Wind in the Pines

 

Weather: Clouds know no boundaries.  On Wednesday, the sky turned gray around 9:30 am.  I assume smoke from the flare up of the fire in Flagstaff arrived.  Friday, the winds were strong all day, but got worse around 1 pm.  The sky turned gray as Los Alamos had winds to 48 mph.

By 4 pm visibility was falling.  The lights blinked as the utility recovered; winds were up to 53 mph in Santa Fé.  

NOAA reported a dust storm around Cochiti at 5:42 pm, with less than a quarter mile visibility.  It got to us around 6:40 pm.  I couldn’t see the Black Mesa, which is less than two miles away.  The white haze was suffused with a rosy glow.

Things began to abate around 7:30 pm.  The mesa became a looming dark mass.

The winds stoked the wildfires.  We now have them on three sides: one to the northeast near Mora, one to the southeast near Pecos, one to the south near Albuquerque, one to the southwest near Jemez Springs, and, of course, the one near Flagstaff.  It won’t be long before Colorado makes its contribution.

My nose has been running constantly since Tuesday, and my eyelids have been itching.  The surrounding areas on my face are getting raw.

Last rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 29 degrees F.  Week’s high: 83 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 61 mph in Santa Fé on Friday.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples, fruiting crab apples, purple leaf sand cherry, and forsythia.  The flowering quince has fewer flowers than usual. Tulips only bloom for short periods.  I noticed more dead evergreens this week.  This time they were 5'-10' long-needle pines.

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Siberian elms, alfilerillo, western stickseed, cheat grass.  Many of the dandelions I picked had small insects on them.

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Strap leaf aster

What’s blooming in my yard: Sand cherry, grape hyacinths, lilies of the valley, blue flax, and vinca.  The wind takes the petals off the cherries so quickly, I rarely see a flower.

I can see the flowers on the rose-colored crab apple.  When the leaves open, they are maroon.  In the past, it began blooming before the leaves turned green, and the flowers blended into them.  This year, the leaves turned green before the buds opened.  As soon as they opened, the flowers attracted bees.

What’s coming up in my yard: Hostas, peonies, David phlox, Rumanian sage; black locust, cultivated tamarix, snowball, and caryopteris are leafing

Animal sightings: Rabbit, quail, geckoes, sulphur butterfly, small bees on flowering crab apple and Siberian peas, sidewalk and harvester ants.  The local farm supply store is advertising baby chicks.  Two people had goats in their yards on Thursday.

Tasks: Warm temperatures say I should be planting seeds, but the wind forecasts say it would be a waste of time and money.  I did feed the potentillas and spirea on Wednesday, after the first “wind event” of the week.  I use a dry fertilizer than is heavier than dirt.  I immediately ran water to soak some of it in.  Theoretically, I should have used the hand rake to dig it in, but that would only have loosened dirt that would blow away.  I felt the need to do those shrubs because, once they fully leaf, it’s impossible to get to their roots without crawling.  Hopefully, those same arching branches blocked Friday’s wind.

I started cutting dead wood in the winter.  I couldn’t burn then because it was too cold, and now can’t until the wind season passes.  The worst thing about a pile of brush is that it threatens to escape in the wind.  A couple years ago I bought some 3' x 5' wire-mesh fence sections to lay over my seeds to keep the rabbit from eating the succulent sprouts.  When some brush blew away, I laid a section on top of the pile and weighted it some spare pavers.  It worked well on Friday.

Weekly update: Saturday was clean-up day.  I removed more than 200 Russian thistles from my yard.  Most blew in from the prairie where people’s ATVs have destroyed the vegetation, and the continuing drought has prevent the grasses from recovering.  The soil is so dry, I left inch-deep foot prints in areas that I don’t water when I was picking up the carcasses.

My fence was a more serious problem.  A horizontal bar had come loose a year ago, but the man I asked to fix it only put in some short screws.  When I woke from my nap on Friday, both ends were out of the braces that held them to the posts, and the section was bouncing off the guy wire for the electric line pole.

I just watched.  Nothing would have induced me to go outdoors then.

When I looked again around 8 pm, the fence section had uprighted itself.

Saturday I did go out.  It was standing, but at an angle.  Since the pine boards have dried over time, it wasn’t heavy.  I could lift the one end back to the fence line.

