Water and grapefruit

I've been thinking some lately about water and the desert.

I grew up in the east, where the humidity made you wish for a little less water and a little more seersucker.

That's what roads usually looked like as I stared out the window in the cars of my childhood.

I've lived in Southern California a long time now and am still amazed at how adaptable I am to the dry.  I say that in what, admittedly,  has been a very mild summer with lots of "June gloom."  That's the marine layer hanging around the morning and keeping the afternoon cool.  Thanks so much Pacific.

I've been doing a little writing (of the academic type) lately about the "real" desert here in SoCal.

(That my paper proposal was rejected for my annual professional conference did give me pause.  I've decided to interpret it as a failure on their part, not mine.  My annual membership renewal for said society languishes in the mail basket, perhaps to go unpaid.  Oh, yeah, deny them that $100 and THEN they'll see!)

Honey and I have been frequenting an inn in Desert Hot Springs for a couple of years.  And, yes, I do mean frequenting.  Eight times in two years counts as frequent.  :)

Sigh.  We've just been back a week and I'm ready to go back.  I think the GTI has a homing beacon now.

The innkeeper, a man of considerable charm, refers to his pool and hot tub as filled by water from a "fissure."  He means, of course, that Desert Hot Springs is sitting on a big old fault in the earth.  Those tricky faults that cause all the quaking also can cause the water of spring.

Desert Hot Springs has all the water it needs and can use.  It's good water, too.  It's good to drink.  Lovely to soak in.

Elsewhere in the region, there's less water.

Looks dry.

One of my current fascinations is water of a decidedly undesirable sort in the desert.

That's the Salton Sea.  Formed by inadvertent flooding from irrigation canals in the early part of the 20th century, it was once hailed as the new playground to the stars.  Now it's a salty mess, that kills fish, smells bad, attracts shorebirds, hosts some odd communities, and just generally sits ignored (as best as people can) in the middle of the Imperial Valley south of Indio.

The kingbird probably has a better idea than the sandpipers.  Don't get in the water.

I got to thinking about water closer to home this morning.  When we bought our house eight years ago, I planted a very small grapefruit tree.  And small it stayed.  Mostly because I didn't water it.

When we did landscaping a few years ago, we had a bubbler put on it.  I thought it rebounded quite well.  Then Honey's mother pointed out that the "rebound" was what she called a "sucker plant" and not the "tree" at all.  Today, I looked outside and commented to Honey that a sucker plant had once again attached itself to the little grapefruit that couldn't.

We agreed to plant something else.

A little later in the morning, I decided to feed the backyard birds, something I've gotten a bit out of the habit of recently (for monetary reasons, mostly).  Nyjer costs.  Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't.

Everyone wants "wild canaries," but I'm here to testify that if you want goldfinches at your feeder, you got to pay for nyjer seed.  (Current price about $2/lb.)

Anyway, as I filled the feeders, I glanced at the grapefruit tree and thought, "what the hell, I'll go ahead and shovel it out today."  I figured we could replace it in the fall sometime.

So, after I put away the seed implements (bird feeding is complicated, don't you know).  Visit a Wild Birds Unlimited near you to find out just how money you could be spending!  Don't forget the nyjer is obligatory if you want the little gold ones.

I walked over to the grapefruit "tree."  Let me give you a sense of scale.

That's it on the left.  The tree (no quotes) on the right is the tangerine.  It has had many fruit every year, water or no.  Bless its over productive heart.

There's no doubt that water helps these trees.  Here's the orange tree that didn't produce more than a dozen in the non-water years.

See all those fruit?  We'll be up to our elbows in oranges again this year.

Did I mention that they're navels?  Yum.

So I'm standing over the grapefruit and I glance down.

Yeppers, those are actual grapefruits.

Water.  I tell you what.  Eight years on and the little tree that couldn't has four grapefruit on it.  And lots and lots of new growth.  I'm giving it another chance.  Redemption comes when it does, I suppose.

Now, if only it would rain.