Sunday, September 27, 2015

Ground Squirrels


Weather: After light rains Monday and Tuesday nights, plants are coming into full fall bloom.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, alfalfa, Russian sage, Maximilian sunflowers, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds, coreopsis, zinnias.

Beyond the walls and fences: Bindweed, green-leaf five-eyes, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, chamisa, native sunflower, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, broom senecio, golden hairy, purple and heath asters.

In my yard: Calamintha, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, sweet pea, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Goldfinch mining the chocolate flower seeds, chickadee feasting on the horseweed; geckos, sulfur butterfly, bees, grasshoppers, ants.


Weekly update: Ground squirrels are more destructive in my yard than rabbits, grasshoppers or ants. The latter just destroy garden plants. The squirrels attack hoses, retaining walls, and native vegetation.

None of that, of course, appears in their official biographies. It s typical to read "Spermophilus variegatus is sometimes considered a pest because it occasionally damages crops. The effect on crops is usually not significant though." or to be told it has a positive impact on the environment because it "is an important disperser of many plant seeds and fruits."

Some years ago one or several - I don't know how many, I rarely see even one with the white bands around its eyes - started tunneling behind the retaining wall. After all, the area was moist: it trapped water coming off the hill and prevented it from washing against the foundation of the house.

I first realized it was there when I came home and found four roses had been sliced off at their bases. Of course they didn't recover.

Then, when I tried to replace them, my trowel reached a tunnel. If I tried to plant anything, it would likely fall into the black hole. The shaft is still there, and only grass can grow above it.

Inconvenient as that was, though, I was more concerned about it destablizing the compacted dirt being held by the rail timbers.

The animal, or more likely another, since their life span is about 30 months, is back. There s a huge mound at the base of every one of the oriental poppies I spent so much effort getting to grow along the retaining wall. Only one, so far, has put out new leaves.

The problem with the mounds is the squirrels bring up very bad dirt with their sharp claws. When it rains, it spreads through the bed, covering the good garden soil with heavy, impermeable clay.


The squirrels actually became a serious problem two years ago. Perhaps it was the drought.

Whenever I saw a dead cholla cactus, I saw a mound at its base. Last year, when I walked toward the near arroyo where I know they live, I noticed all the cacti were standing in disturbed dirt. Few bloomed this year.


When I walked out on the prairie last spring, I noticed every single prickly pear had been molested.


There's been a mound near the base of one of my cholla that's gotten larger every year. The experts say the animals with brown fur spotted with lighter dots often have a home burrow and "several other foraging burrows." They may be used for several years and enlarged.

This week I was weeding the west side of my garage. A winterfat had taken up residence on the other side of the block path where there's the most runoff. Whenever I put my hand down to pull out grass it had killed, my fingers were stabbed by sharp-pointed satellites.


I finally took a piece of foam and patted the area, hoping to sponge up the darts. In the process, I pulled out a piece of cholla cacti.


The squirrel was taking pieces under the shrub to eat or for the water, then leaving the spines at the perimeter. I don t know if it was deliberately setting booby traps around its hidey hole, or if it was chance.


The rodent apparently went under that winterfat this past winter. When I went to turn on the water this spring, nothing came out of the hose. I tracked it back to a hole in the section that went under the shrub.


I replaced the hose, and two days later no water. It had been eaten again. Apparently, the animal is breaking into them for the water. I'd say half my hoses have been tapped this year.

It seems to be a problem I'm stuck with. The cures are poisons that are more dangerous than the animals they kill.


Notes: For the problems getting the oriental poppies to grow, see the post for 8 June 2008 at right. Winterfat is now Krascheninnikovia lanata; it was Eurotia lanata. Ground squirrels are also called rock squirrels. They're in the Sciuridae family.

Desert USA. "Rock Squirrel," Desert USA website.

Wund, Matthew, Lucas Langstaff, and Phil Myers. "Spermophilus variegatus," Animal Diversity website.


Photographs:
1. Ground squirrel in my front garden, 26 July 2008; taken through the window.