Then I tried to stabilize it with string.  That may sound silly, but it had worked the day before elsewhere.  Another horizontal was loose, this one notched into a 4x4.  I couldn’t get someone to repair it, and I kept knocking it in place.  However, the ground in the area is tilting, and gravity pulled it out again.

Finally, I went out on April 11 with a small step ladder and tied it with four different pieces of string.  I had learned looping one piece of string multiple times didn’t work, so this was an experiment.

The area usually gets the worse winds.  It’s between two buildings, and the wind tunnels through.  That is the oldest section of fence, and many boards have come loose as their nails have corroded the wood around them.

The winds may not have reached that area as strongly Friday as it did the more open area to the south.  Anyway, the strings held.

So, on Saturday, I looped string around the top horizontals and lashed them to the metal posts.  After I did the first, I discovered I couldn’t do the bottom rail.  When I did the other end, I did the bottom first.

This is not a solution.  It’s time to call a fence builder, and offer to pay a day’s wages.  In the past it was hard to find anyone.  Local people don’t advertize, and ones in Santa Fé don’t like to be bothered, especially when it’s not a simple job.  It could be months before I can get the problem fixed permanently, or as permanently as anything is in New Mexico.

Notes on photographs: All taken in my yard yesterday, 23 April 2022.
1.  Profusion flowering crab apple; it probably has a heritage so mixed it’s not worth giving the generic name in the rose family.

2.  Sweet cherry (Prunus avium), supposedly a self-fertilizing Bing, which seems an oxymoron.  I have not seen a complete flower this spring.

3.  Broken fence section on Saturday morning.
4.  Another fence area repaired with string.
5.  Broken fence section repaired with string.

Forsythia

 

Weather: Hard freeze Thursday morning, with high winds every day.

Last rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 17 degrees F.  Week’s high: 77 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 48 mph in Santa Fé on Tuesday.

Fire watch: A metric can be a dangerous thing.  The Forest Service has a ten-year plan to manage the woodlands with controlled burns.  The goal is “ treating up to an additional 20 million acres of National Forest System lands, and up to an additional 30 million acres of other federal, state, tribal and private lands.” [1]  If one divides that by fifty states, which is silly, that would mean a million acres in New Mexico.  Since Rhode Island probably doesn’t have much forest, that means more than a million here.

Managers who want to earn good reviews, no doubt, are under great pressure to meet their quotas.  Santa Fe National Forest cancelled plans for a planned burn this week.  Earlier someone had identified tomorrow, April 18, as the beginning of a “window of opportunity,” but now the men are too busy with the fire in Pecos that began when “erratic winds” blew sparks from a proscribed burn onto neighboring land.

Proverbs may say March is windy, and April is wet.  The reality is March was wet this year, and when the winds started (“out like a lion”) they have started everyday.  Anyone, who looked away from a computer screen long enough to see what was happening out the window, would know the chance of “erratic winds” was great, and totally predictable.

So far, the smoke from fires in México still is going into the Caribbean, Texas, or the southeastern states.

What’s blooming in the area: Bradford and fruiting pears, peaches, purple leaf plum, forsythia, daffodils, and tulips before morning temperatures fell

What’s coming up in the area: Purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Siberian elms, purple and tansy mustards, alfilerillo, western stickseed, dandelions

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences:  Green-leaf five-eyes, Tahoka daisies; cottonwood, Russian olives, winterfat, snakeweed broom, and chamisa beginning to leaf

It could be a banner year for pigweed.  The annual usual emerges in July after the monsoon rains begin.  This year, we had moisture in March with untypically high afternoon temperatures.  It not only is coming up densely along the shoulder of the road, but also is emerging in cracks in the pavement.  I removed several colonies along my neighbor’s fence where the other plants haven’t emerged yet, and it has no competition.

Russian thistles also are going to be dense this year.  On Tuesday, I removed thirty carcasses from my back yard, and twenty from my drive.  This is the first time they’ve blown in back.  A few years ago people began taking their ATVs onto the prairie, particularly enjoying land that wasn’t covered with winterfat.  The grasses died, and were replaced by Russian thistles.  The results came my way, not their’s.

I didn’t see a lot accumulated tumbleweeds along fences when I drove to Santa Fé on Wednesday morning.  However, I suspect some have fallen into ditches, and pieces will be carried downstream to everyone who irrigates.

