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GARDEN OF DREAMS

From Barren Land to Animal Refuge

By James Dale MerrickPublished 3 years ago 30 min read
5
IN THE BEGINNING--BARE LAND

It all began with an unremarkable decision to plant daffodil bulbs around some boulders during the fall of 1999. The mounds of rock appeared near the neglected rustic A-frame my partner and I had purchased the previous summer in Bear Valley Springs near Tehachapi, California. My goal was to clear the debris from the long-abandoned culvert that snaked its way down our hillside property line. The boulders were partially buried in a depression that worked its way downward to a rough and sagging twenty-foot square redwood platform. I imagined the deck had served as a gathering place for prospective real estate buyers. Not in my driven thoughts did I think the appearance of those abandoned boulders would possess me for the next ten years.

We had purchase that acre of parched hillside with its thirty-year-old rustic gambrel cabin to fulfill one of his dreams for a place of peace and natural beauty away from the monotony of central Bakersfield. We were both retired teachers. There didn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t have a weekender home. In a dry and semi-barren way, the area was appealing. I welcomed the opportunity to take my mind off my dad’s untimely death the previous March. The Tehachapi mountains presented the opportunity to leave the year behind and create a calmer life, one that two retired men could enjoy.

The cabin had been one of four pre-fab structures used by the land developers in 1971 to promote sales of house sites in Bear Valley Springs, a planned rural community. The location occupied an isolated valley encircled by a rim of mountains. Sales of lots and constructions of homes had been underway for thirty years. The community still contained many undeveloped building sites. Our place was located at the 4,100-foot elevation. Higher up the mountain, home sites rimmed the valley upwards to 6,000 feet. Many of those places were covered with ponderosa pines. On the slopes below the project’s crest, an ancient dry-oak forest supported a multitude of wild life: bear, elk, deer, rabbits, skunks, raccoons, ground squirrels, and a variety of birds.

The house stuck out of a clump of shrubs in the center of a barren hillside. Its one peculiar feature was an abandoned three-foot-wide sidewalk that stretched across the property halfway between the street and the house. The walkway had originally be used to convey buyers on an oval tour around the five model homes. One advantage of the site was that a branch of the valley’s figure-eight traffic artery passed below our acre. In winter, that main road was the first to be cleared of snow. Across the street, community tennis courts, a restaurant, golf course, and admin buildings were conveniently available to us.

The boulders and rocks that drifted down the east property line fascinated me. No…lured me: I was drawn to them. The question of why they appeared out of nowhere, scattered partway down the hill among tall brush and dry grasses, puzzled me. They poked through the weeds without purpose. For no apparent reason they paralleled one section of the designated property line. I didn’t think much about that oddity at first, but later the answer to the conundrum became apparent. At first, all I wanted to do was remove the rubble from around the boulders and plant daffodils, which I knew would do well in the climate of cool winters and mild springs. My partner, in his authoritative way, had said he had no interest in working outside. He declared himself the “inside guy” and assigned me to be the “outside guy.” That order meant he would manage inside the cabin and I was to manage outside of the cabin, which was alright with me.

My brain swelled with visions of hundreds of daffodils skirting the dribble of boulders. I could visualize the orange-centered yellow flowers popping through the ground in the spring and adorning the culvert with blooms all the way down to the road.

HUNDREDS OF DAFFODILS SKIRTED THE BOLDERS

Little did I know that an eager predator lurked below the surface of the ground waiting for the opportunity to challenge my gardening authority. My imagination didn’t stop with daffodils. I decided to plant the land on the east side of the driveway all the way to the street. It was an area thirty feet wide and one hundred and twenty sloping fee to the roadway.

During that first fall, I managed to clear years of dead and decaying plant growth from around the boulders. The solution to the mystery of why the huge rocks existed in the first place became apparent. Once I had cleared away the wild growth, I could see that the original slope of the land along the property line had been bulldozed into a man-made arroyo. Rocks and boulders had been brought into the area and placed in a pattern that followed the cut in the hillside between our cabin and the cabin on the east.

Near the bottom of the line of rocks, I cleaned out an eight-foot wide circular cavity in the soil. As I removed the accumulated refuse that had flushed into the depression from years of runoff, I uncovered a six-inch-diameter drain pipe. My eyes gazed back up the hillside to where I had started the cleaning project. They followed the zigzagging pattern of rocks and boulders. “Okay,” I said to myself, “here is a drain but where is the pump?”

