Gully Washer

Weather: Gentle rains since a week ago Thursday left 2" of water in the trash bin Tuesday morning, but couldn’t offset the effects of evaporation on warm days.  By then, so much water had disappeared that roots of weeds broke off rather than come out when they were pulled.

Friday we had one of those storms people here called a gully washer.

I began hearing thunder around 2:20 pm, but that didn’t signify.  It had thundered the previous two days to no result.

Then, about five minutes later, I heard drops on the metal roof.  By the time I looked out a window, the badlands across the Río Grande weren’t visible and windows on the west side of the house were being pelted.

By 2:50 pm, part of my garden near the downspout was flooded, and water from the back porch roof was running between the lilacs.  Around 3 pm, the rain was hitting my north facing windows.  Ten minutes later, it was letting up and soon stopped.  It came down for almost an hour.

Last useful rain: 8/5.  Week’s low: 58 degrees F.  Week’s high: 91 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 35 mph in Los Alamos on Thursday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, desert willow, trumpet creeper, buddleia, caryopteris, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, red-tipped yucca, Russian sage, purple salvia, sweet peas, David and purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, rose of Sharon, winecup mallow, pink evening primroses, squash, cultivated sunflowers, lance leaf coreopsis, blanket flower, yellow yarrow, Shasta daisies, Sensation cosmos, zinnias, pampas grass; color visible in apples

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, bind weed, green flower five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, scurf peas, vetch, leather leaf globe mallow, Queen Anne’s lace, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, stick leaf, nits-and-lice, alfilerillo, lamb’s quarter, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, goats’ heads, pigweed, Russian thistles, native sunflowers, Hopi tea, golden rod, wild lettuce, horseweed, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, goats’ beards, native and common dandelions, corn: rice, tobosa, ring muhly; six-week, side oats, six-week and black grama; smooth brome, barnyard, quack, three awn, and bunny tail grasses, tan mushroom, green moss

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, cliff rose, fern bushes, garlic chives, Standard hostas, daylily cultivars, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, white spurge, large flower soapwort, lead plant, sidalcea, ladybells, hollyhocks, coral beard tongues peaked, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clock, blue flax, sea lavender, Siberian catmint, coral bells, tomatillo, chocolate flowers, cushion chrysanthemum, anthemis, Mönch aster, black-eyed Susans, gloriosa daisies, Mexican hats peaked, blanket flowers, plains coreopsis, white yarrow, purple coneflower; red grapes ripe

I experimented with different varieties of phlox until I discovered around 1997 that David would grow along the west side of the garage.  It has white flowers and was found by Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Conservancy in the 1980s. [1]  I still would have liked some of the purple phlox that so many here have, but it’s not sold.  I believe it emerges when modern hybrids of Phlox paniculata regress.  James Bissland thinks they appear after the roots get hot. [2]  I’m happy to have some of the purple flowers, but I’d rather they were somewhere else so they wouldn’t contaminate the fragrant, white bed.

What bedding plants are blooming: Snapdragons; some people in the village have annuals blooming in pots

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Annual baby’s breath, sweet alyssum, pink bachelor buttons, honeydew and water melons

Animal sightings: Magpie, goldfinch, geckoes, monarch butterfly on purple coneflowers, cabbage butterflies in village, ladybugs, bumble and small bees, hornets, grasshoppers, harvester and sidewalk ants; hear crickets

Tasks: When it rained in late June a friend complained it soon would be muggy.  Less than six weeks later, the annual grama grass (Bouteloua barbata var. barbata) is blooming and the pigweed (Amaranthus albus) is more than 4' high along the roads in the village.

On Monday, the county sent out a large tractor pulling something wide to cut the shoulders wherever they were level.  That prompted my uphill neighbor to fire up his small tractor and ride it around the yard to cut his pigweed, Russian thistles, and goats’ heads.

I spent parts of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with the string trimmer chopping things down along the fence that edges the drive I share with my side neighbor.  I had done this once before in early July but some pigweeds already were too thick to cut at the base.

One thing I finally realized is that pigweed needs more moisture that Russian thistle, so it’s the one along the shoulder and my fence.  Salsola pestifer can handle the dryer lands away from roads.

Weekly update: The relative merits of our different methods of weed control were tested on Friday.  I live on a hill than slopes both south and west, with a paved road on the west.  When it rains, water runs down the shoulder to the curve.  There, part of the water crosses the road, and part continues to flow down into the yard of the neighbor whose hired backhoe hit the gas meter while he was scraping the ground bare a few weeks ago.

Water flow was a serious problem when I moved here.  It would come down the drive and wash out a section of the bed along the gravel.  I installed pavers along the edge, but they only helped a little.  When I hired someone to regravel the drive I told him to bank that area so water would flow the other way.  That is language people understand where I grew up in Michigan, but seems alien here.

I also asked him to find a way to stop the flow of water down the drive that blew off the roof of my neighbor’s metal building.  Instead, he left a high area north of the problem, and filled a low area with gravel.  That lowland had several inches of standing water on Friday, that it caught coming from uphill.  It may not have been what I wanted, but it more than sufficed.

The other places I had standing water were drive paths in part of the drive and a low area north of the peaches.  The first probably occurred because the ground gets more compacted from the car’s weight and can absorb less.  The area by the peach was carved several years ago when a hose connection leaked for weeks and flooded the area.

My uphill neighbor doesn’t have as many problems because the neighbor above him scraped up a large berm on the uphill side of his property that diverts water to the east.  It stopped water that used to hit my retaining wall and flow through the cracks.

That doesn’t mean my uphill neighbor doesn’t have water gliding over his land.  Last summer it came under the fence and washed out a section of my side neighbor’s fence border.  It followed the same path this summer.

It flows into a low space in the drive that also catches water coming down the pavement along the shoulder.  I’m sure it was level there when the drive was graveled, but the various streams of water have carved a small basin.  It is harmless, like the low place in my drive, and serves a useful purpose.

As for the neighbor who had the yard scrapped, water collected in the usual places in the back yard and was visibly flowing along the surface.

This was the first heavy rain since the previous owner hardened the drive, so it was the first time water coming off the pavement had a new avenue.  The drive in front of the house had standing water fifteen minutes after the rain had stopped.  Two hours later, there still was water beside the house where a heavy vehicle had been parked last fall.  Water doesn’t exactly have a memory, but once it creates a path it reuses it.

In the end the differences in weed control are transient.  Pigweed, which was wilting by the road from lack of water, is reviving, and we’ll all have to do something again later this summer.

That doesn’t mean everything is futile.  Nature may continually be eroding our efforts, but, even so, the small attempts to direct the flow of water pay off, if one is willing to count time in years and not weeks.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Green Flower Five Eyes (Chamaesaracha coronopus) in my gravel driveway, 23 July 2022.

2.  David and purple phlox, 6 August 2022.

End notes:
Phlox is discussed in more detail in the post for 13 August 2006 on Nature Abhors a Garden.

1.  “Phlox ‘David’.”  Perennial Plant Association website.

2.  James H. Bissland.  Quoted by Alfred Carl Houttes.  The Book of Perennials.  New York: A. T. De La Mare Company, 1942 edition.  222.