Footprints in the Dirt

photo by Jamie L. Manser/JamieManser.com.

Prehistoric footprints of ancient people including a child and a domesticated canine were recently uncovered in an irrigated field excavated in Tucson, Arizona. Just as incredible are the remains of their irrigation system (dating back 2500-3000 years) with two field cells and parallel channels to redirect water from the Rillito River.

4000 years ago, the first people settled in Tucson for the abundant river water that flowed year round. The Hokokam captured rainwater with rock dams. The Tohono O'odham crafted earthen dams and brush weirs to divert water from washes for crops. They lived in harmony with the desert, gathering its fruits in the proper seasons. They were experts on desert farming, having developed sophisticated techniques to grow sturdy native plants like the three sisters: beans, maize, and squash. Happily, the Tohono O’odham have brought back those traditional techniques by growing heritage crops at the San Xavier coop and by assisting with The Mission Garden at the base of “A” mountain. There is much we can learn from them about sustainability and how things grow in the desert dirt.

The Mission Garden

In my last blog, I commented on how some people see only dirt when they look at our desert, but it is actually brimming with life.  That got me musing about it.  Imagine my delight in watching my friend Elaine Romero’s play, “Dirt!”  Her play beautifully elaborated on that theme by including Tucson’s first settlers and the lost barrio. Her lyrical descriptions conjured up the following images for me.

After the Native Americans, came the Mexicans who built Tucson. Like the mesquite, their roots were deeply embedded in the dirt. Their homes and neighborhoods were built out of dirt and water. Their roads or calle were formed by paths worn in the dirt for generations - paths that connected family and friends in their tight knit barrio community. But their footprints have long been covered over with cement in the name of progress.  Out of the cement grew a big, ugly, lonely concrete monument to both urban renewal and their once vibrant community – the Tucson Convention Center. Dry fountains lined with misplaced boulders are sad reminders of our dry river beds (another causality of progress.) Nothing could grow out of the layers of concrete.

Until… Borderlands Theater reclaimed the dirt under that cement with “Barrio Stories.” The descendants of the neighborhood returned to La Calle to retrace the steps of their displaced ancestors.

Playwright Elaine Romero and Jana 

The company was looking for a way to get Tucson’s Mexican-Americans to come back to the theater. They came up with the idea of doing a play that the whole community could get involved in.  Inspired by the book, “La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” by Lydia Otero, they gathered oral histories of the people who had memories of Barrio Viejo before the devastating demolition. Playwrights Virginia Grise, Martin Zimmerman and Elaine Romero were tasked with adapting it into theatrical pieces.

When Borderlands producing director Mark David Pinate visited the Tucson Convention Center, he knew he could put his theater education into practice by staging the plays throughout the grounds as a site specific work.  Dispersed around that area were vignettes of life in the old barrio.  Appropriately placed by the dried up, cement fountain was Elaine Romero’s short play, “Dirt”.

If you missed the Borderland Theater’s “Barrio Stories,” it is my honor to share this patch of “Dirt” with you.

DIRT: First, there was me, Dirt, the dirt and the cactus, and the geckos, and the Saguaro, and the locals didn’t bother naming their paths, their streets. Pottery shards at the foot of “A” Mountain, Sentinel Peak, and the Tumamoc Hill date back 4,000 years before any of this mierda started. Before the cement came and laid itself on top of me and tried to make me inconsequential.

First, we looked like nothing fancy. Some adobe bricks. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. Buildings made from the earth, from the ground. And it included everybody. The Hohokam, the Tohono O’odham, and the Mexican Period.

 I remember the day when the demolition crews came. They took something and they turned it into nothing. Some people say it looked like the surface of the moon, or an atomic bomb had come and hit downtown Tucson. And even when they finished, the people didn’t want to walk there. The people didn’t want to go there. The people felt a big hurt, a big hole, in their hearts. Bigger than anyone ever imagined. And sometimes when you’re the dirt, you have the privilege of capturing the people’s tears in your earth. I’ve had that privilege here in Tucson.

