Needle Grass

 

Weather: It rained almost every day this week.  When I was out working Wednesday, the grass was still damp, so my sweat pants got wet.  I went in when my joints began to complain and changed clothes.  Dry clothes are one of the great joys of the world.  Whenever I experience this, I also think of George Washington.  Popular history says he died after getting chilled in the rain.  In those days in that humid part of Virginia, before central heating, he probably didn’t have clothes or bedding that was dry and couldn’t get warm no matter how much time he spent in front of an open fire.  Modern life may have its issues with power plants, but warm, dry houses is not one of them.

Last useful rain: 7/30.  Week’s low: 58 degrees F.  Week’s high: 93 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 45 mph in Santa Fé on Monday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red-tipped yucca, daylilies, gladiola, Russian sage, sweet peas, David and purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, roses of Sharon, few hollyhocks, purple salvia, pink evening primroses, cultivated sunflowers, lance leaf coreopsis, yellow yarrow, pampas grass

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, vetch, fern leaf and leather leaf globe mallows, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, goat’s heads, alfilerillo, lamb’s quarter, pigweed, Russian thistles, winterfat, native sunflowers, Hopi tea, goldenrod, wild lettuce, horseweed, tahoka daisies, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goat’s beards, dandelions; corn, needle, rice, tobosa, side oats, six-week and black grama, ring muhly, smooth brome, barnyard, quack, three awn and bunny tail grasses; conical tan mushroom

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, yellow potentilla, cliff rose, fern bush, caryopteris, garlic chives, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, white spurge, large flower soapwort, lead plant, sidalcea, ladybells, coral beard tongues, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, Siberian catmint, coral bells, Saint Jon’s wort, honeydew melon, tomatillo, chocolate flowers, cushion chrysanthemum, anthemis, Mönch aster, black-eyed Susans, gloriosa daisies, Mexican hats, plains coreopsis, blanket flowers, white yarrow, purple coneflowers; remnants of spring and early summer buds

What bedding plants are blooming: Snapdragons

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Annual baby’s breath, sweet alyssum, Sensation cosmos, zinnia

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, western chickadees, geckoes, yellow swallowtail butterflies, red dragonfly, bumble and small  bees, hornets, grasshoppers, harvester and sidewalk ants; hear crickets

Tasks: Last Sunday I was finally able to burn the accumulated brush from this year’s clean up.  The flames were dark orange, except in an area where there may have been some winterfat branches.  There, they were yellow-gray.  As usual, no smoke rose until I started to sprayed the remains with a garden hose to ensure nothing would flare up.

With the rain, I couldn’t add dead wood to a new pyre, so I turned to pulling the pests of summer: heath asters, wild lettuce, horse weed, purple asters, and brome grass.

Weekly update: Saturday I walked out to the nearby prairie for the first time in years.  I could see it was greening up, but I wanted to see if it really was recovering, or had been invaded by seeds dropped by the high winds of April.

The hill behind my house has always been needle grass, but all that remained Saturday were black lumps.  The green came from invaders.

Stipa Comata is a bunch grass, so there always are spaces between clumps.  However, when a stand is healthy, the previous years dead blades cover the area to mulch the ground.  It’s difficult for other plants to find a foothold.

In dry years less mass is generated and less protection is created.  This can continue so long as nothing happens to disturb the equilibrium.  The above picture was taken in 2011, and the one below in 2014.

This area was protected by the topography.  My house is on a hill that slopes both west and south.  The prairie hill faces north and west.  Years ago a ranch road was cleared at the western base, and a few years ago a narrow utility land carved out at the northern base.

The area in the photographs is on the lee side, so winds bringing seeds from the southwest don’t reach it.  This year’s wind was different.  It lasted for hours, and carried plants high in the air.  They could and did drop anywhere.

The needle grass clumps are black, with few new green blades.  Because of several dry years, there also is less dead verbiage between the plants.  The thistles have taken filled the interstices.  As they get larger, and they will with this week’s rain, they will overshadow the grasses and drop seeds that will sprout more densely next year.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Russian thistle (Salsola pestifer) bud or flower outside on the shoulder of the road, 30 July 2022.

2.  Needle grass (Stipa comata) waving in the wind on the prairie, 19 May 2012.
3.  Needle grass in the same area on 10 April 2011.
4.  Needle grass after some dry years, 18 April 2014.
5.  Needle grass this summer, 30 July 2022.

