High hopes for the thornscrub
I’m excited to tend to Thornscrub like I would my own yard (I hesitate to use the word “garden”, it sounds vanilla as hell and too safe, manicured and wholesome). Thornscrub will have elements of the living world that I could never have in my own little yard, which still has to exist on a grid of city blocks where it stands as a lonely oasis surrounded by a desert of lawn and asphalt, a stark visual portrayal especially when seen above from a drone). I’m excited to make rounds around Thornscrub the same way that I do my own yard and garden, noticing individual plants and saying hello to them like they’re friends, noticing where the orb weavers are setting up, how populations of various insects are doing, where the tortoises live, when the cicadas come out, where the indigo snakes like to lurk. I’m excited to have good friends to do this with, to make these rounds with, to talk about the biological going-ons that occur there. I’m excited to provide a refuge for all the things that I love, safe from the rampant destruction going on in the human world outside, where acres of habitat continue to be cleared without any respect or awareness for the living world that exists there.
Making the rounds to check on the life that we are protecting, observing and noting changes in the seasonality and habits of the plants and animals that live there…these are the kinds of things that I enjoy doing in my own little 1/8th of an acre at home. I enjoy checking on the leafcutter ants and the spiny lizard that’s as fat as a hamburger. I always hope I run into a gulf coast toad hiding amongst my plant pots and soil bins. I softly chuckle watching the anoles wake up and bail from the potted plants that they’re resting in when I move them. I like knowing that the chirping frogs are still hanging around. I was ecstatic when a tarantula showed up near my front stoop one day. Thinking about these things makes me wonder what it will feel like to be the same way not just about 1/8 of an acre, but about 145 acres. The same way that I am able to tend to and create places that foster life around my own yard, I will tend to and foster life around our 145 acres of intact peyote gardens and Thornscrub habitat, doing everything that I can to enable it to thrive : shooting pigs, monitoring habitat, fencing around soil crusts, putting water out for wildlife.