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Throughout our history people have left footprints in the dirt. There is much they can teach us about living in harmony with the earth and water. We can learn from our city's mistakes on urban renewal and bad water management - and not repeat them. 

“Barrio Stories” was more than oral histories or bearing witness to a close knit community torn apart. This was a joyous celebration of a community kicking up some dust and reclaiming the ground that was Barrio Viejo.  

What? Spring already? Time to plant!

Tucson Gothic

Today was the first day of Spring. And, while it's really feeling like Summer already, it's time to start thinking about the first of the two major planting seasons we have here in the Sonoran Desert (the other being the late Summer Monsoon season).

One problem many of us have here in Tucson (especially those of us who aren't native Arizonans) is figuring out what kinds of plants will do well here in our arid climate and when we should plant them. Not to mention, where can we get seed for plants that thrive here in our desert home? The Burpee catalog may be fine for the East Coast, but it's not much help to us here in the Old Pueblo.

Fortunately, we have numerous resources available to help us answer those questions. One of those resources (that is absolutely free!) is the Pima County Public Library (PCPL). Branches throughout the county have Seed Library displays where you can "check out" seeds that are well adapted to Southern Arizona. To help you know what to plant and when, the Seed Library page on the PCPL website highlights which seeds in the catalog are in season and lets you search for a branch near you that has them in stock. You just need to go over to the branch with your library card in hand and you can check out up to six seed packets a month. And, while the Seed Library would appreciate your saving some of the seeds from the crops you plant so other library patrons can enjoy them in the future, you are under no obligation to return the seeds. When you are ready to dive into seed saving, the library and Native Seeds/SEARCH can get you started with a free seed saving class. (I'll talk more about the class Jana and I attended at our local branch library in a future post.)

With the vernal equinox rapidly approaching, Jana and I looked at the Seed Library listings to see what we could plant this weekend. There were a lot of good choices, but we settled on a plant that has been much reviled, but that we've been fascinated with: amaranth.

Amaranth was a staple of the Aztecs and was bred for consumption by indigenous peoples throughout the Americas in the precolonial era. Like quinoa, amaranth seeds are considered a "super food" because of their high nutritional value. When the conquistadors conquered modern day Mexico, they banned the growing and consumption of amaranth because of its connection to Aztec religious ceremonies. But, fortunately, many varieties of amaranth have survived.

The variety most common here in Baja Arizona is Palmer Amaranth - often called "pigweed" or "carelessweed." To farmers in Arizona and to the Arizona Agricultural Extension, it's an undesirable weed and they have been seeking (largely unsuccessful) methods of eradicating it. However, the Tohono O'odham prize the young amaranth leaves as a delicious Spring desert green and collect the seeds of the mature plants to use as a grain. Though small (about the size of poppy seeds), Palmer Amaranth seeds can be roasted, ground, or used in much the same way as poppy seed.

Last year, we transplanted some of the neighborhood amaranth into our garden in hopes of getting some young plants that we could harvest without the worry that they had been sprayed with an herbicide, but, unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and our second crop of amaranth never came in.

This year, we thought we'd try our hand with some of the cultivated varieties of amaranth, so we got some amaranth seed native to a variety of locations: New Mexico, Mexico, and Guatemala. 

There is a part of our garden that hasn't been cultivated before. It was covered in gravel by the previous owner of the house and is sandy, rocky soil that gets a lot of sunlight. We figured that would be the perfect location for some amaranth, so we spent this weekend preparing our little plot to grow some weeds.

We'll let you know how it turns out!

Desert Landscaping: Going Native for Tucson's Rivers

There are some things that just drive me crazy! Like...why are there still patches of lawn in the Tucson desert? And those little rocks that get caught in your sandals – gravel!  I understand why people put gravel in their yards.  It conserves water, sure.  I don’t want to spend all weekend weeding either. But if you look at the sun cracked, gravel covered plastic we use to tame it, there are signs of life (weeds) breaking through. When some people think of the desert, they think of dirt. But our dirt is brimming with untamed life. 

