be sure if they had, in fact, completed the trail ).

“That’s possible, but they haven’t yet turned back.  Look, we can still see their tracks.  I won’t panic until the tracks stop.  Then we can turn back.”

“But look, the visibility is coming down really fast.  We can no longer see the mountains, or even 10 feet ahead.  What if it starts snowing again and erases all their tracks and ours?  Then we can’t go forward, or return.”

At this point, any rational person would have panicked, but I was following Method 4.

Then suddenly, as if to make sure we would  the trail started descending into a canyon.  That was when the plane started circling.

I wondered whether I should take off my jacket and wave at the pilot.  It’s a good thing I didn’t, because :

(a) I would have gotten rather cold without the jacket,

(b) The jacket was black, hardly a bright contrast against the black and white terrain,

(c) Pilots don’t land in canyons anyway.  He would have probably waved back at us and carried on.

So we plodded on, and soon came to what looked like the end of the trek – a clearing, and a signboard.

After the mandatory dancing and cheering, we came to the signboard and saw that it wasn’t the end – it was just where the trail branched off into two more trails.

Later, when we had finally reached the parking lot, we would sigh in relief and tell ourselves that this was the most beautiful hike we had ever been on.

Was it my imagination or was it circling?  Had the rescuers started searching for us ?  Surely it was a little too early?  We hadn’t been gone for more than a couple of hours, after all..

The Guadalupe Mountains were covered in snow.  So were our trail, the trees and cacti.  This was a little unusual – New Mexico is not, after all, known for snow.  But snow had decided to follow us everywhere we went this winter, and we shouldn’t have been surprised when nearby Carlsbad, NM received 4-5  inches of snow in a single day (it usually receives less than an inch in December).  It would have snowed a little more in the Mountains, and would definitely get colder.

Rational creatures wouldn’t be out in this weather. Not surprisingly, the very rational Mr. Bear and Mr. Mountain Lion were snug in their dens, possibly watching reality shows on TV and sniggering at human beings.

It was just as well.  We did very much like to meet these denizens of the Park, but certainly not on the trail.  We would have liked to be at a safe distance, inside a tank-like SUV, with cameras ready and so on.   We definitely weren’t autograph hunters, we were just paparazzi.

There had been other animals about – you could see their tracks clearly on the fresh snow – hoof prints of a deer, smaller depressions where a rabbit might have hopped, and other prints that belonged to a larger animal – maybe an elk?

There weren’t too many human beings around either.  In fact, we were the only people for miles around.

But there were birds.  Tens of them.  Eastern bluebirds, Cardinals, Bushtits, Robins, unknown yellow and orange birds, all kinds of Little Brown Birds – Meadowlarks? Wrens?   The only Little Brown Bird I recognized was the sparrow, and these were abundant too, merrily hopping in the snow.  Sparrows in the Snow.   A sight stranger than my imagination.

A female (Western?) Bluebird

We had set off on a trail that passed through 2 springs, and beside each one there were dozens of trees and tens of birds.  The rest of the place was scrub land – with lots of multi0colored cacti.

This wasn’t one of those bold, dashing trails.  This was a trail which didn’t like to stand out.  It was trying its best to remain inconspicuous, to blend in with its surroundings.  Or perhaps it was sick of being trampled upon by all animals at all times of the day and night.  Whatever its reasons,  it was plotting a career change from being Mr. Trail to becoming Mr. Part of Desert.  Right now, it was Mr.  Indistinguishable Part of Snowfield, but you could see it was content to remain that way.

The weather was a few degrees below freezing (i.e. say  minus 7 deg Celsius or so) , but we were bundled up in our jackets, gloves and thick hiking boots, and even my freezing toes were getting warmer with each step I took.

It would have been all too easy to get off the trail.  It was staying on the trail that was much harder.

“Wasn’t it Emerson who said that about going where there is no path and leaving a trail?”

We agreed that he had no idea what he was talking about.  Clearly, he had never hiked in snow.

For our part, we were quite content  to remain on the beaten track.  We even wished it was a little more of a beaten track.

It was a beautiful and desolate place, and we were taking our time walking through it, stopping every now and then to take pictures.

The worries began later.

(to be continued..)

Somewhere under all that cake icing, you will also find a front garden.

My travel plans are all in shambles.  I have just spent 7 hours at the airport, playing roulette re-book with American Airlines representatives.  I will return for more tomorrow.

The grand irony is  – it’s not the 3 or 4 inches you see here (which must have already become 6 or 7 inches or more) that’s causing the delays.  The airport is functioning smoothly and there is hardly any snow on the roads.

It’s the “upto 1 inch” of snowfall they had today in Dallas that made them decide to stop all incoming flights pretty much  shut down the airport.

A few hours later, I looked out again, feeling very self-congratulatory and expecting to see a lush green lawn again.  This time I got a nasty shock.  There were some twenty yellow flowers in the front lawn.  I rushed to look into the backyard.  Yes, there were another twenty odd flowers in the backyard too!  (There were more in the sides of the house too, I ended up weeding around fifty of them).

