Dead Wood

Weather: Mornings are colder and the sun rises later.  This Monday I began my fall watering schedule which spreads the work done in three days over four.

Last useful rain: 9/13.  Week’s low: 42 degrees F.  Week’s high: 84 degrees F in the shade.  Winds got up to 26 mph in Santa Fé on Thursday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, fern bush, upright sedum, silver lace vine, morning glories, Russian sage, purple salvia, David phlox, roses of Sharon, hollyhocks, winecup mallows, Maximilian and cultivated sunflowers, cushion chrysanthemum, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, marigolds, zinnias

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, scarlet creeper, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, leather leaf globe mallows, goat’s heads, green amaranth, white pigweed, lambs’ quarters, snakeweed broom, native sunflowers, ánil del muerto, Hopi tea, tahoka daisies, wild lettuce, horseweed, gumweed, ragweed; heath, purple, strap leaf, and golden hairy asters; timothy, barnyard, and quack grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, cliff rose, yellow potentillas, sweet peas, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clocks, pink evening primroses, chocolate flowers, Mexican hats, blanket flowers, lance leaf and plains coreopsis, anthemis

What bedding plants are blooming: Snapdragons

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Cantaloupes, bachelor buttons, Sensation cosmos

This spring, I scattered zinnia seeds where there was a bare space that be colonized by an unwelcome visitor.  Since few ever germinate, I threw down lots of seeds.  This year, many came up in the shade of the cottonwood.  Each plant as put up one stem, with one flower.

I put more near some peaches.  Fewer came up, and were as stingy with their blossoms as usual.  However, seeds blew across the drive and other plants came up where they chose.  One in the driveway has many stems on a single plant with lots of flowers.  Same seed package.

Animal sightings: Ground squirrel, small gecko, monarch and cabbage butterflies, small bee, fewer hornets, sidewalk and harvester ants; hear crickets

My neighbor, with his mercenary backhoe, destroyed the habitat of the ground squirrel.  I saw it on my porch railing Saturday afternoon.

Tasks: Jobs never get done; there’s never that moment when I can look back and see something as it ought to be.  Before I finish with a row, plants have begun to reclaim the cleared areas.  On Monday I thought I had finished cutting Russian thistles in the front yard, after working with the string trimmer for five days off and on beginning September 1.  I did notice some I had missed on the wetter side, and Wednesday went out to get them.  Then I saw the weeds that had been cut had begun to regrow, especially in areas that were nearer where I water shrubs.  They were closer to the ground and denser, but easier to cut.  So far, I’ve spent two day redoing what I had hoped was done.

Weekly update: This week I finally began cutting dead wood from shrubs.  I never seem to get around to this until fall, when I have to worry about finishing before frost kills leaves.  The cutting can’t be done until summer, after the leaves all have emerged, and by then other areas demand more attention.

I called the man I’ve used before to cut the dead wood in trees.  He was last here in the winter of 2019, but I hadn’t had him back because it was so cold I didn’t want to disturb Nature’s precautions.

Back then the cottonless cottonwood had lots of dead wood because it had been attacked by borers.  A useful woodpecker had gone after them, leaving enlarged holes.  The tree trimmer brought his crane and cut everything that had died, then sprayed the tree with an insecticide.  He made no promises.  He hadn’t been able to save a relative’s tree with the same methods.

The next year, the cottonwood abandoned the limbs that had been pruned, and put out new growth nearer the trunk.  It also began sending out sprouts along the block paths.  By the time I called his crew this year, the tree looked nearly as bad as it had two years ago, but was recovering.

Cutting dead wood is tedious.  When I do it I begin with the obvious bare ends.  Then, I have to trace each barren stem back to point where there’s new life or to the ground.  There are no short cuts.  One has to bury oneself in the shrub.

They professional crew followed the same process.  They first cut everything they could from the ground with a chainsaw on a pole.  Then, one man went into the bucket and started at the outer edges.  Since many of the cottonwood branches were long, he cut them in small segments.

Next, he took the bucket into the tree itself to get to the beginnings of the dead wood.

The other crewman was picking up debris and feeding it into the shredder.  I asked that man how long he had been doing this kind of work.  He said he had a ranch north of town where he had to clear his own trees.  It’s how we all learn.

When the crew left, the tree looked better than it had looked in years.  It looked normal.

ANo doubt, some wood will die back from the cuts.  It always does.  But maybe, fingers crossed, the men finally were able to get the last of the borers.  The man in the crane only saw one diseased limb, and he cut it below the point of damage.

Notes on photographs:
1-2.  Thumbelina zinnias (Zinnia elegans), 17 September 2022.
3-5.  Souixland cottonless cottonwood (Populus deltoides), 16 September 2022.