Celia

Weather: Precipitation twice this week, both times the result of moisture kicked up by Celia, and both times with long periods of gentle rain and no strong winds.

Last useful rain: 6/26.  Week’s low: 57 degrees F.  Week’s high: 93 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 47 mph in Santa Fé on Sunday.  Days in June with winds over 25 mph: 21 of 25; day’s with temperatures in the 90s: 15 of 25.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, bird of paradise, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, fern bush, Arizona and  red tipped yuccas, Asiatic lilies, daylilies, Russian sage, sweet peas, bouncing Bess, hollyhocks, Shasta daisy, yellow yarrow; one person has apricots on the ground

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Bush morning glory, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, wild licorice, alfalfa, white sweet clover, scurf peas, fern leaf and leather leaf globe mallows, buffalo gourd, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goat’s beards, native and common dandelions; juniper berries formed

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, cliff rose, tamarix cultivars, regale lilies, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, white spurge, golden spur columbine, winecup mallows, sidalcea, ladybells, coral and foxglove beard tongues, Maltese crosses, Jupiter’s beard, blue flax, catmints, pink evening primroses, tomatillo, Mexican hats, black-eyed Susans, chocolate flowers, plains and lance leaf coreopsis, blanket flowers, anthemis, white yarrow, purple cone flowers

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons; someone in the village has petunias

Animal sightings: Rabbit, two hummingbirds, western chickadees, geckoes, unidentified butterfly, hawk moth, small bees, hornets, lots of small grasshoppers after rain, harvester and sidewalk ants, earthworms; hear crickets

Tasks: I finally found the harvester ant hill.  Every time I’ve been working along the west side of the drive, I saw the large black insects crawling through the areas where I was working.  Saturday, they were particularly active.  They weren’t just climbing around the brick edging, but were carrying seeds across dead grasses to the western fence.

I went out with a bottle of poison and found a very large, say 18" across hill, that was several inches high in the crown of the ranch road.  The road has not been used in years.  I continued along the road, and found another hill of large, red ants, which I also treated.

While I was out there, and still wearing rubber gloves, I picked the Russian thistle carcasses that had gotten caught in salt bushes.  I took them to the far side of the road, so they would have a clear path north when the winds return.

After the rains pass this coming week, both the sidewalk ants and thistle seedlings will multiply.  I figured there was no point in going after them before then.  However, I did order new batteries for my weed eater in anticipation.  After two years, they only would stay charged about five minutes.

Weekly update: Our moisture is coming from Celia.  While some thought it would become a hurricane, it has remained an off-shore tropical storm that has moved slowly from the southwest coast of México to the southern tip of Baja.  It has kicked up moisture that moved north through the western valleys into New Mexico.

The unusual feature is the north-south movement; usually moisture moves from southwest to northeast.  Mexico’s weather service noted Celia had “extensive cloud bands, in interaction with a low-pressure channel.” [1]

At our end, the weather bureau has variously said “the H5 high centers itself still to our east over the SE US while another closed low dives southward into central CA,” [2] and “a rich monsoon moisture plume is expected as NM will be in a weakness between two high pressure centers.” [3]

What our local forecasters didn’t say was that the high pressure area to the east, which is keeping the moisture over Rio Arriba County, is a heat dome.  It apparently began last winter when temperatures in the western Pacific warmed.  When the air heated by the ocean moved east over the colder eastern Pacific, it rose and moved onto land. [4]

An atmospheric science professor at Iowa State University suggests the warm mass then ran into the jet stream, “a band of fast winds high in the atmosphere that generally runs west to east.”  William Gallus said the jet stream normally meanders in a wavelike pattern between north and south.  When heat causes the movements to “become bigger, they move slower and can become stationary.  That’s when heat domes can occur.” [5]

In Minnesota, Sven Sundgaard thought the conditions that now affect us began when that hot air reached the Desert Southwest two to three weeks ago.  That was when our temperatures reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. [6]

The dome formed as the heat compressed the air under it, driving out the moisture.  That, in turn, meant fewer clouds to block the sun.  With no moisture and increasing heat, the dome became a stable mass. [6]  It now  has moved east to channel our rains, which will continue until the dome moves farther east or Celia dissipates.