My thought was that the project was probably abandoned in the late seventies when interest in buying property at Bear Valley Springs had died down. During the twenty-plus years, since that time, Nature had filled in the depression around the drain.

When I uncovered more of the six-inch plastic pipe, it led me through a patch of overgrown silvery-green Chinese juniper to the neighboring property. Like the frond of a giant palm, one juniper branch had extended over the edge of a rectangular concrete pit that was partially covered with splintered two-inch-thick planking. One end of a piece of planking had fallen inside, creating a ramp. I lifted another plank and drug it behind me. Immediately, growls and high-pitched warning screeches escaped the darkness.

RACCOON PHOTO BY DAN GOLD @ UPSPLASH

Startled and afraid, I stepped back and watched as one after another a mother raccoon and four youngsters scrambled up the slanted plank and fled into the mound of nearby junipers.

And there was the answer to my question. The concrete box concealed a set of commercial pumps that had been used to create the stream. The abandoned boulders and stones made sense. Water had been pumped uphill above the rocks. It flowed downhill to the drain in front of the now-rotting redwood deck and was returned to the top of the culvert by pumps to flow down again and again and again.

That once-dynamic water feature served as a drawing card for prospective property buyers. It was a way to attract shoppers to the model cabins that had been built on adjoining lots. From the platform, buyers would have been able to gaze uphill in amazement to the sights and sounds of rushing water while watching the cascade fall endlessly along the property line to create the illusion of beauty. The observation platform would have provided buyers a place to sit to the accompaniment of a rushing mountain stream. In that tranquil spot, they could have envisioned “the good life” at Bear Valley Springs.

Unlike Bakersfield, Bear Valley had months of winter cold. That first winter I didn’t get much done with the soil. I wasn’t accustomed to the weather. Most days, the temperature was too low for me to work outside. From December to April, I managed to clear the land east of the driveway and downhill to the street below, a thirty-foot by one-hundred twenty-foot area. It included the man-made arroyo, the decrepit redwood platform and a dirt parking spot near the road. When I removed the weathered redwood deck, nine heavy-duty metal brackets remained. Each of those was anchored to a concrete piling that went into the ground two feet. To remove the concrete would have been a formidable task. I decided to disguise the nine hold-downs rather than remove them. To each, I fastened an upright two-inch-diameter galvanized pipe. Each pole varied in height from ten to fourteen feet. On the top of each, I attached a shingled bird house made from a five-gallon plastic bucket.

THE BIRDHOUSES

By the time I had finished clearing the area and working the soil around the boulders, I had learned a few things about gardening on our hillside. I realized that if the nursery plants I wanted to introduce were to survive, I would have to overcome two main challenges. First, I had to find ways to discourage animals from feeding on the leaves of introduced plants. Whatever I planted would also share the soil with animals that were inclined to devour roots. Second, I had to limit the competition from invasive native plant species. If the surface soil were left without mulch, native plants would soon take control. Mulch scattered on bare ground would be invaded by germinating indigenous seeds and soon be smothered with plant growth. I had to take that knowledge into consideration and keep in mind the overall purpose of the project was to accommodate wild animals--not run them off. Three animals that had the potential to destroy nursery plants challenged my thinking: ground squirrels, gophers, and voles. Ground squirrels and gophers dug extensive tunnels and created expansive burrows that could eliminate root systems. They were able to move soil into mountainous piles and could bury imported plants.

My thoughts were awhirl with various scenarios of what to plant and how to protect what I did plant. I knew I wanted lots of daffodils. I knew I wanted to separate the planted area visually from the driveway. I knew I needed drought-tolerant plants. I knew native plants would reclaim the area faster than the nursery plants could take over. I had to eliminate the threat of native plants reclaiming the area before the nursery plants were put into the soil. Without addressing those considerations, my refuge idea was doomed before it started.

