During the time my broken foot had prevented me from walking the trail, I found so many turquoise rocks around the house and yard I began to wonder if the turquoise stones really were everywhere — not just in the arroyo. Now that my foot is better I can walk the hilltop around the house to take a further look.
The other afternoon I wandered up the hillside past the big power pole. At its base there was a pile of dirt left over from the drilling that had been done to set the pole. In the dirt I found a round turquoise rock the size of a grape — more evidence that there is turquoise under the hill where my house is.
CHAPTER 34
Every summer my great grandma A’mooh grew cosmos, four o’clocks, morning glories and hollyhocks. I plant pots of cosmos in the autumn now and think often of A’mooh. In her yard there were the lilacs and the old-fashioned rugosa rose bushes, and next to the swing on the long porch there were two shrubs with cascading branches of tiny white flowers that she called “bridal bouquet.” A huge datura plant had grown in the sandy floodplain soil in her back yard; she called it a “moon flower” because the blossoms opened at night.
My garden is fifteen or twenty mismatched clay and plastic flowerpots on the porch of my studio under the big mesquite in the front yard. I drag this potted garden back and forth from the sun to the shade in the summer.
In November I sow seeds before the cold weather comes. The seedlings like the milder temperatures and they grow quickly after the equinox. By the end of January my front porch is perfumed by pots of datura, alyssum, cosmos and snapdragons. On the nights the temperature falls below freezing, I make tents out of old towels and sheets to protect the cosmos and datura. I drag the pots back into the sun all winter, then back under cover at night, over and over. This is the fate of any gardener of alien plants from outside the desert.
There is no point in preparing a flower bed. The desert trees and shrubs can send out roots overnight to suck the water from a flower bed or tree well; the mesquite tree in my front yard will even steal the water from my clay and plastic pots if I don’t block the drainage holes in the bottoms of the pots with pieces of slate. The pots are discolored with streaks of gypsum from the well water and some of them are cracked.
The garden shade, the green leaves, the seeds and the water buckets attract birds and rodents which attract the rattlesnakes. The cool of the dampness and the deep shade of the pots give great comfort to the rattlesnakes that live around and under my house. Snakes will perish in direct sun and the summer midday heat in a matter of minutes much as we humans can die of heat stroke. Besides their heat detection sensors, rattlesnakes also have organs to detect the coolest spot in an area.
One morning I walked back and forth on the porch with the hose watering the flowerpots, past the geranium that overhangs its pot and sweeps the porch bricks. After an hour or so I took a break and sat down where I could see the small brown rattler coiled up under the overhanging geranium branches on the porch floor. My feet had only been inches from him all that time but the snake recognizes me — he must do this often but I never noticed him until today. He seems unconcerned about me; I’m not enough of a threat to make the snake want to leave the sweet cool shade of the clay pots where ground squirrels and sparrows stray from time to time.
Over the years I had planted a good many cacti from outside the Sonoran Desert only to watch the birds and rodents feast on them. Sonoran varieties secrete bitter or toxic juices that protect them if their spines and stickers don’t stop predators. I can’t resist night-blooming cacti. I grow the indigenous reina de la noche but also three others that are not native and must be protected from pack rats and from freezing. I grow the night-blooming cactus for the subtle glorious fragrance of the blossoms that last only one night.
I grow pots of datura because datura withstands the heat and ultra-violet radiation of the summer. By day, the alyssum, snapdragons and datura survive in the shade; at night the big white datura blossoms are heavenly fragrant.
The daturas are interesting to grow because they are a vital part of the life cycle of the beautiful hawk moths that may grow as large as hummingbirds. The hawk moths visit the datura flowers on moonlit nights guided by the perfume and the luminous white flowers the size of saucers. The moths lay their eggs in the dirt around the base of the datura plant and the larvae grow into huge beautiful bright leaf green caterpillars with white markings. The voracious caterpillars then strip the datura plants of their leaves and buds before they spin their cocoons.
At the end of September, the heat began to recede, and a rainstorm revived my garden. The pink and the white rain lilies bloomed and I kept watering them after the rain left — for the bees and the butterflies and for me.
One morning as I watered, I saw two large grasshoppers, amazing in their beauty and their size. Their outer wings were emerald green in the center with peacock green along the edges; the inner wings were hues of magenta red and magenta pink with lacy leaf patterns in bright yellow. Their faces and necks were outlined in bright yellow on jade green, and their antennae were bright orange with bold black stripes. They sat in the cluster of pink rain lily blossoms they’d been eating. They regarded me fearlessly, with great majesty. Their bright black eyes looked intently into mine.
As soon as I saw them, I wanted to sketch the grasshoppers in colored pencil, but I was busy and went off to do other chores. I worked on the manuscript. I forgot about the grasshoppers.
The next day I found one of the big grasshoppers under the potted fig tree. He walked unsteadily as if drunk or sick. His antennae moved feebly, but he didn’t seem afraid of me. I picked him up carefully and moved him so he wouldn’t drown when I watered the fig tree. I wondered what had happened. Poison? Then I remembered: his life was the length of a summer; he was dying of old age. Still he was arresting in his beauty and his steady gaze connected with mine. The vivid colors and intricate markings were unlike any I’d ever seen. I left him in the rain lilies to die in peace.
The next morning I found the grasshopper in the rain lily leaves, “dead” some might say because he didn’t move, but he was still brightly colored, so there was life in him yet. I gently picked him up and brought him into my studio. I needed to hold him in place somehow; all I had was a shot glass where I stood him up so I could see his thorax plainly.
As I sketched him, I realized he wanted a portrait in the manner of the Star Being portraits I’d painted. Later, after I finished the grasshopper’s sketch, I brought out a big canvas like the ones I used for the Star Being portraits, and I prepared the canvas with stucco and left it to dry.
I was thinking about how to paint the grasshopper face-on in the manner of the Star Beings; it presented difficulty because of the shape of the grasshopper’s head, so I didn’t work on the portrait. A few days later while I was outside to watch the rain clouds gather from a hurricane in Mexico, I noticed another of the big colorful grasshoppers under the mesquite tree by the front porch. It looked me in the eyes, and I knew at once this grasshopper was a messenger from Lord Chapulin.
Get back to work.
I thought a profile was a tempting variation from the portraits I’d done, so I got out my sketchbook and colored pencils to attempt a sketch in profile but I just couldn’t get it right. Chapulin didn’t want a portrait in profile; he wanted his portrait face-on, like the portraits of the Star Beings.