I have no idea how much rain has fallen here.  As of 9 am Sunday, the National Weather Service report for Los Alamos said at least 1.3" in the past two days.

Saturday evening around 6:30 pm, I walked around my property.  Then, the standing water was confined to the yard of my neighbor who scrapes away his vegetation several times a year.  I discovered a dent in the eave of my garage where water was pouring down.  That explained why the gravel in that area always disappears.

The ground between the grasses to the south, salt bushes to the west, and winterfat to the north was wet and tan in color.  The soil in my garden beds, where I occasionally add manure and fertilizer, was darker.  The ranch road was the palest shade, especially the track on the west side where I dumped the Russian thistles.

Of course, water was trapped in the bed with the pansies, because it’s under the drip line of the back porch and gets all the water that falls on the back half of the house.  The area near the down spout for the eave on the front side also had a layer of water.

This morning when I made the same circuit, water was beginning to pool between the winterfats, especially those just south of the alfalfa near the crab apples.  In back, the shade bed was filled to the capacity, and the overflow was draining past the lilac and along a path that had formed in back when I was removing Russian thistles in April.

In front, water had filled some low places in some beds, but nothing was trapped in the brick-lined ditch that carries water away.

The greater affects were beyond my fences.  The yard of my neighbor, which had some water last night now, was filled with pools of water.  He has the misfortune of having his drive at the point where the road curves, so some of the water that is flowing downhill on the asphalt continues into his yard.

More of it flows into the downhill ranch road, which had water running on the surface.  My neighbor to the north cuts his vegetation whenever it gets high.  The previous owner scraped it late in summer.  The result is standing water on the downhill side, just above the part of my drive that goes along the north fence.

I did that walk about 7 am, when it was raining gently.  When I went out two hours later, the downfall was just a mist, the running water had stopped from lack of supply, and the standing water all had sunk into the ground.  It will be a few days before we can know if it finally reached the roots of the native vegetation.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Asiatic lily hybrid, 24 June 2022.
2.  Daylily tetraploid cultivar, 25 June 2022.

End notes:
1.  “Tropical Storm Celia Continues To Intensify and Could Become a Hurricane.  The Mexacinist website, 23 June 2022.

2.  Guyer.  “Forecast Discussion” for 14 June 2022 at 2:18 am.  United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service website for Los Alamos, New Mexico.  For what it’s worth, NOAA defines “H5” as “500 millibar level height (in a standard atmosphere this is near 5,500 meters (18,000 ft).”

3.  “Forecast Discussion” for 23 June 2022 at 3:30 am, National Weather Service website for Los Alamos.

4.  “What Is a Heat Dome?”  NOAA, Ocean Service website, last updated 7 July 2021.  Research done by NOAA’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program.

5.  William Gallus.  “What Is a Heat Dome?”  The Conversation website, 22 June 2022.

6.  Sven Sundgaard.  “Tracking the Heat Dome: Short and Long-Term Impacts for Minnesota.”  Bring Me the News website, 11 June 2022.

7.  Sundgaard.

This Is Not Normal

 

Weather: Blas is the right kind of hurricane.  So far as I know, it didn’t invade land, but churned up enough water to send great amounts of moisture through México, where the drought is as serious as it is here. [1]  Fortunately, whatever impediment was turning moisture to the east has cleared so we got some rain Friday night.

Saturday was the first day in weeks when I could relax; I did not have to start watering before I ate breakfast.  Taking care of a garden shouldn’t be an albatross.  When I lived in Michigan it wasn’t.  I could work when I felt like it, weeding and pruning, but I only had to run a sprinkler on weekends in the heat of the summer.  As I said last week, the drought has turned daily watering into a “do it or lose it” competition in which victory is far from certain.

