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.
No comments:
Post a Comment