What’s blooming in my yard: Sand cherry, flowering quice, star of Bethlehem, vinca

What’s coming up in my yard: Lilies of the valley, catmints, Silver King artemesia; cherries and Siberian peas beginning to leaf

Animal sightings: House finch, geckoes, monarch butterflies, bees, hornets, ants

Apricots and peaches are out of bloom.  I have no idea if any flowers were open long enough to be pollinated, or if any insects were around.  The little I know about honey bees is that they don’t like cold and don’t like wind.  Much of the time when the trees were in flower, morning temperatures were cold and winds began as soon as it warmed.  I never saw any around my trees.

One sand cherry was in full bloom the day after the cold temperatures.  By late morning, the fragrant shrub was surrounded by bees and monarch butterflies.

Tasks: Bees aren’t the only creature kept indoors by high winds.  I did get out at the end of the week to continue cleaning dead matter from beds where plants will not be affected by random cold mornings.  I try to leave some leaves on the ground to keep soil from blowing away.  Sometimes, I crumple some of the debris I’m removing to keep the land covered.

Weekly update: Forsythia is durable, but not happy with cold or drought.  Two years ago, my forsythia began blooming in late March, and the flowers were killed by snow on April 13.  Temperatures plunged to 15 degrees F on April 15.  Last year, mine had problems with getting enough water and only produced a few flowers.  I juggled hoses, and cut dead wood.  This year it is back to normal.  Or was, until Thursday morning.  Since, a few unaffected buds have been opening.

What I noticed this spring is people who had magnificent shrubs—ones at least 8' tall—had cut them down.  They’re blooming, but not like their glory days.  They may have reacted to a poor season by consulting the experts (either on YouTube or television or books).  If experts are asked what to do, they feel it incumbent on maintaining their status by giving advice.  Be patient and let nature heal itself is not an option.  The affects of drought do not penetrate their sealed universes.

My guide book from 1903 simply says next year’s flower buds form in late summer, so, if you’re going to prune, you need to do it before then. [2]  It doesn’t add you ought to; you do that if flowers only form on new wood.  The young growth blooms first for this, and many other shrubs right now, but the old wood also has flowers.

By the time my mother had a forsythia bush in the early 1950s, the garden manuals had become more demanding.  Hers told her “forsythias require pruning immediately after blooming, cutting several of the oldest stalks a few inches above ground level in order to allow new growth to take its place.” [3]
 
She dutifully went out and cut hers back each year.  It never produced more than the original number of stems, never got more than 3' high, and never displayed a great array of flowers.  She had been trained to be obedient, and never would have questioned the good book.

I didn’t discover forsythia until years later when my Michigan apartment looked out over a grown over farmstead.  A large forsythia copse that seemed 10' tall had arching branches that bloomed in the spring.  It had continued flowering after the owners moved away and their house disappeared.  It taught me all I need to know.

There seem to be two contradictory views of nature embedded in garden books.  The one is that, because some plants bloom best their first year, all plants follow that cycle.  To keep a shrub bearing flowers, one must constantly prune parts to “rejuvenate it.”  Left to itself, nature gets lazy.

The other fear is that nature is dangerous.  Christopher Lloyd warns forsythia “can be strikingly handsome, but one has to be careful.” [4]  Albuquerque’s Rosalie Doolittle advises “it can grow out of bounds.” [5]

There may be more involved in one local yard.  Sometime after the crash of 2008, a child or grandchild moved back with his or her family.  It may have been financial, or it may be the owners, now in their eighties, needed more care.

Either way, a generational conflict may be festering.  The young always know more than their elders.  In addition, I noticed children sometimes are shocked to discover their retired parents have developed new interests that do not include them.  They feel the old somehow have let themselves go and need some discipline.  The results may be the ambitious pruning program that has cut down so many things that had grown more luxuriously than they could have in suburban gardens

Notes on photographs: Forsythia does not photograph well.  The yellow reflects light back into the camera, which already has problems finding a focus point because there are no protruding stamens.

1.  Forsythia Lynwood Gold in bloom in my yard, 5 April 2022.  The flowers are pointed upward.

2.  Forsythia Lynwood Gold after temperatures fell to 17 degrees F on 14 April 2022 in my yard.  The darkened flowers point downward.

3.  Forsythia behind a 4' wall with a 4' metal fence above, 26 March 2014.  These have been cut to 3'.

4.  Forsythia growing between cottonwoods, 26 March 2014.  These have been cut to 4'.

End notes:  Forsythia is discussed on Nature Abhors a Garden on 1 April 2007 and 30 March 2014.

