Monday, July 28, 2014

Wash Out


Weather: Clouds every day, last rain 7/17; river is running brown.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, bouncing Bess, purple garden phlox, alfalfa, sweet pea, yellow yarrow.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, velvetweed, buffalo gourd, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, Queen Anne’s lace, goat’s head, horseweed, wild lettuce, Hopi tea, plains paper flowers, tahoka daisy, strap leaf and golden hairy asters.

In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, sidalcea, pink evening primrose.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy and miniature roses.

Looking west: Johnson’s Blue geranium, catmint, David phlox, ladybells, sea lavender, Mönch daisy, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Coral beard tongue, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, anthemis.

In the open, along the drive: Dorothy Perkins rose, fernbush, buddleia, larkspur, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, French marigold.

Animal sightings: Geckos, small birds, bees, grasshoppers, large and small black ants.



Weekly update: It’s been almost two weeks since soaking rains caused flooding in Española. That’s the period when one surveys the damage and considers how to protect oneself the next time.

I live on the side of a great sloping hill that collects water that moves in sheets.


Sometime since the last bad rain, my uphill neighbor used a backhoe to strengthen a berm on the periphery of his land.


During the rain two weeks ago, it deflected the water enough I didn’t see any evidence of flooding the next morning in my yard. In the past, some water would have cascaded over my retaining wall and left rivulets in the flower bed below.

Some of the water backed up by his berm may have found a low place to enter a washout on the north side of his land.


Land here is catacombed with these unseen passages from the pre-Pleistocene past that have been filled by sand and gravel. This one appears shallow at the road, but deepens as one walks farther back.


Some years ago, the man who lives on the other side of the wash out decided he didn’t like vegetation in the washout. It offended his sense of a proper landscape. He took a backhoe and cleared everything in the wash. Pigweed has come back where ivy leafed morning glories and scarlet creeper used to bloom.

One result was guys with ATVs turned the wash into a road that compacted the soil in parts of the bed.


This spring the man to the north placed a dead tree across the wash out to prevent people driving by his land. What one man can move, another more determined one can remove.

The man’s backhoe also damaged the culvert that went under the road.


When the rains came the night of July 14, the culvert was quickly jammed by debris.


Water backed up at the road and spilled through a low place on the south side by the first neighbor’s drive. Mud and uprooted plants lined his drive in the morning.



Eventually, enough water accumulated to flow over the road to leave a path of sand.

Two men’s attempts to control nature left both on dry land abutting a wash that probably deepened in places upstream.


Photographs:
1. Ivy leaf morning glory and scarlet creeper blooming in nearby wash, 31 August 2008.

2. Wash after rains of 14 July 2014, taken 20 July 2014.

3. Slope of hill above the wash and my neighbors’ houses, 10 April 2011.

4. Berm behind my uphill neighbor who lives south of the wash, 10 April 2011.

5. Wash behind my uphill neighbor’s house, 10 April 2011.

6. Upstream in the wash, 8 November 2011. The one-seeded juniper gives some idea of the depth.

7. Ivy leaf morning glory growing between ATV tracks in the wash, 18 September 2011.

8. Culvert after it was damaged by a back hoe, 11 April 2013.

9. Culvert after the flood waters of 14 July 2014, taken 20 July 2014.

10. Vegetation washed along my uphill neighbor’s drive and into the road, 20 July 2014.

11. My uphill neighbor’s berm directs water into an abandoned road bed that breaks into the arroyo. The junction is marked by the muddy, trapped vegetation. From there it washed back into the base of this drive where it met the road. No muddy plants exists upstream on 20 July 2014.


12. The continuation of the berm from behind the house in #4 to the road bed that lies between the property and the wash, 10 April 2011.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Flooded Arroyo


Weather: Rain most nights.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, bouncing Bess, purple garden phlox, alfalfa, sweet pea, yellow yarrow.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, velvetweed, scarlet bee blossom, blue trumpets, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, Queen Anne's lace, goat’s head, horseweed, wild lettuce, Hopi tea, plains paper flowers, tahoka daisy, strap leaf and golden hairy asters.

In my yard, looking east: Maltese cross, large-flowered soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, sidalcea, pink evening primrose.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy and miniature roses.

Looking west: Elephant garlic, Johnson’s Blue geranium, catmint, ladybells, sea lavender, Mönch daisy, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Coral beard tongue, butterfly milkweed, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, anthemis.

