Terracing

Weather: We got 45 minutes of solid rain last Monday afternoon, and a little more Friday after dark. Since Monday, the temperatures have stayed at 91 or below.

Last useful rain: 7/27. Week’s low: 55 degrees F. Week’s high: 98 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, desert willow, trumpet creeper, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, red-tipped yuccas, Russian sage, buddleia, rose of Sharon, bouncing Bess, datura, sweet pea, annual four o’clocks, alfalfa, farmer’s sunflowers, coreopsis, corn

The corn doubled in size and started to tassel. Since the growth started before Monday’s rain, I’m not sure what was responsible: the changed sun angles, the increased humidity, the rain from the week before, or all of the above.

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, caryopteris, hybrid daylilies, golden spur columbine, large-flowered soapwort, David phlox, catmints, lady bells, sidalcea, winecup mallow, hollyhocks, blue flax, lead plant, pink evening primroses, white-flowered spurge, sea lavender, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, larkspur, white and Coronation Gold yarrow, chocolate flowers, blanket flower, Mönch aster, purple cone flowers, bachelor buttons

What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, trees of heaven, purple mat flower, stick leaf, velvetweed, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, leather leaf globemallow, yellow mullein, scurf pea, white sweet clover, Queen Anne’s lace, goat’s head, prostate knotweed, toothed spurge, purslane, Hopi tea, fleabane, horseweed, wild lettuce, common and native dandelions, goat’s beard, plain’s paper flower, áñil del muerto, goldenrod, golden hairy asters, Tahoka daisy; cattails in town ditches

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum; local petunias

Tasks: Common and native dandelions are still blooming, as are goat’s beards, though not as prolifically as earlier. The volunteers that require the most attention now are white sweet clover, wild lettuce, and horse weed. Unlike dandelions, they’re either annuals or biennials, so it’s enough to keep them from going to seed. Unless they’ve been around, their roots are either straight or swallow. Seedlings can be pulled easily.

I’ve tried periodically to get a datura started. I planted one at the west end of the drive in 2013 that bloomed. The next year it emerged after the monsoons, but didn’t flower. Two years later, a seedling came up, but again did nothing. This year, when I was removing all the plants that were crowding a small potentilla I’d planted earlier this season, I noticed what looked like seedlings from five years ago. Superstitiously, I left them.

Now, they’re blooming, and their large leaves are blocking water from reaching the potentilla. I looked down every couple days through the leaves to see if the shrub is still there and needs me to water it by hand. The reason I did the weeding was to eliminate the need to do this watering with a hose.

Animal sightings: Cat, hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, sidewalk ants, cabbage butterfly, bumble and small bees, hornets, other small flying insects, grasshoppers; heard crickets

Large black ants opened a big hill after the rain earlier in the week.

Weekly update: Terracing is one of those things I never consciously studied. What I learned I gleaned from looking at pictures and reading captions. From that, I vaguely knew people terraced fields to create level areas. In rice paddies, the barriers also held water.

As I’ve said many time, I live on the side of a hill. Before I moved my house here, someone scraped out a level area by digging dirt from the surrounding area. This left me with a building sitting on top of a mesa surrounded by gullies. A friend built a retaining wall on the high side from railroad timbers.

I’d learned from my mother’s experiences it wasn’t a good idea to have plants next to the foundation. I knew from 4-H one should worry about draining away water as well. Since things like cement weren’t easily available, I bought foot-square Mexican tiles and laid them along the foundation. I sealed them, but suspected the indoor tiles probably wouldn’t last. Surprisingly, they’re still there, though some have cracked.

One time when I was ordering construction materials, the building supplier had bricks. I ordered two pallets. I used these to create low walls two bricks high parallel to the tiles following the contours of the mesa. I also lined the edge of the gully. I filled the narrow beds with a mix of sand, soil, sawdust, manure, and fertilizer.

The width of the bands partly was dictated by the slope of the mesa. But, more important, it was defined by the width of my arm. I had learned the hard way that no bed should be wider than I could reach comfortably sitting on the ground, or in this case, on the narrow band of bricks.

Ever since I laid the bricks and tiles I’ve discovered nature and I do not see these structural ramifications the same. Seeds get dropped into the cracks between the tiles that have to be removed. The golden spur columbines put out a number of stems that push the tiles apart. When I doing the annual weeding, I have to reset the tiles.

I also had to change my rule that nothing would grow in the cracks. The columbines became so aggressive, the more desirable plants took refuge in the tiles. So, now I have to walk around the coral beards tongues, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, and coreopsis. On the west side of the house, the blue flax fled to the tiles last winter.

Maintaining the brick walls is more work. If I were a professional landscaper, I might have hired someone to build them with stable footings. Instead, I laid the bricks on the ground, getting the ground level with a plasterer’s float.

The ground eroded under some, tilting them down. In other places, the bricks sank in wet soil. Walking on them became treacherous. Then the columbines dropped their seeds, pushing the bricks father apart. Dirt settled in the cracks, and little, wet beds formed for white sweet clover and dandelions.

Another task when I’m doing the annual cleanup is restoring the bricks. Since I can’t use my right thumb, I’ve been using that chisel to pry errant bricks loose and scrape off the dirt. I reset them, and hope if I walk over them enough, they’ll stop wobbling.

Notes on photographs:
1. Datura wrightii from 2013 seeds, 23 July 2018.

2. Potentilla fruticosa ‘Gold Star’ planted this spring, seen through the stems of the datura, 23 July 2018.

3. Tiles at top and two rows of bricks, with an oriental poppy (Papaver orientalis) in front, 29 May 1999.

4. The terraces made by two rows of bricks, with the ones in front lining the gully, 13 May 2000; yellow Dutch iris in bloom.