I decided to cover the planting area with a two-layer black-plastic weed barrier, the top side woven plastic, the underneath side felt. The fabric was designed to allow rainwater to penetrate both the weave and the felt. The black color would trap heat from the sun underneath, which would encourage fungus to attack the underlying native seeds. The dense felt matting would deter surviving seeds from growing through the barrier. To start, I planned to strip the ground of native plants and debris, then cover it with weed barrier. Six-inch wire staples would hold the fabric in place. When finished, the soil would be completely covered with the barrier. I would then use an empty five-gallon bucket and a yellow lumber crayon to mark circles on the black covering where I would eventually dig one-foot-deep holes for the new plants. I would install Xeriscape drip tubing over the fabric from circle to circle to provide irrigation. After the plants were in place, I would cover the entire garden area with four inches of organic mulch trucked in from a local nursery. It would be dumped out of the way and later wheel barrowed into place

When I began the project, gophers dominated the area. Mounds of dirt marked the entrances to their tunnels and pock-marked the property. These rat-like rodents had insatiable appetites for plant roots. To protect the nursery plants from gopher damage, I decided to assemble a wire-mesh basket for every planting hole. The mesh was small enough to keep gophers away from the central roots. I hoped the baskets would provide enough time for the new stock to develop sustaining root systems.

Voles were a minor problem. They were small enough to go through the wire mesh. Only poison, which I was committed to avoid, would deter them. I decided to tolerate them and hope their destruction of roots would be minimal.

The finished baskets had two basic parts, the body and the collar. The body was made of one-inch chicken wire to fit into the holes that I intended to dig after I cut out the circles drawn on the weed barrier. Around the top edge of the body was a four-inch collar made of quarter-inch galvanized mesh. That part of the basket protruded above the soil line and was designed to keep the mulch from encroaching on newly-planted stems.

Before digging the plant holes, I installed the tubing for the drip irrigation system over the barrier fabric. It eventually carried water through half-inch plastic tubing to each circle. From that point, water was diverted to each plant through an emitter fastened to a quarter-inch piece of tubing. As soon as the irrigation system was completed, I cut out the circles, dug the holes, and began planting. To feed the plants initially and provide moisture-retention, I mixed excavated dirt, commercial potting mix, and sterilized steer manure in a four-two-one ratio. Each new plant was inserted into a hole, protected by a basket, and nourished with refurbished soil.

During the garden’s second summer, I poured a two-foot-wide concrete sidewalk that wandered down the east side of the driveway. It began at the top of the arroyo between the boulders and the driveway and continued downhill to the depression in the ground where I had discovered the drain for the artificial stream. The drop-off to the drain became a unique location for a planned flight of steps that eventually led into the sunken area. It was an ideal place for a grotto. I envisioned a sidewalk connecting at the base of the steps and continuing through the forest of bird houses to a shady spot under one of the few adult oak trees on the property. It seemed the perfect location to create a place of peace and quiet.

To visually separate the new sidewalk from the concrete driveway, I chose mahonias, which flourished in Bear Valley Springs. I knew the crisp holly-like leaves would do well in our location. Four-foot stems would form a barrier to separate the walkway from the drive. At the end of winter, clusters of prickly leaves would bear tiny yellow flowers and mark the beginning of spring. Weeks later, blueberry look-alikes would adorn the tips.

Next came the daffodils. I had waited a long time to plant them and started by removing six inches of barrier fabric from around each of the boulders and large rocks. I planted the bulbs directly into the soil about six inches apart. Local gardeners had told me that gophers didn’t eat daffodil bulbs, so I felt confident planting them in unprotected places. I planted five-hundred around the rocks and hoped the locals were right.

I went ahead with the idea of creating a grotto where the drain for the artificial stream had been. The finished concrete steps from the sidewalk led down to a circle of soil that was blessed with sunlight all afternoon. At the top of the steps, I chose the native yucca to thrust its spikes of cream-white flowers into the air.

STEPS LEADING DOWN INTO THE GROTTO

At the bottom of the steps, I planted blue-flowering ajuga and the California native, blue-flowering ceanothus. Patches of white-variegated green ivy lighted the shady edges of the grotto and advanced along its banks to the still-naked poles of the lofty bird houses. White-flowering Iceberg climbers were naturals to cover the rustic poles. I planted one at the base of each. In time, undulating branches covered the posts and crisscrossed on wires to form a canopy of white blossoms surrounding the still-vacant homes. It was then I came back to the idea of a circular garden beyond the bird houses and close to the main road. It became a reality the next summer.

