On New Year’s Eve 2013 I had my first Luminaria Party. For those who don’t know what those are, they are a Southwestern religious tradition dating back hundreds of years, starting with small fires built in New Mexico pueblos, neighborhoods, and churches on Christmas Eve to symbolically light the way of the Holy Spirit into homes and hearts. More recently luminarias (also called farolitos, or “little lanterns”) have evolved into paper bags filled with sand and candles, and have also become more secular and spread outside of the desert southwest as holiday decorations. I didn’t have a luminaria party in 2014 or 2015, but I did in 2016 and again in 2017. I may make it an annual event in the early part of December, so as to minimize timing conflicts that surface with other holiday parties later in the month.
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This is my house, decorated with luminarias for the event held on Saturday December 16, 2017. Tea light candles can be purchased in bulk online and paper bags are cheap and sand is free, so the main investment is the labor involved with setting them up. My initial foray in 2013 was to make 700 of them, which was an enormous amount of work that took several days to set up and clean up from. The 2017 session was more modest with about 300, and with the help of my friends we set them all up within two hours. Much easier.

Looking down on the gardens nearest my house from my rooftop. Since everyone wants to know, that is Aloe “Hercules” about 9 feet tall to the right foreground. It’s grown up from 4 feet tall to this in around 9 years, which is much slower than it would be in milder California. But the fact that I can grow it at all (with annual winter cold protection below about 25 F / -4 C) is sufficient enough, I suppose. I cannot grow most aloes due to a difficult combination of cold, heat, and hungry animals, so I enjoy the handful of species that I can keep without complaint.

We start making the luminarias and setting them around about 2 to 3 hours before sunset so that they are in place by that time. It’s good to start lighting them before the sun actually goes down since the process takes awhile (even with 10 people and 10 lighters) and the best photography comes about 15 to 30 minutes after sundown. That is when the daylight has faded enough to allow the luminarias to show up, but it’s not so dark that you cannot see the landscape anymore either.

December weather can be chilly in the Arizona desert, but if the winds are calm and you make a nice bonfire, it is actually very pleasant. This was actually just a short time pre-bonfire, since we had all been busy making sure the luminarias were lit before we settled down to eat and relax.

Time to get the bonfire started. In my desert botanical garden, things die, despite my best efforts. Most debris is composted down, but sometimes I save interesting items for bonfires, such as these Mediterranean fan palm trunks. Those flames are about 10 feet tall!

Let’s back up in time a bit, shall we? For posterity, here is one of the three Mediterranean fan palms (Chamaerops humilis) being burned in the prior photo. In January 2015, nearly three years ago, I was contacted by a person in Parker, Arizona, who was doing a demolition job on an older 1970s era vacation home on the banks of the Colorado River, making way for a new and gigantic home on the now much more valuable waterfront lot. Everything had to go, including 40 year old landscape plants, which included a number of cacti (which was why I was called) and these palms and more.

This photo from February 2015 shows the three Med fans I salvaged from that Parker job. I planted them right near a water spigot so that I would be able to help them out generously with irrigation, and Med fans are known to be desert tolerant and are grown worldwide in suitable arid subtropical climates. Despite my intensive assistance, however, the palms did not survive, primarily because I bare-rooted them in winter, and they were unable to tolerate that treatment. If I had been able to move them with a soil ball, and do so in warmer spring weather, they might have lived. But I didn’t have the right equipment or manpower for this relocation job, but since they were going to be bulldozed anyway I decided to give it a shot. Unsurprisingly, they failed.

The Mediterranean fan palm trunks burned vigorously at first, as the flames consumed the numerous leaf petiole bases stuck to them. The denser, more fibrous portions of the trunk interiors were much harder to get to burn, although with enough supporting firewood they eventually did so.

So after the palm trio expired, I looked at the standing dead trunks for over two years, and decided that this was a fitting end to their lives. They shall be immortalized in the memories of 2017 Luminaria Fest attendees, and this blog post.