1.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Prescribed Burn Planned for Santa Fe Watershed Postponed Indefinitely.”  New Mexico Fire Information website, 12 April 2022.

2.  Harriet L. Keeler.  Our Northern Shrubs.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920; copyright, 1903.  412.

3.  Louise Bush-Brown and James Bush-Brown.  America’s Garden Book.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939.  296.

4.  Christopher Lloyd.  The Well-Tempered Garden.  New York: Random House, 1985 edition.  362.

5.  Rosalie Doolittle.  Southwest Gardening.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967 edition.  85.

More on Terracing

 

Weather: Our moisture usually comes from the southwest; more specifically it crosses across the northern Baja peninsula.  There has been no moisture moving from the Pacific since at least last Sunday.  By Thursday, relative humidity levels in Los Alamos and Santa Fé fell below 10%.  The moon is bright at night and the dawn is clear.  If any white clouds form during the day along the horizon, it’s from water being pulled from the soil and plants.

First reports of smoke from fires in México, but its going into the southeastern states.

Last rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 22 degrees F.  Week’s high: 79 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 59 mph in Los Alamos on Tuesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Apricots, pear, purple leaf plum

Sometimes, when I can’t see much of a tree, I note it has pink or white flowers, and hope it will make sense later.  This week, if it was pink, it probably was a purple leaf plum.  Next week it may be impossible to separate the plums from the peaches.  Up close, the differences are obvious.  Both members of the rose family have five petals, but the plum has purple stamens and the peach has white.  The flowers of the first tend to be inside the tree, while the peaches usually are at the ends of branches.  Try to see those distinctions at a distance.  All one can assume is the larger trees are peaches, the ones with reddish auras are plums, and the rest are unknowns.

What’s coming up in the area: Mount Atlas daisies

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Siberian elms, tansy mustard, alfilerillo, western stickleaf, dandelions

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Leatherleaf globe mallows

What’s blooming in my yard: Peach, Bradford pear

What’s coming up in my yard: Hyacinths, lady bells, sea lavender, sweet violet, anthemis, coreopsis; fruiting crab apples, flowering quince, spirea, lilacs, and privet are leafing

Animal sightings: Western chickadee, hornets, ants

Tasks: String trimmers are labor saving, if you only look at not having to cut plants individually. You still have to clean up the cuttings.  It took several hours to clean garlic chives tops that were cut in half an hour.

Weekly update: On 13 February 2022, I mentioned individuals who terraced their land, and commented it often was not obvious when one drove by in a car.  I found a more interesting example a few weeks ago.

When I first started taking pictures of older buildings in 2014, there was an old house across from Anthony’s at the Delta that was barely visible behind a house trailer.  I could see it was a square adobe with a metal roof that sloped on all sides from a ridge pole.   Large cottonwoods were behind it.

When the house trailer left, it was replaced by tractor trailers.  Then, by 2018, whoever owned the property had the front area cleared, and the house boarded up.  A cobblestone wall was visible separating the house area from whatever had once been between it and the road.  The trees, of course, were larger.

Sometime this winter, the lot was cleared.  The microwave dish survived, but not the cottonwoods.  Large stumps were in back that couldn’t be removed.  That dish appears in both the above photographs and provides perspective.

What is not quite as obvious is the change in elevation.  The gray area was beside the house trailer in the first photograph.  The green marks a rise.  That gray wall wasn’t just a yard wall; it was a retaining wall that kept the land level a good foot higher than the area in front.

The change in elevation is less clear when one stands above looking toward the road.  Whatever equipment was used could destroy the yard wall, but it couldn’t remove all the stones.  They probably came from the river which is relatively close, or may have been on the land when it was cleared.  Whoever built the house didn’t just clear an area for the walls, but worked hard to provide a level yard, or maybe one that sloped just enough so water would not collect.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Purple leaf plum flowers (Prunus cerasifera), 9 April 2022.
2.  Peach flowers (Prunus persica), 9 April 2022.
3.  House, 4 May 2014.
4.  Same house, 19 August, 2018.
5.  Same location, 27 March 2022.
6.  Same location, 27 March 2022.

Juniper Cycles

 

Weather: Afternoon temperatures too high on Monday, followed by high winds the next day.  Gentle rains that lasted on Wednesday and Friday.

