Summer sunsets & solstices

[Return of the J.D.]

The local tribes hereabouts used to do a lot of their planting right about now, too--the summer rainy season is about 3 weeks away, and they always made a point of getting their crops planted in time for the summer thunderstorms to water them.

My kids and I planted Hopi corn this year--two crops, the first being a red-kerneled kind ("Wiekte," or "Greasy Hair") that you plant right before the last frost, and which is ready to harvest in time for the pre-rainy-season festivities, which is right about now. We've picked a few ears so far, and they've turned out well. Last weekend, we began planting the taller Hopi blue--which should be ready maybe in late October. It's long been awesome to me how well these anciently-adapted crops work in this extreme environment. A couple of corn varieties used by the local tribes can produce fully-formed dried ears in 60 days from planting--to take advantage of very brief availability of water. There's something awesome about just holding a shucked ear of it in your hand--it seems to sum up centuries of history, and wisdom, and tenacious desire for life. I've often thought that all of this is often lacking in some of our own species.

 

[Kevin the grey]

When I speak of following the seasons instead of time it is an ongoing affair with me . I used to get up at 4:20 A:M: every workday morning and rarely saw the sunrise . That is my starting point . It is good to see gentlemen who celebrate the start of the day in such a gracious manner .

To celebrate the Solstice I climbed the tallest elevation I could find . The local ski hill/contaminated earth dump . O:K: not the most natural of settings . It was the only way to see the sunrise in the highrise world I live in . A grass covered hill with who knows what underneath . Foxes live there . Guinea fowl live there and for the moment Mr. Malamute and I lived there . It felt good in a quiet way . I was not made small so much as again to contemplate that there was more than I . Thank you for loaning me a little bit of the grace you live in .

 

[Ad Astra]

Hope everyone had a sunset that looked like this.

Seeing nature's clock turn a tick like that is spectacular, to me. And again, you only get so many of them. It is a reminder to be happy, and to live the life you really want to.

Thanks to everyone who read & contributed.



Mike

 

[Kevin the grey]

60 days ? That is something else . Is it very hot where this occurs with plenty of rain when it is available ? Corn is truly one of natures interesting gifts . Even the silk which some in ignorance won,t abide is a delicious , nutricious addition to some salads and has medicinal properties as well . When corn is very fresh I will take a mouthful or two of the silk . It is nothing like when it is a cooked stringy mess clinging to your teeth . A very pleasing texture .

 

[Return of the J.D.]

The "60-day" corn I've gotten is from a nonprofit outfit called "Native Seeds / SEARCH" (I forget what "SEARCH" stands for, but the last letters are for "research clearing house"). They're at www.nativeseeds.org . Their mission is to identify, collect, and preserve varieties of native-grown plants that would otherwise be lost due to industrialized farming. Part of how they do this is selling seeds, at low cost, to people who will plant them and keep them going in as many different places as possible. They offer special discounts (and I think even free seeds) to Native Americans, should that apply to you, by the way. I know of two varieties they've carried that can supposedly bear usable dry seed in 60 days; one kind is "Tohono O'Odham 60-day"
http://www.nativeseeds.org/v2/cat.php?catID=44&cp=2
and another is a variety they call "Sahuarita" --which can supposedly bear seed in as little as six weeks, though I no longer see it in their online catalogue. Different people's mileage varies greatly as to the timing of this, of course. The Tohono O'Odham (Spaniards called them "Papago") reservations are in southern Arizona, in the deserts, so we're talking extremes of heat (110 + degrees air temperature in the shade 6 feet off the ground; hotter on the ground and in the sun). Humidity's a bit different: the Tohono O'Odham sometimes traditionally figured out places where runoff from nearby hills and high points would run to, and in any such place that had decent soil, they would plant their crops--sometimes constructing little dam-like weirs to slow down the water's flow a bit and help with channeling. The result was that you might get zero water for months, and then suddenly you'd get 18 inches flowing through after a single storm, and then maybe only a couple more rains in the whole season. So, kind of a mix of extremely-high humidity and nothing. That's the beauty of a fast-growing subspecies. We have "spadefoot" toads here that are kind of similar: they'll spend most of their lives in kind of a suspended animation underground, then when the ground gets wet, they'll dig up to the surface, hop to a puddle, breed, then re-burrow. The tadpoles mature in some unheard-of kind of short timeframe--I almost want to say I've read somewhere that it can be a week, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, if you're at all into the idea of growing native corn, beans, squash, tobacco, etc., the Native Seeds website will get you started. Their focus is on stuff that came from the desert Southwest and northern Mexico, but I understand that a lot of that stuff will grow elsewhere, too. Another really interesting read about ancient plant/human interactions and how the old ways get lost and re-found--and the advantages of having wild or traditional plant varieties available--is a book called "Gathering the Desert," by Gary Nabhan. Odd as this may sound, it's actually interesting--includes first-hand stories about expeditions deep into remote Mexican canyons to find virtually-extinct plants, etc.