^2020 vs. 2024
When my husband and I moved into our main house in the height of the early pandemic, the yard attached to our kitchen and sunroom quickly became “my yard.” It was a small, weirdly shaped triangle of true desert terrain: dust, dirt, tumbleweeds, and goat heads. My mom has always been an avid gardener, so I grew up with flowers and fresh veggies, and I was eager to transform my own little patch of property into a lush, green paradise.
It turns out that gardening in Minnesota, where I was raised, is a little different than Santa Fe. When I began, the ground was mostly a layer of sand on top of a layer of rock on top of a lot of clay, and as monsoon season got drier and summer got hotter, there just wasn’t much moisture to go around. The plants most likely to thrive were spiky and tough, or my true nemesis: elm.
^ Please excuse my son’s chatter in this one haha
The first year, I planted bushes and trees, flowers and herbs. By the following spring, almost everything had died. A couple hardy cacti and drought-resistant bushes held on, but I was otherwise starting from scratch. So I installed a mini drip irrigation system, added a higher ratio of drought-resistant plants, shoveled in more piles of fertilizer, and sprinkled a mixture buffalo grass and clover across the barren ground. I began to dump my coffee grounds and eggshells around the little plants, especially my berry patch, and I started beekeeping, adding some pollinators to the mix.
^2020 vs. 2024
This spring, four years after I began my dust garden, I had the highest return rate of plants yet. My lilacs are budding, the cherry and apple trees are pushing out new leaves, and all but one of my raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, which are notoriously hard to grow in northern New Mexico, made it through the winter. The little bed of wildflowers around my beehives reseeded itself. For the first time, tulips popped up and bloomed.
Sure, we had a wet winter, so everything got a little more to drink. And yes, the soil has improved tremendously over the years. But so have I.
^ Tulip and hops!
Recommendations
Writer Jennifer Grayson was kind enough to forward me an advance copy of her upcoming book, A Call to Farms. In it, she explores the trendy practice of regenerative agriculture (what my husband practices on our farm, Back Porch Greens). The question she strives to answer: Can the farmers taking this approach help reverse an epidemic of diet-related disease, food inequality, and even climate change?
A Call to Farms comes out this July.
What I’m reading
The Highest Tree House in the Amazon
By Allison Keeley for The New Yorker
One morning in May, 2023, a lone truck, piled high with wooden beams, did something curious: it carried its cargo into Puerto Lucerna, against the usual flow of timber. The beams were headed for a remote pair of intertwined trees that measured a hundred and thirty feet tall. There, a group of conservationists from Tamandua Expeditions planned to erect the highest tree house in the Amazon.
The Revenge of the World’s Most Famous Female Pirates
By Dr. Rebecca Simon for Truly Adventurous via Pocket
Female pirates were unique: not only did they upend the social system, they were marginalized figures who transcended their social positions, proving that women were just as brave, self-sufficient, and defiant as men, in the process inspiring generations. Their tale turned out to be extremely popular for the rest of the eighteenth century. Advertisements for the 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates listed the names of dozens of pirates profiled. Smack in the middle, the ad promised “the remarkable actions and adventures of the two Female Pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny,” with their names in a bold font that dwarfed all others.
No doubt the women themselves would have proudly appreciated their immortal places in the pantheon of pirate legends. When they faced the gallows, their lack of fear reflected their self-realization. “[Hanging] is no great hardship,” Mary mused. “For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the sea, that men of courage must starve.”
The Family Who Vanished Into the Bush
By Dan Kois for Slate
But the stark facts—the lonely car on the beach, the 8-foot waves, Tom and the children vanishing completely—were daunting. “I do fear the worst,” Tom’s sister, Rozzi Pethybridge, told a reporter. “I am worried a rogue wave has caught one of the kids and he’s gone in to save them.” Phillips’ uncle seemed to be hinting at something even darker when he told another reporter that in some ways he hoped it had been a rogue wave: “If something has happened to the children, the best-case scenario is that they were washed out to sea,” he said. “That way it’s an accident.”
Last but not least