Last rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 23 degrees F.  Week’s high: 82 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 40 mph in Santa Fé on Tuesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Apricots, daffodils

What’s coming up in the area: Honey suckle, Dutch iris, yellow yarrow; globe and weeping willows are leafing

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Dandelions

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Bindweed, cheat grass; leaves on Siberian elm seedlings

What’s blooming in my yard: Warm afternoons are forcing the apricot buds, then cool mornings are turning them brown

What’s coming up in my yard: Roses, potentillas, and ornamental crab tree beginning to leaf; new growth on bouncing Bess, Maltese cross, sidalcea, Oriental poppy, Shasta daisies, Mexican hats, goldenrod

Animal sightings: Chased a rabbit out of the drive and quail off the utility lines.  Saw a cabbage butterfly, pill bug, house fly, and crickets

 Tasks: Water running in the village ditch on Tuesday.

Thursday I used a string trimmer to cut down last years stems on the garlic chives.  Then, sitting on the ground, I used a floral rake to remove the cuttings and dead leaves that cling to plants.  When I’m on the ground, the action is like rowing a boat, and less of a strain on my back.

Everything was too wet on Friday, so I finished pruning.  I did the fruit trees and privet bushes that edge the drive in January.  This week I cut catalpa tips that were at eye level, and cut back some junipers that were spreading into pathways.  I also cut Siberian elm and apricot sprouts that cannot be poisoned because they are too near valued plants.  Each one I cut will send up sprouts that surround the slain.

Weekly update: I tend to take my junipers for granted.  I notice when their branches intrude, and when they have problems, like the insect webs in 2015.  Otherwise, I more often make notes of seedlings I remove from garden beds.

That said, I’m not sure this was the first year a male tree produced pollen, or if it is just the first time I happened to notice.  I transplanted five from various places in 2006, and four survived.  One began producing berries in 2015, and has done so every year ever since.

I did notice one tree was looking brown earlier, and wondered about drought.  When I looked closer, the tips of the branches were brown.  The known female was green, and the other two were bright green.

Everything one reads about Juniperus monosperma emphasizes their poor germination and slow growth rates.  Normally, females do not produce berries until they are ten-years old.  Mine began bearing fruit when it was nine.  It took sixteen years for the first male to produce.

Kathleen Johnson, of the U. S. Forest Service, stresses everything depends of water.  In droughts, trees can “stop active growth when moisture is limited but can resume growth when moisture availability improves.”

There’s no question where the seeds come from.  My property abuts grassland on the south where scattered trees are growing.  I know the one closest is a female.  While birds are responsible for most of the seed dispersal, I have never see birds in the areas where seedlings come up.

I suspect the quail and the wind.  The first used to live under the female, until a neighbor’s dogs began harassing them.  Then they started trying to roost on my back porch.  I often see them on the utility lines that run along the prairie boundary.  I think it likely that the seeds were released when the birds were on the wires, and the wind moved them around the house.  Johnson says they germinate best when they are buried.  The wind also handled that.

Before I transplanted some seedlings along my drive, I moved six to the other side of the yard.  Two made it through the summer, but I saw nothing after three years.  The area was exposed and bare, like much of the prairie.

When I moved the others in August of 2006, I planted them downhill from the gravel drive between winterfat bushes.  Johnson says researchers think shade is important.  The man rebuilding my driveway in 2012 went out of his way to uproot the winterfat.  He was a rancher, and saw them as a problem.  The junipers seemed to have grown more since their nursemaids were removed.

They get water because I planted other shrubs and trees near them.  This past summer they got more water than usual because the ground squirrel damaged the hose.  It leaked in places, but not enough to justify replacing it.

The two nearest the well did better than the ones uphill.  The pump house is near a culvert that runs under the drive, moving water from my neighbors metal building roof to a place beyond my drive.  While junipers have long taproots, they also produce lateral roots in the top 3' of the soil that may be 2.5 to 3 times the height of the trees.  I believe those, especially the southern female, have roots in the area where the galvanized pipe traps water.

Notes on photographs: Taken 30 March 2020.
1. Female juniper with last year’s fruit; color is less bright and the ends are green.
2. Male juniper; color is less bright and ends are brown.
3. Undeclared juniper; color is bright and the ends are green.

End notes:
Kathleen A. Johnson.  “Juniperus monosperma.”  Fire Effects Information System, 2002.  Available on a U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service website.