Last useful rain: 6/19.  Week’s low: 48 degrees F.  Week’s high: 101 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 41 mph in Santa Fé on Monday.  Days in June with winds over 25 mph: 17 of 18; day’s with temperatures in the 90s: 13 of 18.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid and wild pink roses, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red tipped yucca, Asiatic lilies, daylilies, red hot poker, Russian sage, bouncing Bess, sweet peas, lance leaf coreopsis, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver lead nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, scurf peas, fern leaf and leather leaf globe mallows, velvetweed, Hopi tea, goat’s beards, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, dandelions, awn grass

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, yellow potentillas, tamarix cultivars, regale lilies fragrant, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, white spurge, coral and fox glove beard tongues, golden spur columbine, winecup mallows, ladybells, blue flax peaked, catmints, Queen Anne’s lace, pink evening primroses, black-eyed Susans, Mexican hats, Shasta daisies peaked, chocolate flowers fragrant, plains coreopsis, blanket flowers, anthemis, white yarrow

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons

Animal sightings: Rabbits, quail, humming bird, western chickadees, geckoes, black swallowtail and unidentified butterflies, bumble bees, hornets, grasshoppers, squash bugs, sidewalk and harvester ants; hear crickets

On Monday, the man who was changing the water filters on my well killed a black widow spider that was nesting in the lid of the well house.  It’s been several years since I’ve seen one, but I often found them near the retaining wall.  I never weed close to it, because I still assume they are still there.

Tuesday, I was raking out dead leaves from a grass clump when I pulled up a hornets’ nest.  Needless to say, I scurried away as quickly a possible, only to return with a can of insecticide.  Then I left the area for the day.  The photograph is the bottom side.

Tasks: The weather forecast said it would rain Friday night, so that morning I planted the last of the summer seeds.  These were ones I kept to put in places where nothing had germinated.  One never knows quite what was the problem: in some cases it was heat or lack of water, in others I suspect the seeds weren’t good or adapted for this climate.  Then, of course, there are always the predatory ants, birds, and rabbits.

Weekly update: Last week, I said I watered the pansies in the early afternoon as much to cool the air around them as to hydrate their roots.  I got the ideas years ago when I was reading about Arab gardens in Spain.  The fountains and canals didn’t just bring water to the households but also cooled the air like evaportive coolers.

I couldn’t find the source for that fact now, and it doesn’t matter.  We learn by absorbing bits of information that, for some reason, stick with us.  The longer they’re in our brains, the more likely they are to be altered.

When, at a later date, one acts on some half-remembered fact, like I’ve been doing, failure is chalked up to experience, but it’s always hard to credit success to one’s efforts.  I’ve learned too many factors are involved to believe I was the prime mover.

It was a surprise this week to discover this wasn’t just some bit of junk science.  In Kansas, where the effects of heat are exacerbated by humidity, owners of feedlots install sprinkling systems to cool down their animals. [2]

The reason this became news is more than 2,000 head died this week.  With the heat, they had “a huge spike in humidity” when “wind speeds actually dropped substantially.”  The changes were so sudden the cattle couldn’t adjust to the heat stress.  Anthony Tarpoff added “as long as there is a breeze — the animals are able to recover.” [3]

The owner of one feedlot said, “this is not a normal event.”  While Brandon Depenbusch conceded “it does happen,” he added “it is extremely abnormal.” [4]

The reason I even read about the cattle is that I was interested in what I thought was extreme heat this year.  I was annoyed when some meterologist said “it’s not uncommon to see weather patterns that support a heat wave.” [5]  I thought, what planet is Robert Oravec on.  While I suspected he might be from Phoenix, he actually is stationed in College Park, Maryland.

I got so annoyed, in fact, that I looked up the temperatures I recorded for June for the last five years.  The averages for the first 16 day were 89.9 F, 86.6 F, and 87.9 F for 2018 to 2020.  Then, last year, the average jumped more than three degrees to 93.2 F.  This year the average is 93.6.