When I first came to Tucson, I was amazed by all the green in our desert: our famous saguaros, prickly pears towering over roof tops, agaves with stalks resembling giant asparagus, and cholla cactuses lining the horizon like furry puppies glowing in the afternoon sun.  (Don’t try petting them though!) Twisted and gnarled Mesquite and Paloverde trees grow amok. This time of year wild flowers speckle the ground. The desert hums with bees pollinating brilliant cactus blooms. Our tough desert plants are adept at storing water for the long dry spells.

There are seasons when our desert has an overabundance of water. In the spring, icy water bounds down the Catalina Mountains into rushing rivers and streams. During Monsoon season, our washes rage and overflow. Not enough of this water sinks into our aquifer, because the caliche ground has turned hard from inconsistent rain. Instead our precious rain water is collected in city streets to be polluted with automobile oil. Lack of foresight and understanding have left us with no infrastructure to retain the water for our daily use. Miles and miles of cement aqueducts bring us water from the Colorado River. But we are beginning to see how vulnerable that supply is as poisonous tailings from long abandoned mines leak into Colorado’s rivers reaching as far as our own Lake Powell.

It wasn’t always like that. Tucson is one of the oldest settlements in the country.  Native Americans and Mexicans settled here for the abundant Santa Cruz river water. The Hohokam, expert desert farmers, created an elaborate irrigation system connected to the river. They captured rainwater with rock dams and storage tanks. The Tohono O'odham crafted earthen dams and brush weirs to divert water from washes to crops. There was a riparian habitat with abundant trees and animals. It wasn’t that long ago that our rivers and streams flowed year around. Old time Tucsonans still reminisce about playing in the river as children.

This was before bad management, over-pumping and drought depleted our ground water and turned those rivers into dry river beds. It was before cement and gravel covered the earth. 

Hope is budding around the desert like native wild flowers. Nestled in nearby neighborhoods are shady desert oases boasting colorful native flora and fauna.  Some are nourished with rainwater runoff from roofs or gray water from washing machines.  Water is diverted into the yards using berms and rocks to direct the flow to catchment basins where water soaks into the ground to nourish plants.

Tucson’s own Watershed Management Group is inspiring local homeowners and businesses to develop more sustainable landscaping. All this might seem overwhelming, but the WMG is here to help. They offer free classes on rainwater and greywater harvesting. You can learn more by taking their field studies courses. You can get started on creating your own desert oasis by joining their coop and working on other people’s yards. When you accumulate 19 hours, the volunteers will work on your yard for free (not including the cost of materials and consultation/supervisor.) Dan and I have started the process by taking classes and joining WMG's coop so we can transform our own yard using rainwater and greywater harvesting.

 Organic mulch and native grass in catchment basin allow water to seep into the ground.

One of the most incredible things we learned in Watershed Management Group’s classes is that we can all play a part in refurbishing our ground water so the Sabino and Tanque Verde Creeks will flow into the Santa Cruz River once again!

There are signs of positive change throughout the city. Tucson Water offers rebates for homeowners to install rainwater harvesting and graywater systems. The city is taking baby steps towards better water management. While there are still patches of grass by the Old Courthouse, there are also curb cuts to water native trees outside of the new County Public Service Center.  

emitters watering boulders

If we dig up all that boring gravel and enhance our rustic desert landscape with rainwater harvesting, we can play a part in replenishing Tucson’s groundwater so we can enjoy flowing rivers surrounded by flourishing Cottonwood and Willow trees.

UPDATE SEPT. 1, 2019: I am so excited about the City's Proposed Stormwater Management Program. Installing more Green Stormwater Infrastructure is one of the most impactful actions we can take to make Tucson water independent and secure in the future. As a citizen advocate, I have attended G.I. planning meetings at the Pima Department of Environmental Quality. I'm so impressed by the incredible the work that the city and county are doing to implement Green Stormwater infrastructure using guidelines by Watershed Management Group. To really be sustainable, we need these systems to be built all over town and to be maintained.

