A hot wind blows across a barren landscape of rocks and a few cacti. There is no dust; the soil was blown away years ago. A lone Texas Spiny Lizard wonders where his next meal is going to come from and thinks it might be time he blew this place, too. Then all of a sudden — thud. Something has fallen from the sky. The lizard investigates this odd object, about the size of a small prickly pear, a terra-cotta color, a ball of some sort. He touches it with his tongue. Red clay. It’s imbedded with little seeds, seeds he hasn’t seen around these parts since the Mexican crows left for good. Then another thud. And another. Then thuds all around him. The lizard scrambles for cover under a rock and hopes this isn’t some scenario like the invasion in that sci-fi flick he saw at the Alpine drive-in a few years ago. He waits, something lizards are very good at.
It rains. Some of the balls roll away in the runoff, but most soften and flatten out and stay put. Days pass. Now there are sprouts popping out of the clay patties. The lizard has his first salad in years, but he’s careful not to be greedy. He calls his friends on his mobile phone and tells them about the transformation occurring in his patch of desert. A bunch of them come out to party in the young vegetation. Some of them decide to stay, including a shy minx of a lizard. Babies are born. Soil begins to form from plant matter and the new grasses and wildflowers hold it in place during the next rains. The crows return and drop more seeds for scrubs and trees. The big plants grow. The springs return. And the land is transformed into the paradise the lizard’s grandfather once talked about.
Is the lizard dreaming? If he is, so is photographer/naturalist Jim Bones and the other devoted members of the Adobe Seed Ball Consortium, who are busy revegetating large tracts of land in New Mexico and Big Bend. In these arid regions, seeds by themselves are blown away, washed away, eaten, and fried in the sun. So half-inch seed balls — a mixture of red clay, humus, water, and seeds — are made by hand or simple machine. The clay protects the seeds until the rains come and germination can begin. The humus gives the seeds a head start in a land of erosion where much of the topsoil is long gone.
You can find out a lot more about these seed balls than the lizard did by attending the Fall Field Day at the National Wildflower Research Center on September 21, 12-5pm, 292-4100. (You can also learn about plain old seed planting. Now’s the time to scatter wildflower seeds, like bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and lemon mint.) Or check out Jim Bone’s website at http://www.rt66.com/~jimbones; write to: The Adobe Seed Ball Consortium, PO Box 158, Marathon, Texas, 79842; or call 915/386-4414.
This article appears in September 12 • 1997 and September 12 • 1997 (Cover).