Phoenix’s Winter in Summer

If you live in a place where winter lasts from October to April, you know the symptoms of deep winter–that period from mid-January to mid-March. You spend more time indoors, eyeing the thermostat. Special clothing keeps you warm, you eat heartier meals, play more board games.

Bird feeder with ant moat.

In winter, you carry a few things in the car in case you get stuck–maybe it’s kitty litter that will add traction if you slide into a snow bank. You may carry flares and one of those blankets that help you retain heat.

Well, here in the Valley of the Sun, which sound much nicer than “Sonoran Desert Floor” we take protective action, too. Except ours is in July and August, all the way into September.

We bring plants in for the summer. Those tropicals hate 115-degree heat and full sun. So in they come. We put out extra bird feeders and bird baths so the birds don’t die. My hummingbird feeders have ant moats around the top. Ant moats keep the ants from marching hundreds of yards up the tree (or feeder pole), down to the feeder and then into the feeder to reach the sugar water. Before ant moats I had to clean the feeders daily, to get the ants out of the drinking spouts. After moats, I have to refill the moats two and three times a day because the finches who drink sugar water will also drink the moat empty.

Birds do die from excessive heat here, I’ve seen two Mexican doves do exactly that,  particularly if the highs stay above 110 every day and the lows don’t go below 90. Which is much of July and August.

Some animals even go through aestivation–a sort of summer hibernation. They don’t gear up for it, but they do go into a stage of inaction during the hottest part of the day. Aestivation is more for amphibians and insects whose ponds dry up, but I’ve seen birds stay in the shade without moving for hours at a time.

Some trees drop their leaves in July and August, and there are almost no flowers on trees on

Ocotillo without leaves.

cacti, either. Octotillo, a thorn bush, will get leaves back quickly if it rains, but for the rest of the summer, it’s a bare thorn tree.

You can’t plant a vegetable garden in summer because the heat simply wilts veggies, no matter how much you water them.

You carry water in the car, and a hat and long-sleeved shirt in case you have to abandon the car for some reason. Visitors who go hiking, thinking themselves fine athletes, often have to be rescued because of heat stroke. Last week, two hikers died from over-exposure to the sun.

You can’t walk barefoot; even flip-flops get very hot if the walk from the car to the mall is more than a short sprint.

There are places that close in July and August–petting zoos, balloon rides, desert exploration hikes won’t risk their clients’ lives.

So we stay indoors, glad for pools (you wear a hat and sunglasses in the pool) and board games. In September, the night time temperature begin to drop, although we generally have triple-digit days till early October.

Which is when life becomes the envy of the rest of the nation again.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She teaches communication skills, including writing and giving presentations as well as how to make and use an art journal, even if you can’t draw.

Fiddleheads and Fireflies

The desert is a lovely thing, a land alive with adaptable creatures and plants. A landscape of color and vibrancy I’ve seen no place else.

I love living here, but there are a few things that I miss more than I can describe. The tender green of a fiddlehead fern as it unfolds in the spring, always close to running water. The smell of damp spring smells like the first day of Creation. Or at least, the way I imagine it.

Image from http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/120294 via lilidonnelly.com

Years ago, I lived in rural Maryland. Two apple trees grew in the yard. They were old, and had never been trimmed. We scheduled a trimming, and the men came while I was gone. When I came back, the stumps of trees greeted me. They look struck by lightning, and in the February gloom, I sat on the porch and cried.

But the men who pruned them knew what they were doing. A few weeks’ later the trees were shot through with new green branches, all pushing out apple-green leaves, tiny at first, then unfurling to grass-green leaves the size of playing cards.

One spring night it rained. Fireflies filled the trees. They looked like tiny Christmas lights, blinking in the dark. I dreamed about it a few nights ago, and I remember that I miss fireflies. We don’t have them here, and it makes me miss them more.

–Quinn McDonald moved from the East Coast to the Sonoran Desert in 2008. She’s a writer and a life- and creativity coach.

Adjusting to a New Location the Artist’s Way

You move someplace new. How do you make yourself feel at home? What does it take to get used to a location that is different in many ways to the home you left behind? If you work, you meet new people right away, and they will point out their favorites stores, theaters, restaurants, activities. You work with new people, you adjust.

You’ll notice the differences first. The things that are the same don’t stand out, but the differences do. So when I landed in a place 2,500 miles from my starting location, I had the same experience, but through the eyes of an artist. One of the first things I did was buy a handful of different colored pencils–I had plenty of greens from the East Coast landscape, but I needed purples, grays, tans, and yellows for the desert.

Looking around, I noticed that the trees were different. A lot different. Most of them didn’t have big leaves, there was one that had a green trunk and no leaves. I discovered it was the Palo Verde, a tree that sheds its leaves in summer to protect itself from the heat. The green trunk does the work of photosynthesis.

What fascinated me was the seed pods. Trees in a searing climate protect their seeds in hard-cased pods that twist open in the rain, or look delicious to birds, who carry the seeds away and plant them with a dollop of fertilizer. I’d gather up seed pods during walks, put them on the drawing table, only to discover that the next morning, they had twisted open enough to shoot seeds across the room. Some of them have thorns to hitch a ride. I discovered those as I walked barefoot across the carpet. Others have sails on them to carry them on the wind.

The desert is an amazing place of great beauty and amazing variety. If you visit it, bring a camera. It changes every day, and everything is worth photographing.

–Images: color pencil on 100-lb Bristol board by Quinn McDonald

–Quinn McDonald is an artist who is endlessly fascinated at how plants, animals and people adjust to their environments. She is a certified creativity coach and a life coach specializing in transitions. See more at QuinnCreative.com

Desert Rain

It’s been about a week, and my life has changed enormously. Yesterday, I was driving down the street, sipping from a can of coconut water. It’s a wonderful drink, made from green coconut slivers and the water a green coconut holds. It’s not the caloric coconut milk, it’s the stuff you hear sloshing inside a coconut when you shake it. When the coconut is still in a husk. I’ve never drunk it before, and it’s wonderful. Slightly sweet and very mild.

Then the sky turned dark, there was thunder, lightning and. . .rain. Like a shower, but for a very short time. The air smelled wonderful, of wet sand and ozone. Another few drizzles, and it was over. Enough for desert plants to store up some water. Enough for desert rats to drink up.

A mile later, my car was covered with dust puddles. Before the rain evaporated completely, dust had settled in the water, and the water evaporated. Leaving a speckled car. Couldn’t resist taking a picture, which reminded me strongly of East Coast water in the first hard freeze. What looks like chunks of ice to the East Coast transplant looks like dust to the West Coast native.

Life is good here. I’m starting to breathe more and worry less. Life is a bit slower here, and when you turn on your turn signal, people let you move over in the lane. Yes, life is good here.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach, who will shortly start up her art again. (c) 2007. All rights reserved.