Smoke

Weather: Snow, then cold. Last night the stars were bright and the air filled with smoke.

Last useful snow: 11/12. Week’s low: 14 degrees F. Week’s high: 55 degrees F in the shade.

What’s still green: Leaves on area hybrid roses, cliff roses, juniper, arborvitae, and other evergreens, iris, red hot pokers, blue flax, hollyhocks, winecup and leather leaf globe mallows, beards tongues, snap dragon, golden spur columbine, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, vinca, coral bells, alfilerillo, green leaf five eyes, Saint John’s wort, cat mint, baptisia, violets, sweet pea, Queen Anne’s lace, alfalfa, Shasta daisy, Mexican hats, chrysanthemum, coreopsis, blanket flowers, anthemis, white yarrow, dandelion, asters, June, needle and cheat grasses

What’s yellow or yellow-green: Broom snakeweed,

What’s gray, gray-green, or blue green: Four-winged saltbush, buddleia, pinks, winterfat, snow-in-summer, Silver King artemesia, golden hairy aster, chocolate flower

Tasks: Someone who keeps his shrubs and trees pruned was out Tuesday amputating his catalpa.

Animal sightings: Cat, small brown birds

Weekly update: Canute knew he couldn’t control the tides. Saturday, Trump said "I want great climate, we’re going to have that." I’d settle for something I didn’t like a few years ago when winter temperatures hovered around 20 degrees.

So far, we’re repeating last year when it got down to 11 on this day and 10 the next morning. Then morning temperatures returned to the low 20s until December 5 when they reached a low of 5 and stayed below 10 until the solstice.

We haven’t been as cold yet this year, but the fall below 20 degrees started last Tuesday when it was 14 outside.

The laws of physics don’t hibernate, especially the one about heat rising and cold falling. This morning when it was 16 here, it was 31 in Los Alamos, 30 in Santa Fé. It’s not just that our heat rises, but their automobiles produce more fumes that trap the increased heat their producing to keep warm.

I’ve been wanting to get outdoors to continue cutting winterfat and Maximilian sunflower stems. It’s not just because they need it. I have to maintain my summer work schedule if I’m going to counteract the affects of age on my bone density.

Yesterday, when it finally was warm enough to go outside the smoke from California arrived. It looked like it was flowing north, then east on NOAA maps. But storm fronts of some kind (more of those forces of physics) were pushing the smoke south, especially east of the Sangre.

In the house, my eyes were stinging. I alternated between being stuffed up and breathing through my mouth.

Now smoke is something we’ve all become familiar with. I’ve learned the effects are worse when they’re actively fighting the flames with retardants than when the firefighters are letting a blaze burn itself out.

The smoke in California must be geometrically worse than anything Las Conchas produced. Because the fires are so near settled areas, they’re using more retardants. But worse, it isn’t just trees and shrubs that are burning. Buildings are always toxic, and automobiles worse.

The fact Paradise turned into a charnel house is probably only worse psychologically. It’s an image from Halloween that one could be inhaling bits of someone’s grandmother.

Notes on photographs: Cook’s hardware has murals on the outside of its storage building. The original one with the train on flat land (top) was painted over, and the one of the train near the San Juan bridge (bottom) was painted on an abutting wall. Not only does it represent an idealization of our past, but a past when the only pollutants came from steam engines.