In the open, along the drive: Dorothy Perkins rose, fernbush, buddleia, larkspur, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, French marigold.

Animal sightings: Geckos, small birds, bees, hawk moth, grasshoppers, small black ants.


Weekly update: The headline in this week’s Rio Grande Sun is "Heavy Rain Causes Flooding." Ardee Napolitano says we had five inches Monday night and another .6 inches Tuesday.

And I slept through it. Almost. I did wake several times, but each time it was a steady, soaking rain, not the hard rain one associates with flash flood warnings.

When I went to the post office Wednesday, I saw the usual signs. Standing water on the shoulder, sand washed across the road from uphill dirt drives.


The one thing that was odd was the bridge over Arroyo Seco on State Road 399 by the Black Mesa Golf Club. Instead of sand along the shoulders of the road, it was only on the bridge.


When I went back this morning to look, it was obvious a great deal of water had passed, and some must have washed over the top of the bridge. I saw sand collected on the tops of the bridge supports.


Much of the vegetation on the upriver side was laying down. Anything with any elevation was smeared with dirt.


Beyond the arroyo bank, the ground was still wet from where water had collected.


Bridges act as ad hoc flood control structures. No matter how wide their banks, they narrow and limit the amount of water through a channel. Thus, the protect the banks on the downstream side.

No matter how narrow their supports, they impede the flow. Water back ups, but does not rush forward until it breaches the top. This must be what happened this week.


What, I wonder, is where the water came from. All the flooding reported by the Española newspaper was in areas near the Río Grande below bluffs where the pavement collected water, then dumped it in nearby yards.

Arroyo Seco flows from the southeast. It merges three intermittent creeks that flow north through those hills to the east of 84/285 north of Pojoaque. Each of those has two branches. There’s also one short tributary coming from the north.

They merge with another arroyo coming from the east into a northwest tracking sand bed.

Soon after, the arroyo goes under the road before the La Puebla exit, parallels 84/285 for a short distance then continues to flow east of the badlands for about a mile before breaking through to flow across SR 399.


When I drove to Santa Fé Thursday, there was no sign of extra water at the 84/285 bridge. The arroyo must have collected its extra load in the distance between bridges, with runoff from the badlands and, possibly, a concentration of rain. We’ve all seen odd patterns of rainfall.

The Española town flooding had human origins. This seems to have been nature unregulated, with a manmade structure preventing serious flooding downstream.


Notes: Rio Grande Sun, 17 July 2014.

Photographs: All taken this morning, 20 July 2014. The last shows the vertical cut made by the water well up the side.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Elephant Garlic


Weather: Lots of dramatic clouds, more wind, a little thunder, and less rain in the nights.

What’s blooming in the area: Trumpet creeper, hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, daylily, datura, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, alfalfa, sweet pea, yellow yarrow.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, velvetweed, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, showy milkweed, Hopi tea, goat’s beard, plains paper flowers.

In my yard, looking east: Maltese cross, snow-in-summer, large-flowered soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, sidalcea, coral bells.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy and rugosa roses.

Looking west: Elephant garlic, Johnson’s Blue geranium, catmint, blue flax, Shasta daisy.

Looking north: Coral beard tongue, butterfly milkweed, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, anthemis.

In the open, along the drive: California poppy, larkspur, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, French marigold.

Animal sightings: Geckos, small birds, bees, grasshoppers, small black ants.


Weekly update: An alien appeared in my phlox border in June. I noticed something with flat leaves that flexed outward up along a stem like corn. I said to myself, I hope that’s not that thing growing in some ditches that gets eight feet high. I must get it out before the roots get established.


I repeated that to myself every time I walked by. Unfortunately, I never remembered it when I was out cleaning. It had become surrounded by purple coneflowers and wasn’t visible.

In July, I noticed the volunteer had produced long stems that curved ninety degrees. White swollen balls were at the ends. Extending from them were three-inch long needles of green.


Last week I discovered the white skins were splitting on the underside to expose tiny bulbs. I thought, that’s some kind of allium, but not anything I’ve ever planted. A friend agreed, and suggested various forms of garlic.


I wondered what could some neighbor have planted that blew this way. The phlox bed is next to the west facing side of the garage that stops the wind. It’s the place that collected the dandelion seeds from my southeastern neighbor.