When finished, the floor of the circular area was covered in gravel and set with a patio table and chairs. Four-inch-wide bender board kept the gravel in place and maintained a crisp edge around the circle of gray rock. The dramatic difference in growing conditions from the cold morning shade to cremating afternoon summer sun made it difficult for me to find plants that thrived. Over time, I tried dahlias, foxglove, delphiniums, and daylilies. None flourished. As a last resort, I covered the berms surrounding the area with white-variegated green ivy. The ivy thrived in all but sunbaked places.

By spring of the third year, the plants along the driveway were lush. The first-to-bloom daffodils surrounded the boulders. They lifted their heads in unison with the yellow mahonia blossoms-- yellow, yellow everywhere! In late spring, the three-foot stems of yellow-green carpinterias thrust upward along the drive. Everyday I watched for signs of plant growth. The newest bud, the freshest leaf, the first change of color sent waves of wonder through me.

I was drawn to the view from the cabin deck. It made my chest heave. A long sigh escaped me whenever I gazed at the new concrete walkway. A smile lifted the corners of my mouth while my eyes traced the route past the pod of yellow-ringed boulders, down the flight of crisp-edged concrete steps, and through the blue-flowered grotto to the rose-covered bird houses. I delighted in the canopy of white and took pleasure gazing on the tree-shaded circle of reverie.

In contrast, the west side of the driveway was a dry and barren desert. Piles of dirt from the excavated laundry room tugged at me to do something with the mounds. I daydreamed of ways the soil could be used. One day my thoughts turned to the grandiose idea of changing the entire hillside below the cabin into a forested area that would attract wild animals. The insane idea of creating a safe place for beasts of the forest emerged. I began to think of that dream as an animal refuge garden. It took shape during a deliberation with the Voices in my head:

Adamant: You know, the Bible says we should be stewards of the earth. That means we should protect plants and animals.

Pleasant: Before the driveway was put in, deer passed through here to get water at the springs that are now lakes in the golf course. They still come through here at night on their way to drink.

Me: I could replant the hillside to encourage them to stay.

Doubtful: It would be way too much work.

Me: I could use the excavated soil from the laundry room to make plateaus and berms on the hillside. I could plant those.

Earnest: You could create a forest of trees that would encourage deer to stay on the property.

Adamant: Planting that large an area would require irrigation. You don’t want to get into something that complicated.

Me: I’m pretty sure I could put together a xeriscape drip system that would work here.

Pleasant: You could blend the animal refuge idea into a place for people as well. Put in some tables and chairs or benches.

Cautious: If people were going to be able to get around in the area, you would need to create walkways. Think of all the work!

Me: Let me talk to my partner about it.

He was willing to help finance the idea, but he said he wouldn’t do any of the work. That would be my job. I was the outside man. I wondered, Would the deer come? Would the raccoons I saw hiding in the pit venture in? Were there any other animals that would feel safe coming here? I’d only seen ground squirrels, rabbits, and birds on the property.

That’s how the animal sanctuary began.

To learn everything I could about gardening in Bear Valley Springs, I created a resource library made up of garden books and periodicals. I drove the neighborhood taking notes and listed the names of plants that had stood the test of time. I visited local nurseries to get suggestions and spent hours perusing the Sunset Western Garden Book. I needed plants that were distasteful to animals and could tolerate freezing winters, hot summer days, and drip-system irrigation. Decisions about color were important to me. I wanted the garden to look warm and inviting in early spring and cool and refreshing during late spring and summer.

To landscape the entire front half acre, I needed a lot more of everything. In particular, I would need hundreds more gopher baskets. With basket construction in mind, I built a twelve-foot work bench inside the new laundry area.

I drew a plan that illustrated every feature of the project. The drawing included details of the completed eastside gardens and a design for the west side of the driveway. Five more destination gardens were added: Remembrance, Moon, Oriental, St. Francis, and Fall. With the exception of the boulder area, which already bordered the east side of the driveway, all destinations were planned to be approximately ten-feet square, surrounded by dense planting. Concrete sidewalks would connect the gardens.

