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.