Prices

Weather: It got down to 30 on Thursday morning, and some surviving lilac buds began opening. The same day, one pansy and one viola, which weren’t in bloom when I bought them, responded to the cool by blooming. Morning temperatures Friday and Saturday were just at freezing, and they continued to flower.

The winds have not stopped, though some days have been calm enough to be encourage false hopes. Earlier this week I was finally able to break off a black locust branch that had come down several years ago. I put it on top of the burn pile as a weight, and may remove it when I burn until the winds stop. The only problem is even the base of the 2.5" diameter stem has thorns.

Last rain: 4/8. Week’s low: 30 degrees F. Week’s high: 81 degrees F.

What’s blooming in the area: Spirea, few lilacs, broad leafed yucca, Dutch iris

What’s blooming in my yard: Fruiting crab apples, sour cherry, Siberian peas, tulips, lilies of the valley, vinca, blue flax, pink evening primroses, coral bells

What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy mustard, hoary cress, purple mat flower, oxalis, white tufted evening primroses, western stickseed, bindweed, greenleaf five eyes, fern leaf globemallow, fleabane, dandelions, goat’s beard, green amaranth; needle, rice, cheat, and June grasses

What’s reviving: Virginia creeper, catalpa, desert willow, trees of heaven, skunk bush, buddleia, Russian sage, regreening arborvitae, baptisia, perennial four o’clock, goldenrod, coreopsis, purple leaf coneflower

What’s coming up: Stickleaf, tomatillo, reseeded larkspur. Onions are up in one of the market garden fields.

Tasks: I’m still picking dandelions everyday to keep them from going to seed, and have the brown and yellow stains on my hands to prove it. The first comes from the milky sap in the hollow stems. The flowers open about midmorning, and not all at once, so I have to go looking for them several times. Even then, some sneak by and are scattered by the afternoon winds before I find them.

I finally planted the pansies and violas I bought more than a month ago. The roots hadn’t developed much, making them just as fragile as they were when I first put them out to harden up. Once morning temperatures had stabilized around freezing, I discovered another reason I couldn’t plant them. The pansies were going into an existing bed, and the hostas hadn’t come up yet. The violas had to wait until the lilies of the valleys emerged. When I dug their holes I discovered the shrubs that were more than 6' away had sent their roots over and I had to scrape out spaces without disturbing them.

Animal sightings: Quail, small brown birds, gecko, hornets, sidewalk ants. My neighbor has a family of chickadees who’ve been nesting in his metal building for years. The sentinel seems larger this year, but doesn’t seem to bothered when I walk by in my drive.

Weekly update: Mother’s Day has become the traditional day for nurseries to sell plants. It’s not simply because it makes for nice advertising to suggest one take one’s mom out shopping for something for the backyard, but the last projected frost date has passed.

It’s also getting so warm it’s hard to transplant things safely, so I start shopping the end of April. Prices go up every year, but this season seems like the one that definitely separates the rich from the rest of us.

I decided I wanted three small potentillas for a very narrow part of a bed that was on a slope and edged with bricks. Dutch iris were already in the area. I needed something in a small pot to fit the space.

When I was in Albuquerque Monday I stopped in one garden store where the only yellow potentilla was in a five-gallon pot and cost $31. With tax, three were more than a hundred dollars. The other two places I looked didn’t have them, or much of anything yet.

The next day I was in Santa Fé and stopped in two places. Both had the same brand, the same size, and the same price. I also checked out the two big boxes and the two local hardware: none even carried potentillas.

Friday I had to go back to Santa Fé and tried one other place. It actually had exactly what I wanted: potentillas in half-gallon pots for $11. They came from another nursery.

I read somewhere that the nursery offering the large pots had serious financial problems after the real estate crash of 2008. For a couple seasons, few new houses were built, which meant few new landscapes were created. Their stock of unsold pots accumulated, and had to be wintered over or sold at reduced prices.

The crash also meant financing became for difficult as banks consolidated and local ones disappeared. We no longer have a locally owned one here in Española. The combined effects of more stringent lending requirements and non-local owners has meant local businesses have a hard time getting the credit they need to buy spring inventory.

If there’s a 50% markup on goods, then those thirty dollar shrubs cost them fifteen. If they can get the seasonal loan, it can buy less. One striking feature of many places I went this week was how little they were carrying.

Even bedding plants have become dear and hard to locate. Several years ago, the big boxes converted from six-packs of plants to single pots. The marketing idea was they could get more money per square inch of shelf space with the single pots than they could the six-packs.

Apart from price, they were the same problem as the five-gallon shrub. They required too big a hole in beds with other plants. They were designed for decks and raised beds filled with matching potting soil.

When I was looking for pansies I was in a big box in Santa Fé where someone put two flats in his cart. When I got to the plants I saw they were singles, and walked away. I thought, while I stood behind the man at the checkout counter, he must be a gardener for someone who didn’t worry about cost. No, he was a homeowner and put them back when he was told instead of two flats he had to pay $1.59 for 48 pots. Pansies weren’t worth $75.

My local hardware stores still carry locally grown six-packs. The one gets them from McLain’s Greenhouse in Estancia, and the other has other sources. The latter are expensive: five dollars for a six-pack means that man’s 48 pansies would be forty dollars.

Neither store carries as much as they used to. On the one hand they can’t compete with the big box prices. The one had no trees or shrubs this year, and very few annuals or perennials. The other still had a full range, because loyal customers know it tends to provide better plants, so they don’t lose as many when they pay the higher price.

Notes on photographs:
1. Viola that came into bloom after temperatures few below 32 degrees, 4 May 2018.
2. Siberian pea tree flowers, Caragana arborescens, 2 May 2018.
3. Gold Star Potentilla fruticosa in its narrow bed, 6 May 2018.