Luxury of Space

Weather: It got very warm last week, and people were working in their yards. Then the chilly winds began, and it was impossible to be out.

Last rain: 3/18. Week’s low: 23 degrees F. Week’s high: 73 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming: Bradford pear, apricot, early peach, forsythia, daffodils, alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, dandelion

What’s emerging: Apache plume, roses, flowering and one type of fruiting crab apple, flowering quince, weeping and globe willows, Siberian elms, privet, arborvitae, leatherleaf globemallow, sidalcea, Maltese crosses, bindweed, ladybells, western stickseed, winterfat, snakeweed broom

Tasks: I ran all the hoses for the first time this week. Despite the harsh winter, I didn’t find any that failed because of the cold. One might have been stepped on when the men were working on the shrubs, and another attacked by an animal.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, house wrens, and other small birds, small bees, first fly in the house, worms

The apricots started blooming on March 18 after some days in the high 60s. The winds were too high for the bees. Then the afternoon temperatures cooled to the mid-50s. Bees don’t come out until the air temperature is 55, and aren’t fully active until its 66. All those flowers that opened were wasted, if one wanted fruit.

The bees finally appeared last Sunday, when it reached 64. Since then, winds have come up in the afternoon, so they could only be active in the late mornings.

My apricots never come into full bloom like my neighbors; instead a few blossoms open at a time. This probably is a defense against the vagaries of the weather. They may never produce a full crop, but they should produce something every year that it doesn’t freeze in late spring.

Weekly update: Like most, I’m hunkered in with enough supplies so I don’t have to go to a grocery store for several weeks. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for families to be confined to the house for days with no sports on television. I’ve discovered space is a great luxury.

The first kind of space is room to store food. When I was a graduate student in Philadelphia, the refrigerator had one of those small, internal, hanging cabinets. It froze over when I put anything in it. If I were there now, I would be having problems. There was only one grocery story (and that was blocks away) and some corner markets. I would have had to live on canned goods.

Over time, I ate more frozen vegetables. I bought a small freezer when I moved to Española, so I could stock up when stores in Santa Fé had what I wanted. Monday I made one final foraging trip to that city and now have enough frozen food for a month.

I lived in a studio apartment when I was in Philadelphia. While that may sound romantic, it meant I cooked, slept, and studied in the same room. Ever since, I have rented places with two bedrooms, even when it meant I had to live in a bad neighborhood. I had discovered the need for internal space.

I’ve had to walk for at least half an hour a day for the last twenty years to maintain my bone density. At first, I used gyms. Those, of course, now are closed.

Then, when I no longer was commuting to work and passing some facility, I began walking in the house. In the summer I can use the full length, but in the winter, need to close some doors. Still, I have enough room to pace without feeling pent in.

The greatest luxury is land. Except for days when it is too cold or too windy, I can get outdoors. The directives that we stay indoors don’t apply. There’s no one within hundreds of feet, and my neighbors are seldom out.

It may be too soon to plant seeds, or to clean perennial beds, but there is always something to do. I spent some days cleaning out the grasses and alfalfa that had invaded some rambling roses. It’s not something one does in the heat of summer, nor without wearing padded clothes like heavy sweats.

I’ve lived in places where it was possible to have lawns. Some men told me they used mowing it as an excuse to be outside. Here, a few use rider mowers, but it’s too early for the grass to be growing. In many places it hasn’t even turned green.

Instead, I’ve been hearing weed eaters. Without traffic to mask the sound, the noise of the motors carries farther.

Notes on photographs:
1. When globe willows (Salix matsudana umbraculifera) turn bright green, the leaves are separating from the stems; 28 March 2020.

2. Sequentially opening buds on a Blenheim-Royal apricot (Prunus armeniaca), 19 March 2020.

End notes: Wikipedia. "Forage (Honey Bee)."

Timber!

Weather: Rain Friday. Bare ground had begun to crack in places when dry air was drawing out moisture. The cracks remained after the rain. They’re ideal places for wild seeds to germinate.

Last rain: 3/13. Week’s low: 28 degrees F. Week’s high: 70 degrees F in the shade.