UPDATE MAY 1, 2020: Green Stormwater Infrastructure fee was included on utility service statements for residents and businesses within the City of Tucson to pay for maintenence of GSI.

UPDATE 2021: The City hired Blue Baldwin as Tucson Water's green stormwater infrastructure program manager. In November, Dan and I participated in a training to monitor GSI installations with city and county employees. In December, we also attended GSI maintenance training for landscapers and maintenance people working on the city's GSI features. 

Spilt Tomatoes

I was in the flow - waxing poetic about the lushness of our Arizona landscape for my sustainability blog. 9 o’clock! And we hadn’t eaten. I peeked into Jeremy’s room. My apathetic teenager was finally at his homework. It was up to me to procure dinner. I rushed out of the house, leaving a yapping dog in my wake. Ideas whirled in my head as I strolled to the store. When I arrived, I asked the cashier if she had a pencil.  I quickly jotted down my (no doubt brilliant) musings on the back of a receipt, then went about my shopping. I scooped several varieties of bulk trail mix into plastic bags. (Note to self: don’t shop when hungry.) Then I grabbed a bag of tomatoes for our spaghetti sauce that night.

As I unloaded my groceries on the conveyor belt, I realized – Doh!  In the midst of writing a blog on sustainability, I had forgotten my reusable bags. Again! I already had all those plastic produce bags full of tomatoes and trail mix. I would just carry them without a grocery bag. I announced to the bemused sales clerk, “This will be a guilt free walk home.” Then, just as I finished crossing the street, I felt something bounce off my toe. I looked down and saw tomatoes rolling to the curb. ARGH! I motioned, “One moment” to a car at the corner and scrambled to pick them up.

For the rest of the walk home, I thought about the ten (count ‘em ten) plastic bags I was carrying. I made a mental note to look up where all that plastic came from. I thought about how all those plastic bags would end up in a landfill - or worse - along the street, - or even worse - in the ocean! I racked my brain, trying to concoct a trick to help me remember the reusable grocery bags – as if going to the grocery store wasn’t reminder enough.

Grocery store – grocery bag, grocery store – grocery bag. Not that complicated. Sustainable thoughts flashed through my mind: turn the water off while brushing teeth, switch off the light (in my dad’s voice…), the cereal box goes into the recycling bin, onion peels in the compost box, feed The Pooh... The Pooh! That’s it! Our dog! She always followed us to the door yipping to go with. Yip! Yip! Yip! Perhaps I could imagine her as a yipping grocery bag!

Boy, do I need something to eat.   

Finding Faith - Fighting for the Earth and Food Justice

After watching “The Harvest,” “Man in the Maze,” “Forked,” and “Food Ministries in Tucson, AZ,” during the “Food Justice Mini Film Festival” at The Loft, I was all geared up to attend the “Food Justice, Faith, and Climate Change Forum.” But I have to admit, I was given a moment of pause when the word, “Faith” registered. I had become increasingly disillusioned with Christianity since "family values” were  shanghaied by politicians creating fear to divide us as a nation. Once in office, they sold out Christianity by denying fundamental Christian values such as taking care of the less fortunate. Using the media as a platform, they depicted the poor as lazy and stupid, not deserving of our sympathy. They coined the phrase “welfare queens” and dehumanized the homeless. They ignited racism by demonizing undocumented workers, calling them “illegals.” “Welfare” became a dirty word. Our representatives made a mockery of Christianity by denying science and climate change so their rich campaign contributors could continue to profit by savaging the earth. Being called an “environmentalist” became the supreme insult. It is a shame that you can’t even use the word “Green” anymore because it is such a turn off to so many people. This was NOT the same Christianity I had grown up with.

Franciscan Sister Joan Brown of Interfaith Power and Light

Arriving a few minutes late, I came in the middle of the opening prayer. For a few uncomfortable moments I wondered if I belonged there, if I was a fraud for even attending. But my fears were soon relieved as Franciscan Sister Joan Brown of Partnership for Earth Spirituality and New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light spoke on climate justice. Fred Bahnson, director of the Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, spoke on using the Tree of Life as a symbol for faith-based activism on climate change. The Tree of Life is our chosen symbol, too! My spirit soared as one lecture was preceded by a Native American blessing. This interfaith event wasn’t about fear or exclusion, it was about love.

