Sunday, September 09, 2018

Locally Grown


Weather: I suppose it was inevitable that with the summer temperatures so high the natural change to fall would be abrupt, but it was still a surprise. Leaves on some cherries and peaches have started to turn color and drop.

Last useful rain: 9/2. Week’s low: 48 degrees F. Week’s high: 84 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, alfalfa, farmer’s sunflowers, coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums, pampas grass

What’s blooming in my yard: Hosta, garlic chives, large-flowered soapwort, David phlox, lead plant, pink evening primroses, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, scarlet flax, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, Mönch aster, purple and yellow cone flowers, zinnias, 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, crane bill, broom snakeweed, Hopi tea, horseweed, wild lettuce, dandelions, plain’s paper flower, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, purple and golden hairy asters, Tahoka daisy, pigweed, Russian thistles, quack grass, seven-week and side oats grama

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum; petunias and dwarf African marigolds locally.

Tasks: The market garden fields that were abandoned have been colonized by áñil del muerto and native sunflowers. While áñil is dense in many places in Santa Fé, these fields are the only ones with many plants locally.

I’ve got hoses that are beginning to fail. I don’t know if its age or an animal has attacked them. I do know I can’t replace them; Amazon no longer has them available. I’ve installed a couple 50' hoses where I need 25' just to save some plants. Manufacturers and merchants who’d rather have one short than one left over at the end of the season don’t know the true cost of their calculations of unused inventory.

Animal sightings: Cat, rabbit, hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, small bees, hornets, other small flying insects, grasshoppers, sidewalk ants; heard crickets


Weekly update: Genetic diversity is one of the keys to species survival. When a flower produces a number of seeds with minute differences, chances increase that at least one will be able to survive the unknowns of the next season.

Thus, the datura that came up from seed did much better this summer than the purchased plant, though both had parents from the same grower.

My seedling produced a few flowers in July then went out of bloom. Area plants that have been around for years began blooming in May and never stopped.

Then, on 28 August my seedling was covered with buds and the purchased plant had one. Most, but not all those buds have opened. Yesterday, I discovered the small bees, which had disappeared in mid-summer, were back. One was a datura flower.

Perhaps the tryst of a local bee with the local seedling will mean I’ll finally get some plants as durable as my neighbors.

Notes on photographs: Small bee on Datura wrightii flower in my yard taken 8 September 2018. I’m not sure about the species of these bees.

1 comment:

Vicki said...

Fantastic photo of the bee in the Datura flower.