Cool Weather

Weather: Morning temperatures below freezing; last rain 10/25/2013; 10:13 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, yucca, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, dog violets, Saint John’s wort, scarlet and blue flaxes, Dutch clover, sweet pea, moss phlox, snakeweed and anthemis, grasses.

What’s red or turning red: Bradford pear, apricot, spirea, cherries, sand cherry, raspberry, coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, baptisia, snow-in-summer, pinks, pink salvia, baby’s breath, chocolate flower and golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or turning yellow: Peach, apple, rugosa rose, beauty bush, lilac, forsythia, cottonwood, weeping, globe and sandbar willow, German iris, golden spur columbine leaves.

What’s blooming: Chamisa, Jupiter’s beard, broom senecio, catmint, chrysanthemums, tansy.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Goldfinches on Maximilian sunflower heads.

Weekly update: Temperatures fell below freezing morning after morning. No dramatic changes this year, just a graduate tamping down.

Leaves on trees and shrubs, especially those in the rose family, changed color.

Most flowers finally were killed, but some in protected areas have survived.

Those that thrive in cool-weather continue to bloom, especially the snap dragons

and sweet alyssum.

The ones that evolved to exploit harsh climates prepare for next year. Oriental poppy leaves, which die in summer, have regrown. They may be killed again in deep winter, but in the meantime they continue to feed the roots.

Alfilerillo has sprouted in the drive,

as has the unknown scarlet loco.

Many have dried, many brown.  The others are baring their stems.

Photographs: All taken yesterday, 26 October, 2013, in my yard.

1. Betty Prior rose, growing in drip line.

2. Seven Hills Giant catmint.

3. Apricot leaves.

4. Calendula, grown from seed; started to bloom a few weeks ago.

5. Snapdragon, growing near wooden retaining wall.

6. Sweet alyssum, growing near wooden retaining wall.

7. Oriental poppy leaves.

8. Alfilerillo or cranes’ bill, new plant in drive gravel.

9. Unknown scarlet loco, new plant in drive gravel.

10. Russian sage, growing near the catmint.

Purple and Gold

Weather: Temperatures below freezing; last rain 10/13/2013; 10:32 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Silver lace vine, Maximilian sunflowers, Sensation cosmos.

Beyond the walls and fences: Chamisa, snakeweed, Hopi tea, Tahoka daisy, gumweed, broom senecio, native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, golden hairy, heath and purple asters. Cottonwood and catalpa leaves turning yellow.

In my yard: Fern bush, winecup mallow, catmint, calamintha, bachelor buttons, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, anthemis, chrysanthemums, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hats. Spirea leaves turning orange-red, sand cherry leaves purple red, Siberian pea leaves yellow. Alfilerillo coming up in drive gravel.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Goldfinches on Maximilian sunflower heads.

Weekly update: Purple and gold are the colors of the season, here and in Michigan were I was raised.

There the yellow was golden rod that spread along the roadside in August.

Here, it is áñil del muerto, the yellow daisies with no common name. They were slow to sprout this year, but expanded after the weather turned cold. This week, of course, they too began going to seed.

 

Chamisa, broom senecio and snakeweed were equally late. Before them, there were the native sunflowers. And, before them it was gum weed, Hopi tea, and the ubiquitous golden hair asters.

In the midwest, white flowers are more important in late summer than the purple, especially Queen Anne’s lace

and common yarrow.

Here, all you see is an occasional heath aster.

The few purples there must have been asters. Here they are Tahoka daisies in August,

and purple asters now.

Their flowers are so similar, they are best identified by their leaves. The daisies are dense and ferny, the asters more scattered and needle like. From a distance, the one is more likely to be rounded, the other tall and thin. From a car, you use the calendar to decide.

The view from the car is most important. Many do not actually grow together. Instead, they bloom at the same time, in different patches of roadside. It’s our memories which combine them.

Photographs:
1. Purple golden hair asters blooming along the road, 15 October 2013.

2. Áñil del muerto blooming in field that was mowed in late summer, 15 October 2013.

3. Goldenrod near a village irrigation ditch, 12 July 2012.

4. Áñil del muerto in my drive, 15 October 2013.

5. Golden hair aster in my yard, 15 October 2013.

6. Queen Anne’s lace with alfalfa in my yard, 21 July 2013, started from seed.

7. Common white yarrow near my drive, 11 July 2013, started from seed.

8. Heath asters in my yard, 15 October 2013.

9. Tahoka daisy near my drive, 15 October 2013.

10. Tahoka daisy near my drive, 15 October 2013.

11. Flag ceremony at a Michigan day camp, 1959. I have no recollection of who’s in the picture, but I know the flower’s Queen Anne’s lace. The shape is forever imprinted in my memory.

Fall Arrives

Weather: Temperatures falling to low-30s; last rain 10/10/2013; 11:21 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Silver lace vine, Russian sage, Maximilian sunflowers, Sensation cosmos.

Beyond the walls and fences: Chamisa, snakeweed, Hopi tea, Tahoka daisy, gumweed, broom senecio, native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.

In my yard: Fern bush, winecup mallow, catmint, calamintha, bachelor buttons, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, anthemis, chrysanthemums, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hats.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Large and small black ants.

Weekly update: Fall arrive this week - not following the calendar and not after some great temperature drop. Morning temperatures simply fell in the low thirties, day after day.

Not enough cold to shock. Just enough to slowly destroy flowers. My zinnias are gone, but they continue blooming near the village where moisture from the river traps heat. My cosmos are desiccated, but flowers persist at the bases of plants were leaves and the ground provide some warmth.

