In My Face

The start of this summer on the hilltop has been particularly pleasant. A few years ago I spent four full months, with a crew of three workmen, rebuilding our deck. It is a large deck of about 900 square feet that has folding glass doors that open the kitchen completely to it and two sliding doors from the living room out to it. It’s surface is a slip-resistant travertine tile and the railing is expensive thick glass that creates an unobstructed and breathtaking view out to the west and north to the Pacific Ocean on up to the peaks of the San Gabriels and San Jacintos. In many ways, this view of the boulder-studded hillsides, eternal rugged western coastline, distant purple mountaintops and azure blue sky with hints of dissipating morning mist, is what defines the beauty of this hilltop. Like any great canvas, this view has layers to it. The sky, ocean and mountain ranges are the backwash of the canvas and the three nearest ridgelines overlap to create the most visible layering effect with a sliver of distant and lightly humming Freeway (U.S. Rt. 15, which runs north/south through these valleys) giving just enough of an anchor to modernity in the picture and a reminder that life is always about motion. The foreground of the picture is my back hillside on which my gardening efforts over the past six seasons have personalized my own succulent and sculpture fantasy that inspires both reverence for the power and diversity of the plant kingdom and the whimsy of man as he seeks his identity in the world.

I have furnished this deck of my re-creation with a 16’ x 12’ shade palapa highlighted with low-voltage up-lighting, an eight-piece wicker lounge set, a large firetable and a hightop with stools. It’s a wonderful spot and I find that I usually bemoan the fact that I don’t get it to use it as often as I would like since it tends to be either too cool and damp (morning dew) or too hot and sizzling in the late afternoon. One of the things that’s helping on the heat front is a new caliente red shade cover on the palapa, which does a better job of keeping the shade cool. It seems counter-intuitive to use darker fabric to cool summer spaces, but I learned from my Bedouin friends in the desert that dark fabric works well for that purpose. And what is helping even more this summer so far is that the weather has been simply fantastic. I translate that to mean that it is both sunny and warm enough to be pleasant shorts weather, but it is also breezy and moderate enough (mostly in the 70’s and low 80’s) to not be oppressively hot. When people think and talk about San Diego’s “perfect” weather, this is what they are talking about. Sunny, warm and low humidity. And that makes for some nice opportunities to take whatever I’m doing (reading, writing, calling or viewing) out to the lounge area under the palapa and sit facing the endless views in all directions. I will also mention that one of the nice things about this area is that there simply are very few flying insects to bother you and the occasional one is mostly pushed aside by the breeze.

This particular summer we have an added element in play that is not so unfamiliar to us, but is still rather unexpected nonetheless. As I have mentioned before, agaves are the most plentiful succulent in my garden and agaves have a lifecycle that has them sprouting massive seed stems once in their lifecycle just before they call it quits. The Agave Attenuates have the 10/12 foot Dr. Seuss “question mark” stems. The Agave Americanas (Century Plants) that have a blueish tint send up the thirty-foot gigantic tree-like stems that last for months before they start to teeter. And the Desert Spoon Agaves send up slim eight-foot stalks that look like giant green sheafs of wheat. Usually, all of these stalks tend to blend into the landscape and are viewed by us from a medium distance. But this year we have two gigantic Century Plants stalks on the back hillside, probably 50 feet each from our deck railing, and three Desert Spoon stalks that have sprung up five or six feet in front of deck railing. These have all created two other visual layers to the canvas from the deck. At first, I thought I might need to cut down at least the Desert Spoon stalks since they intruded on the panorama, but then I began watching these stalks, which seem to grow right before your eyes. Every day they have grown and change and it makes me wonder if they secretly grow at night or if it is a constant and continuous progression of millimeters per hour all day and night long.

As seed stems, these growths are very appealing to the bee population. Bees in this garden get a smorgasbord of seed stems and just as the Aeonium stems and Houseleek (Hen & Chicks) stems are fading and falling over, these agave stems are starting to blossom, the bees move from one to the next with total fluidity. I don’t often sit near enough to the seed stems to bear witness to the bee cultivation, but I certainly know its going on. I have long since dropped any dislike for bees, but rather understand and appreciate what they have to offer this and all other gardens and am glad to have a progression of blooms to keep them fed and interested. The humming birds and even larger birds also enjoy these seed stems and can be seen competing with the bees for space around the most flowerful crowns. Now, with these stems just beyond my glass railing on the deck, I have what feels like the worlds largest terrarium where I can watch this process of birds and bees and flowers for long stretches of time and with great interest. I remember a similar fascination with an ant farm in a glass box when I was a kid. There is something both primordial and invigorating to sit and watch nature do its thing at this micro level. It now also gives me added incentive to sit out on the deck and enjoy these seed stems in the fine summer weather…while having something interesting to look at.

I am reminded every day of how much I enjoy observing life and nature and pondering with fascination the wonder of it all. There were and will be different birds and bees from the beginning of time and until the end of time. They have adapted to the changing environment as we must learn to every day. They have gotten stronger and more efficient over time as have we. Perhaps at times they extended beyond the optimal, but nature always reigned them back in, just as nature is doing to us right now. I am allowing nature to be in my face because nature will always get in our face when it must.