No, these didn’t grow magically in a few hours (although I shall not rush to discount that possibility, these are wicked sorcerers).  The plants had just been hiding under the blades of the grass.

Later, when I went to weed them, I realized that some of them had lurked just inches away from where I rested the previous day, declaring victory on the War on Weeds.  No doubt they had pointed their leaves at me and laughed. Or perhaps they sneered.

The birds in my garden love the dandelions.  I love the birds in my garden.  But I fail to see how you can then turn around and say, logically then, I should love the dandelions.  That’s not logic at all.

The other issue with the War on Weeds is that I have to fight it on two fronts.  There are the Dandelions, and then there are the Canada Thistles.  The thistles have pretty flowers too, pink ones that all you dandelion-lovers would no doubt love.  I dread the thistles much more than the dandelions.  The thistles not only have tap roots like the dandelions, they also have prickly leaves, and they can grow more than six feet tall.  And they simply invade my lawn near the rushes.

The thistles are now threatening to take over my precious perennial bed, and  I can see I have to devote all my resources to fighting them first.  The perennial bed will be the easier battle.  Getting them to realize that I don’t need them as a border to my lawn is going to be much harder.  I can see them now, marching in lines at the end of my lawn.  Soon there will be bright pink flowers and puffball seeds that waft slowly in the wind, and after that, I might as well brig out the white flag.

Dandelions still grow in my yard.  Like that army in Macbeth that lay concealed in Birnam Wood, my dandelions are hiding in the grass.  They will come forward soon, and start an attack all over again.  Meanwhile, I am keeping a look out every day for the next yellow flower.  And the first pink one.

Sometimes I wonder at my weeding out a pretty yellow flower to make way for a lawn that doesn’t have any decent flowers, that drinks up fertilizer and weedicide and hundreds of gallons of water. But I look out at the green lawns beside mine, and the moment passes.  All I can say is, at least I have that moment.

So perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise that my own yard is overrun with the yellow weeds.  But then, you see, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the city is dandelioned, all that matters is my neighbors’ yards, and remarkably, you cannot see a single dandelion in their manicured lushness.

At least the Chinese neighbor’s yard has the occasional dandelion, though these are swiftly pulled up by the neighbor’s old father (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Grandpa).  But I have never seen a single dandelion grow in the yards of my American neighbors.  Nor have I ever seen them weeding in the yard.  I wonder what the secret is – how does their garden grow with no dandelions and no crab-grass (even if there aren’t pretty maids all in a row)?

My own lawn has shrugged off the pre-emergent fertilizer we applied assiduously.  It was supposed to prevent crabgrass and dandelions, but the weeds never got the memo.  The weeds also treat all the weed-killer sprays I applied like so much air freshener.   Some dandelions had the grace to wilt for a day, but others just looked a little annoyed, and they all burst into flower again.

Obviously, they have declared war.  So the other day I bought a new weapon, the dandelion remover.  This removes the dandelion by the roots.  Well, in theory.  When I saw this in the garden store, I had visions of pulling up dandelions with intact long tap roots that branched off into numerous fibrous roots, somewhat reminiscent of the pictures I remembered from long ago high school botany.

It turned out, though, that pulling up dandelions is a Skill.  There are many variables like Angle of weeder, Distance of weeder from dandelion, Moisture content of soil, Type of soil and of course, Size of dandelion.  One could almost do a PhD thesis on this.

I take that back.  Why almost? One can definitely do a long-term research on this – if one can do a 3 year, £300,000 study to prove, pretty much,  that ducks like water.

But back to my dandelions.  I am still nowhere close to pulling dandelions by the roots, though I have grown from pulling off the shoots to actually removing an inch or so of  root.  A few times I even improbably pulled up a whole plant, and waved it around like a trophy.  Unfortunately, no one was watching.

In a couple of hours, I had cleared the front and the back yard of dandelions, at least the ones in flower.  I had won the War On Weeds!

I sat in the shade, congratulating myself and taking pictures of the last dandelion.  Grandpa kept me company, pulling up more dandelions and planting something.   As I watch him pull yet another yellow flower out, a part of my mind wondered about the fact that Grandpa had been pulling up dandelions for days or even weeks now.  Shouldn’t his yard be weed-free already?  Did that mean the dandelions would come back in my lawn too then?

But I told myself that I was being silly.  Surely Grandpa was doing it all wrong and not removing the roots.  That foot-operated thingy he had must not be the right tool.  He was making it look so easy too, and here I was in imminent danger of dislocating my shoulder.  No, he had only himself to blame.  My dandelions wouldn’t come back.

Judging by the various projectiles you are hurling at me, I realize it may not be such a good idea to mention temperatures.

