Last token snow: 12/12. Week’s low: 2 degrees F. Week’s high: 52 degrees F in the shade. Winds were up to 36 mph in Santa Fé before the storm on Saturday.
What’s still green: Needles on pines, piñon, cultivated and native junipers; leaves on cliff rose, yuccas, winecup mallows, alfilerillo, coral bells; bases of blue flax and Mexican hats
What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaves of four-winged saltbushes duller, winterfat only in bud clusters
What’s turning purple or red: Leaves on coral beard tongues; stems on some roses; twigs on apricot, peaches, spirea, and globe willow
What’s turned yellow: Branches on weeping willows
Animal sightings: I noticed several people had big dogs loose in their yards Tuesday. I vaguely remember the one, but not the place with four different breeds. Although one dog was wearing a fabric coat, it’s a reminder that this seems the wrong time of the year to get an outdoor pet.
Tasks: When my west neighbor died last summer he was in his late 80s. As he became more infirm, he was able to do less maintenance in his yard. Last Sunday, when temperatures were below freezing, the new owner and a friend with a flame thrower, were out burning piles of brush that had accumulated. They also went after the Russian thistles along the outer fences.
They stacked the remains of the firewood pile on the back porch. Another neighbor has stacked the wood to the roof of his porch. It not only keeps it dry and handy on cold mornings, but may act as protection against the wind when he opens his west-facing entry door.
Weekly update: Each year, just before Christmas, when little is changing in the landscape, I look at what people have done for the holidays.
It’s not exactly related to plants. No one has decorated any of the trees in the yard, although one person strung lights from one to another in the front orchard. A few had fake trees: one had the spirals, another a stem with a few white horizontal branches.
Live greenery is hard to come by. It’s been some years since Delancey Street had a temporary tree lot. I suppose the big boxes have something; I know one had lots of poinsettias when I was in ordering rocks for my erosion project. One family filled their window boxes with fake red and white flowers.
The stores may make more money selling artificial strings of green. They’re certainly nicer to handle: no sap, no sharp needles. They also are easy to store, and don’t have to be put in the trash, which is limited to one bin a week. A few people wound strands around porch posts.
The most common greenery is fake wreaths. At least seven people had them, usually on gates. The local churches are shells, where the dioceses holds services once a month. It’s up to local parishioners to decorate them. One had a wreath on the door. The other had a string of lights along a side fence.
The most popular decorations are lights, as mentioned last week. A few have the plastic luminarias and one put out paper bags.
Other types of decorations come and go with what survives storage and what can be replaced. Only one person still had wire reindeer, and two had creches.
I don’t know how long people are going to tolerate the inflatable figures. Every one I saw Tuesday was flat on the ground. The only fully inflated ones were in the front of a business that sells them, and has the tools to keep them filled them with air.
Stores are conservative: they may have decorations inside, but few have anything visible from the street. Lights, of course, don’t work during the day, and few are open in the evenings. The most common was that old stand-by, tempura paintings on windows.
Notes on photographs:
1. Alfilerillos (Erodium circutarium) are staying green in the gravel of the driveway, all the tips sometimes turn bright red; 25 December 2022.
2. Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) leaves died this week; 25 December 2022.
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