2. Ground squirrel at the base of the reinforced wall of the near arroyo, 2 August 2013; taken from road level.

3. Mound near the rim of the far arroyo, 21 September 2013.

4. Mound near cholla cactus on the prairie, 3 August 2013.

5. Mound around prickly pear near where #3 was taken six months before, 20 March 2014.

6. Cholla cactus thorn cluster taken from under a winterfat in my yard, 26 September 2015.

7. Piece of cholla cactus taken from under a winterfat, 26 September 2015.

8. Thorns still on the cholla in my yard, 26 September 2015.

9. Destroyed hose, 26 September 2015; eaten part at right, weather damage at left.

10. Mound near the cholla cactus in my yard, 4 March 2012.

11. Mound near the same cholla, 25 April 2014; it now exists on both sides with broom snakeweed growing in it.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Giraffes


Weather: It’s been a dry monsoon season, with the last attempt at rain on 9/4. Relative humidity was down to 7% in Santa Fé a week ago Sunday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, buddleia, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds, coreopsis, zinnias.

Beyond the walls and fences: Goat’s head, bindweed, green-leaf five-eyes, yellow evening primrose, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, native sunflower, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy, purple and heath asters.

In my yard: Yellow potentilla, garlic chives, calamintha, lead wort plant, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, Maximilian sunflowers, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold, gazania.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ants.

Insect webs appearing everywhere, especially high in the cottonwoods. When I kick those nearer the ground, they contract into denser webs protecting the eggs.


Weekly update: The wet weather early in the season appeared too late in the life cycle of perennials to increase the number of flowers this year. Right now, the peaches are forming next year’s buds. As a result, as I mentioned in the post for June 18, stems just got longer.

Now its time for the late summer annuals that germinated in the wet period and matured when the rains stopped. Most aren’t noticeably more floriferous or taller.

Native sunflowers are the exception. They apparently need water in the air as well as in the soil. Unlike many years, we’ve only had a few days when the relative humidity in Santa Fé was below 10%: August 6, August 20, and September 13.

They are taller, and the branches on the lateral stems don’t seem to be spaced more than usual. That means there also are more flowers.

The only way one judge height is by comparison. They usually get about five or six feet high. This year I see them nodding above six foot walls. I’ve even seen them towering above corn stalks that themselves were unusually tall.


Maximilian sunflowers are a different matter. For one thing, they’re perennials. Mine always bloom earlier than others. I bought them from a nursery in Santa Fé, so they aren’t the local ecotype.

Because they flower earlier, they must do most of their growth earlier. They are decidedly taller than the ones just coming in to bloom.

Not only are different strains of sunflowers different, but different species also behave differently. When the seeds of the native Helianthus annuus are ripe, they heads bend a little, but the stalks remain erect. When the farmer’s single flowered varieties mature, theie entire heads droop from the weight of the oil.

When Helianthus maximiliani are ripe, the whole stalk bends. When they’re in a clump, the middle ones push down the ones to their side, and the ones on their far side push them down until they cascade. It’s bad enough when six foot stalks collapse over the path. When they’re eight foot long, they bury everything. Fortunately, most of mine are across from some foot high tansy that doesn’t seem to mind.


I’m more worried about my cottonwood. A few years ago, it died back in the drought and one branch broke off.


This year the tree has flourished with the added water in the soil. It has added a good six feet. The old dead wood is barely visible.


I fear when the next dry year comes, it will die back again, and I’ll have problems with dead branches. They’re way above my ability to do any anticipatory pruning.

Photographs:
1. Native sunflowers growing down the road, 10 September 2015. The higher part of the wall is 6'.

2. Maximilian sunflowers in my yard, 5 September 2015. The fence is 6'.

3. Native sunflowers growing on the flood plain of the Río Grande. The tall corn is to the left.

4. Maximilian sunflowers two weeks after #2, 20 September 2015. The stems have leaned over.

5. Cottonwood with dead branches two years ago, 8 November 2013.

6. The dead wood has been engulfed with new growth; it’s only visible when the wind blows like yesterday, 19 September 2015.


7. You can just see the dead branch in the indentation on the right in the wind; everything above is new growth, 19 September 2015.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Drought and Snakeweed


Weather: Dry, with only a wetting on 9/4.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, buddleia, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, annual four o’clock, bouncing Bess, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds, coreopsis, zinnias.

Beyond the walls and fences: Goat’s head, bindweed, green-leaf five-eyes, yellow and white prairie evening primroses, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, native sunflower, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy asters.

In my yard: Yellow potentilla, garlic chives, calamintha, lead wort plant, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, scarlet flax, Maximilian sunflowers, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, bachelor button, Mönch aster, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold, gazania.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bumble bees, grasshoppers, ants.