Monarch Butterflies

 

Weather: Hot, and not cooling off at night.  Earlier this year, when temperatures were in as high in June, morning temperatures were in the low 50s.  This week they are in the low 60s.  The house has become a heat trap, and plants, like pansies, that need cool evenings to recover, are dying.

I think by Thursday the heat was trapping pollutants.  My body was being handicapped in its response to room temperatures in the high 80s by bad air that caused my nose to stuff up.  I was getting the kinds of head and eye aches I had had when the fires actively were being fought.  No doubt some of the fire suppressing chemicals are being sucked up with the moisture in the daily cycle of evaporation.

Last useful rain: 7/14.  Week’s low: 60 degrees F.  Week’s high: 98 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 41 mph in Santa Fé on Tuesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, fern bush, caryopteris, buddleia, bird of paradise, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red-tipped yucca, daylilies, Russian sage, Spanish broom, sweet peas, purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, rose of Sharon, hollyhocks peaked, winecup mallow, purple salvia, squash, cultivated sunflowers, blanket flowers, lance leaf coreopsis, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver lead nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, vetch, toothed spurge, fern leaf and leather leaf globe mallows, purslane, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, stick leaf, alfilerillo, lamb’s quarters, prostate knotweed, goat’s heads, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goat’s beards, common dandelions, corn; needle, rice, tobosa, side oats and six-weeks grama, smooth brome, barnyard, quack, three awn, and bunny tails grasses

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: As soon as I pull them, new pigweeds, goat’s heads, and Russian thistles emerge

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, cliff rose, tamarix cultivar, garlic chives, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, white spurge peaked,  David phlox, large leaf soapwort, lead plant, sidalcea, ladybells, coral beardtongue, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, coral bells, Saint John’s wort, tomatillo, chrysanthemums, anthemis, Mönch aster, Shasta daisies, black-eyed Susans, gloriosa daisies, Mexican hats peaked, chocolate flowers, plains coreopsis, white yarrow, purple coneflowers; remnants of spring and early summer buds

What bedding plants are blooming: Snap dragons; some pansies losing mass and shrinking away

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Annual baby’s breath, sweet alyssum, Sensation cosmos

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, western chickadees, geckoes, yellow and black swallowtail butterflies, hawkmoths, small bees on fern bushes, hornets, grasshoppers, sidewalk ants; hear crickets; kicking down insect webs

Tasks: The annual cycle continues of weeding and feeding a bit day.

Weekly update: I saw a full-sized monarch butterfly Thursday.  Ironically, it was the day I read Danaus plexippus plexippus is now officially an endangered species. [1]

The list of potential causes is long: logging in forests in México where they spend the winter, use of herbicides in the Midwest that kill the milkweed needed by caterpillars, climate change.  Conservation attempts have been both useful — the Mexican government created a reserve in 1986 [2] — and symbolic — the narrow protected migration path in the National Butterfly Center in Texas.   Effective actions are inhibited by conflicting data and politics. [3]

I first saw monarchs in large numbers here in April 2019, when they surrounded my blooming sandcherry.  I assumed then that weather conditions had altered their migratory path from México.  It’s the kind of variation that makes it difficult to calculate monarch populations, because those who expect them are disappointed and raise alarms, while those to who receive them don’t notice.

The butterflies arrived the next year, but before the sandcherry was blooming and they settled on a peach tree.  The same thing happened last year.  This year the sandcherry was blooming for them.  These kinds of asymmetric events can lead to deaths in small areas, without affecting the size of the total cohort.

Reduced populations of Asclepias in the Midwest commonly are attributed to the increased use of herbicides.  Here it seems more a function of weather and aesthetics.  The whorled milkweeds (Aesclepias verticillata) have all but disappeared in my immediate area because people want to keep their shoulders bare.  They don’t use chemicals, but string trimmers and tractors.

The more common showy milkweeds (Asclepias speciosa) grow along fields that are irrigated, and usually survive on the far side of the pipes.  I’ve seen some this year, but not as many as usual.  I only noticed one blooming in late May.  I think heat has been the problem.  They usually bloom the first week in June when temperatures were in the 80s.  They reached the 90s the next week.

While monarchs get all the publicity, they are not the only butterflies whose habits have been changing.  The appearance of swallowtails usually has been sporadic, but this week and last I’ve seen more of both the yellow and black species.