What’s emerging: Austrian Copper roses, bearded iris, Daylilies, chinodoxa, Dutch clover, alfalfa, western stickseed, golden spur columbine, Jupiter’s beard, winterfat, Queen Anne’s lace, coreopsis, goldenrod, tansy

What’s green: Junipers and other evergreens, cliff rose, fern bush, yuccas, grape hyacinths, garlic chives, garlic, vinca, coral bells, blue flax, hollyhocks, alfilerillo, coral beards tongues, pink evening primroses, Mexican hats, anthemis, yarrow, purple asters, dandelions, cheat and June grasses

What’s gray: Bath pinks, snow-in-summer

Tasks: I took advantage of the cloudy days before the rain to rake out sticks and grasses that had accumulated in the gravel. It’s not something I do in the sun, and so there was more than I expected. I only got a fraction done.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, house wrens, and other small birds. Tulips are being eaten as they emerge.

Weekly update: The methods used to cut down trees probably haven’t changed much since men invented axes. In the late nineteenth century, all the innovations were applied after the tree was felled. Steam-powered saws were used to cut the tree into transportable lengths, and steam cranes were used to lift them onto railcars. Before that, axles connecting big wheels were used to move logs out of forests. Then, of course, steam was used in the saw mills.

Loggers changed from axes to two-man saws. However, they still used the same methods. An area was cleared large enough for a tree to fall, then a notch was made in the trunk on the side facing that area. Next, a smaller cut was made on the other side, and the weakened tree forced to fall forward.

Once the tree was on the ground, men lopped off the branches, and sawed the trunk into appropriate lengths for loading onto a sled, big wheel, or rail car.

A website that explained how to do this with a modern chainsaw suggested placing wedges in the felling cut to prevent the saw from getting pinched by the tree. They also would guide the direction of the fall. This is the sort of technique that probably was used in the past, but didn’t get included in descriptions of the work.

The biggest change in logging didn’t come from the saws, but from the invention of cranes with buckets, better known as cherry pickers.

The man I hired to cut my trees used a chain saw to fell an 8' cherry at the base with a notch cut last winter. This year, with the much taller cottonwood, he utilized his crane.

The owner began by cutting all the low branches with a chainsaw mounted on a pole. This shrank the area where limbs could drop.

Then, his assistant took the crane aloft. He steered it into smaller branches, and cut manageable sized pieces that he dropped into the cleared area. Once the outer wood was removed, he moved the crane nearer the trunk, and repeated the process, until he was at the center.

One reason so little has changed is logging ultimately depends on an intuitive sense of the laws of gravity and geometry. These have been known, in one form or another, since Euclid. The Family Handyman website said the way to calculate the space needed for a tree’s fall was to hold an axe handle vertically at arm’s length, and walk back until the handle blocked sight of the tree. That was the place were the top would land. I know I learned something like that in tenth grade, but have long since forgotten the details.

Notes on photographs: Taken 5 March 2020 with the permission of the crew.
1. 10:31 am. The assistant began at the outer edge of the tree.
2. 10:36 am. He cut manageable sized pieces from the tree, and let them drop to the ground.
3. 10:44 am. He was able to move toward the top of tree, because he had cleared a drop area.
4. 11:12 am. Once one area was completed, he moved to another.

End notes: "Cut Down a Tree Safely." Family Handyman website.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Weather: Rain was forecast for Sunday, but all we got was the moisture streaming overhead that had come over central Baja. The clouds allowed me to begin cleaning grass and twigs from the driveway that usually is in the sun. Tuesday morning the moisture condensed into fog and frost. The soil got a little water that way.

Last rain: 2/23. Week’s low: 17 degrees F. Week’s high: 69 degrees F in the shade.

What’s emerging: cheat grass

What’s green: Junipers and other evergreens, cliff rose, fern bush, yuccas, grape hyacinths, garlic chives, garlic, vinca, coral bell, blue flax, hollyhocks, alfilerillo, coral beards tongues, pink evening primroses, Mexican hat, anthemis, yarrow

What’s gray: Bath pinks, snow-in-summer

Tasks: Monday I cut down a leggy winterfat in the retaining wall outside the gate. It was in a mound about a foot higher than surrounding land. Since some of its oldest branches were buried, that meant the shrub had been capturing dirt that was floating down from my neighbor’s land. I had installed the wall last year to stop that drift of dirt into the area in front of my gate, because it block it from opening in the winter.

To try to hold the land, I planted some Dutch clover seeds. Along the edge, near the drive, I put in some California poppy and African marigold seeds. I spread some ground red pepper on the soil, and then laid down a layer of cottonwood leaves to keep in the moisture.

