Rabbit Tricks

Weather: The sun has been shining into my eyes at my desk around 8:30 am.  Most days, afternoon temperatures have not gotten warm enough to work outside.

Last useful snow: 11/13.  Week’s low: 11 degrees F.  Week’s high: 64 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 29 mph in Santa Fé on Tuesday.

What’s still green: Needles on pines, piñon, cultivated and native junipers, yews; leaves on cliff rose, pyracantha, yuccas, grape hyacinths, vinca, hollyhocks, winecup mallows, alfilerillo, violets, bouncing Bess, pink evening primroses, coral bells, Queen Anne’s lace, Dutch clover, sweet peas, blue flax, lance-leaf coreopsis, anthemis, purple asters; blades on cheat grass; bases of Mexican hats and needle grass; some rose leaves are dark and leathery

What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaves on four-winged saltbushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer; bases of golden hairy asters

What’s turning purple or red: Leaves on coral beard tongues; twigs on apricots, peaches, and globe willow

What’s turned yellow: Branches on weeping willows; arborvitae and Japanese honeysuckle leaves are browning

Animal sightings: I think the birds I see flitting through leafless trees are transhumant rather than migratory, and have come down from areas where snow is covering their forage.

Tasks: A few people have been putting up their plastic luminarias.  People with icicle and chase lights installed on their eaves long have given up taking them down in January.  So far, only one of my near neighbors has turned his on.

Weekly update: Rabbits are one of those unsolvable problems.  My neighbors use dogs and cars kill them, but their numbers never change.

At least one lives under my neighbor’s tool shed, and comes in to eat.  Some animal scraped an opening under the gate, which I make uncomfortable by putting a rock in the middle.  The rabbit simply kicks it aside.  At least I know it’s been here, even when I don’t see it.

Several years ago I bought some lengths of wire mesh I laid over beds where I planted annual seeds.  The idea was that by the time the sprouts came through the mesh they would no longer be edible.  For the most part it worked, and this year, for the first time, I managed to grow some melons.  Of course they started so late in the summer they didn’t mature before frost.

There was one bed where nothing grew, annual or perennial or German iris.  I kept adjusting hoses thinking it wasn’t getting water.  Then, last winter, I saw a rabbit going through the area.  This year, I put down a screen after I planted zinnia seeds.  Voilà, the zinnias came up and bloomed.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect solution.  Some grass sprouted in one zinnia bed.  I didn’t have time to pull it, and then when I had time, the zinnias had sprouted.  I no longer could move the screen.  The two lived together, though the grass became a pest.

This past week I finally lifted the screens and pulled the grass from the areas where only annuals grew.  I left it around the roses and rose of Sharon because, whatever its faults, it was a mulch of sorts.

After I cleared the annual areas, I troweled the area.  The ground was bone dry because it’s in the sun.  I dropped some larkspur and Dutch clover seeds I should have planted in the late summer, but couldn’t because of the grass.  Who knows if they’ll germinate.  For now, the replaced screens will protect them from the birds.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Watermelon (Citrullus vulgaris) growing under a screen that’s not visible; 29 October 2022.

2.  Drive with lower place scraped out my an animal under the center board; the rabbit kicked the large, flat stone aside; 11 December 2022.

3.  Zinnia elegans stem growing through wire mesh; a morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor) came through the mesh and spread, but never bloomed; 11 December 2022.

4.  Grass coming through a mesh screen, 11 December 2022.  This is after I lifted the screen and cut down the grass growing next to the zinnia bed.