What I haven’t seen are the smaller cabbage and sulphur butterflies.  The whites usually are common, but this year I’ve only seen one a month from March to June.  I noticed the yellow ones twice.

They are not as spectacular as monarchs, and don’t have the same kind of specialized dietary requirements.  That makes their apparent disappearnce more alarming, because it means environmental changes, whether heat, fire, or drought, are affecting the plebeians as well as the aristocrats of the butterfly world.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Flower on side oats grama grass (Bouteloua curtipendula) in by yard, 17 July 2022; planted with purchased seed.  The native varieties are black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda) and six-weeks grama (Bouteloua barbata var. barbata).

2.  Blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis) in my yard, 23 July 2022; planted with purchased seed.  Both have the characteristic long seed head, but side oats are pointed down, while blue grama are horizontal.

End notes:
I discussed the appearance of large numbers of monarchs on  Nature Abhors a Garden on 4 April 2019.

1.  International Union for Conservation of Nature.  “Migratory Monarch Butterfly Now Endangered - IUCN Red List.”  Press release, 21 July 22.

2.  Catrin Einhorn.  “Monarch Butterflies Are Endangered, Leading Wildlife Monitor Says.”  The New York Times website, 21 July 2022.

3.  Elizabeth Pennisi.  “Are monarchs endangered?  Scientists debate as United States mulls protection.”  Science website, 8 January 2021.

Garden Hoses

Weather: We’ve had clouds, and even rain on Thursday night, even though the satellite showed little moisture moving over the area.  Most of it probably was evaporation from the fire sites that hovered in the atmosphere.

Last useful rain: 7/14.  Week’s low: 59 degrees F.  Week’s high: 96 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 32 mph in Los Alamos on Tuesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, fern bush, caryopteris, bird of paradise, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red tipped yucca, daylilies, Russian sage, sweet peas, purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, rose of Sharon, hollyhocks, pink evening primrose, Shasta daisies, cultivated sunflowers, black-eyed Susan, lance leaf coreopsis, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Illinois bundle flower, datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, vetch, white prairie evening primrose, toothed spurge, fern leaf and leather leaf globe mallows, purslane, yellow mullein, buffalo gourd, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, stick leaf, alfilerillo, lamb’s quarter, prostrate knotweed, goat’s heads, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goat’s beards, native dandelion; brome, needle, side oats grama, rice, barnyard, three awn, and quack grasses

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences:  Áñil del muerto

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, yellow potentilla, cliff rose, tamarix cultivar, garlic chives, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, white spurge, Maltese cross, David phlox, large leaf soapwort, lead plant, sidalcea, winecup mallow, ladybells, coral beard tongues, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, catmints, Saint John’s wort, tomatillo, watermelon, Mönch aster, Mexican hats, chrysanthemum, chocolate flowers, plains coreopsis, blanket flowers, anthemis, gloriosa daisies, white yarrow, purple coneflowers; remnants of spring buds

I planted one of those seed mixtures growers use to sell their less expensive seeds or lots too small to be worth the cost of packaging separately.  Last year, I put one in the bed by the driveway that serves as a retaining wall for dirt traveling downhill.  I had few expectations, but was pleasantly surprised when a number of species bloomed.  This year, so far, the annual baby’s breath and sweet alyssum are blooming.  The latter are taller than the ones sold separately that never seem to germinate.

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons

Animal sightings: Rabbit, two hummingbirds, house finch, western chickadees, woodpecker on utility pole, geckoes, black swallowtail butterfly, hawkmoths, dragonfly, bumble and small bees, hornets, grasshoppers, sidewalk ants, earth worms; hear crickets

Tasks: The humidity has encouraged everything to grow.  All one’s work comes undone, if one expects to step back and see an area cleared of weeds and other distractions.  Shrubs and trees that were pruned in spring have stuck out new branches.  I can push the apricot stems and catalpa pods aside, but will have to deal with thorny rose canes that are intruding into my space.

I’m not the only one.  During the week I hear people out with string trimmers; on Saturday morning I heard rider mowers.

Weekly update: This week I drove by someone who was using a garden hose to tamp down dust from yard work.  I noted the futility of the woman’s effort because she had no nozzle and the water limply fell to the ground.