Later that day, a delivery man used the flattened area as a place to leave a package for my neighbor. The winterfat had prevented him from doing that earlier. Since there’s no mortar in the block wall, it can’t take any weight.

The chickadees returned the next day. Before I could get to the area, they had disturbed the leaves and exposed some seeds. I replaced the leaves and laid down some pieces of wire mesh.

I figured that wouldn’t be enough to stop the tree cutting crew from using the space as a laydown area, so, before they arrived, I added some stakes along the edge, and tied a string between them.

Animal sightings: Robin early Monday, sparrow on the utility line later in the day, bird call on Tuesday around 6 am. That marked the return of the chickadees, who have been flitting about ever since.

The tree man said the locals called ground squirrels long-tailed rats. When he gave it in Spanish as ardilla de cola larga, he realized that translated as squirrel, but he implied people meant rats. He’s only used commercial products for them. On his own land he used the poison pills, and when he worked for the county, they used gas pellets. In both cases, he had to find a new tunnel to insert the pellet, and then stuff newspapers in the penetration hole. He said he killed hundreds on his land near the Chama river north of town.

Weekly update: As they say, by the time you know you have a problem, it’s too late. Last summer, the top third of my cottonwood lost its leaves. Last Thursday, a crew arrived to cut out the dead wood.

The crew chief said the problem was cottonwood borers that drilled into the wood, and killed everything above their holes. He said that did more damage to nursery-grown trees than native ones.

While he said cottonwood borers, he probably did not mean Cottonwood Borers. Plectrodera scalator is a large long-horned beetle that lays its eggs at the base of the tree, and the worms kill young trees by girdling them. It’s primarily a root living pest.

The Poplar Borer, on the other hand, attacks the trunks of trees that are at least three-years old. Unlike the Cottonwood Borer, Saperda calcarata attracts woodpeckers, who enlarge the holes.

I planted my cottonless, that is to say male, Souixland cultivar in 2004. It grew normally, but did not get too tall.

It had its first problem in June of 2012 when a branch broke off and blocked part of the driveway.

The next year, a branch died in the same general area, but remained in place.  I thought the problem was lack of water, and began watering it more often. It got taller, and the staghead and hole from the broken branch were eclipsed.

Then, in 2016, one of those insect tents appeared in the same part of the tree. That is, it was on a branch pointing east over the entrance to my gate. I tried spraying it apart with water, but I couldn’t get close enough to destroy the nest. It simply collapsed on itself.

Last summer, the tree cutting crew removed the dead wood under the tree, and I cleared out the winterfat that had exploited the area. I was still concerned about it getting enough water. That summer and the one before had been much hotter. Delivering the same about of moisture didn’t mean the same amount was available.

I wondered how much duff to leave. I drove around the area and noticed leaves did not accumulate under local trees. Apparently, when they grow in the bosque, they get so much water from flooding, they haven’t adapted to dryland conditions. Instead of holding moisture in the ground, I reasoned the leaves acted as a barrier. When it rained, the ground did not get wet under the tree.

The reason leaves had accumulated under my tree was a vertical board fence on two sides trapped them. No leaves remained outside the fence where the wind could blow. I removed most of the leaves.

In April of 2019, the tree began leafing, and put out new growth on the trunk and on along one branch. It was making its own strategic retreat and recovering where it was safe to do so.

In summer, the branches that had grown above the insect nest began losing leaves.

A small black-and-white woodpecker appeared in mid-September, and kept returning until December.

Each time it was active, the block walk near the tree was covered with small ants. There was no nearby hill.

Now the tree has been cut back to the size it was before its great spurt of growth. Only time will show if the decapitation was enough to eliminate the pest, whatever it was.

Notes on photographs: Same tree, a Souixland cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
1. 2012 April 30, before any problems appeared
2. 2020 March 5, before the tree cutting crew arrived
3. 2012 June 29, broken limb
4. 2013 July 11, bare staghead limb
5. 2016 July 26, insect nest that collapsed from being sprayed by a hose
6. 2019 April 14, recovery attempts by tree
7. 2019 November 9, bare branches on dead wood

8. 2020 March 5, damaged wood; the neat, small holes probably were made by the borer; the ragged, larger holes probably were enlarged by the woodpecker.

9. 2020 March 5, tree with dead wood removed

End notes: R. C. Morris, T. H. Filer, J. D. Solomon, F. I. McCracken, N. A. Overgaard, and M. J. Weiss. Insects and Diseases of Cottonwood. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Technical Report SO-8, 1975.