Trees are reacting to changes in air temperature, sun angles and drying soils. The decline in photosynthesis rates shows in leaves slowly losing their green. The catalpas are yellowing.

Others are quietly sealing the junctions between leaves and stems. Nothing overt changes. Trees simply get barer each day.

A storm blew through Thursday from the west. Winds reached 55 miles an hour in Los Alamos around 1 pm. They were in the low forties in Santa Fé where I was holed up in a windowless shop watching someone look for viruses on my computer.

When I got home, I saw winds had passed. The gravel under the Siberian pea was littered with small leaves.

When I rounded the curve, I saw grasses in the parking area near the house had trapped peach leaves, not yet yellow, but sealed enough to fall.

The thing that puzzles me every year is the difference in hardwood cycles here and in the north where I was raised. People there used to plan vacation trips to see the maples and oaks turn color. They knew they had at least one weekend, and maybe two.

Here, the leaves that change color, like the peach, drop immediately. The color is on the ground, not in the stands.

The most brilliant color comes from Virginia creeper, which has crept west from the Mississippi valley. The changes begin early, when stems holding the berries turn red. Now, the leaves light up otherwise drab trees.

In the mountains, the aspens that colonize areas of pines destroyed by fires and lumbering turn yellow. Down here, their cousins, the cottonwoods are being drained. From a distance, the leaves look like gold. Up close, they’re splotched with brown.

If you want fall color here, it’s best to plant trees that have red leaves all year. They don’t change much with the season, but they standout when everything else fades.

Photographs: All taken yesterday, 12 October 2013.

1. Skunk bush leaves in the sun; the ones in the shade are simply liver-spotted as they lose color.

2. Tithonia, an annual that was too slow to grow. It hadn’t produced its first flower when the cold killed the leaves.

3. Purity cosmos flowers desiccated by cold, either eaten by grasshoppers or battered by Thursday’s winds.

4. Catalpa leaves losing color with slower photosynthesis.

5. Stella cherry with most leaves gone; the remaining ones are showing colors that coexisted with the chlorophyll.

6. Siberian pea leaves, on the shrub and on the ground.

7. Elberta peach leaves blown into low annual grasses in the drive.

8. Virginia creeper scampering through trees growing on the banks of the main irrigation ditch for the village.

9. Cottonwoods growing along a lateral irrigation ditch; the low red shrub is closer to the main ditch.

10. Purple leaved plum leaves; tamarix in back.

11. Daylily leaves.

The Wooden Pig

Weather: Temperatures in the mid-30s; last rain 9/18/2013; 11:40 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Silver lace vine, Russian sage, daturas, Maximilian sunflowers, Sensation cosmos.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, sweet peas, Russian thistle, pigweed, ragweed, chamisa, snakeweed, Hopi tea, Tahoka daisy, gumweed, horseweed, broom senecio, native sunflowers peaked, áñil del muerto, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.

In my yard: Fern bush, winecup mallow, David phlox peaked, catmint, calamintha, bachelor buttons, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, anthemis, chrysanthemums, dahlias, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hats, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Large and small black ants.

Weekly update: I always think of this period between the first cold morning and a killing frost as the age of the wooden pig.

Last Sunday, the first cold morning of the season, affected those who lived in the house of the straw, the pig and the frivolous town girl he married who hadn’t yet adapted to life in the country. She’s sick and some of the children died when cold came through the dried stalks. Those nearest the ground, where the straw is thickest and holds the most heat survived, fared better. Her relative’s nearer the river, where moisture settles in the evening were less affected.

Zinnias come from México. This year they started blooming the last day of June. The plants became bushier. Flowers skimmed the tops. Few turned to seed. They were everything a summer annual should be, constantly in bloom, dependent on someone somewhere else to provide next year’s seed. They were too inbred to reproduce anyway.

The cold splotched many with brown.

They survivors continue undaunted. New flowers open, next to ones killed or turning to seed.

The pig in the wooden house was smarter. He married a local village girl who may forgo the tolls of middle age as long as possible, but knows what needs to be done. When cold seeped through the cracks between the wooden planks, she shivered some. In the morning she began the necessary preparations for winter.

The native sunflowers have had a hard summer. Droughts took its toll. Some began blooming in July, but it was only in September tall plants were surrounded by flowers.

As soon as the weather began turning, flower heads drooped and seeds appeared.

They’re still producing flowers, but converting them to seeds as quickly as possible.

The pig in the brick house doesn’t worry. He repaired the cracks in his mortar this summer. His house is snug. His wife, a country girl, finished the canning long ago. But like all women facing menopause before contraception, she has an occasional late burst of fertility. She may not live to see the youngest children graduate from college, but she is lives today.

The perennials took their cues from changes in light, moisture and temperature early. They bloomed early in the summer, produced their seeds, and quietly started the leaf buds for next summer. But, here and there, an unspent bud opens. Some blanket flowers in the grass.

A pink salvia protected by neighboring plants.

The last of the large-leaved soapworts.

They serve no purpose but life itself, doomed to the same fate as the zinnias, and just as determined to bloom until the very coldest frost.

Photographs: Except where noted, all were taken yesterday in my yard.

1. Scarlet flax.

2. Scarlet flax.

3. Zinnias last Saturday, 28 September 2013, before temperatures fell to near freezing.

4. Zinnias.

5. Zinnias.

6. Native sunflowers blooming along an irrigation ditch close to the Río Grande, 13 September 2013; taken from a bridge.

7. Native sunflowers.

8. Blanket flower.

9. ‘Rose Queen’ salvia.

10. Large-leaved soapwort.

11. Jupiter’s beard.