The chart above shows temperatures have reached at least 100 degrees three times last year, and two times this year.  Temperatures rose to the high 90s once in 2019, three times last year, and seven times this year.  As Depenbusch said, it happens, but it’s not normal.

Notes on photographs:
1. Daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) growing in the shade of the apricot tree, 16 June 2022.  I put in a row, and they chose where to naturalize.

2.  Hornets’ nest found in a clump of grass, 16 June 2022.

3.  Table of temperature highs for June 1-June 16 for the past five years (2018–2022).  Dark blue = 2018, rust = 2019, gray = 2020, gold = 2021, medium blue = 2022.

End notes:
1.  This is based on seeing Air Quality maps that show smoke coming from México.  I’ve never been able to get useful information about conditions there because I ask Google my questions in English.  I don’t know enough Spanish to know what to ask.

2.  Roxana Hegeman.  “Thousands Of Cattle Killed By Brutal Heat, Humidity In Kansas.”  Associated Press, published by Huffington Post website, 16 June 2022.

3.  Anthony John Tarpoff, veterinarian with Kansas State University.  Quoted by Hegeman.

4.  Brandon Depenbusch.  Quoted by Hegeman.

5.  Robert Oravec, National Weather Service, Weather Prediction Center.  Quoted by Ben Blanchet.  “Record-Breaking Heat Wave Hits Over 75 Million Americans.”  Huffington Post website, 13 June 2022.

Not Again

Weather: I’ve been learning more about the daily temperature cycle as I try to keep the pansies from dying.

My thermometer says it starts getting hot before noon — I don’t know the actual temperature because the sensor is in the sun in late morning, and not reliable.

Then, one of several things may happen.  The heat may cause winds, or I think technically convection.  Even when the temperature rises, the moving air tempers its effects by removing heat from the vicinity of plants.

Soon after noon, clouds begin to form.  I suppose they are from evaporation or water released into the air by fire fighters, since no moisture has moved into our area from either Colorado or México.  Friday, the weather bureau was blaming a high pressure system.  I take its word; all I can see on the satellite is moisture that’s moving north from México is being turned east into Texas.

The clouds screen the sun and temperatures begin dropping from 1 pm onward.

It is nearing the solstice, so temperatures generally rise as part of the sun’s annual cycle.  Until Friday, the fires were under control, and less water was being used on the one to the southwest of me.  Thus, less water was being released into the atmosphere.  That, along with the high pressure system, has prevented anything from ameliorating the heat.

Last useful rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 51 degrees F.  Week’s high: 100 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 46 mph in Santa Fé on Monday.  Days in June with winds over 25 mph: 10 of 11; day’s with temperatures in the 90s: 6 of 11.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey, hybrid and wild pink roses, silver lace vine, Asiatic lilies, daylilies, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, sweet peas, coreopsis; catalpa blooming period cut short by heat

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Datura, bindweed, green flower five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, scurf peas, fern leaf globe mallow, velvet weed, Hopi tea, strap leaf aster, goat’s beards, common and native dandelions; three awn, cheat,  and brome grasses

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Corn in one shaded yard

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior and miniature roses, yellow potentillas, tamarix cultivar, red hot pokers, Johnson blue geranium, Maltese crosses, white spurge; coral, fox glove, and smooth beard tongues; golden spur columbine, Dutch clover, winecup mallow, blue flax, catmints, Rumanian sage, pink evening primroses, Mexican hats, Ozark coneflower, Shasta daisies, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, anthemis, white and yellow yarrow; sour cherries ripe

What’s coming up in my yard: Second leaves on some Heavenly Blue morning glory and African marigold seedlings

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons; someone in the village has petunias

Animal sightings: Rabbits, hummingbird, western chickadees, geckoes; cabbage, swallowtail, and other unidentified butterflies; ladybug, large dragonfly, bumble and small bees, hornets, grasshoppers, sidewalk and harvester ants; hear crickets and noisy insects

The only thing that seems to love running about in the sun and heat are the geckoes: a rabbit comes into the shade of some shrubs in the late afternoon, while I’ve startled chickadees in areas where water was spraying.

