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).
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