As I drove on, I realized this wasn’t a question of ignorance, but a symbol of the habits we develop as children that are determined by our physical environments.

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest with city water.  Water pressure was never a problem.  In summer, kids would sometimes turn a hose of each other.  Usually, there was a nozzle to disperse the water, but, if not, we learned how to stick our thumbs over hose openings to make water spray.  Of course, we got wet, but in the heat of summer that was the idea.

Now, I live beyond the reach of city water, and artesian wells are relatively new.  Traditionally, water here came from creeks and acequias.  One didn’t need a hose to deliver it, but a ditch.

The transition to urban uses is hampered by poor quality control by manufactures.  It has been years since I have purchased a nozzle that didn’t leak at the connector.  Water runs down the hose onto my sleeves or flows back to my slacks.  At a minimum, my hands get wet.  It’s not pleasant, but it’s summer.  My clothes dry.

That, too, is a response to discomfort learned in childhood.  What I tolerate, others won’t.

Notes on photographs: This past May I noticed leaves that looked like a vetch growing beside my Garage.  Since it could do no harm, I left it.  This week it began blooming, and it certainly looks like some kind of vetch, though I haven’t figured out which.  Pictures take 16 July 2022.

Gas Line Break

Weather: After three days, the rains stopped on Sunday, and I resumed watering on Wednesday.  I had begun watering the seed beds with a garden hose on Tuesday.  A little rain fell on Friday, enough to cool and moisten the ground in the afternoon, but not enough to sink deeper than the surface.  The winds have stopped, and the temperatures are about what one expects for this time in July.  The wildfires may not be out, but they are contained enough that the Forest Service has been removing equipment and worrying about restoration.

Last useful rain: 7/8.  Week’s low: 59 degrees F.  Week’s high: 93 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 33 mph in Santa Fé on Wednesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, fern bush, caryopteris, bird of paradise, desert willow, trumpet creeper, fern bush, caryopteris, red tipped yucca, daylilies, Russian sage, sweet peas, purple phlox, bouncing Bess, hollyhocks, golden spur columbine, Shasta daisies, cultivated sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, lance leaf coreopsis, yellow yarrow, purple cone flowers

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Illinois bundle flower, datura,  bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, nits and lice, toothed spurge, leather leaf globe mallow, buffalo gourd, Queen Anne’s lace, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, stick leaf, alfilerillo, lamb’s quarter, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy aster, goat’s beards, common and native dandelions, mushrooms

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: The usual summer weeds are sprouting, including toothed spurge, goat’s heads, pigweed, Russian thistles, and quack grass.  Prostrate knotweed is covering large sections of my driveway, and some purslane has come up near burn pile.  I hope the grasses turn into seven week grama, but they could just as easily become cheat or June grass.  Illinois bundle flower is filling a bare area in back that has been ravaged by a rabbit.

The dry, hot spring delayed the revival of plants that depend on water to break their dormancy.  The needle grass in my back yard and beyond on the prairie has begun to green.  Some Siberian elms, which I thought had died at the back of my neighbor’s yard, began leafing, while the brown cholla down the road also began to green.

The early heat prematurely ended the blooming season for many plants.  My catalpa, now laden with pods, also was a branch that is flowering.  Elsewhere, scattered spots of color have appeared on other’s spirea, honeysuckle, and forsythia.

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, yellow potentilla, cliff rose, tamarix cultivars, Asiatic and tiger lilies, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, white spurge, large leaf soapwort, winecup mallow, sidalcea, ladybells, coral beard tongues, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, catmints, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, tomatillo, Mexican hats, chrysanthemum, chocolate flowers, plains coreopsis, blanket flowers, anthemis peaked, gloriosa daisy, white yarrow

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

Animal sightings: Western chickadees, geckoes, swallowtail butterfly, hawk moth, dragonfly, small bees, hornets, grasshoppers, sidewalk ants; hear crickets

Three juncos were breaking into coreopsis seed pods on Monday.  On Tuesday, gold finches were making the same raids.  This is the first year I’ve succeeded in getting many seeds to sprout and bloom.  I’m just hoping they leave enough seeds from acculturated plants to start a colony.

Tasks: Men took their first cut of hay before Tuesday.  In this area, I’ve heard string trimmers, and added mine to the cacophony.

