Monday, August 29, 2016

Rain’s Slow Drips

Weather: Some solid hard rain Saturday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, bouncing Bess, David and purple garden phlox, sweet peas, datura, Sensation cosmos, zinnia; pyracantha berries bright orange; apples falling.

Beyond the walls and fences: Scarlet bee blossom, white prairie and yellow evening primroses, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod, native sunflower, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisies.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, hostas, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: Atmospheric moisture has fallen into a self-defeating cycle. Clouds appeared most days around noon, often with great rumbles of thunder. No rain fell, but the clouds kept air temperatures from rising. The lower temperatures subdues conflicts between warm and cold air, which delayed the formation of storms. They’ve been coming, when they’ve come, after dark.

Then, as more disturbances formed off the coast of México this weekend, we got several hard rains.

Wet mornings have perpetuated the cycle of weeds and ants taking advantage of my unwillingness to go out. White sweet clover seedlings are suddenly 2' high, though they aren’t blooming. Goat’s heads appeared every day, and they were blooming.

It’s taken a while for the water and cool temperatures to effect other plants. Perennials like bouncing Bess and sweet peas that had gone dormant in the heat are back in bloom. There are fewer returning roses, probably because they were able to open most of their buds in the long cool spring.

Even with the water, the leaves on catalpa trees continue to fade. If that’s a consequence of the soil drying at the base of their roots where they absorbed dissolved iron, then it means the water hasn’t seeped that far down yet.

It’s taken a while for monsoon flowers to open along the roadsides. Today was the first day I’ve seen áñil del muerto and Tahoka daisies. Native sunflowers are still scarce, but the daturas are finally blooming. Their morning glory cousins are not.

The Russian thistles, ragweeds, and pigweeds are blooming in places, but aren’t yet plentiful. The broom snakeweed has taken advantage of their retarded growth to colonize more parts of my yard that have been resculpted by drought.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Two Sides of Clouds


Weather: Rain after dark most night.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, David and purple garden phlox, zinnia.

Beyond the walls and fences: Scarlet bee blossom, white prairie and yellow evening primroses, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, hostas, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds and other small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, ants, grasshoppers.


Weekly update: I tend to hibernate in summer, and nature exploits my lassitude. For years, I thought the reason was the heat, since my body has a low tolerance for high temperatures. That was a useful explanation when I was working, and could only work outside when I got home.

When I retired, I thought, now I can spend as much time as I like outside in the early morning hours before the sun becomes too high. The problem with that vision was that it was formed when I was younger. I’ve discovered I now can work outside for several hours, and then nurse sore muscles for several days, or I can limit myself to an hour and go out every day.

With new resolve, I set the timer and went out each day. Then, a couple years ago I cut my hand in July, and couldn’t do anything. Last summer, as I was cleaning some of the messes that developed, I vowed to find a way to work in the winter and not let the elms get away from me again.


All went well this year until it started to rain the end of July. I discovered it’s impossible to cut plant stems when they’re wet. If I waited until things dried a little, the sun was beating down. Since the Los Conchos fire, the rains have been carrying something from the canyons into the valley. When I go out in the morning, my nose shuts down. I begin breathing through my mouth, which diverts the toxins from the lungs into my stomach, which starts to complain.

So, just as I needed to be out, I’m finding new excuses to stay in. As I mentioned in last week’s post, this is the time when the ants multiply. So far, there hasn’t been a new crop of Russian thistles or pigweed, but the goat’s heads are back, and the weeds I hadn’t yet pulled jumped in size. I’ll have horseweed and white sweet clover and wild lettuce again next year.


It becomes a matter of setting priorities. I decided it was more important to spray and crop the elms, locusts and Russian olives that keep coming back than it was to cut the nuisance weeds. I thought it more important to cut back and weed the ditches that carry water from the house than it was to prune dead wood from the Russian sage and caryopteris. I just look at the powdery mildew on the neighboring lilac and think, maybe I’ll remember to spray it next year.

When it starts raining, I stop running water even though I have no idea how much actually lands in the night. I wondered if some trees that had yellowing leaves were getting too much water. Then, I checked the one on the back porch. Its soil was dry.


So I ran a sprinkler on those plants that aren’t getting enough, but don’t water others areas. I hope they like alkalinity. When I looked at a pool of water this morning by the house, it had that telltale white scum that water company I hired can’t explain.

Life is a paradox. All summer I fretted about lack of water, and now that the monsoons have arrived I complain.


Photographs: All pictures taken the morning of 22 August 2016.

1. Russian sage. Last winter when I lined the eroding path with bricks, I cut the stems that lay outside. I cut them again a month ago. Some are back.

2. Caryopteris. I haven’t trimmed the dead wood on this or other shrubs in more than three years. The last time was before I cut my hand.

3. Ditch that takes water away from the house. I’ve cleaned it twice this year, and started again this week.

4. Wild lettuce buds towering above the garlic chives.


5. Yellow leaves on the weeping cherry where the hummingbirds nested. They left last weekend, but I had gotten out of the habit of watering it every day.

