Topic 107: Garden Friends

Carol:

No Gnomes Allowed

I have always envisioned myself becoming a serious home gardener when I retired. I priced greenhouses, investigated composting techniques, and read Sunset magazine for monthly planting tips for high-desert climates.  In truth, my garden has declined since I retired and its current state is pitiful. The most I can hope for is that the neglected plants are hardy enough to make it till spring and the return of my favorite garden friends. 
 

When we moved here, the yard was wild with natural vegetation: cactus, cat claw, juniper and ponderosa pine.  The weeds and granite rocks afforded the perfect habitat for a variety of animals,-- peek-a-boo rabbits and sun-catching lizards. Some of our garden friends  were heard but not seen, a night owl  perched on the roof of our shed, the javelina that huffed around and chewed on the cactus leaves.

A particular favorite was the horny toad population. Most of them would  lie around the edges of our cement driveway, then skitter underneath the  deck when we got too close; but, they would sit still long enough for us to observe them up close. Most were about the size of the palm of my hand, but the cutest were the babies about the size of a quarter, miniatures of their parents in every detail.
 

We called them horny toads because the kids were little and that just seemed to fit better than the more formal horned toads.  They might have looked scary with their horns and bumps, but we were reading a lot of dinosaur books at the time so any initial fear was overcome by curiosity. Had I been less of a English teacher and more of a naturalist, I would have done some research on the horny toads and found out they were not toads at all but lizards. That makes them reptiles, not amphibians, with the official title of the ones in our yard Short-horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi).
 

I enjoyed the horny toads almost as much as I did our other favorite garden friends, the top-knotted Gambel’s quail (Callipepla gambelii)  that woke us up in the morning as they called back and forth to each other from the branches  of the juniper bushes. My father had hunted quail  when I was growing up, and I had eaten them from time to time. Once I saw them running across the road,  with a covey of babies running behind them single-file, I lost any desire to eat them again. 
 

I realize that I have been writing this essay in the past tense as if something has changed and my garden friends have abandoned us. Unfortunately, our little neighborhood eco-system has changed.  Some of the change has come from years of drought, some from the increasing encroachment of human life as the hills behind us became dotted with new homes. I haven’t seen a horned lizard in years, not since right after I bought a horny toad sculpture at the Desert Sonora Museum to put on a rock in our newly landscaped yard a few years back. I read that they are now endangered in several states and under protective laws. The quail are still fairly abundant, so I expect to see little families around the yard in March when the weather warms up and their hatching season begins. I always drive especially slowly then so the string of baby quail crossing the road don’t get separated from their mothers.
 

I have finished this essay early because my webmaster daughter has plans for the day and wants to post our daily themes early. The temperature is climbing into the forties, not a sign of moisture, a perfect day to prune the butterfly bush, clip back the cat claws, or…. maybe I’ll do a little reading instead.

Sources :

Desert USA. Gambel’s Quail. http://www.desertusa.com/mag01/apr/papr/gambel.html
Arizona Game and Fish: Quail. http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/game_quail.shtml
Gambel’s Quail Photo. Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by “Snowmanradio” SearchNet Media from Tucson, Arizona, USA

Horned Lizard Conservation Society. http://www.hornedlizards.org/hornedlizards/hornedlizards_frame.html

Megan:

I'm spending the day helping a friend move. Depending on when I finish, I may add an essay here later in the day. Maybe. Probably not.