Tasks: I began removing sweet peas that were growing over hoses, or had gotten tall enough to block water from getting to its preferred destination.

I also am spending more time watering seeds with a garden hose, rather than a soaker.  Last year, I only watered the seeds in the bed outside my gate.  Now, I’m watering the pansies in the late mornings, rather than the evening when it is part of my routine.  With the dry conditions, I have added all the other seed beds to the late morning regimen.  What took 5 minutes has grown into half an hour.

Weekly update: The worst thing about the drought and associated heat and high winds is that it wears me down.  Growing a garden anywhere is an act of optimism that somehow survives constant negative feedback.  One keeps going, even when it is obvious flowers will continue to be blighted by heat, and drought continues to gnaw away at the very soil that supports it all.

There were high winds between 6 pm and 7 pm on Wednesday.  I have no idea how high, because Santa Fé did not report wind speeds for that one time period to the weather bureau.  They weren’t as strong as those on April 12, but were much stronger than anything we’ve had since.

It happened to be the time when I run water to plants on the south side of the house, so I was outside several times.  Dirt was blowing from everywhere in my neighbor’s yard.  I said last week, this had stopped.  I don’t know if the winds loosened more dirt, or if they were moving at a lower altitude.  The next day, the dog kicked up dust every time it ran along the fence to bark at passers by.

I’m not growing the pansies from some nostalgic desire to recreate Midwestern conditions here in arid New Mexico.  One of the problems with construction is that the ground around a house gets disturbed.  Some gets destroyed just by the needs to level an area.  If nothing is done, plants like Russian thistles colonize the barren ground.

My neighbor’s answer is to hire someone to scrape away the vegetation several times in the summer.  This has the added benefit of eliminating fire hazards near his residence.  Fires probably aren’t new to this area; they may not have been like the ones this summer, but when wood was the only fuel, fire must have been a constant danger.  Eliminating dry matter is inherited wisdom.

I’ve tried another tactic, keeping the native vegetation in place.  While it may be a fire hazard, having a vertical board fence is worse.  I would have preferred a stone wall, but every time I mentioned it, people said it was too expensive and refused to consider doing the work.

The problem is around the house, where I placed foot-square, Saltillo tiles around the foundation to keep away both weeds and vermin.  The one problem area is the few feet on the downhill side of the southwest corner of the back porch.  It’s in the drip line for the roof, so all the soil improvements have washed away.

Since it’s behind some lilacs, I’ve tried any number of shade tolerant plants: first native grasses, then various bedding plants.  The clover seed I planted this year came up everywhere but in that one small section.

Most recently, I’ve been planting different hostas in hopes that if they got started they would protect the ground from erosion, and allow some grass to grow.  I’ve put some in each of the last three years.  They survive, but so far I haven’t found a variety that will thrive.  The pansies simply are interspersed to keep the ground covered.

Anyway, it was while I was checking their condition Friday evening that I saw the smoke column beyond the northern end of the Jémez.  The temperature was 95 degrees F, but the air was calm.  It was then the angst of “Not Again” settled on me.

It wasn’t just that I’ve learned what the various smoke patterns mean.  This one signaled a new fire was being fought.  It was the difficulty of finding out what was going on, and if it affected me and my breathing problems.

Walls of silence have been erected by bureaucrats everywhere who are trying to protect themselves in the face of declining budgets.  Every institution, not just the government but the media and corporations, are trying to maintain some level of services with less money.  Inevitably, that means less populated areas like Rio Arriba county get left behind.

The county has no weather station, and so I have to make deductions based on reports from Los Alamos and Santa Fé.  Having no report of wind speeds when it was most needed is typical of what happens: someone may have made an error or equipment may have failed.  Either way, something that should have been known has been lost.