I was inspired by the faith-based responses to climate change and food justice. We heard how individual congregations were implementing environmentally sustainable practices like starting their own community gardens, and installing solar panels and rain gathering cisterns. There were practical lectures like: “Seed Libraries and other Strategies for Providing Better Access to Fresh Food in Food Deserts.” Barbara Eiswerth, founder of Iskashitaa Refugee Network, told us how they make arrangements with local residents to pick fruit that would otherwise be wasted. 

We heard some practical responses to food justice. Don Bustos, New Mexico Organic Farmer of the Year, spoke on “Farmworkers to Farmers: Empowering Those Who Bring Us Our Daily Bread.” On his farm he implemented training programs for farm workers to become independent organic farmers by using solar energy. Jose Oliver, co-director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, shared how they reach out to schools to implement the Real Food Challenge. Through the program, schools work with food service providers, distributors, processors and growers to ensure: (1) local economies, (2) environmental sustainability, (3) fair labor, (4) animal welfare and (5) nutrition.

Veronica Kyle, Chicago Outreach Director of Faith in Place, spoke about reaching out to her community. She demonstrated how important it is not to shame people for their food choices, but to speak to them from where they are. Her organization published a Southern Cooking cookbook with healthy, organic recipes. Once Veronica was lecturing on organic gardening and spouting off sustainability jargon. The audience didn’t know what the heck she was talking about – even though a few had been gardening their whole lives. When she started a community garden, she made sure to ask those gardeners to share their expertise. She is reaching people where they live. 

I came away from this forum feeling inspired and hopeful that people of all faiths were coming together to make a difference in climate change and food justice. Just imagine the environmental impact if every church, temple, synagogue, and mosque encouraged their communities to do the same.

Planting the Rain: How we discovered the Watershed Management Group

I first heard about the Watershed Management Group (WMG) shortly after returning to Tucson in 2013. As I was talking to people about growing native and locally-adapted plants here in the Sonoran Desert, WMG frequently came up in the conversation. I checked out their website and read some of their newsletters, but I didn't really understand the benefits of water harvesting in anything but an intellectual manner until I rode my bike around town on the Homescape Harvest Tour in 2014. (Click the map below to join me on the tour.)

We set off on our odyssey from another Tucson treasure, Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage (BICAS) and pedaled away to see what our neighbors were doing to harvest water in their own yards.

On the tour, I saw people doing truly amazing things with water harvesting...at a lot of different levels. In one case, it was little more than building up a berm between the house and the roof line to make sure the rainwater would flow into the small backyard garden, instead of flooding the foundation of the house.

Another homeowner took the recycling approach: building a cistern, composting barrel, and chicken coop out of "junk" saved from the scrapyard.

And, it's not just homeowners who were getting into the act: responsible businesses, like the Tucson Association of Realtors, installed curb cuts and catchment basins filled with native grasses and plants to reduce flooding in their parking lot and filter the pollutants out of the water before allowing it to settle in to help replenish our diminishing groundwater reserves.

The Shipek house (Lisa Shipek is the Executive Director of WMG and Catlow Shipek is the Policy and Technical Training Director at WMG) was a true showcase of just how much is possible by taking a holistic approach to managing water and waste. While it will be a long time, if ever, before we get to the same point with our humble midtown home, it was incredibly inspiring. Whether it is the rainwater-sustained lush greenery that greets you from the street (a rarity in Tucson!) or the composting toilet and solar heated shower that we all had to line up to check out, there were so many great ideas in this one home alone, that I could easily write another blog post just about all the features of their oasis in the desert.

The tour wrapped up at the WMG Living Lab - the office, classroom, and demonstration site that is "home base" for the Watershed Management Group.

When the 2015 Homescape Harvest Tour rolled around, I knew I needed to bring Jana along with me. We started off our walking tour with the full tour of the Living Lab.

