Spring Snow

Weather: Snow Monday, low temperatures Wednesday.

Last snow: 4/13. Week’s low: 15 degrees F. Week’s high: 76 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples, flowering quince, Siberian elms, donkey spurge, moss phlox

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, western stickseeds, tansy and purple mustards, common and native dandelions.

Dandelions are particularly aggressive this year. I picked nine blooms and buds off one plant this morning. I don’t know if it was the warm spring or winds last year, or both, but they’ve filled every space in my beds reserved for seeds. They bloom along the shoulders, and have turned a number of yards into yellow seas.

What’s blooming in my yard: One type of fruiting crab apple, daffodils, grape hyacinth, vinca, wintered-over pansy

Last year I wanted blue pansies and all that were offered in the early spring were mixed colors. I didn’t want yellow and didn’t buy any. Then, in late May, the local hardware got some six-packs of single colored pansies. When all the blue ones came into blue, there was one yellow among them. It was the only one that lasted the entire summer, and wintered over to mock me again this week.

What’s emerging: Hostas, lilies of the valley, perennial four o’clock

Tasks: For the first time in years, I have no major projects to complete this spring, and I’ve been able to cut dead stems in places that normally don’t get trimmed until mid-summer. I’ve never seen my daffodils bloom, except through the bars of old David phlox stems.

Animal sightings: Chickadees and other small birds, bumble bees, hornets, sidewalk ants. Crows have been especially noticeable this spring as they fly overhead.

Weekly update: New Mexico’s spring reverted to its natural pattern after weeks of very warm weather that brought fruit trees into bloom early. I don’t know if the snow and ensuing cold killed the incipient apricots and peaches, but it certainly destroyed the cherries for this year.

The only leaves that were killed were the ones on the newly planted forsythia. All the others survived. Fortunately, the tender ones like catalpas and grapes hadn’t emerged yet.

What is always interesting is flower buds. If they’re closed when conditions degenerate, then they continue to open, but if they’ve begun to expand they turn brown. Thus, apples were beginning to bloom in local orchards on Friday.

I have three types of crab apples. The white-flowered fruiting ones were blooming, and now are nothing but leaves. The pink-flowered fruiting ones had only begun to open, and now are in full bloom.

The pink-flowered tree that’s supposed to be fruitless was in full-bloom when the snows landed. Leaves were above them, and most survived the snow, but not the morning when the temperature plunged to 15 degrees F.

Today, the buds that hadn’t opened are blooming. They’re not particularly visible, but they did attract a bumble bee.

Notes on photographs: Profusion flowering crab apple that grows near the house.
1. 13 April 2020, when the snow fell in the night.
2. 14 April 2020, after the snow melted.
3. 15 April 2020, after the temperature dropped to 15.

Tree Recovery Phase

Weather: The apricots and peaches got through their blooming seasons without a killing frost. However, the daily extremes from below freezing in the morning to low 70s in the afternoon cut their season shorts and made them less spectacular than usual. Only the Bradford pear flourished in my yard.

Last usable rain: 3/18. Week’s low: 25 degrees F. Week’s high: 75 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming: Bradford pears, fruiting and flowering crab apples, sweet cherries, purple leafed plums, flowering quince, forsythia, tulips, daffodils, baby blue iris, vinca, alfilerillo, western stickseeds, tansy and purple mustards, donkey spurge, common and native dandelions

What’s emerging: Russian olive, apples, snowball, beauty bush, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, cat mints, calamintha, purple salvia, sea lavender, large flower soapword, David phlox, peonies, Mönch asters

Tasks: Truck farming fields have been furrowed.

I went to the local big box gardening center to get a replacement shrub; I would have preferred getting it in Santa Fé or Albuquerque, but it wasn’t worth the risk of going to either of those cities. On Good Friday, the man in front of me was buying two small oriental lily plants; the man behind had two good-sized arborvitae like the shrubs that lined the entrance to the Santa Cruz church.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, house wrens, quail, bumble and small bees, hornets, sidewalk ants

One sandcherry came into bloom on Tuesday, and the monarch butterflies split their time between it and the peach. They were gone on Thursday.

Weekly update: Everything is leafing, and I can see the consequences of the pruning that was done for me on March 5.

