Forsythazioc Era

Weather: On Wednesday I noticed one of my neighbors had erected a metal pole and was flying the US and New Mexico flags. On Thursday, the high winds came through, and they seemed to have survived, though they made a racket flapping about.

The winds made it impossible to continue clearing dead stems, because I couldn’t burn the brush before the winds started in late morning. Then, it got too cold to do much else.

Last rain: 4/8. Week’s low: 21 degrees F. Week’s high: 86 degrees F.

What’s blooming in the area: It’s not that nature hates fruit and does everything it can to destroy the flowers every year. It’s more that cold fronts come after its gotten too warm, and the destruction of blossoms that opened in the premature heat is simply collateral damage. Saturday morning’s cold scotched the flowers on my flowering crab apple, sweet cherries, sand cherry, and forsythia.

The following list of plants blooming in the area was done Friday: sweet cherries, sand cherries, purple leaf sand cherries, flowering crab apples, flowering quince, redbud, forsythia, daffodils, tulips, alfilerillo, purple and tansy mustards, western stickseed, common and native dandelions.

What’s reviving: Apples, raspberries, snowball, beauty bush, caryopteris, lilacs, cottonwoods, Siberian pea tree, lilies of the valley, peonies, ladybells, donkey spurge, coral bells, catmints, black eyed Susans, Mexican hats, Silver King artemesia, Shasta daisies, tahoka daisy, leather leaf globe mallows, ring muhly grass

Tasks: The most arduous garden task for me is laying hoses. My upper arms aren’t particularly strong, and just pulling 50' of inert rubber leaves me breathless. Then, trying to get a brittle hose into a plastic garbage bag is even more demanding.

Last summer, after it as apparent the hoses I had installed in the spring were failing, I had to put down new ones. The only time you can easily lay hoses is this time of year, when few things have leafed. To get anything done, I simply threaded them through branches and around plants. Now, I have to go back and fix them.

Sometimes, it’s simple: I just walk on the hose and break off dead stems with my feet. However, in other cases I have to get on my knees and crawl under shrubs, pulling as I go. If they still don’t lay flat, I have to get some bricks to hold them, then later bend down and retrieve the weights with my left hand.

Animal sightings: Quail, gecko, bumble bee, cricket, pill bug, sidewalk ants

Weekly update: In the nineteenth century, before geologists had a firm definition of stratigraphy, they often named a layer for the uncovered bones. This didn’t mean they did something simple like call it the Camel layer. Instead, they found a report of similar paleozoological discoveries, and named the layer for that town. Thus, areas around Española that now are called Pojoque member, Tesuque member, or simply middle Miocene were then identified as Barstovian beds [1] for remains found in Barstow, California. [2]

I use a similar scheme when I group local landscapes into the Rosicrucian, Forsythazoic, and Perovskian eras. The first existed through the early 1950s when people planted fruit trees. [3] The second began in the late 1950s when ranch-style houses began displacing block houses modeled on those built in Los Alamos. That was followed by a barren period, when, if a characteristic shrub was planted, it didn’t survive. Today we’re in the age of Russian Sage. [4]

The interesting thing about the history of the local landscape is that once a flora was established, it was perpetuated by people who bought older homes. If the house had forsythia, they did not plant fruit trees, while those in older houses often added a forsythia. They also did not dig them out. The difference between the landscapes of the two groups was the Forsythazoic owners kept their shrubs pruned, while the Rosicrucians tended to let them take on their natural shape.

The continuity in taste came from two factors. When many people move into an established neighborhood, they wanted to blend in, if for no other reason that they feared they might destroy their property values if they introduced something different. But a larger factor may have been the reason they bought a particular house in the first place. They may already have had associations of plants with the architecture from their childhood.

Notes on photographs:
1. Unpruned Forsythia intermedia Lynwood Gold, 10 April 2018.

2. Soaker hose going over branches of a sandcherry that hadn’t yet begun to bloom, 10 April 2018. I also often have to remove the dead leaves to get a hose to lay flat, or to let the water reach the ground.

3. Another sandcherry (Prunus besseyi) in full bloom, 10 April 2018.

End notes:
1. Daniel J. Koning. Preliminary Geologic Map of the Española Quadrangle, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe Counties, New Mexico. Socorro: New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, May 2002. Map and report.

2. Ted Galusha and John C. Blick. "Stratigraphy of the Santa Fe Group, New Mexico." American Museum of Natural History. Bulletin 144:1-128:April 1971.

3. Most fruit trees, including apples, apricots, cherries, and peaches are members of the Rose family, the Rosaceae.

4. The Latin name for Russian sage is Perovskia atriplicifolia.