Weekly update: Working in the yard is, first of all, a matter of temperament.  I had a neighbor in Ohio who liked to mow the lawn because it gave him an excuse to be outside.  Others, like my neighbor on the east, hate the very idea and do as little as possible.

The other factor is what one’s predecessors did.  When I lived in Michigan, the previous owners of my house had a company spray their yard periodically to weed and feed.  It took two years for the grass to recover, when I stopped.  For a while it was so weak it was plagued by fungus.

My neighbor on the west always hired someone to scrape his yard bare.  He died last summer, and the person living there now, like my neighbor to the east, doesn’t have an inclination to work outside.  What was there, when I took the above picture after the strong winds of April, was still there in the next picture on Friday.

All that had changed is the four-winged salt bushes, which had volunteered along the front fence, probably had gotten larger.  Mine seem to have done so after the rain.

This week, the new resident hired some people to remove dead shrubs and scrape the yard.  The backhoe arrived on Thursday and leveled the ground on the east side of the house.  On Friday, before I took my nap, he was using the front-end loading bucket to knock down dead branches from the Siberian elms in back.

When I woke the temperature had risen and I went on the back porch to give the pansies some water.  First, I had to let water run to empty the heated liquid out of the hose.  While I was randomly spraying the side yard, I heard the backhoe return.  He apparently drove it home for lunch.

Soon after, around 12:30 pm,  I heard the sound of something caught in wheels.  When I looked that way, the backhoe was parallel to the salt bushes, and he was on the ground looking at the end nearest the fence.  While he was there, a great, gushing sound began.

He had knocked the top off the gas meter.

While he was wandering around the backyard with his phone, the first person to pass stopped, backed up, parked, and went through the fence to make sure someone knew what was happening.

The next few cars drove by oblivious to what was happening.  They had their windows up, and probably their air conditioners on.  Many may also have had radios or other music playing and not heard anything.  I couldn’t hear the gushing when I went in the house.

Then, at 12:45 pm, a second person stopped, and climbed the gate to get in.  Again, he was someone who recognized the problem and wanted to make sure the owner of the house was aware of the gas leak.

Five minutes later, the first fire truck arrived.  Two more came soon after.  They tried to stop traffic, but of course had to let people through.  But, only one at a time and with a caution.  Luckily, there’s little traffic most of the day.

During this period, I had walked out to the fence on the north side of my property.  A fireman told me people are constantly running over meters.  By then, at that location, which was nearer the destroyed meter, I could smell the gas.

As we were talking, the fireman told me not to burn any weeds.  I hadn’t thought of that, but I suppose, for every person who recognizes a crisis, there are any number who have no clue what a gas leak means.

A little after 1 pm, the first gas company truck arrived, but the men didn’t do anything.  I shouldn’t say that, because they probably confirmed the problem to their dispatcher.  But, they weren’t the crew who was qualified to deal with the problem.

Someone from the sheriff’s office showed up five minutes later, and he couldn’t do much either.  The firemen already were handling traffic problems.

It wasn’t until 2:05 pm that a second gas company truck arrived.  Within a minute, there was a whistling sound, and then silence.

In fifteen minutes, a third gas company truck arrived, this one with a backhoe on a trailer.  Then, a crew began digging around the meter.

Five minutes later, the owner arrived, and soon was talking to people on the road behind the fence lined with salt bushes.  All I heard was someone say “I didn’t see it.”

The owner returned to the house, and the emergency vehicles shifted places.  A fire truck that had been up the road, moved behind the one in the photograph, which made it closer to where the men were working.

The sheriff moved to allow that maneuver.  When he returned from turning around, he drove into the yard and knocked on the door.

Soon after 3 pm, the fire trucks left, and the gas crew was waiting to leave.

When I looked Saturday morning, I saw the gas company crew had installed a different kind of meter connection.  Instead, of the heavy metal disc like the one I have, there was a low pipe and a taller one.  Both look more vulnerable than what they replaced.

Oh, and the thistles were still there, kept in place when the gate was open.

Notes on photographs:
1.  White yarrow flowers (Achillea millefolium), 8 July 2022.

2.  My neighbor’s gas meter at the far left on 25 April 2022.  I didn’t intentionally photograph it, so it may be blurry.  I was interested in the number of Russian thistles (Salsola pestifer) that had accumulated after the strong winds a few days before.

