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.