Texas July 2009

Apparently it is about choices—at least, sometimes. I made up my mind when I leased a casita in Santa Fe two years ago, and then decided to make New Mexico my home for most of the year after buying my tiny, wanna-be home/condominium, that the garden I had doted over for the better part of seven years would have to do or die during the summer months that take their toll in Texas, regardless.

To those in Santa Fe who ask, "Don't you have someone who looks after your place in Texas...don't you have an irrigation system," the answer is simple, yet not. No rich Texan with a second home in Santa Fe here, I rely upon the kindness of family. I would rely on strangers as well, were they available. My sister, Joan, has labored in the inland heat to keep alive a few of the trees that I've designated as most vulnerable, along with the Old Blush climber rose that is slowly marking the wire fence adjoining our properties. A modest, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants watering system I had installed early in the the history of this garden could only do what it was designed to do: water the oldest part of the garden. As absence would have it, yes, fallen into disrepair, a challenge to be solved on another day, or not. Replacing the computer board of my gas oven, apparently the fallout of a lightning strike during one of the April storms, is more straightforward. I will bake again when I return to Texas for the end of summer. How true, I will bake again, and also in the oven.

This is the year that I’ve found out how tough tough can be. Already in drought in 2008, through a lackluster winter that didn’t produce the moisture that we rely upon—la Nina, el Nino, jetstream, whatever—and in spite of a wet April, the summer has beat the crap out of Texas. Yes, summer has its foot firmly on our neck. The worst drought on record, or in 90 years, wherever the truth lies, has reminded us that Mother somehow knows best, or at least she, in her personification as Nature, has had us shaking our heads and exaggerating the truth (or maybe not). Ninety years?

My loss of a few rose shrubs doesn’t matter a tinker’s dam in the big picture. Nor does the bexia grass “lawn” where in the spring—not this year—I usually get a nice stand of wildflowers outside the fenced in area of my garden. Brown, simply brown, this lawn is, except for the sprinkling of green resulting from a couple of shower blessings during my two-week visit to Texas to help bury our Aunt Mary. Losses in crops and a saturated cattle market leading to virtually fire-sale prices in the auction ring. It is what it is. As Union Army General Philip Sheridan said of Texas during a tour here after the Mexican-American war, "If I owned Texas and hell, I would rent Texas and live in hell." While I don't know how much of his sentiment had something to do with the summer heat, it is a palpable metaphor. My physician asked yesterday as I sat in his office, "why do we live here?". For close to two weeks I have dragged the water hoses from place to place, filling a 3-gallon galvanized bucket to tote to a parched-throat thirsty tree or shrub while the water hose lies delivering a drink where I drop it.

I will head back to northern New Mexico this weekend, and as I write these words, the hose does its work, draped across the limb of a vitex tree. I will venture from the air conditioned dark space that I call my office, while a machine on which we Texans rely so heavily, delivers lovely, lovely cool to this room, out to the garden shed, where I will sip on a glass of wine, as I make a final push for this time around, hoping and praying that showers—make them lavishing rains—will sooth this landscape, even though I won’t be here to see and hear this miracle of Mother Nature. And while you're at it, Mother, the stock tanks need a little attention as well. Does this qualify as a prayer?

Texas July 2009—Normangee, Texas (July 24, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis