The St. George View

I’m working on my desert garden, suspending fabric—starting with split hammock fabric stretched between shepherds crooks–over my container garden. I’ve created said container garden using bricks and soil imported in bags from Home Depot.

It now looks like a curtain in a Moroccan tent. It gives things a boho chic feel, but that’s really due to lack of funds—leading to repurposing—and the desperate need for shade.

As for the lights, they are to add romance and beauty at night, creating a small Disneyesque tableau. I love to landscape and garden, always have.

Gardening in St. George, when the temperature is on a summer-long three-digit jag, is no mean feat. It’s literally 118 degrees some days, so hot you wonder if the world’s going to end and you should put your affairs in order.

I kid. By twilight it cools down and things get mysterious as drunken bats weave across the sky, waving away the last of the day’s light. And then the crickets chirp their best approximation of a lullaby.

Oops! I didn’t mean to get poetic there. This is meant to be one woman’s testimony to how she beats the heat while gardening in Southern Utah.

It’s an ongoing process. My most immediate plan is to keep creating shade in all kinds of ways. To bring more soul —I meant soil but between me and spell check there was a Freudian slip—into a yard composed mainly of concrete, dirt and gravel. And mulch, lots of mulch.

–Sarah Torribio

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