The finished plan included an allée of ornamental pear trees that would line the three-foot-wide pre-existing sidewalk that had been constructed years before to link our cabin to the other models. The pears would bloom white in the spring. I planned to create a visual barrier along the main road with a mixture of red-tip photinia and dwarf pampas grass. Both produced white flowers. The photinia created pom-poms of tiny blossoms. The three-foot high bursts of green pampas grass would send white plumes skyward in August. The blossoms of those plants would continue the cool-colors theme. Extending east and west along the sidewalk above the cabin, controllers would be installed to manage the drip system that would irrigate every part of the hillside above and below the cabin. Dirt from the laundry excavation would be used to form plateaus for the terraces in each garden. Underneath the cabin, the countertop on the new workbench would be used to roll out wire for the production of gopher baskets, which I planned to construct on inclement weather days.

For the spaces around the gardens, I chose trees that deer could take shelter under and shrubs that would provide protection for rabbits and quail. In its final form, the plan anticipated a twenty-five-foot-high tree canopy under which wild animals could remain secluded. Sun-filled openings in the canopy would illuminate the destination gardens in which humans could relax. To form the forest, I chose a mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees: blue oak, Chinese pistache, ornamental plum, and California live oak. Intermixed on the hillside were evergreen native oaks, white birch, deodar cedar, red-tipped photinia, heavenly bamboo, and Chinese juniper. To provide expansive cover for all animals, trees and shrubs were chosen for their reputed hardiness and rapid growth. As a people barrier and to outline the driveway and gardens on the west side, I chose holly-leaved barberry and silver-green carpinteria, To soften and unify the overall design, a redwood arch was planned for the entrance to each destination garden. My plant of choice for the arches was the white Iceberg climbing rose. I was a fanatic about wanting to see the entire hillside bloom white in late spring.

The Remembrance Garden was the first destination to be created west of the driveway. It was designed to be a tribute to people my partner and I credited with changing our lives in memorable ways. Using pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow, I dug into the hillside and tossed the dirt downward to form a platform. The curvature of the hill determined the somewhat-random shape of each terrace. To tamp the soil, I used a wood pole stuck into a one-gallon can of concrete. When the earth was packed down and firm, a four-inch slab of concrete was poured. Plants that flowered blue or yellow were chosen to fill in the upper bank and the edges around the slab. The plateau was paved with two-inch black stones. On the upper bank, the lime-green leaves and spiky yellow blossoms of St. John’s wort flourished. The lower edges were planted in blue periwinkle. A golden chain tree, remarkable for its wisteria-like drooping clusters of yellow spring flowers, was centered on the bank. A cobalt-blue ceramic bird-bath fountain became the focal point of the terrace. It contained a scattering of polished black stones. Each was inscribed with the name of someone my partner and I wanted to honor. Visitors entered the garden through a redwood arch that supported white Iceberg roses.

A VIEW OF THE REMEMBRANCE GARDEN

On the hillside below the Remembrance site, a similar terrace was created. It celebrated St. Francis of Assisi because of his respect for animals. After entering through a rose-covered arch, a visitor would see the molded statue of St. Francis standing on a pedestal at the end of the garden. At his feet, water trickled over native stone and animal images on its way to a tiny pool. In spring, a bed of irises flashed raspberry petals. An inlay of raspberry-hued ceramic tiles swirled in the sunlight on the concrete floor. A privacy screen of holly-leaved barberry isolated the terrace.

INSIDE THE ST. FRANCIS GARDEN

From there, the sidewalk led through an arch of white blossoms to the Moon Garden. This planted area spread out below the cabin balcony and was home to plants where white dominated. White sweet alyssum and white Irises graced the area on both sides of the walkway in front of silver Chinese juniper. Silver leaves and white flowers of jimsonweed carpeted the sloping area below. Plumes of dwarf pampas grass danced white in the lower planting. On full-moon nights, my partner and I could stand on the balcony and look down on a reflected checkerboard of moon light coming toward us through the darkness.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE MOON GARDEN

A forest of mountain bamboo surrounded the next arch. Its slender stems towered and blocked the view of an imposing bolder that sat Buddha-like near the summit of the sidewalk. Behind, cloud-white matilija poppies with egg-yolk centers rose in profusion on four-foot ocean-green stems. A terrace of tan and beige river-stones spread out in a mat of gentle curves and open spaces. Surrounded by pink-flowering peonies, an iron bench waited in one corner. Nearby, an upper-level peat bog collected run-off water from the laundry room. It nourished a spread of towering black-green horsetail reed. Two iron herons peered out from that oasis of equestrian grass. In the shade of a weeping birch, a circular vessel of burbling water hid in the bamboo.