6. Water just out of my hose. I assume what looks like soap scum is something alkaline. Every year after there’s been a lot of rain, my well pulls this up from the aquifer.

7. Powdery mildew on lilac leaves nibbled by grasshoppers.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Ants


Weather: We’ve gotten some rain this week, but have had more winds, thunder and lightening that led to nothing; last rain 8/13.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, David and purple garden phlox, zinnia, Sensation cosmos. Apples began showing color.

Beyond the walls and fences: Buffalo gourd, scarlet bee blossom, yellow evening primrose, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, Hopi tea, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod. Quack grass was up everywhere; goat’s heads and Russian thistles were beginning to emerge.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, sea lavender, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, perennial four o’clock, hollyhocks, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, purple and cutleaf coneflowers, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds and other small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, hornets, ants. Grasshoppers continued to denude apple trees and more tent nests appeared in trees of all types in the village. Crickets have been loud at night.


Weekly update: I have a problem with ants. During the summer I have up to six hills of large black ones who deliberately bite. I also see them stealing the grass seeds needed to maintain a prairie ecosystem already struggling with drought and high heat. In addition I have more than a hundred hills in my driveway gravel inhabited by smaller ants who leave me alone, but who turn my hoses, block paths, and brick borders into highways.

Generally, I’ve ignored the one to try to eliminate the other. The first time I was bitten, the swelling and itch didn’t go away for several days. It’s not the kind of problem you can take to urgent care, so I tried the various itch and bite ointments in the house. None worked. For some other reason, I took an aspirin, and the pain disappeared within half an hour. I happen to have a very low tolerance for aspirin, and keep it only for serious emergencies. Ant bites should not be that emergency that may trigger serious stomach problems.


The answer isn’t buying the magic potion, which probably does not exist, but eliminating the underlying problem. Controlling the ants.

I’ve tried whatever was available in the local stores. A few years ago some powders containing permethrin stopped their activity for about three weeks. That product no longer is available, and the replacements don’t even shut down hills for a couple days. Often when I’m in the store someone in the line will ask if what I’m buying works. I tell them no, it’s only temporary. They say they haven’t found anything either.

Efficacy seems a simple enough requirement for a commercial product controlled by the EPA, especially when the poisons pose potential dangers to me and the environment. But no, all that’s offered is risk and cost.


In frustration, I went on-line. Bayer told me there were many types of ants, and each behaved differently. It said, if I wanted to control my insects, I first needed to identify them. I paged through their pamphlet and found the little ones were pavement ants. The larger ones were not included.

I finally learned the big ones were harvester ants. They come in several colors and species, and seem to be primarily limited to the southwest. Too regional to interest a big international corporation like Bayer, whose financial experts are dedicated to maximizing their resources.

Armed with that information I looked more carefully at the available pesticides. They target fire ants, carpenter ants, Argentinian ants. Not the common pavement ants and not the vicious harvester ants. Even though they can denude grazing lands, they are not a serious enough economic hazard to justify the costs of research to develop new pesticides.

Deterrence isn’t the same thing as eradication. For that, the experts say I need to destroy the queen.

Does that mean I have more than a hundred queens in my drive, and that I have to take serious action against each one? Or, are the hills like crack motels, with several outlets for a single source?

I wanted a simple answer to that questions, but all I found on-line were rehashes of what I learned in elementary school, when I first heard about ant farms. You could recite it yourself: there’s a caste system with female workers who farm aphids. The writers never specify which type of ant they’re talking about. Apparently the farms are Texas red harvester ants.


I didn’t want to burrow through scientific articles, in a new field, but had little choice. I did finally learn from Noa Pinter-Wollman’s team that black harvester ant colonies in California can have up to six unique sites, and moved eight times in six months. Which one houses the queen?

I also learned the generic fertile ants fly from their nests to set up new colonies. Somehow that piece of information makes eradication an impossibility, since my neighbors have either given up controlling them or never tried.

I settled again on shutting down hills temporarily. When I started in the spring, the pavement ants had recognizable low mounds made of red sand. Within days, new holes appeared a few inches away. They apparently moved their entrance just beyond the treated area. The second hills were often less conspicuous. By the third treatment, they were often nothing more than holes in rocks, sometimes camouflaged by whatever weed was growing nearby.


The harvester ants began with the characteristic large crater of coarse gravel. Since then, they have settled for holes in the gravel, often two or three in one area.

Since hills disappear in winter, I assumed their life cycle was like plants. Nothing in those generic descriptions connects the life cycle to the calendar. I was forced to observe something that only interested me for negative reasons.

The pavement ants were back in mid-March this year, and the first harvester hill appeared in mid-May. Then they seemed to multiply in summer. I saw a bunch of new red sand-topped hills August 4, the day after our heaviest rain. A red harvester ant hill appeared August 6.

When I reread some of the Wikipedia articles I discovered those first hills were last year’s colonies, and the mid-summer ones are from new queens who don’t emerge until the summer rains. They’re more like biennials than annuals.

There’s no point in treating anything right now. Rain washes away or congeals powders, just as the ants are multiplying. But soon, I’ll go out again, with whatever I can buy, and renew the Sisyphean task unaided by any of the experts who are paid to help. Their corporate employers are secure in the knowledge their monopolies give me no choice but to buy their marginally useful products, or get bitten.


