Weather: Morning temperatures fell to new lows. While this may be expected this time of the year, I suspect Florence and all the other tropical disturbances were drawing the moisture away from this area. That upper atmosphere water acts as a shield that keeps heat from rising. With it gone, temperatures fell to 43 on Thursday and to 38 on Friday when Florence was close to the North Carolina coast. Humidity levels fell to 10% in Los Alamos and Santa Fé on Thursday afternoon. This morning the air is moist and warm again.
Last useful rain: 9/2. Week’s low: 38 degrees F. Week’s high: 87 degrees F in the shade.
What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, buddleia, trumpet creeper, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, Russian sage, rose of Sharon, datura, sweet pea, annual four o’clocks, farmer’s sunflowers, coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums, zinnias, pampas grass
What’s blooming in my yard: Garlic chives peaked, large-flowered soapwort, David phlox, lead plant, pink evening primroses, perennial four o’clock nearly gone, calamintha, scarlet flax, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, Mönch aster, purple and yellow cone flowers, white cosmos, Maximilian sunflowers, African marigolds
What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Apache plume, stick leaf, velvetweed, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, scarlet creeper, leather leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, goat’s head, prostate knotweed, white prairie and yellow evening primroses, broom snakeweed, Hopi tea, horseweed, wild lettuce, dandelions, plain’s paper flower, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, Tahoka daisy, pigweed, Russian thistles; purple, heath, and golden hairy asters; quack grass; seven-week, black, and side oats grama
Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum; petunias and dwarf African marigolds locally.
Tasks: For reasons still unknown, the ground squirrel left piles of dirt around the iris growing in front of a retaining wall. The soil it brings up hardens and absorbs no water. I wonder how it can support roots a few inches underground, but perhaps the grasses and other cover keep it from drying out.
I suspect this is what is uncovered when that vegetation is removed, and the wind takes away the veneer of top soil. None of the seeds I planted in barren areas this summer grew more than a few inches. Some were in the path of a leak that kept them very wet.
Animal sightings: Cat, rabbit, hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, small bees, hornets, other small flying insects, grasshoppers, sidewalk ants; heard crickets
Weekly update: About six weeks ago, one area in Santa Fé got a lot of rain in a short time. My friend who lived there said water reached his retaining wall that edged the sidewalk on the house side.
His street sloped down into a T intersection. The pavement, curbs, and sidewalls channeled the water, while the crown directed it toward the wall of a woman who lived at the corner. It eroded the mortar and the wall came down in a single piece. The flood waters then crashed into a wall on the other street and took out another wall.
They probably were built by the same mason. Both walls used half-high, hollow, cinder blocks with a solid layer at the top.
When I investigated local walls a few years ago, I noticed many of the earlier ones had rough textured grout. I assumed it was used before Portland-cement mortars became available in town. I assumed Santa Fé didn’t have the same problems. But, this neighborhood was developed in the middle-1950s for middle-class families, and the mortar resembled putty.
My friend also told me people had advised the woman to apply to FEMA for assistance in rebuilding the wall. I thought, but didn’t say, FEMA? I know it was a bad storm, but isn’t that money better spent in Puerto Rico? Or saved for real disasters, like the ongoing one in the Carolinas?
The last time I saw him he said she had decided a FEMA loan wasn’t worth the paperwork, since it only covered 30% of the cost. Her greater problem was finding someone to do the repairs.
I always thought my problems with finding people to build fences arose from the fact I lived in the Española valley, and tradesmen simply refused to travel north.
I did also know a hierarchy of skills existed in Santa Fé before the economic crash of 2008. Contractors who worked at Las Campanas struggled to keep their crews together when the work stopped. Many who were immigrants simply left. With Trump’s war on Spanish-speaking immigrants, more may have returned home.
Newspapers proclaimed the economy was near full employment this week. They believed that was the result of the Republican tax cut, but in some occupations it may simply have been the elimination of skilled competition.
The woman discovered the result was the few men who were willing to bid on her job had highly inflated ideas of their worth, based on what better skilled men had earned in Las Campanas. One told her she had to supply both the stone and the grout, a demand that suggested he didn’t believe his skills were up to the task and wanted to have something to blame if the wall failed again.
Every tradesman I ever talked with wanted to supply everything so he knew the quality and could add the markup to his profits.
After I saw her wall, I thought again about the ones I built around my garden. Her wall had footings, and I simply had laid bricks on top of the soil. I wondered why mine hadn’t failed like hers. When I looked closely I saw her footings, like many I’ve seen here, were level with the surface of the ground, rather than raised like the slab under a house.
I don’t know anything about the relative strengths of currents in layers of water, so I don’t know if they’re stronger at the very bottom were her footings met the wall. The bricks in my low walls footed themselves when they sank partly into the ground, so they didn’t have weak areas exposed to running water.
When I was removing the bad dirt around the iris this week, I noticed the bricks had sunk so low the top layer of soil washed away. Before I could recover the exposed rhizomes, I had to add another layer of bricks to hold the soil. At least, I didn’t have to hire someone to do the work.
Notes on photographs: All taken in Santa Fé 21 August 2018, at least two weeks after the storm.
1. The wall came down in a piece.
2. Close up of the grout between blocks that failed.
3. Close up of the footing after the grout was gone.
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