AERIAL VIEW OF THE ZEN GARDEN FROM CABIN BALCONY

The fall Garden was the last destination to be constructed on the west side. It was reached via a sidewalk that branched off the lower reaches of the driveway. The grape-hued leaves of an ornamental plum marked its entrance. Human guests entered through a double line of yellow daylilies guarded in the background by squads of prickly deep-green holly.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE FALL GARDEN

The raised circular platform was surrounded with a privacy screen of four redwood arches covered in white Iceberg roses. From the center of each arch, a black wrought iron Mexican lantern swung gently in the breeze on a short chain. The floor was paved in chunks of broken concrete mortared in gray. A round wrought-iron table and chairs filled center stage. Shade from a forest-green umbrella surrounded the table and blocked the glare from the passing sunlight. Barely-visible mauve flowers on lacy smoke-tree branches billowed upwards against the sky. A clutch of deodar cedar trees shielded the platform from the street.

As work on the refuge garden came to a close, I couldn’t resist working on the dry and desolate upper property. Our cabin bedroom was located upstairs. The view from there was barren land. I wanted to be able to look out and see an expanse of flowers. Thirty feet above the cabin, and central to the view, I constructed a ninety-foot long box with a wire floor. The wire kept out the gophers. I filled the box with the same planting mixture I had used in the animal refuge garden.

The irrigation system was extended to include the box and areas above and below it. I planted the box with a variety of iris rhizomes. A mixture of native oaks and deodar cedars was planted on the upper hillside to augment the scattering of native oaks that had survived there for decades.

Below the box and in front of the bedroom window, I covered the soil with weed barrier and prepared it for long rows of summer annuals. The plants I chose had reputations for tolerating summer heat and for flowering profusely: cosmos, gaillardia, marigolds, and zinnia.

By 2009, the garden surrounded the cabin. Most of the decisions I had made in designing and planting had worked in my favor. Using heavy-duty weed barrier, four-inches of mulch, and wire gopher baskets proved to be wise decisions. The native plants did not appear on the surface of the heavy mulch nor did they manage to push up through the weed barrier. Only a few nursery plants were lost to gophers. In some cases, the creatures climbed into the top of the baskets and ate their way down through the roots. Of the one-thousand shrubs and trees planted, perhaps only thirty were lost to gophers. None were lost to ground squirrels. A dozen bedding plants, including sweet alyssum and Shasta daisies, whose roots were not protected with wire baskets, died each year. I suspected the roots had been lost to voles. The drip irrigation system was not difficult to install or to repair. The fifteen controllers delivered the water to all parts of the garden as programmed.

I had not anticipated all outcomes. The irrigation system, fountains, and birdhouses created unexpected challenges. During the winter months, I turned off the water to protect the plastic tubing from freezing. In their search for something to drink, the ground squirrels punctured the empty tubing with their sharp front teeth. Repair work resulting from damaged tubing was required each spring to get the irrigation system up and running. The damage might have been reduced if I had provided an alternate water source during the winter months. The pools at the bases of fountains became bathtubs for the raccoons. Mud and debris from their bodies created a frequent cleaning chore. In the end, I turned off the fountains and filled the pools with gravel. As a final insult, the inventive raccoons used the new gravel surfaces as places to crap.

Birds never entered the birdhouses. In later research, I learned there was an essential relationship between the diameter of the entrance hole and the size and shape of the interior. My five-gallon birdhouses had doorways that were too small and interiors that were too large for the birds that frequented the garden area. Enlarging the entrance holes might have attracted larger birds such as owls. After the roses had created a canopy in the birdhouse area, larger holes might even have spurred the curiosity of visiting tree squirrels. They would have been able to climb the rose stems and could have found the shingled residences irresistible.

Most of the three-thousand daffodil bulbs I planted throughout the half acre below the cabin had disappeared by the fourth spring. All of the hundreds of tulips, crocus, hyacinth, and muscari bulbs that I planted failed to reappear. One clue as to what may have happened came to me the second-year. The bulbs that did reappear poked through the soil in places where they had not been planted, places where there was no weed barrier. Somehow, the bulbs had traveled to new locations. My theory was that the gophers, traveling in their underground tunnels, used most bulbs for food during the winter, which caused them to disappear. Other bulbs, perhaps the distasteful daffodils, must have been carried along gopher tunnels to underground chambers where they could not survive. A few lucky daffodil bulbs must have been taken to places near uncovered surfaces where they were able to grow toward the sunlight and bloom the following season.