The man across the road from him grows vegetables in a raised bed. I considered what would a serious gardener try and remembered elephant garlic is always treated by plant catalogs as an exotic novelty. Henry Fields calls the bulbs "gigantic." Gurney promises the bulbs "commonly weigh a pound or more." Territorial seeds shows one next to a baseball in a catcher’s mitt.

Some add it’s not really a type of garlic, but a leek. Jung says it has a "very mild flavor" and "leaves no garlic aftertaste." The word "subtle" often is used.

My plant doesn’t look like the Allium Ampeloprasum shown in pictures. The stem can rise five feet with the tips pointed straight up. Penny Woodward says that round stem can curve when "left without water for a long time." It straightens when it rains, but the kinks remain.


The flower heads are usually filled with the six pink or purple petals typical of Amaryllis family. The stamens extend outward. Tiny bulbs may be scattered among the florets, but Woodward says "these are usually absent."


So far, all I see are buds and bulblets. It may be too soon to see flowers. It also may be this is an unusual specimen, the child of a bulblet kidnapped by a ferocious wind last fall.


Nichols claims to be the one who introduced it as elephant garlic in 1953. It bought its first stock in 1941 from a gardener in Scio, Oregon, in the Willamette river valley where Bohemians had settled. The native ranges along the rim of the Mediterranean basin from Northern Africa through the Levant and Balkans over to Iberia.

Nichols doesn’t say why it used the term elephant, but every catalog assumes the term refers to the size of the underground bulb. The white-skinned heads with their long curving snouts reminded me enough of pachyderms to prompt me to look up the species.


The plant is a biennial that multiplies from bulblets. Since it needs lots of moisture, I doubt it will become a nuisance. We rarely have the wet falls and warm winters it prefers.

Notes:
Current catalogs from Henry Field’s Seed and Nursery Company, Gurney’s Seed and Nursery Company, J. J. Jung Seed Company, and Territorial Seed Company.

Nichols Garden Nursery. "The Story of Nichols Elephant Garlic," company website.

Woodward, Penny. Garlic and Friends (1996)


Photographs: Elephant garlic growing near my garage.
1. 10 July 2014
2. 4 June 2014, purple coneflowers and phlox in back, daffodil leaves in front
3. 10 July 2014
4. 10 July 2014, phlox in back, Silver King artemisia at right
5. 10 July 2014
6. 10 July 2014
7. 8 July 2014
8. 10 July 2014
9. 8 July 2014
10. 10 July 2014

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Felling Trees


Weather: Rain twice this week while Douglas weakened off the western coast of México.

What’s blooming in the area: Catalpa, Dr Huey and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, lilies, daylily, hollyhock, datura, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, alfalfa, sweet pea, yellow yarrow.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, tumble mustard, velvetweed, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, showy milkweed, Hopi tea, goat’s beard, plains paper flowers.

In my yard, looking east: Maltese cross, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, winecup mallow, sidalcea, coral bell.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy and rugosa roses.

Looking west: Johnson’s Blue geranium, catmint, blue flax, white mullein, Shasta daisy.

Looking north: Coral beard tongue, butterfly milkweed, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis.

In the open, along the drive: California poppy, larkspur, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Pansies, snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, French marigold.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, geckos, small birds, grasshoppers, small black ants, wasps.


Weekly update: Removing dead cottonwoods is difficult and necessary. The roots are shallow, and the trees prone to blow over, crushing whatever is in their path.

It’s also expensive. When I called a local tree cutting firm several years ago about removing a six-inch diameter black locust, the person answering the phone said the minimum cost was $500. Imagine the multiplier for a six-foot bole.

It was easier a hundred years ago.

Techniques haven’t changed much. When I was a child, I learned the basics, probably from a camp craft book. You made a notch on the side you wanted it to fall. You made another cut on the opposite side, and got out of the way.

It sounded easy. How-to videos tell you the same today. Chain saw advertisements reinforce the belief anyone can do it.

And, in the past, anyone could.

What has changed isn’t the tools or techniques, it’s the intimacy that comes from dependence. In the eons when people depended on wood for heat and cooking fuel, children learned the ways of trees. Picking the path and making the notch required some knowledge of the way trees behaved. It wasn’t simple geometry.

Then, people removed trees near their homes, then went farther afield for fire wood. There was little danger in felling trees, if one stayed out of their path.

Today, many large cottonwoods live in captivity. With changing land values, large tracts have been subdivided and newer houses built close to old trees. When you pass a commercial tree cutter, it has a man lift so men can remove branches from the top, then cut the trunk in small segments.

