Holly
Spring doesn't truly start in New Mexico until the middle of May. Some ballsy gardeners might plop their plants in the ground before the 15th, but they know their choice is a risky one.
This came as a shock to me.
I had just moved from Texas, where two seasons exist⏤spring and summer. Winter (if you want to call it that) is just a single catastrophic ice storm in the middle of February.
The weather hasn't been the only shock. I had no idea that moving one state away could feel like another country⏤ a country whose culture is opposite of mine.
New Mexicans don't like eye contact… or loud voices… or giving/receiving compliments from strangers. They don't like acknowledging strangers at all. It's no wonder New Mexicans have an undercurrent of dislike for Texans.
Texans live for stranger acknowledgment. The tip-of-the-hat coupled with a "Howdy!" cliché is barely an exaggeration.
In the oxygen-lacking high desert, boundaries are somehow both strongly enforced, and also nonexistent. I have an example I'll get to, but first, it's worth noting how chaotic the real estate market is here.
When we found a place to live, it was the only real option. If our rental application hadn't been accepted, we wouldn't have moved. We could have embraced hotel limbo like some transplants, but given the precariousness of the market, it seemed as though a person could be stuck living in a hotel for months, or possibly longer.
I had thought the real estate market in Austin was expensive and cutthroat. It had nothing on Northern New Mexico.
Only one housing option? You ask. How can that be?
Nine out of ten rentals didn't accept pets, and my cats are my family. Also, everything is expensive and wacky as hell. One place offered was not only outside our budget but didn't have an actual kitchen. When we first asked about the place, It was described as "the downstairs of a house", and knowing New Mexico's quirkiness, we knew to question the wording.
"Downstairs of a house?" We texted, "Are the upstairs and downstairs connected?"
I wanted to know if I had to meander through someone else's living room to leave my home.
"That's a good question!" They responded as if we had passed some kind of New Mexican test, "They're connected by stairs. But there's a door with a deadbolt on both sides!"
Oh, the ol' deadbolt standoff. The unspoken agreement if you don't unlock your side, I won't unlock mine.
This "downstairs of a house" was heavily remodeled with marble tile and new gold fixtures. My husband swiped through the photos that were messaged to him⏤ that's a whole thing too. If you want to find a place to live, you post a plea in a Facebook group and hope a landlord feels merciful and sends you a pity message.
A photo of the "kitchen" caught my eye.
"Wait a minute… Where's the stove?" I asked.
"Uhhhh, I don't see one…" He flipped through more photos, hoping a stove would appear.
"Is there no microwave either?!"
"Doesn't look like it. There's a fridge… And a sink…"
I glared at him as if it were his fault.
"Let me ask about it," He said.
"But there's like two places to eat in town! What are we supposed to do?! They want $2,200 a month?! This is crazy. Is there just a hot plate?" I felt like I was losing my mind.
"She says there's a single burner, yes."
So… A hot plate.
Needless to say, when we found a single, plausible option, we quickly applied. Thankfully we got it.
It might have a refrigerator stand-off situation (there's a shared door between units, blocked by refrigerators⏤ a "you don't move your fridge and I don't move mine" situation) but at least there's a stove with three working burners and a damn microwave.
The regional Southwest is still the Wild West, but mostly in the way of building permits.
Anyway, back to the lack of boundaries, or what have you…
When we looked at our current place, I was excited about several large garden boxes in our front yard. They needed some work (some pieces of wood were missing or damaged) but I looked forward to cleaning them up and having an edible garden again.
I was equally excited about the abundance of windows, though I was less grateful during curtainless move-in purgatory.
During our first week here, I was able to see every past tenant's mail land on our doorstep and even caught an Amazon delivery guy trying to bust into a closed side gate to leave our neighbor's mail there.
I was hyper-aware of our corner's on-goings against my will.
The same day the movers had finally brought our things, a car pulled up beside our driveway. A tall guy around my age got out, walked to the front door, knocked quickly, and walked away. With his speed, I assumed he was delivering yet another package⏤ probably not mine.
This assumption was reinforced when I opened the door and found a package at my feet.
"Thanks!" I yelled, picking up the package. It was actually mine!
I looked back to wave at him. That's when I saw him reach into the back of his sedan and remove a power drill.
"Hi! I'm Steve," He said, waving with one hand and a power drill in the other, "I'm the previous tenant and I'm just here to get my garden boxes."
I know I made a face. Not a good one. I was well aware that this place had been empty for almost two months before we moved in. The property management company said nothing about the planter boxes. It felt invasive. Between all the people in my house (for moving and maintenance), wandering inside gates and around my house, and strangers using my trashcan as their personal dumpster for dog waste, now this guy was removing the wood that contained over a foot of dirt. He wasn't going to ask. He wasn't going to have a conversation. He was just going to do it. My living there, signing a lease, and forwarding my mail meant nothing. These were his garden boxes.
"Oh, ok," I said. I knew if I said any more, the words would come out even more snarly than they already had. I was done⏤socially spent. I went inside to refrain from unleashing all the stacked-up frustrations on this weird guy who could obviously take me in a fight.
Instead, I watched Steve slowly collect his wood, chummily chatting with all the neighbors on our driveway⏤ neighbors who had gone out of their way to avoid meeting me.
It took Steve more than one trip, and his trips were weeks apart. I never knew when I would glance out a window to see him in my yard, collecting a few more planks of wood and shoving them in the trunk of his car, each time leaving a bigger eye sore for my neighbors to stand on my driveway and chat about.
Weird, tall cubic piles of soil had embarrassingly formed in my front yard.
He better take the dirt, I thought, this is some garbage. If I have to unpack then immediately shovel dirt, so help me…
I found him on Facebook and messaged him about the dirt, to no avail. Another neighbor assured me he was taking it.
Yes, finally, a neighbor came up to speak to me instead of dodging me as if I were a feral raccoon.
Weeks had passed before Steve showed up with a rental truck and took his dirt.
So I suppose that's what I mean by strong boundaries but also none. Everyone will go out of their way to avoid contact with me, but will happily stand on my driveway to chat, borrow my dumpster, or peek around a fence to look into the sunroom like a cartoon character. (I was glad my husband witnessed that one so he would believe me when I recounted the daily shenanigans).
This whole experience has got me thinking about how hard it would be to buy gifts for a gardener in a different region than your own. Not only have I had to start from scratch socially, but any plants I grew before now get destroyed by the searing New Mexican sun. Even my agaves are getting nuked.
If you know someone in my shoes (who loves plants and gardening but lives somewhere whose climate is very different) you're probably safest to buy nice gardening tools ⏤ pruning shears, gloves, trowels, etc. Wildflower seeds native to the region they live in would also be a good choice.
If they're struggling with the social climate, like me, they would likely appreciate things that assist in making non-human friends⏤ like bird feeders, bug hotels, and bird houses.
The non-human company has been helping me keep my sanity.
Most importantly, if you have a relative or a friend like Steve, please give them gardening gifts for their housewarming. Someone could have bought him a hardware store gift card or offered to help build new planter boxes. It would have spared me over a month of awkwardness, and him countless miles on his sedan.
