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My Garden
by Jane “Spider” Fawke
I woke up at 5.30 am on Monday, June 30th to the most beautiful “Fighting Temeraire” sky, a luminous watercolor of grey and gold clouds, with a lacey veil of rain drifting across the Copper Mountain
plain. Those little devils in Wonder Valley or the Monument were getting a misty shower! My beloved Alan asked, “why doesn’t it pass over us”, ‘because the Rain Kachinas love to see us schlepping
buckets of emergency water to our neglected little patch, that sat unloved for 8 years of probate court’ I reply!
I have been a gardening nut for 52 years, since my brother let me hold carrot seeds for him to sow in our food garden, in Kidderminster, England. I was 3. We grew everything, because we were poor. I
watched, fascinated, as Graham dropped the little seeds into a row of our fertile red sandstone, covered them gently and watered them. I checked every day until the little cotyledons poked up, then
turned into feathery little wands of future carrot, a miracle! I was hooked.
Since then, I have learned to garden in quite a few distinct areas- the ex-bombsite weed patch of my student flat in Crouch End, London. I fed 8 students and wrote my general studies thesis for my Masters
Degree in Art on my vegetable patch there; my dear friend Bob’s garden, in the Hamptons-New York, featured on the front cover of House and Garden, (boy, we had some good plant fights with potting soil
and pruners)!, and my vegetable plot in the Sepulveda Basin garden in the San Fernando Valley, but my “garden” in North Joshua Tree
has become my biggest labor of love. I am trying to make my 15 acres a haven
for all our Mohave Desert species, a place they can come to be safe and grab a quick drink or local snack, but it is really hard work. For every plant hole, I dig six or seven starters, usually hitting caliche or a rock bed. You can forget the old adage about a ten dollar hole for a one dollar plant; they have to make do with a one dollar 99 hole. I cannot get certain plants going, Baja Fairy Duster, what did I do wrong? Why do things just keel over, (the Golden Cholla)? Or disappear, (the Hangman’s Cholla)? Damned rabbits have cut a swath of destruction too, now every plant has to be wrapped in chicken wire, very Beverly Hillbillies, I hope the wire goes rusty soon.
I have had a few successes, the Desert Bird of Paradise that lived for years with no care, blossomed with my careful treatment only to get smashed by the concrete guy driving his truck over it and up onto
the patio and into the house, (yes, you did read that right), smashing the bush to bits. It survived and now I have at least a dozen seedlings all over the field. The sages that I planted too late that
dried up into twigs but re-sprouted this Spring; the magnificent Crocossoma I found
living in secret in the Creosote bushes and now, after 3 years, I am finally getting visits from all the desert animals that I love so much.
The Cohens, our Jewish coyotes, (they love Matzo Brie), are trotting across the field, the Quails have double clutched and are leading their chicks and hatchlings to the water dish, our neighbor Rhonda’s
Rattlesnake, Ruby, is bunched up on the patio under the mosaic pots I made at the fab Perry Hoffmann’s mosaic class, the Racerunner lizards are having a big territorial scrap amongst my old Gnome
collection, ( I defy you to find a Brit gardener without a Gnome tucked away somewhere), and the little House Finches and Sage Sparrows are twittering away on the bird feeders.
My garden plans for next year include a waterhole, a seep, a Mesquite forest, a huge floral patchwork of all the seeds I collected this spring, and a big hibernation wall out front complete with viewing
portholes, loosely based on the Ha-Ha in Cheltenham Crescent, Bath.
Many of my plans and plants will mature long after I’m gone, but that is the beauty of gardening, planting for the future.
I can’t wait for fall, the packets of Lupin, Cali Poppy, Desert Dandelion, Aster
and all the other seeds I can’t remember I have will be sown over the field with the ancient gardeners blessing of “grow, you buggers, grow”!
Jane “Spider” Fawke wrote this piece about her garden in North Joshua Tree.
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