Weekly update: Drought is a progressive condition, or perhaps I should say, a retrogressive one. If the intervals between dry spells aren’t long enough for vegetation to recover, each one makes conditions worse.

Say, for example, a drought kills 5% of the vegetation, and 2% recovers. When the next drought destroys another 5%, that’s 8% gone.

New Mexico had severe droughts in the 1930s and again in the 1950s. The Santa Cruz reservoir went dry in 1956. More dry years occurred in the late 1970s. It may have been wet after that, but damaged grasslands didn’t recover enough to survive the recent bad years.

My front yard was in poor condition when I came here in 1991. All the slope supported was ring muhly grass, winterfat and broom snakeweed.


When we had some dry years around 2007, the ring muhly died. Broom snakeweed colonized areas where water seeped from beds I was watering. I left the upland undisturbed, and so it remained impervious to weed seeds.


We had a very bad year in 2012, when water was severely rationed by the ditch managers. Needle grass on local grasslands suffered. Russian thistles invaded the next spring. The land to the south and west of me was devastated for the first time since I’ve been here.


Last year, the carcasses blew in the wind, and water was still rationed. However, there was just enough rain to revive the dead crowns.


Nothing much happened in my yard in 2014, but we had rain this year in late spring and mid-summer. My previously barren ground sprouted Russian thistles everywhere. They didn’t come from those carcasses, but from seed blown off the land to the south and west. It had been an aerial assault.


Elsewhere, broom snakeweed appeared everywhere in late summer on hillsides that had lost some of their cover. Some had continued to be grazed a few weeks a year by horses


but other parts haven’t been grazed in the last 20 plus years.


Some experts point to the yellow flowered shrub as an indicator of land abuse. Others note, when it’s invading it slows or prevents soil erosion. It’s part of nature’s repair kit when things go awry.

Notes: Broom snakeweed is Gutierrezia sarothrae. Russian thistles are Salsola pestifer. Ring muhly is Muhlenbegia torreyi. Winterfat is Eurotia lanata. Needle grass is Stipa comata.

Tirmenstein, D. "Gutierrezia sarothrae," 1999, in United States Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System, available on-line; summarizes research on the composite.

Photographs:
1. Broom snakeweed in my yard, 12 September 2015.

2. Snakeweed floret, 12 September 2015.

3. Front yard before it was destroyed by drought, 26 August 2006. The purple haze is ring muhly grass. The grass in front is black grama. Winterfat is the gray shrub in back.

4. Front yard two years later, 2 August 2008. The gray rings in front are the dead muhly. The rest is winterfat.

5. Local prairie after the drought killed the needle grass (the black clumps) and Russian thistles had invaded (the green), 24 August 2013.

6. Local prairie with the needle grass reviving, and the Russian thistle carcasses blown away, 20 March 2014.

7. My front yard this year, after those seeds from the local prairie landed, 6 September 2015. The rust is Russian thistle, the yellow is broom snakeweed, and the gray is winterfat.

8. Area hillside covered with broom snakeweed, 10 September 2015.


9. Arroyo flood plain across the road from the hill in #8, 10 September 2015.

10. Same flood plain as #9 before most recent dry years, 2 November 2011.

Sunday, September 06, 2015

Watermelon Rites


Weather: For the past few weeks, the tropical depressions and storms off México that feed our monsoons have been heading west rather than north; some rain Friday night.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, buddleia, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, rose of Sharon, hollyhock, datura, morning glories, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, annual four o’clock, bouncing Bess, David and purple garden phlox, red amaranth, cultivated sunflowers, African marigolds, coreopsis, blanket flower, zinnias.

Red and yellow apples visible on trees, pyracantha berries orange, grapes turning purple.

Beyond the walls and fences: Yellow mullein, goat’s head, bindweed, scarlet creeper, green-leaf five-eyes, yellow and white prairie evening primroses, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, Hopi tea, native sunflower, plains paper flower, horseweed, wild lettuce, flea bane, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy asters, side oats and seven week grama grasses.

In my yard: Yellow potentilla, garlic chives, California poppy, lady bells, calamintha, lead wort plant, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, scarlet flax, Maximilian sunflowers, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, bachelor button, purple and cut-leaf coneflowers, Mönch aster, yellow and reseeded Sensation cosmos.

