Location Rules

Weather: Some warm afternoons, but the winds begin soon after it’s warm enough to be outside.
Last useful rain: 10/04. Week’s low: 23 degrees F. Week’s high: 73 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming: Scarlet flax, broom senecio, snap dragons, a few blanket flowers and plains coreopsis, one chocolate flower

What’s still green: Cholla cactus; leaves on Bradford pear, crab apples, Siberian elm, beauty bush, juniper, German iris, red hot poker, regular and garlic chives, tansy, bouncing Bess, pinks, sweet peas, pink evening primroses, sweet violets, coral bells, golden spur columbine, blue flax, green leaf five eyes, bindweed, vinca, Johnson Blue geranium, winecup mallow, Queen Anne’s lace, Mönch asters, yarrow, dandelions, purple coneflowers, chrysanthemums, lance leaf coreopsis, Shasta daisy, June, needle, and cheat grass

What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaves on Apache plume, fernbush, winterfat, snow-in-summer, catmint, Silver King artemisia

What’s turning yellow: Leaves on cottonwoods, lilacs, Maximilian sunflowers, goldenrod

What’ turning orange: Leaves on peaches, choke cherries

What’s turning red or purple: Leaves on woods rose, sandcherries and purple leaf sandcherry, purple leaf plum, leadplant

Tasks: Finished clipping dead wood from the Siberian pea, and moved on to the lilacs. They have been neglected for a number of years, and the dead wood turns too hard to cut easily.

Animal sightings: Small birds, small gecko, grasshoppers, ants

Weekly update: It’s not Herbert Spencer’s survival of the fittest that defines what survives the first cold temperatures, but the realtor’s "location, location, location!"

Temperature fell to 23 degrees a week ago Friday, and then went down to 18 on Saturday. Nothing prepared the floral world. The lowest it had been was 33, and that was almost a week before.

Anything that was exposed was killed: leaves on trees, stems on herbaceous perennials, and most annuals from warmer climates.

But not everything. Grape leaves along the top rails of fences along the main road died, but not those lower to the ground. The outer leaves of one person’s datura died, but not those between the dead leaves and the stone wall.

Wherever there was a heat sink, something might survive. I have three apricots. The leaves on two, which stand by themselves along the gravel drive, died. The other is next to a juniper. All the leaves died, except those nearest the evergreen.

Because the preceding days were warm, the ground retained heat. Most of the green leaves mentioned in the above list are near the surface. Most of the chocolate flowers that grow over Saltillo tiles died, but the a few leaves on one growing in dirt survived. It produced a flower, barely visible behind the protective stems.

Species does make a difference. The other plants that still have flowers are ones adapted to cold climates, like snapdragons, or native ones that are used to climatic extremes like the purple asters and broom senecio.

Landscapers like to tell homeowners how they can exploit microclimates created in their yards by buildings and trees. They can’t control the even smaller nanoclimates made by plants themselves.

Notes on photographs: All were taken 20 October 2019.
1. Blanket flower (Gaillardia grandiflora).
2. Chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata) growing close to the ground.
3. Apricot (Prunus persica) protect by a one-seeded juniper (Juniperus monosperma).

Arrested Development

Weather: Last Thursday’s morning temperature was 42; Friday it was 23. The lows have been below freezing ever since.
Last useful rain: 10/04. Week’s low: 18 degrees F. Week’s high: 76 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming: It’s too soon to know if any of the visible flowers are alive or freeze dried. Virginia creeper leaves turned burgundy before the cold, but other leaves simply died with the cold. It remains to be seen if any more change color.

What’s still green: The full effects haven’t been processed by plants, so many leaves are still green.

Tasks: My order of spring bulbs arrived after temperatures fell. It had rained 10/4, and water remained in the ground. However, the soil was cold to handle and to stand on.

The peaches seemed lighter when I put some bags in the trash this morning. I’m not sure if the cold forced them to give up more water, in effect partially freeze drying them. Of course, they warm every afternoon.

Animal sightings: Small birds, grasshoppers, ants and small flying insects still active. I heard migrating geese Sunday afternoon near the river.

Weekly update: I didn’t realize until this summer how much my sense of passing time is related to what I see in my garden. When plants stopped growing because of the high heat, I went into a hiatus. I knew what the calendar said, but my sense of time was that it was still early July. Until certain plants, like zinnias and cosmos bloomed, my internal calendar was frozen.

In the past few weeks I had a hard time adjusting to shorter day lengths. There were certain areas I watered in late afternoon, usually after I had eaten. Suddenly, when I did that, it was dark before the watering was done. I couldn’t remember to start earlier, because, or course, I was still waiting for the annuals to bloom.

We had another jolt this past week, when temperatures went from those of fall to winter. Plants didn’t have time to go through their usual deceleration. Since leaves didn’t change, my internal calendar again was suspended.

The cold temperatures mean nothing will get watered again: the hoses probably contain ice in the early morning.

Instead of doing any weed removal, all I can do now is continue trimming dead wood. I’ve only got a few more days left to use the presence of leaves as my criteria. After that, the only way I can judge if a limb is alive is if it is pliable. That isn’t a sure sign, but one can be sure that one that’s rigid probably is dead.

Notes on photographs:
1. Broom senecio (Senecio spartioides), 14 October 2019. This only started to bloom on a week ago Monday. The fact an insect was actively foraging suggests the flower is still alive.

2. Pink evening primrose (Oenothera Speciosa), 14 October 2019. This is blooming in a protected location, low to the ground and next to the heat-retaining rail-timber wall. They have been actively growing this fall. However, I doubt the presence of the ant signifies anything.

3. Catalpa with dead wood marked by glittery, light-catching pipe cleaners, 10 October 2019.