When I got in the house Friday, I checked the weather bureau site and noticed an Air Quality alert that mentioned the Midnight Fire near El Rito.  The office in Albuquerque was passing on a message from some state office that said the fire was in Colfax County, and listed the areas that would be effected.  It included places like Ojo Caliente, Taos, Los Alamos, and Santa Fé.  It did not mention the Española valley.  Someone in the state should have had a better grasp of local geography than that.  Colfax County is up by Raton; El Rito is in Rio Arriba county.

Garbled as it was, I had a name and found some information from various media sites that said it was discovered on Thursday, and was 60 acres.  That was the early report.  Another said it had grown to 500 acres. [1]

It took the New Mexico Fires website until noon on Saturday to issue a report.  Overnight, the conflagration had spread to 3,500 acres.  There are only so many trained men and women in the country, let alone in New Mexico.  Individuals and resources are being diverted from the fires north of Mora. [2]  They must have long since passed the point of “Not Again,” and are blindly continuing to do what they can in the face of overwhelming adversity.

When the temperature in the shade of my house reached 100 degrees F on Saturday, I went out to cool down the pansies.  They still were wet from being watered around 11 am, but nothing in their short lives could prepare them for that temperature.

As I was coming back into the house, the phone was ringing.  It was an automated call giving me some kind of information about evacuations in the El Rito area.  Since it’s hard to isolate locations by telephone number, it probably was calling every number that might be in the area.

Or, just as important, it may have aimed to contact local relatives of people living in that area who don’t have phones.  People in the valley may know people who live on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo, but many have land in the northern part of the county.  El Rito is getting close to home.

This is the first time I’ve gotten such a call.  This doesn’t mean Midnight is more dangerous than the Cerro Gordo fire when embers were falling near the river in town.  It’s simply an example of the upgrade to emergency systems that has occurred since then.

When an emergency is local, local sources of information are best.  Our television stations are in Albuquerque, as is one of the daily newspapers.  The ones in Santa Fé and Los Alamos are more provincial in their coverage, and the local paper is a weekly.

The first reports on Friday night were all depending on a press release made by the El Rito Ranger District, and the most detailed information was on the website of the Rio Grande Sun. [3]

Notes on photographs: All taken around 6:40 pm on 10 June 2022.
1.  Pansies (Viola wittrockiana) and several varieties of hostas; the white is a piece of bark from the beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis).

2.  Midnight Fire as seen from my back porch; the smoke is blending into the afternoon clouds.

3.  Midnight Fire as captured by the zoom function on my camera.

End notes:
1.  William Coburn.  “Wildfire Breaks out Near El Rito.”  Rio Grande Sun website, 10 June 2022.

2.  Carson Nation Forest Public Information Office.  “Midnight Fire Saturday morning update.”  New Mexico Fires website, 11 June 2022.

3.  Coburn.

Zero Sum Games

Weather: More of the same winds and high afternoon temperatures.  High winds Monday dislodged another set of Russian thistles.  On Tuesday, I noticed a neighbor’s fence had been damaged.  It was made from prefabricated vertical board sections, and two had fallen.

Last useful rain: 4/1.  Week’s low: 38 degrees F.  Week’s high: 88 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 46 mph in Santa Fé on Monday.  Days in May with winds over 25 mph: 30 of 31; in June 4 of 4.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey, hybrid and wild pink roses; catalpas, honeysuckle, silver lace vine; red-tipped, tall, and weeping yuccas; red hot poker, peonies, snow-in-summer, sweet peas, coreopsis, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, alfalfa, scurf peas, oxalis, fern leaf globe mallow, nits-and-lice, showy milkweed, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, dandelions; rice, three awn, cheat, and brome grasses

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Toothed spurge

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior and miniature roses, yellow potentillas, tamarix cultivar, chives, Johnson Blue geranium, coral bells, Maltese cross, foxglove and white slender beard tongues, golden spur columbine, Dutch clover, winecup mallow, blue flax, catmints, Rumanian sage, pink evening primroses, Shasta daisies, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, anthemis, white yarrow

What’s coming up in my yard: Sensation cosmos seedlings are producing their second leaves.