Sandcherries have all disappeared. Privet berries are bright green and highly visible. Rugosa rose hips are brilliant scarlet; small ones on Woodsi are cranberry red.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold, gazania.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ants.

Weekly update: Watermelons were so integrated into pueblo life by the time of the 1680 revolt that Popé assured his followers, if they abandoned the mission crops, they would "harvest a great deal of maize, many beans, a great abundance of cotton, calabashes and very large watermelons and cantaloupes."

Santa Clara included the melons in their "ritual formulas as one of the principal crops." Hopi at Shipau’lovi chanted

Corn in blossom
Beans in blossom
Your face on gardens looks.
Watermelon plant, muskmelon plant,
Your face on garden looks.

during the Butterfly dance, according to Elsie Clews Parsons. Alexander Stephen saw the Hopi at Walpi include watermelon seeds with those of cotton, gourd and sweet corn in the "paps of the effigy of the mother Pa’tlülükpñüh" in the Horned Water Serpent dance in 1893.

Parsons said the Hopi cut images of watermelon and corn during the Soyal winter solstice ceremony to bury in an orchard or field. The association remained after bands were Christianized. In the early twentieth century, the Santa Clara cut chunks "into ornamental patterns" to offer on the Day of the Dead in the churchyard.

Watermelon played an equally important role in social rituals that brought groups together. It seems to have functioned like the calumet in the midwest as a sign people were meeting in peace. When Diego de Vargas was negotiating with Ácoma during the Reconquest, they lowered "many watermelons, tortillas, and cooked pumpkin down to me, praising Our Lord for our great success."

At Santa Clara in the early twentieth century, the fruits were "the favorite luxury of the people - given as presents, and produced on festive occasions and for honored guests, especially in winter." Barbara Friere-Marreco said they and apples were provided "when neighbors are invited for Christian prayers."

I talked to someone from Santa Clara last year. He said when he went to one of the western pueblos a few year’s back to return a repaired ritual item, he sent his son into the local grocers to buy a watermelon. Even though he was doing them a favor, he was the one entering their pueblo.

The varieties grown by the Hopi and Santa Clara that were dried for winter use may have been some hybrid inadvertently developed in the pueblos that had the fat and keeping value of the older melons with some of the flavor of the newer ones. Paul Vestal said the Ramah Navajo often planted several varieties in "one small field." The plants are fertilized by bees, and accept pollen from cousins.

Some of the old ways have passed since new seeds were introduced. Alfred Whiting said, many Hopi were dismayed when their watermelons no longer kept until February.

Large watermelons were a Midwestern staple when I was a child. No refrigerator was large enough to hold them. No family could eat a whole one. They were reserved for large gatherings. I remember large metal tubs filled with ice and melons at 4-H camp.

Seedless melons are smaller than those large ovals, and inducive to smaller groups. A family can eat one in a few days, anytime they’re in season.

However, even the small melons produce large plants that ramble over the ground. People with small yards can’t give them space. They rarely appear in vegetable patches in the valley.

Until the listeria outbreak in 2011 that damaged the reputation of Colorado cantaloupes, peddlers would fill pick-up beds and sell Rocky Ford watermelons by the side of the road. I haven’t seem them the past few years.

That same summer, one of the local market farmers had planted melons in early June. On September 10 I could "see some round melons and a few large, oval ones." On September 12, the Centers for Disease Control announced the bacteria infection in Colorado had affected 15 people.

When I passed on the 24th, the field had been abandoned. It lay fallow until this year, when they raised peas there.

Rocky Ford watermelons were stigmatized then, and haven’t yet regained their ceremonial role. A bad season like this, when few local melons matured enough to reach the local farmer’s market, perpetuates the break in tradition.

Notes:
Friere-Marreco, Barbara, John Peabody Harrington and William Wilfred Robbins. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. Hopi Journal, 1936.

Popé. Quoted by Pedro Naranjo of San Felipe, declaration of 19 December 1682; reprinted in Charles Wilson Hackett, Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, volume 2, 1942.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, translated in Parsons.

Vargas, Diego de. Letter to Charles V, 16 May 1693, translated in John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge, To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.


Photographs:
1. The only watermelon for sale in the local farmer’s market in the past two weeks. The farmer grew it in Velarde. He said he put in a bunch of seeds, but they all shriveled up.

2. His honeydews did a little better.