3.  The area of my neighbor’s gas meter at 1:11 pm on 8 July 2022, shortly after the fire trucks arrived.  The Russian thistles are still there, but I can’t tell, from the angle, if the four winged salt bushes (Atriplex canescens) had grown.  This may be blurry because of the extreme zoom feature that I used.

4.  My neighbor’s new meter on 9 July 2022, again using a zoom feature that exaggerates the salt bushes.

Where There’s Smoke...

 

Weather: We had rain through Tuesday, then nothing until Friday night.  I have no idea how much fell.  There was about 4" of water in the bottom of the trash bin on Tuesday, but the walls may have captured some moving at angles.  That number may be too high.

On Wednesday, I used my moisture meter, which was designed for house plants, to record levels in parts of the yard.  The probe is just over 6" long and the maximum reading is 8.  In most places I checked, both in a watered bed and in the untouched yard, the reading at 2" was about 3.  It didn’t reach 8 until 6".  There was one place where the probe stopped at 4" with a reading of 8.  Unfortunately, that was where I planted some raspberries that didn’t survive the summer heat.  At least, I have an idea what happened.

I realized on Thursday that it didn’t matter how much water was reaching the roots of the native vegetation.  What mattered for my seedlings was the surface, which had begun to dry almost immediately.  I watered those areas alone until we got rain again Friday night.

Last useful rain: 7/3.  Week’s low: 52 degrees F.  Week’s high: 91 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 32 mph in Santa Fé on Friday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, fern bush, caryopteris, Arizona and red tipped yuccas, daylilies, red hot pokers, Russian sage, sweet peas, purple phlox, bouncing Bess, larkspur, hollyhocks, winecup mallows, Shasta daisies, cultivated sunflowers, lance leaf coreopsis, purple coneflower, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, cholla, bush morning glory, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, oxalis, hoary cress, nits and lice, toothed spurge, leather leaf globe mallows, buffalo gourd, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, alfilerillo, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goat’s beards, common and native dandelions

What’s coming up beyond the walls and fences: Nebraska sedge; lots of unidentified seeds are up in the gravel with their first leaves; a few Russian thistles, pigweed, and ragweed are up along the road; someone was out Saturday with a string trimmer

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature rose, yellow potentillas, cliff rose, tamarix cultivars, Asiatic and tiger lilies, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, golden spur columbine, white spurge, sidalcea, ladybells, coral beard tongues, Maltese crosses, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, catmints, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, tomatillo, Mexican hats, black-eyes Susans, chrysanthemum, chocolate flowers, plains coreopsis, blanket flower, anthemis, white yarrow

What bedding plants are blooming: Pansies, snapdragons; someone in the village has lisianthus in a pot

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, western chickadees, geckoes, black and yellow swallowtail butterflies, hawk moth, lots of small bees, few bumble bees, grasshoppers, harvester ants tried a new hill closer to the house, sidewalk ants, earthworms; hear crickets

Tasks: Some unwanted plants only can be removed when the ground is thoroughly wet.  Queen Anne’s lace and white sweet clover have straight, rubbery roots that will slide out when tugged.  Things like dandelions break, no matter the soil condition, because the roots are less strong.  I even managed to pull a 24" Siberian elm with relatively undeveloped roots.  This week was also the time to pull wild lettuce, but mud clings to its roots that needs to be knocked off.

I spent time working under the flowering crab apple where garlic chives have come up between pavers that line the drainage ditch.  These, too, are best removed when the ground is wet.  They rise from bulbs, which have roots under them.  I used a chisel to loosen them from the side.  Like lettuce, I had to remove mud from the roots.  Decent dirt is too valuable to toss in the trash.

Weekly update: The Forest Service, understandably, is a bit defensive about this year’s fires that were caused by controlled burns.  The affects may not have been as dramatic as the Cerro Grande fire of 2000, which also was caused by a controlled burn. The lab closed, the city was evacuated, and the fire destroyed one neighborhood in Los Alamos.  Those people lost everything.  However, insurance companies set up temporary local offices, and the federal government made sure people had chances to file for compensation.