 

We also saw a really exciting example of a neighborhood coming together to convert a vacant lot that used to be full of trash and surplus equipment into a "pocket park." This neighborhood eyesore is well on its way to becoming a garden spot that the whole neighborhood can enjoy. Seeing what they are doing in the Palo Verde neighborhood has inspired us to consider similar projects in our own neighborhood.

Jana and I are very excited about water harvesting and the Watershed Management Group. We have a lot to do to make our xeriscaped plastic sheeting and gravel Tucson yard into a desert food forest, but we're very excited about the challenge and the potential we see in our yard. And, with every workshop we attend at WMG, we get a lot more ideas to try to implement. We're ready to plant some water!

Starting Where We Live

We plan to take out the rocks and use greywater to water our backyard. 

Glancing at the sweet Tree of Life Valentine card Dan gave me, brings to mind how we have grown together in the past two years. The Tree of Life represents our connection to each other, our community, and the planet.

After giving up on internet dating, I found Dan on Facebook. There were pictures of him mentoring teens in robotics, gazing fondly at his 3D printer, and painting the walls at CoLab workspace. I was impressed by how he was trying to do good in the world, so I asked him for a tour of CoLab. He rushed by me sweating profusely from riding his bike. After showing off CoLab, he offered to give me a tour of “his downtown” – Maker House and Xerocraft. We settled in the courthouse courtyard and talked for 6 hours. I told him about my creative boys, my screenwriting, supporting local filmmakers by organizing film events, and writing reviews of meaningful films. He told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in dating. He came to Tucson so he could live inexpensively while working on his many humanitarian projects. The one that was dearest to his heart was “The Pineapple Project” a computer program that would allow subsistence farmers worldwide to use their cell phones to find out what was best to plant on their land.  

That's Gary Nabhan there. We're big fans. 

When we got together a few days later (yeah!), we struggled with finding time for us and all his projects. We are still working on finding the right balance. Dan soon discovered that he needed to apply his program closer to home, so “Sonoran Gardener” was born. Combining my interest in film and his in sustainability, we have gone to just about every sustainability or environmental movie event in Tucson! I even found ways to discuss environmental issues in my movie reviews at Reel Inspiration.

The Poo looking guilty. 

While I have always recycled and have never driven, I am grateful to Dan for introducing me to sustainable living. It has added so much to the quality of our life together. In addition to not owning a car, Dan makes his own bread (lucky for me and the boys) and we are experimenting with planting heritage foods and edible weeds. (That’s right! Weeds!) The heritage Sonoran winter wheat is growing nicely, but the only one who has eaten any of it is “The Poo,” Dan’s dog. We did enjoy some purslane that was growing behind the neighbor’s fence. (I found a yummy Mexican recipe for a green sauce made of tomatillos, garlic, onions and serrano chiles!) We even tried planting purslane and some wild amaranth in our garden.  We may be the only ones who purposefully plant weeds in our garden!

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea).

Sometimes our environmental efforts conflict with each other. We would like to shop local, but not having a car makes it very time consuming to get to the farmers markets on the far end of town. We do cook some heritage foods that we purchased at Native Seeds:  like Tohono O’odham tepary beans. (Those stubborn little beans took over 24 hours to cook after soaking overnight!), and mesquite flour pancakes with prickly pear syrup. (Yum!) Dan would like to harvest his own mesquite beans, but they always fall to the ground before he gets to it. It’s hard being a programmer/gatherer!

Dan and I are great partners in living sustainably. Though we still struggle with developing daily habits. I squawk at Dan for leaving the water on while he reaches for a fork, “We live in the desert!”  I have learned to turn the water off while brushing my teeth! But I still kick myself for forgetting to bring the reusable grocery bag to the store.

Watershed management workshop.

We have found new ways to water our Tree of Life. Dan introduced me to the Watershed Management Group. We started with a lovely neighborhood tour. And we recently attended the Rainwater and Greywater harvesting classes. We are excited to redesign our yard so we can use washing machine water on our landscape. It’s sure to be hard work, but fun too!