Desert gardener: Plant sale a smash

The MGM Garden Club would like to say a big thanks to all of you who came to the plant sale at the Robert J. Moody Demonstration Garden on Saturday. Our members were pleased to provide you with a nice variety of plants. It was a beautiful day! The first time our new flag was raised at the garden on our new flagpole. A very big thanks to Harold and Marion Elliott for funding our flagpole and Jim and Peggy Taylor for donating the flag.

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The weather has cooled and we can once again enjoy gardening. I’ve held off on planting as we have been out of town but now I’m ready. Not sure yet what I’m going to plant. My garden has changed over the last few years as I’ve found it necessary to have a less labor-intensive garden. In fact, I think I’m slowly moving toward a meditation garden. I’ve found I can enjoy the garden just as much - actually maybe more this way.
 
This fall I started a tai chi class with Ed Hayes at the "Y." Since my back surgery in May, I felt I needed an exercise to strengthen my legs and also improve my balance. I can’t believe it but I go three mornings a week from 7:30 to 9:30, but the best part is I like it. My goal is to be able to do tai chi in my garden.

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As I mentioned, we have been out of town with friends. This group formed from Newcomer’s Club back in the mid-1980s when we were all new to Yuma. We used to go out to dinner every Friday night and try a different restaurant each week.
 
Last January five couples who are celebrating 45 to 50 years of marriage, decided we needed to celebrate together on a trip. Jim and I and Jo and Vern Baldus are the only ones still in Yuma. The rest have scattered across the country. Sally and Zenas Blevins now live in Sullivan, Mo., Grace and Dave Gudgel are now in Loveland, Colo., and Shirle and Bob Schnabel moved to Idaho but are now in Green Valley, Ariz. Another couple we all know Marj. and Max VanDenBerg from Boise, Idaho, joined us, too. The week we were gone included Jim’s 80th birthday, so our two daughters came along - Alica Gardner from Cape Cod, Mass., and Janell Gardner from Tucson.
 
We signed up 10 months before the departure date. I never thought it would happen. It is not easy to get 14 people thinking alike as far as location and date. Thanks to Jo’s determination it did happen. She worked with Diana Hilbink, a travel agent with El Sol Travel here in Yuma. From all of our various locations we flew into Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Pleased that we were all healthy by then and able to make the trip. We all arrived within a couple hours of each other and then were shuttled to the Occidental Grand Xcaret all-inclusive resort located about one hour south of Cancun.

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Anyhow, back to the subject of flowers and gardening. Oh, my goodness! Did I enjoy the trip from the gardening point of view, too. What a lovely, tropical jungle location and so much to learn. We experienced more rain in that week we were there than we would see in a year or two in Yuma. We saw many plants I recognized which are very common in Yuma, too, even though we are low desert. For example, Rueilla and Wedelia.
 
I was also introduced to a plant called chaya. We, at first, thought it must be a fruit as it is mixed with orange juice for a breakfast drink. In talking to the waiter we learned it is a vegetable like spinach. So I asked him to bring me a leaf, which he did. I had to Google it when I got home. I’ll share that information with you: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: chaya, also known as tree spinach, is a large, fast growing leafy perennial shrub native to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It has succulent stems which exude a milky sap when cut. It can grow to be 6 meters tall, but is usually pruned to about 2 meters for easier leaf harvest. It is popular in Mexico and Central America as a leafy vegetable, cooked and eaten like spinach; raw leaves are toxic.

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Don’t forget Mary Irish, author of many gardening books for our area will be in Yuma Nov. 15 for a 1 p.m. presentation and book signing. It will be held at Gila Mountain United Methodist Church, 12716 N. Frontage Road in the Foothills. Tickets are $15. It is sponsored by Yuma Garden Club. For more information, call President Cal Kelley at 581-3981.

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By the time you read this article, the election will be over. If it is close, we may not even know yet who won.
 
In my garden I have a planter made of brick. It has a ledge around it and I have five "talking" rocks on this ledge. Talking rocks are words imprinted in the rock - joy, peace, love, wisdom and hope. These rocks seem to know the condition of the world. For example: after the Sept. 11 disasters, I noticed the peace rock kept falling off the ledge. Now since late September and the financial problems and upcoming election, it is the wisdom rock that can’t seem to stay in place. I’m pleased to report that the hope rock stays on the ledge! Let’s hope for the sake of our country, that the love and joy rocks do, too.


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Ellen Gardner, a Master Gardener, can be reached at 343-4020 or at gardner3028@netzero.com. For information about the Robert J. Moody Demonstration Garden, check out cals.arizona.edu/yuma/horticulture/moody_garden/index.html. For information about the Federated Garden Clubs of Yuma, visit gardencentral.org/azgardenclub/westerndistrict.