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.
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.
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