The cottonwood still has some dead wood, but nothing that’s likely to cause a problem if it comes down. Its putting out lots of leaves around the places were limbs were removed.

The tree man cut more of the Russian olive than I would have preferred. He thought the low branches and suckers should be removed every year to encourage it to grow taller. I believed they were part of the tree’s recovery mechanism. He had the chains saw, and they’re gone.

However, the tree wants those branches. Its putting out leaves along the truck, and new limbs from near the base.

The apricot had the worst experience when the man pulled a branch loose with his truck in early January. It’s repairing itself with some leaves below the wound.

Notes on photographs: My good camera died a few weeks ago, and I’m using an older, less good one. I can’t replace it until its safe to drive to Santa Fé for luxury items. Because I use a PO box, I can’t order one online because of the lithium battery.

1. Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), 9 April 2020.
2. Souixland cottonless cottonwood (Populus deltoides), 9 April 2020.
3. Russian olive, 9 April 2020.
4. Blenheim-Royal apricot (Prunus armeniaca), 9 April 2020.

Weeding Puzzles

Weather: It’s not warm enough until about 9 am for the hoses to run; by the time it’s comfortably warm around 11 am, the winds have started.

Last usable rain: 3/18. Week’s low: 24 degrees F. Week’s high: 77 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming: Bradford pears, apricots, peaches, purple leafed plums, forsythia, tulips, daffodils, vinca, alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, dandelions

What’s emerging: Sweet and choke cherries, spirea, snowball, white sweet clover, catmints, Saint John’s wort, pigweed, Silver King artemisia, Shasta daisies, buffalo and needle grasses

Tasks: Ditches are running

Animal sightings: Rabbit, chickadees, and other small birds, bumble and small bees; hornets and sidewalk ants hatched on Thursday. Quail are constantly on the back porch. Other loud birds, crows or hawks flying around.

I replaced a hose that had been eaten by the ground squirrel on Tuesday, and two days later the replacement also was destroyed. Thursday, I saw it run from the steps into my house toward my neighbor’s yard where it lives.

Monarch butterflies arrived Saturday. Last year they came when the sand cherries were blooming. This year all that’s available is the peach and purple-leaf plum. By noon, when the bees arrive, the peach is a very busy place.

Weekly update: I spend about two hours a day outside, when the weather is good. That leaves a hole in my schedule in the winter that I fill with jigsaw puzzles.

I thought about the connection between puzzles and weeding this week when I was cleaning out the dead garlic chive stems I had mowed down with the string trimmer. I wondered why I never remembered the characteristics of plants, like whether to cut or break the stems.

That was when I thought about the puzzles. There are many ways to put one together. My mother would always do the border first, then work from the sky down to the bottom.

I’m so near sighted I can only work a small section at a time. I pick through the pieces looking for the ones I think go in a certain area, using the pictorial fragments as a guide. This week it was two red windmills in the mid ground.

What I do after the middle varies from puzzle to puzzle. As I pick though the pieces I recognize patterns that determine the strategy for continuing. This time I did the water line through the center, then the green below, and next the mountain. Then, I could break the sky into the area with clouds and without. That left the hydrangeas. By this time I recognized different sections of the flowers, and was able to break it into smaller areas.

When I weeding, I follow some general rules. I have to remove enough stuff so I can see what’s below. When I was cleaning some roses last week, that meant mowing down the alfalfa and June grass that were growing on the perimeter.

The other general rule is working from the outside in. Before I could do the drive side of the roses, I had to rake out stems and leaves to clear myself a path. That actually took more time than working on the canes.

These routines are like the way I begin a puzzle.

Once I’m able to seriously clean an area, the methods reinvent themselves. I don’t have to remember the traits of each plant. The process of clearing a way to them reeducates me the way sorting through the pieces of a puzzle guides me.

Both are problem solving in which the strategy is what’s remembered, not the details.

Notes on photographs: All taken 5 April 2020.
1. The cottonwood continues to drop stems. I suspect that were cut off when the man was working from the crane, but got caught by other stems during their fall.

2. I sometimes wonder if I’m imagining the ground squirrel is destroying my hoses. There was no doubt with this one.

3. The sprinkler under the cottonwood was destroyed. I suspect some large limb fell on it. There’s a reason logging can be so dangerous. A hard hat wouldn’t have provided much protection.