Birds and Seeds

Weather: Snow was promised a couple times, and a little did materialize today. Mostly we got the collateral weather: warm nights while the moist clouds moved overhead and raw winds in the day.

I don’t know if the ground is frozen yet or not. I never dig to find out. I do I’m having problems opening my gate. The ground there heaves a bit in the winter. A few years ago I put a narrow line of blocks under the gate wheel. My neighbor cut down some winterfat, and the bare soil blew onto my drive. So, the sum of tiny changes: the blocks probably have sunk a bit, the ground may have heaved a bit, and there’s a bid more dirt to clear - and the gate was dragging this week.

Last useful snow: 12/2. Week’s low: 10 degrees F. Week’s high: 56 degrees F in the shade.

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

Some arborvitae beginning to turn brown.

What’s gray, gray-green, or blue green: Four-winged saltbush, buddleia, pinks, winterfat, snow-in-summer

What still has dead leaves: Area cottonwoods and Russian olives; trees of heaven have their full heads of seed clusters that probably catch as much snow as leaves. My cottonwood finally dropped its leaves.

Animal sightings: Small birds. My bird feeding friend told me the mysterious black hooded birds I saw a week ago may have been juncos.

Weekly update: I forced myself to go out one afternoon and start cutting down the dead Maximilian sunflower stalks. Of course, I got waylaid by all the things that blocked my way.

I began by cutting the dead stems on purple asters and leather leaf globe mallows whose seeds were constantly getting into my clothes. The aster parachutes have been especially troublesome this year.

The globe mallow stems were still green, and wouldn’t cut with my dull loppers. It’s not like I was encouraging them to sprout near my car, so tore at them anyway.

Next, without thinking, I sat on the block walk to cut shorter stems, and slash the garlic chives and hollyhocks that were growing between the blocks. As I went, I swept the blocks with a plastic whiskbroom.

After a half hour, I began to get cold. The air may have been in the mid fifties, but the ground was not. I hadn’t thought to lay a piece of cardboard for insulation.

I went out two days later and discovered some animal had kicked debris over the cleared path. I suspect it was a bird. I don’t know if it detected some residual heat in the area or was drawn by something else. I suspect it was hoping to eat whatever I had planted. Welcome to it, since all that could have been sown were globe mallow, aster, and garlic chive seeds. The last are so plentiful, there was no need to destroy my handiwork.

Notes on photographs: Water serpent and cloud painted on a local stucco wall.