Recently, someone in the village has been cutting down a cottonwood. The road is narrow and the work hidden behind a fence. From what little I could see, I believe they hired a lift and tried to follow the same procedure.

I think a piece fell on a branch of an apple tree. It may only have been a branch, not a limb. The apple limb broke and rolled the cottonwood down its slope onto a coyote fence.


I don’t know if it reached into the road. By the time I saw it it had been cut back. Cascading objects follow the laws of physics.


The second problem when you fell a cottonwood is what do you do with it. The uses for wood are limited. Local builders use logs for vigas and decorative posts, small wood for latillas. They buy everything else.

A hundred years ago saw mills existed to convert stumps to boards. Commercial operations in Michigan, where I grew up, had three stages. In lumber camps, trees were cut and branches removed. Stripped logs were moved by small carts with high axils, big wheels, which were pulled by animals.


The processed logs were hauled to rail sidings where they were loaded onto cars that took them to a mill. Roy Dodge says one operation sent 20 loads an hour. The rail lines were temporary narrow gauge with engines built especially for the work in Lima, Ohio.

Sawmills were located near transportation. In Michigan, they were on one of the Great Lakes where ships would take boards to market cheaply. Elsewhere, rivers were used for the first journey, railroads for the second.

People who burn wood today are choosey. Even my neighbors, who depend of wood stoves, know, if worse comes to worse, they can use an electric space heater. Both men are in their late 70s, too old to go into the forest to fell trees on their own. They have wood delivered. One has it delivered to size, and his son and grandson stack it. The other buys small logs which he splits with an axe as he needs them.

A hundred years ago, men followed a multi-year cycle. They cut wood, then let it dry for several years before they burned it. Each year they created a new pile, and used the oldest.

Now, the labor involved in converting a large cottonwood into fire wood is greater than the price one can charge. Many have heard the wood burns hot and fast, and, if it’s not cured properly, smells. Santa Fé buyers are snobs who skim the surface of local folk life. They want the image without the inconvenience. They only want the best.

Commercial tree cutters simply shred whatever they cut. When I had a cherry taken down, I asked if they were able to sell the wood. The answer was no. A few years ago they could sell some to a woodworker who made spoons, but it hadn’t heard from him in a while. The cherry went the way of all other trees, turned into mulch.

I assume there is a limit to the capacity of portable chippers. Men tend to leave the large boles. Without the top wood, they’re no longer as likely to blow over. If they do, they’re shorter. I have no idea why anyone would want the standing remains, unless the price was prohibitive or the tree cutter simply refused to remove it because it was too large to chip.


One stumbles on the remains everywhere.


Things were different a hundred years ago. Logging has always been dangerous, but then there was the respect that arises from a worthy challenger. Men had themselves photographed with their largest trees. The pictures are a bit like those of fishermen. At one level, they show humans conquering nature. However, the fish or tree, not the humans is in the foreground. Man is always dwarfed.


Notes:
Dodge, R. L. Michigan Ghost Towns, 3 volumes (1970, 1971, 1973).

US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2012, 65 died in the logging industry; the injury rate was 4.3 per hundred employees. The rates were much higher a hundred years ago, especially in the mills. Fire was also a more serious hazard then.

Photographs: Historic photographs from The Disston Crucible, February 1917; Disston manufactured the band saw blades used in mills.

1. Dead cottonwood in a stand by the Rio Grande; everything useful has been stripped, and the large bole left to decay. 13 February 2012.

2. Cottonwood branch fell across a wire fence near the road last fall. The original house is set far back from the road where large cottonwoods grow. The road frontage was platted and houses built. The land in back was kept for possible farm use. This looks like the remains of a dead tree left uncut. 2 November 2013.

3. Damaged apple tree. You can see the branch in front that’s been cut and the one farther back that’s been ripped from the trunk. 5 July 2014.

4. Cottonwood branch on the coyote fence at the edge of the village road. 15 June 2014.

5. The cottonwood log was 10' long and 6' across at the small end. The Baker Lumber Company of Turrell, Arkansas, cut 3,300 board feet.

6. Cottonwood trunk left along an acequia, 26 March 2014.

7. Cottonwood trunk left near the river, 22 May 2012.

8. One reason people climbed onto big trees for photographs was to show the scale.


9. Cottonwood base left along the river, Cundiyo, 14 February 1912. Anything useful has been removed.