Weather: Sweet cherry blossoms succumbed to the succession of cold mornings; they still are producing flowers buried in leaves but the ones that were visible and exposed are gone.
I’m not sure about the butterflies. Monarchs can’t withstand temperatures below freezing and, when it gets cold in México, cluster together on evergreen boughs. I still saw some, but each day’s group may have been a different set.
The hose failures last summer are affecting my plants this year. I have a row of fruiting crab apples and the two that were on a hose that developed a large hole survived the winter, but have no flowers, while the others all are in bloom.
My forsythia leaves started wilting in last summer’s heat. I did what I could to get the shrub more water. It survived the winter, but has not bloomed. Few flowers appeared on some 10' high plants near the river that usually are covered. A few lots down, the forsythia that grows in an irrigation channel was doing fine.
I talked to a woman who was buying a particular type of tomato plant. She’d tried Wall of Water, only it crushed the plant when the wind came up. Like the rest of us, she buys as soon as she sees something and nurses plants until the weather is right because she knows they won’t be available then.
Last useful rain: 4/17. Week’s low: 26 degrees F. Week’s high: 84 degrees F in the shade.
What’s blooming in the area: Apples, flowering crab apples, purple leaf sandcherries, flowering quince, forsythia, tulips, donkey spurge
What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, western stickseed, native and common dandelions, cheat grass
One of the difficulties of controlling the spread of dandelions by picking the flowers is they open at different times of the day in my yard, depending of when the sun reaches them.
What’s blooming in my yard: Sour and weeping cherries, sandcherries, fruiting crab apples, grape hyacinths, vinca; pansy that wintered over
Last year was the first time my flowering crab apple produced lots of flowers, and they were killed immediately by the frost. This year they survived, and are fragrant.
What’s reviving/coming up: Raspberries, Russian olives, weigela, sandbar willow, lilies, lilies of the valley, Rumanian sage, Siberian catmint, tumble mustard, David phlox, green-leaf five-eyes, Silver King artemesia, Mönch aster
Tasks: The warm weather has encouraged weeds. People were kicking up dust with weed eaters, and electric and rider mowers.
Animal sightings: Chickadees, quail, first gecko, cabbage and orange butterflies, ladybug on globe willow, small black ants, small bees on Siberian peas, sandcherry and flowering crab apple
From the sounds I hear in my drive, young birds in my neighbor’s metal building must have hatched.
Weekly update: I’m amazed at how little I learned growing up about trees. I suppose the reason is I was older than they, and I left home for college before I turned 18. I wasn’t around to see them reach adulthood.
This winter was the first time I had someone cut limbs off living trees. In most cases it was to removed dead wood, but in others it was to remove branches that were in my way.
They were cut in mid-February, and two months later they are replacing what was removed.
The cottonwood must have suffered more than I thought from last summer’s heat. Despite getting water every week, it dropped leaves on the southeast side early. This year that limb has no leaves, and should have been cut this winter.
It knew it had problems, and produced branch buds in its main trunk last summer. They have been leafing all along the trunk.
The Russian olive had the same problem, and I forgot to have it pruned. Now, I only see new leaves high on the west side. On the east side, leaf buds are opening on the trunk.
I imaging people who lived with trees eons ago observed these patterns in Nature and must have figured out they could stimulate new growth by dismembering. That, after all is the essence of pruning hedges and fruit trees.
I had some branches taken off an apricot that were reaching into the drive. I assumed it would put out new limbs higher up, since trees seem naturally to die up from the ground. But no, the tree wanted a branch at that level and is putting out new leaves around the cut.
Notes on photographs: All taken 21 April 2019.
1. Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia).
2. Cottonwood (Populus deltoides).
3. Apricot (Prunus armeniaca).
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