Weather: The solstice is approaching, and nature noticed. The goat’s beard’s been blooming earlier and earlier in the day. Monday, the crickets out back started chirping later, though I don’t know if they were reacting to the sun or the heat.
Until yesterday, afternoon temperatures were in the low 90s. The warm weather curtained the blooming period of all the catalpas that weren’t cooled by their nearness to the river. I noticed more evergreen trees were browning, but this time they were full-sized smaller species.
A pre-solstice hurricane threw water our way yesterday, though the gentle rain didn’t deposit much water. The clouds that kept it from evaporating were more helpful.
Last useful rain: 6/16. Week’s low: 45 degrees F. Week’s high: 95 degrees F.
What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, catalpa, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, daylilies, lilies, red hot poker, Arizona and red-tipped yuccas, Spanish broom, Russian sage, purple salvia, hollyhocks, snow-in-summer, datura, sweet pea, hollyhocks, dark purple larkspur, yellow yarrow, cultivated sunflowers, coreopsis. Sugar peas were for sale from a roadside stand on Thursday.
What’s blooming in my yard: Rugosa and miniature roses, Maltese cross, golden spur columbine; foxglove, smooth, purple, and coral beards tongues; Johnson Blue geranium, catmints, Romanian sage, lady bells, winecup mallow, blue flax, tomatillo, pink evening primroses, white-flowered spurge, Shasta daisy, Ozark coneflower, white yarrow, chocolate flowers, blanket flower
What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Tamarix, alfilerillo, purple mat flower, white tufted evening primroses, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, leather leaf globemallow, showy milkweed, buffalo gourd, scurf pea, alfalfa, white sweet clover, tumble mustard, Queen Anne’s lace, Hopi tea, fleabane, common and native dandelions, goat’s beard, plain’s paper flower, golden hairy asters, Tahoka daisy; brome, cheat, and purple three-awn grasses
Flowers were dense on a number of cholla plants in one area, but not visible elsewhere. Mine, of course, are still recovering from the ground squirrel. This is an unusually good year for the one field. Cottonwoods were dropping their cotton.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansies, violas, snapdragons; local petunias
Tasks: One person baled a cutting of hay.
Last Sunday morning I began working to save the chrysanthemums. I hadn’t realize when I changed hoses that they weren’t getting water until I noticed more brown than green in the area. By then the deep rooted perennials and cheat grass had moved in.
The first step is always clearing the major problems so I can see what’s actually happening. I started by digging out or breaking off the dandelions, columbines, and leatherleaf globemallows around the edges.
When I’m doing work that involves repetitive motions, - and what garden work doesn’t - I try to work different areas of the yard on successive days. The idea is I vary which muscles are being used. Thus, I did something else on Monday.
Tuesday, I returned to the mums to remove the loose sticks that crisscrossed the area so I could get to the cheat grass, and occasional purple aster. The cheat grass had gotten very tall. When I dug it out with the chisel, the seeds and flowers broke lose and fell on my pant legs, where I had to pick them off to avoid planting them. Underneath, they were harboring dandelions.
I didn’t get back until this morning, when I removed some of the dandelions with a spade and broke others off. Some had come up inside mum plants. I removed a little more cheat grass, then was able to use the chisel to uplift the many columbine seedlings that had come up. Again, many of the seeds had been stopped in their travels by the dead flowering stems and dropped near or inside the mum’s roots.
By the time my hour was up, the bees were beginning to buzz around the columbines, ensuring a new crop of seedlings next year.
Animal sightings: Hummingbird, other small brown birds, geckos, sidewalk ants, viceroy and cabbage butterflies, bumble bees, hornets, other small flying insects, grasshoppers, earthworms where I was weeding; small bees arrived on purple flowers
I planted some more melon seeds Monday, and placed a piece of wire mesh fencing over the top of the area. It was weighted by bricks at the two ends. Wednesday I found a deep furrow on one side, too big to have been caused by a bird. I don’t think the animal was able to get under. If things start to come up, I still can protect the seedlings by maneuvering the bricks to raise the fencing a little.
I suspect it was the rabbit, which seems to be more stubborn than smart. The ground squirrel wouldn’t have let a mere sheet of wire stop it. Since it can’t get water by biting into my hoses, it’s loosening them at the fittings. When I went to see why some trees weren’t doing well, I found the end cap wasn’t tight. Then Thursday, I found a hose loose at its connection, where it had been fine two days before.
Weekly update: Fire weather has different aspects. The first to arrive are conditions that make fires possible: high heat and low humidity that prepare fuels, lightening that ignites them, and high winds that fan the flames.
Sunday night the second-hand smoke phase arrived. I woke with my muscles sore from breathing. In the morning, I looked at the weather bureau’s air quality map. Vertical smoke was to the south and east of the Sangres. Tuesday morning, it was surrounding the area, and by midnight the entire state was blanketed.
I’m not exactly sure what vertical smoke means, beyond some measurement of the number of particles in the air. I believe it’s the smoke that’s risen from a wild fire into the upper atmosphere where it circulates. Some must drift down, especially in the night, and mix with the automobile exhaust from cities like Santa Fé. When that mix drops into valley, it only affects the few with compromised lungs.
Wednesday I stopped attempting any work outside beyond watering, and always wore a surgical mask. When I woke from my nap Thursday afternoon it had just stopped raining. The smell of smoke was strong outside. First-hand smoke was arriving from a just ignited fire in Valles Caldera.
Rain brought some relief yesterday. This morning the vertical smoke was gone, but we faced what I call the third fire weather phase. They’ve been dropping water and fire retardants on the San Antonio fire. I assume some of that lands on the ashes, and together they become part of the soil surface that dries out in high heat and low humidity. Once turned to dust, they’re picked up by high winds anytime during the year and blow, usually to the northeast towards the Española valley.
Notes on photographs:
1. Pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa) and perennial sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolia) blooming together, 16 June 2018.
2. Goldfinger potentillas (Potentilla fruticosa); smooth brome grass (Bromus Inermis) has colonized the area in front, 16 June 2018.
3. Maltese crosses (Lychnis chalcedonica); Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani) leaves are in back, 16 June 2018.
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