And since this is partially a memorial post to plants I tried to save but couldn’t, here are a couple more photos of the other two palms as they were situated in that now-long-gone Parker AZ yard, and the demolished house.

The photo below shows the third Mediterranean fan palm to the left, and a large soaptree yucca (Yucca elata) to the right. Both were transplanted about 100 miles away from Parker to my gardens in Yucca AZ. Fortunately the soaptree has survived and resumed growing, even if the palm did not.

Because I felt like totally wrecking a house and a mature landscape was a waste of energy and resources, I also tried to salvage some of the other large plants from Parker. These included two 4 foot tall sago palms (Cycas revoluta) and 4 enormous sotols (Dasylirion wheeleri). None of those made the transition, unfortunately. On this night’s memorializing bonfires, however, parts of all of these plants were sent to the ethereal realms to which every living thing eventually returns. Pity, since those were nice sagos, and one was a crested plant.

Moving on, it’s time for another dead item to be sent to the ethers. This time it is a large bloomed-out rosette of Agave chrysantha.

Agaves put out a LOT of heat when being burned. If you’re too close to them, you need to move back. Of course this heat is short lived, and you need to reposition again within a minute or two as the winter chill creeps back up on you. We made this miniature in-and-out migration a dozen times over the course of the evening.

Victor was the Fire Lieutenant. I was Fire Chief.

In keeping with the memorial theme of the recent botanical deaths, here is a photo of the aforementioned Agave chrysantha in bloom in my garden in June 2017, just 6 months ago. The plant being burned is the one on the left and in the foreground. There is a second in the background whose flower spike is still standing, so I will leave it alone until it falls over and then burn that one in a future year. The Trichocereus terscheckii in the left foreground also died (I think it was consumed from within by giant cactus longhorn beetles, Moneilema gigas) so onto the fire it went too. 

My friend Steve took a photo and video of the Trichocereus above being burned. We put it onto the fire early, just as we were getting things started. Trichosacrifice. The ocotillo stems used as kindling beneath it are yet another unfortunate summer 2017 casualty. It was a wild plant about 10 feet tall and having about 12 arms that predated my arrival in 1999. It was growing next to my largest buckhorn cholla (Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa) which stands almost 10 feet tall and has a tree-like diameter of about 8″ thick towards the base. I have no idea why the ocotillo died, as it was happy earlier and bloomed and leafed out regularly in summer. But once gone, it must be released. The facts of life.

In 2017, at least 19 agaves of 8 species bloomed in my gardens over the course of the spring and early summer. Three of them were Agave chrysantha, the appropriately-named golden-flowered agave. Their life cycle dictates that they expire after flowering once, so it’s not a surprise to see them go when I see flower spikes emerging, although it’s usually a bit wistful too.

I tend to leave dead agave floral spikes standing in the garden for at least a year or two after they die. I enjoy the sculptural appearance of the dead inflorescences, and they make interesting garden subjects in their own right. Eventually they do fall over, of course, and when that happens I discard them or burn them. RIP Agave chrysantha, I enjoyed you from seed to adulthood, through flowering and then your final immolation.

In 2016 I burned a wooden toilet seat in a pagan ritual sacrifice. It didn’t appease the Commode Gods because in 2017 I broke another one and had to sacrifice a second. I guess that’s what you get for buying cheap particle-board faux oak seats from Home Depot. But for only $15, this could be an annual thing if necessary….

The kid is not taking this important heathen ritual seriously! Repent to the Commode Gods now young man, or face eternal damnation. May the luminarias light the way for the cleansing of your soul. (And BTW the non-crested sago palm trunk is being burned here, right beneath the toilet seat.)

We chanted and held hands in a circle to summon the powers of life. We prayed for prosperity in 2018. Now we must make pilgrimages to the casinos of Las Vegas in hopes of getting the JackPot with a Royal Flush.

Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here through 2060.

Happy Holidays to All!