That one threatened the national laboratory, but the ones this year have been more serious to many who have land in the Sangre de Cristo.  The Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon fires have destroyed ranch buildings and homes that are not insured.  In many cases, people have week-day homes from which they commute to work, and ancestral holdings they visit on weekends to check on their cattle.  Since the second are not considered to be primary residences, they may not qualify for compensation by FEMA.  Regulations written for modern, urbanized life can’t deal with the destruction of a rural life style that has survived for centuries among families whose ancestors spoke Spanish. [1]

Publicity surrounding the Pecos fire led the Forest Service to stop doing controlled burns until more research is done. [2]  This has left some lower level employees feeling helpless, because such tactics are all they’ve ever known.  One person writing about the El Rito fire, which was caused by lightening, wanted to make sure people realized:

“Yesterday, during an extreme fire weather day, firefighters’ suppression efforts were aided to the north and east by previous fire scars and fuel treatments (thinning and other tactics) that had been completed by the Carson National Forest.” [3]

Spokesmen for the Santa Fé National Forest have been more defensive.  They’ve learned, no doubt from telephone calls and media footage, to explain the causes of visible smoke.  They also have been careful to distinguish between containing and extinguishing a fire.  A few days after President Joe Biden visited the fire area, an unnamed spokesman warned:

“Although wetting rain has immediate moderating effects on light fuels, larger logs can take much longer to absorb moisture and will continue to produce smoke until a season ending event.” [4]

The Forest Service also defended why it uses airplane surveillance to judge when a fire is contained, since one part of the Sangre fire was caused by a winter burn that everyone assumed was out.

“With a total fire perimeter of approximately 680 miles, firefighters would have to ‘cold trail’ –  i.e., carefully inspect and feel for heat with a bare hand – about 6.8 miles of perimeter to add just 1% to containment.” [5]

This is not an attack on individual firefighters or the individuals supervising close to 3,000 people [6] working on a 341,735-acre site. [7]  Many have inhaled smoke for days, and probably will have health problems in the future that will not be recognized by insurance companies.

The fires are unprecedented in their extent.  People will bring out their hobby horses to explain the root causes, but the mere fact the fire has been so massive may mean traditional explanations are as limited as the fire prevention tools that are being questioned.

The full extent of the Sangre fire became obvious Tuesday, June 28, when I was in town.  Smoke from dowsed logs and steam from water falling on warm surfaces combined to create a cloud over the mountain range that stretched the full extent of the conflagration.

The clouds had the same shape as the earlier ones caused by flare-ups, but those were small areas.  When those clouds grew longer, one understood it was the consequence of wind dispersing smoke.

These clouds, and they’ve reappeared every day about 11 am, are of a different order.  They tend to lose form in the late afternoon and become generalized cloud banks.  I don’t remember seeing these kinds of clouds after the Cerro Grande or other past fires in the Jémez.  They simply are evidence of 341,735 acres cooling down all at once.

The clouds also have been appearing above the Jémez Springs and El Rito fires, but they are not so impressive, simply because the fires weren’t as large and the interiors didn’t get as hot.  On Wednesday, even with the dampening effects of the rain, firefighters could only work in the valleys of the Sangre because “higher elevation areas remain inaccessible due to recent rains and soil conditions.” [8]

Of course, it’s smoke and steam from the higher elevations that are most visible in downtown Española, which is on the other side of the mountains.  It’s when the fire first climbed the mountains that everyone knew something was going on, and the Forest Service had to explain what suddenly had become so visible.

Notes on photographs: Taken 1 July 2022 in my yard.
1.  Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta).
2.  Black-eyed Susans with their more-cultivated form marketed as gloriosa daisies.

End notes:
1.  Associated Press.  “Wildfire, Residents’ Fury Facing Biden on New Mexico Visit.”  NBC News website, 11 June 2022.

2.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Fire Investigators Determine Cause of Calf Canyon Fire.”  NM Fires website, 27 May 2022.

3.  Carson National Forest Public Information Office.  “Midnight Fire Update June 15, 2022.”  NM Fires website, 15 June 2022.

4.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires June 18, 2022, Daily Update.”  NM Fires website, 18 June 2022.

5.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires June 23, 2022, Daily Update.”  NM Fires website, 23 June 2022.

6.  The peak reported personnel was 3,009.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office. “Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires, May 27, 2022.”  NM Fires website, 27 May 2022.

7.  Current known acreage.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires June 29, 2022, Daily Update.”   NM Fires website, 29 June 2022.

8.  Santa Fe National Forest Public Information Office.  “Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires June 29, 2022, Daily Update.”  NM Fires website, 29 June 2022.