During my tenth and final year at the cabin, I spent a week of sunsets sitting on a garden bench soaking in the luxury of the refuge. I began watching a mother quail lead her brood up the driveway. She came several evenings near the end of day and inspired the following poem:

THE QUAIL

I sat there in my customary place on the garden bench,

Luxuriating in the fragrance of the evening air in the cool.

-

She came up the driveway that first time

Mandating instructions to her brood of three.

They scrambled helter-skelter after her on legs blurred from view

By their hummingbird-like speed.

-

She tossed me a fleeting glance

And quickly led them under cover into the musty shade

And along the row of carpinterias that lined the drive,

Then out of sight.

-

I listened to them rustle in the dried leaves

And to her incessant monologue,

Sounds that made their way out of the garden

And into the dullness of dusk before fading away.

-

Early the next evening,

While watching the wind-tossed poplar leaves cavort in the twilight breeze,

I listened to them make their running-water sounds.

I heard her again coming up the drive.

-

She shouted instructions to her chicks

As they scurried forward in the protection of her shadow.

Now, only two hurried up the drive behind her

And disappeared into the lengthening shadows at the top.

-

I wondered if she would again pass that third evening.

I took my place on the garden bench beneath the poplar tree.

I waited in anticipation, yearning to see her, to be awed by her determination,

Her dedication, her courage, her journey to somewhere important.

-

I listened for her distinctive call, wanting to know what remained of her family.

The sunlight faded, the poplar leaves silenced.

The shadows of the end of day disappeared.

She did not come.

At the end of ten years, the animal refuge covered the half-acre of land below the cabin and a quarter-acre above. Beyond were acres of dry hilside and native oak trees, deer country. A canopy of trees and ornamental shrubs completely sheltered the hillside below the cabin. From the street, the once-solitary two-story wood cabin became invisible.

Quail and rabbits made their way through the growth on a daily basis. Deer spent the night under the deodars resting on the mulch. The raccoons that had once lived in the abandoned water pump box, took up residence in a hollow tree trunk on the hillside above the cabin. Daylong, song birds flitted from branch to branch throughout the canopy. Coyotes and wild boar skirted the upper property line. Occasionally, a California king snake or a skunk made its appearance. Gophers found somewhere else to dig.

At the first signs of spring, yellow mahonia blossoms burst from their holly-like stems. They marked the edges of the driveway and lined the allée with bracts of yellow flowers. The golden chain tree drooped with racemes of sunny yellow. Late spring bathed the garden in a symphony of white. Carpinterias, ornamental pear trees, matilija poppies, and red-tipped photinias flowered in profusion. On the hillside above the cabin, a rainbow of iris blossoms arched across the view.

Throughout the summer months, the canopy of greens and silver-grays replaced the flurry of spring color with cooling shade. Deodars, ornamental pears, purple plums, and arching bamboo cast their protective arms over the garden with rapid growth of new branches and leaves.

In the fall, towering plumes of white pampas grass alternated along the roadside border with copper-tinted photinia leaves and arching silver sprays of Chinese juniper. Along the driveway, mahonias took on their fall tints of orange and yellow. The Chinese pistache flamed to atomic tangerine. Liquidambars changed their leaves from green to vivid orange, canary yellow, and cardinal red. Along the central allée, the colonnade of ornamental pears became vibrant orange and yellow and red.

The cabin disappeared from view.

VIEW OF THE ANIMAL REFUGE GARDEN FROM THE STREET FIVE YEARS AGO

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I always appreciate your comments on my stories. Your constructive comments help me improve my writing skills. How did you feel as you read? If you like my writing style, please let me know. Hearts are most welcome if my writing deserves them. Jim

goals
5

About the Creator

James Dale Merrick

I have had a rich, and remarkable life. Sharing my adventures brings me joy.. I write about lots of things. I tell about building a home in the rainforest, becoming a life model, love, death, grief, and retiring. Please join me.

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