Notes:
Pinter-Wollman, Noa, Deborah M. Gordon, and Susan Holmes. "Nest Site and Weather Affect the Personality of Harvester Ant Colonies," Behavioral Ecology 23:1022-1029:2012.

Wikipedia entries on "Ant" and "Harvester Ant."

Photographs:
1. Mönch asters with sun through their petals after yesterday’s brief rain, 13 August 2016.

2. Treated ant hills in drive area with few hills, 31 July 2016.

3. Black harvester ant and its hole in the gravel, 6 August 2016.

4. Ant powder congealed in the rain; pavement ants crawl over it unharmed, 26 July 2016. This is the product being sold this year.

5. Red ant hill opened after the rains began, 6 August 2016.

6. Pavement ant hole hidden by stones, sticks and Siberian pea pods, 26 July 2016.

7. Raised ant hill in area of #1 after the rains began, 6 August 2016; they look like pavement ants despite the different architecture of the hills.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

Rain Water and Cool Temperatures


Weather: Rain every day for the last five days; water has seeped down more than the six inches my water meter can measure.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, hollyhock, purple garden phlox, zinnia, Sensation cosmos.

Beyond the walls and fences: Buffalo gourd, scarlet bee blossom, yellow evening primrose, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, white sweet clover, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, Hopi tea, wild lettuce, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, golden spur columbine, sea lavender, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, perennial four o’clock, David phlox, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, purple and cutleaf coneflowers, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Baby rabbits, hummingbirds and other small birds, geckoes, butterflies, small bees on garlic chives, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.


Weekly update: All week we had rain in the late afternoon or after dark. The sun was slow to break through each day, and temperatures remained in the 80s. The water was allowed to seep in.

The first things to exploit the weather were ants. With water forecast every day, it was useless to try to dust their areas. They multiplied.

The rains probably washed away the residual pesticide on the wild grasses and alfalfa. Grasshoppers were noticeably worse by mid-week. Not only were leaves disappearing from hollyhocks, but seed capsules were gone from the Rumanian sage and attacked on the baptisia.


Surprisingly, the first seeds to respond to the moisture have not been pigweed or Russian thistle, at least not yet in my yard. When I heard rain was forecast last Sunday, I planted the leftover morning glory seeds. Few had germinated in June, and they had stopped growing the first of July. They had only grown an inch in the past week, but this morning the new seeds were emerging in masses.


Every year, I get lured into some new experiment. This year it was melon seeds. The cantaloup and honey dew came up in a week. Their second leaves appeared, then nothing more. Like the morning glories, their development was arrested. Just before the rains started, I noticed the small plants were putting out their first flowers.

The watermelons were less successful. They got less water, and only six emerged. They never put out their second leaves. Three died in mid-July and the others were shrinking two weeks later. The first rain fell July 31, and the next day afternoon temperatures rose no higher than 86. The next rain was in the wee hours of August 3. When I went out in the afternoon, I found those seedlings not only had revived, but had resumed growth.


Today I discovered whole groups of dormant seeds had germinated.


Elderberries were my other experiment this year. The bare roots I planted last year were eaten immediately. This year, I opted for potted plants. I hadn’t bargained on the only ones in the market in mid-May being large, and therefore expensive. I kept them in their pots for two weeks until I found some tree protectors. I finally planted them when rain was forecast.

They did fine for two weeks. Then I saw a large mound between two. The leaves on one were brown the next week; the leaves were dead on the other a few days later. I replaced hoses that had been damaged by the ground squirrel, and ran more water. No response. Then, either the rain or the cooler temperatures prevailed. This morning there was new growth at the base of one,


and new leaves opening on the other. Of course, the grasshoppers were eating what they could.


Many other plants had browned out in July. The poppies always die back, and sometimes the golden spur columbine do. This year, the daylily leaves were turning yellow and the hostas were bleaching out. Last week when I photographed the fleabane I noticed all the ring muhly had died.


This is a native and the only grass that grows on the sloping hill. When it disappears, the winterfat and Russian thistles take over. This morning I discovered it too had recovered.


Photographs:
1. Self-seeded garlic chives, 3 August 2016. This morning they were covered with bees.

2. Hollyhock leaves eaten by grasshoppers, 3 August, 2016.

3. Baptisia seed pods, 3 August 2016. Last year the flowers were eaten before seeds could develop.

4. Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds, 7 August 2016. They were planted 7 July 2016 when rain was forecast, but hadn’t yet materialized.

5. Watermelon seedlings, planted in June, finally out their second leaves after a few days rain; 3 August 2016.

6. More watermelon seeds germinated after more rain, 7 August 2016.

7. American elderberry leaves coming up from the base, 7 August 2016. All signs of life disappeared in mid-July.

8. Red elderberry leaves coming back, 7 August 2016. They had turned brown in mid-July; the older leaves are being eaten by grasshoppers.

9. Ring muhly grass, 25 July 2016.

10. Ring muhly grass today, 7 July 2016, after five days of rain.