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.