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons; someone in the village has petunias

Animal sightings: Rabbits, western chickadees, geckoes, hawk moths; sulfur, swallowtail, and other unidentified butterflies; bumble bees, hornets, crickets. grasshoppers, sidewalk and harvester ants; heard a woodpecker

Tasks: I planted the last of the seeds, and returned to the annual round of cleaning beds and clearing pathways for me and water.

Russian thistles are as big a problem as I feared they would be.  One carcass landed in a bed that I had cleared on 12 April.  Friday, I pulled 225 seedlings that had come up between the seeds I sowed a week ago.

The problem isn’t ending.  Everyday I find new carcasses, and pieces that fall off.  Last Monday, 40 appeared in my back yard.

Weekly update: Drought continues to be an invisible menace.  I realized it had been a while since I had seen dirt blowing.  This came to me as I was staring at the mountains, and noticed nothing was moving in the high winds in my neighbor’s yard and the dirt road between us.  I checked, and the last time I made a comment was April 12.

We had the great wind of April 22, and the ones that followed that week that could be measured in Russian thistles.  I only can assume the winds removed all the loose earth, and there’s nothing more to steal until someone plows a yard.

The flowers that don’t happen are another invisible sign of stress.  Some tansy mustards bloomed the first week of April; it usually blooms into May.  Tumble mustard didn’t show this year, and it’s usually flowering now.

As the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado said, “none of them be missed.”  Unfortunately, they are harbingers of other things we don’t notice until too late.  When I went into town on Tuesday, more long-needle pines that were 8' to 10' tall were turning brown.

Grasshoppers haven’t been voracious yet.  They usually devour the baptisia, but this year it completed its bloom cycle.  They used to eat the Shasta daisies, but haven’t in the past few years.  I don’t know if they just weren’t around, or prefer to attack isolated plants instead of clumps.  They’ve pass them to eat coreopsis and blanket flowers blooms on plants that are growing away from the masses.

Drought isn’t acting alone.  The Russian olive that usually blooms in mid-May did nothing this year.  Even when mine fails, I can smell others in the area.  This season, nada.  Many are recovering the cold winter that destroyed top branches.

I can force seeds to germinate.  They are underground where the temperature is somewhat controlled.  I started watering them with a garden hose every day, after I realized the only seeds that grew last year were watered that way.  Normally, they would get moisture every three days.

Water alone won’t make them grow.  Last summer, seedlings never produced their second set of leaves after the heat of June bore down on them.  When the monsoons finally brought rain, it was too late.  A few started to grow, but didn’t mature before frosts.  Most just stayed at their first leaves.

Last year the raspberries came up, and produced nothing after their initial burst.  The same is happening this year.  They usually come up in April and are blooming by the middle of May.  The leaves began emerging the middle of May from the roots, and have not grown since.  Instead of fruit, I’ll be watering them just to keep them alive.

The transition from spring to summer is part of the annual movement of the sun.  If one wants a date, one can use the start of hurricane season, which was May 15.  The water patterns in the Pacific ocean off the western coast of Central American change.

Hurricane Agatha came and went this week, and so did the spring flowering shrubs.  The privet and beauty bush had flowers on Thursday.  On Friday, they were brown or nearly gone.

The threat of the hurricane reminded me nature isn’t exactly a zero-sum proposition, but in this arid part of the world there is only so much water for the atmosphere to distribute.  We got snow this winter, so California did not.  If México gets a hurricane, we may get rain.  What benefits us is becoming a disaster for another.

Notes on photographs: All taken in my yard yesterday, 4 June 2022.
1.  Shasta daisies (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum) in the shadow of the garage.
2.  Partly eaten lance leaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata).
3.  Stunted red raspberry (Rubus idaeus).