View From Casita Colibrí

… it must be time to water Casita Colibrí’s growing garden!

The 112 containers, from 6″ to 24″ pots and 30″ x 8″ x 8″ planter boxes decorating my entry and terrace, are brimming with one to twelve succulents and cacti.  They are watered weekly with gray water — shower water, dish water, and rain water, the latter when and if it ever rains again!  Oh, and then there are the 2 bougainvillea, 1 plumbago, 1 gardenia, 1 geranium, and pot of herbs, which require watering two to three times per week in this 90+ degree heat.  Water is an especially precious resource here in Oaxaca and we tenants must pay for all water deliveries to our compound.  So, in order to nurture my garden, everyday I haul buckets and dish-pans out through the terrace gate to my collecting barrel, a 32-gallon (not so sweet-smelling) plastic garbage can.  The plants don’t seem to mind the hand-me-down, fetid, murky water — in fact, they appear to love it!

With a few exceptions, my original garden was propagated from slips lovingly cultivated by my neighbor G, from his own exuberant and thriving terrace garden — a garden so profuse that there is scarcely room to walk!  When I arrived ten months ago, I was a disbeliever, never imagining that my terrace, too, could become home to a lush riot of greens, grays, magenta, red, yellow, orange, white, and blue.

An added bonus, besides (hopefully) filtering at least some of the exhaust from the diesel buses that race each other up the hill, the vegetation attracts a host of critters — giant friendly bumbling black bumblebees zeroing in on blossoms; geckos skittering across the pottery and terrace walls in the morning and afternoon, catching their breakfast and dinner; large brown crickets that like hang out in my “greens” recycling basket, not minding or even moving when I add more spent flowers and cuttings; and birds, including my home’s namesake colibrí, flitting back and forth across the terrace, chasing insects and sipping nectar from cactus and succulent flowers.

My garden never ceases to inspire, reward, and delight.  And… the garden god watches over it all!