So let’s talk flowers.   The crocus bulbs I planted 2 years ago (and gave up on last year) finally decided to show up.  This was completely unexpected, as not a single one of them had even put out shoots last year.  No doubt they had a midwinter meeting under the mulch where they all decided to grow this year.  The flowers seem to last only a few days, though, so I missed most of them.  Here is one I did catch in full bloom:

The crocuses were an unexpected bonus, but there were more surprises.  Do you remember last year’s tulips? I had not expected them to come up again this year, but they seem to have other ideas.   They have all come out in full force, and have even started blooming.  Other flowers too, you’ll notice, are blooming in my lawn – dandelions.  I need to bring out the weed killer spray.

The tulips and crocuses are lovely surprises, but what about the daffodils I planted last year? I worried all through winter that my resident voles would have the bulbs for winter dinners.  I was sure I’d see mini campfires at night and voles singing voleheartedly while they feasted.

But the voles have disappeared.  No lawn circles this year, and no bulb feasts either, as far as I can see.   Still, the daffodils are taking their time.  It’s amazing how fast some of them have grown, while there are others which are just piercing the mulch.

Here’s one of the early blooms.  As you can see from a look at the lower petal of this flower, the insects, at least are already in force.

So that’s the latest news from the Garden Update Dept.  I will post more pictures of the backyard perennial bed later.  And then there is the tomato forest that is overtaking the basement.  I am sure I can soon start shooting documentaries for National Geographic and Discovery in my basement.  Doubtless there are all kinds of animals hiding in that tomato forest.

When I set off on vacation, my mind was still on the house, at least until I reached the airport. I didn’t worry about whether I had locked the front door, or whether I had switched off the gas. I worried about more improbable events, like whether a sudden severe thunderstorm would flood my basement, or whether I was wise to leave my dishwasher running – what if it suddenly decided to malfunction and flood my kitchen?

Flooding, as you can see, figured strongly in my worries. Lack of water did not.  So I certainly didn’t worry about my plants. I was leaving my plants for more than a week without water. Most of those plants were tender seedlings, and yet I did not worry.

In fact, in my mind, I had it all planned out. I didn’t have high hopes that my seedlings would survive anyway.

When I first announced to my friend A that I had bought 2 packs of tomato seeds, she was shocked.

“How many seeds did you buy?” she asked.

“Oh, one has 20 seeds of hybrid tomatoes, and the other has probably a hundred seeds of cherry tomatoes”, I said airily.

“Oh my god, don’t plant all of them!” she implored urgently. “Every single one of them will grow!”

This looked like a very good scenario, but I was less hopeful.  “No, not with my skills and my luck” ,  I assured her.  “I am sure half the seeds will never germinate, and then most of the seedlings will die mysteriously, and then there is always the good chance that I will forget to water them for a few days.  Given all this, I am assuming probably 2% of the seeds will survive.”

It was in this spirit that I set off for vacation.

I had planted the twenty hybrid seeds in individual seed containers.  The packet had promised twenty seeds, but I found there were actually twenty two seeds.  And the hundred or so cherry tomato seeds I just strew in a tray.  All these sat in my basement, near the large glass doors that brought in plenty of sunlight.

The seedlings came up  a few days before I left.  I watered whenever I remembered, and then, of course, they were on their own.

So when I came back, I had a good idea what to expect.  There would be a famine in my basement, I knew, and I would see some malnourished plants, and some unfortunate deaths.

But what do I find instead?  Rows and rows of healthy seedlings which seemed to have not missed me at all.  Beside them, the hibiscus shrub had even put out flowers!  You could see that not only was there no famine, the plants were probably partying in my absence.

This was very upsetting.  Now, I can understand if those tomato seedlings didn’t want to die, even though that upsets all my percentage probability plans.  I can even go so far as to forgive them for it.  But  couldn’t they have had the good grace to droop, or wilt, or look just a little uncomfortable?

Do they have to look fresh and cheerful, and put out multiple leaves?  Do they all have to germinate?

At a glance, I could see that twenty one of the twenty two hybrid tomatoes had come up.  This was awful.  But I also found myself wondering what had happened to the twenty second seed.   I was vaguely disappointed it hadn’t come up as well, but on the whole I was inclined to like it for staying away.

A few days later, when I started replanted the seedlings in larger pots, I found the twenty second one too – there were two seedlings in one container.  (Can you spot the container with 2 seedlings in the picture? Tell me which one it is. )

Then there are the hundred cherry tomato seedlings.  Yes, all those seeds have germinated too, or at least that’s what it looks like – I have certainly not tried counting them.  My basement now resembles a miniature tomato forest.

But I am fortunate for now – they are still seedlings.  I wonder how I am going to be able to manage them when they grow older.  Will I need a hundred and twenty two pots for the tomatoes?  How long before they outgrow the pots?  I am having anxiety attacks already.

There’s nothing else to be done, I will need to dig a vegetable patch for them in the backyard.

Folks, it looks like Twisted Ankle and Busted Back will be back in action this summer.