Like no other colors, red and green define the year-end holiday season. Pine trees and evergreen branches adorned with big, bright red bows best represent the omnipresent color scheme. Indeed it's everywhere, from the Christmas trees in our living rooms to the garland hanging from street lamps in our crowded parking lots. And don't forget poinsettias, the colorful, tropical potted plants that even before Thanksgiving crowd our supermarket shelves screaming, "I'm the best gift for everyone!"
My Phoenix garden is trying to show its holiday spirit in a couple of ways, especially through my firestick plants. Normally the euphorbia - an ornamental landscape succulent native to Africa - is colored Kelly green, but during the coldest times of year, its branches glow red. At the moment, one of my bougainvillea plants - a torch glow variety - is sporting clusters of tight, magenta leaves. Inside my house, a Christmas cactus bloomed two weeks ago and is now starting to drop its crimson flowers.
Only one bird in my yard appears appropriately decked out for the holiday: a lone male northern cardinal. He's been making regular appearances in search of sunflower seed handouts. I usually spot him decorating the canopy of a neighbor's Texas laurel tree like one of those pretty red bows. Evading throngs of other birds - hungry hordes of mourning doves, an aggressive pair of Abert's towhees, a velociraptor-like curve-billed thrasher, a dozen house finches, several lilting white-crowned sparrows, and even a juvenile Cooper's hawk - the cardinal manages to snag a seed or two.
He's a favorite of my backyard denizens; very recently he escorted a female of his species to my garden for the first time all season. It's not the first time a pair has appeared in my yard; a couple of years ago two of the birds spent most of the winter and spring together in my neighborhood. However, I never saw a nest or any offspring resulting from that seasonal cohabitation.
Maybe this year? As the song goes, kind of, sort of: On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a cardinal in a laurel tree ... On the second day ... a pair of northern cardinals ... On the third day ... three chicks a-tweeting ... etc. etc.
Until we find out how my version of the song ultimately ends, Merry Christmas!
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| Male northern cardinal in my Phoenix yard. |
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| Male northern cardinal waiting in my neighbor's Texas mountain laurel tree. |
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| Male northern cardinal in my Phoenix yard. |
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| Pencil stick cactus ablaze in red in my Phoenix yard. |
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| Torch glow bougainvillea in my Phoenix garden. |
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| White-crowned sparrow, a winter migrant, in my Phoenix yard. |
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