Weather: The weather continues to seesaw between late spring and mid-summer. After temperatures in the 90s on Monday and Tuesday, the mornings were below freezing on Thursday and Friday.
Strong winds started bringing smoke from Mexican wild fires on Monday, when the weather bureau Air Quality map showed the area covered in gray. The pattern lasted through Wednesday. Saturday, dust from the west was forecast.
None of these particulates are visible, and I think the smoke lingers even after there’s not enough left to trigger a spot on the Air Quality map. Then, I only know about them when I have trouble breathing or my stomach hurts or I get weak just walking outside. I didn’t work outside three days this week.
Last rain: 5/11. Week’s low: 28 degrees F. Week’s high: 91 degrees F in the shade. Relative humidity down to 4% in Santa Fé. Wind gusts to 48 mph in Santa Fé.
What’s blooming in the area: Persian yellow, Doctor Huey, wild pink and hybrid roses, yellow-flowered potentilla, spirea, pyracantha, purple locust, Spanish broom, beauty bush, silver lace vine, bearded iris, red hot poker, peonies, oriental poppy, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, purple salvia
What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, fern leaf globe mallow, green leaf five-eyes, bindweed, alfalfa, yellow sweet clover, tufted white evening primrose, flea bane, goat’s beard, common and native dandelions, strap leaf aster, June, needle, rice, cheat, brome, and three-awn grasses
My daily attempt to control weeds by picking flowers before they go to seed has changed from dandelions to goat’s beards. The dandelions always have small insects on them. One this week attracted a large bumble bee.
The most common weeds I’ve been removing are wild lettuce and pigweed.
What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, cliff rose, chives, vinca, coral bells, Bath pinks, Maltese cross, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, pink and white sweet peas, Dutch clover, catmint, baptisia, Johnson Blue geranium, wintered-over pansy and snapdragon, Shasta daisy, chocolate flower, coreopsis
What’s emerging: Toothed spurge and prostrate knotweed; first goat head in my neighbor’s part of the drive way; zinnia seeds
Bedding and house plants: Snapdragons, zonal geraniums, pansies, petunias
Tasks: Something has upset the quail who used to live out on the prairie. Starting in February they’ve been on my back porch. When I chase them off, they fly to my neighbor’s porch or Siberian elm tree. At different times, I hear their raucous cries from other directions.
In April, I used a broom to knock down sticks from one of the rafters. This week I’ve been finding piles of sticks interwoven in the ends of Dr. Huey rose canes, in the sweet peas below, and on the porch. I removed them a week ago Friday and again this Friday. There was a new batch by 11 am Saturday morning.
They don’t just bring in sticks. I’ve found pieces of thorny Russian thistle and pigweed. Humans aren’t the only ones who spread noxious weeds.
I don’t know anything about the intelligence of quail, and it’s not something I wish to research. However, I do wonder about a heavy bird that continues to think a rose cane can support its weight.
Animal sightings: Chickadees, house wrens, hummingbird, quail, gecko, cabbage and small orange butterflies, bumble and small bees, hornets, newly hatched grasshoppers, sound of crickets, sidewalk ants, earthworms
Someone down the road has a rooster that crows between 6 and 8 am, and again at twilight. When I worked in Santa Fé, I was told one of my coworkers raised fighting cocks. That disabused me of my naive assumption that everyone who had a male chicken was like my neighbor who hoped to gather eggs.
Weekly update: People who take a literal view of Genesis must have a difficult time comprehending the Coronavirus. It says plants were created on day three; birds, fishes and other sea creatures on day five, and animals that move on the land on day six.
A virus is neither an animal nor a plant, but a disembodied piece of DNA or RNA. Those who grew up with a Linnean view of the order of the universe were forced to create a new realm, viria. The particular one that is causing infections today has the following placement:
Family: Coronaviruses
Subfamily: Orthocoronavirinae
Genus: Betacoronavirus
Subgenus: Sarbecovirus
Lineage: B
Species: SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus)
Strain: SARS-CoV-2 [1]
So many more layers than the ones I learned when I was taking biology in ninth grade. The sheer volume of viruses — more than 7,000 have been named — has stretched the Linnean structure. Latin names no longer are used for species, and even common names don’t exist. We just call viruses, bugs.
This particular virus had several, equally abstract, tags before enough was known to settle on the current one. The disease it causes was labeled Covid-19 for the year it was discovered.
Viruses are one of those invisible things, like germs and genes, whose existence was hypothesized before they were verified by increasingly more sophisticated laboratory tools. Louis Pasteur, who identified so many diseases in the late nineteenth century, "speculated about a pathogen too small to be detected by microscopes." [2] The existence of viruses wasn’t confirmed until the electron microscope was invented. The first image of a virus was taken in 1939. [3]
Scientists, who do believe in evolution, argue about its location in the chronology of development. Since a virus isn’t even a cell, but must enter a cell to reproduce, most argue it came after the single celled organisms. Exactly when is what’s debated.
Some even question whether a virus is, in fact, a life form. Most say it is because they "evolve by natural selection." [4] Recently scientists acting on that assumption studied the genomes of 160 cases, and found that after SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats, the ancestral A node spawned two more nodes. B only is known in Asia, while A and C have spread. Mutations exist within each that reflect transmission routes. [5]
This is the first time may of us have been in a situation where nothing is known, and what is assumed, based on past experiences, may be disproved. The closest thing in anyone’s experience was HIV. Perhaps the closest in history is the Bubonic plague.
Surprisingly, there have been few alternative Biblical explanations for the virus. No mentions of Satanic creation, no allusions to End Times. [6] Attempts to suggest it was manmade haven’t resonated. The only alternative that seems popular is that the whole thing is a hoax.
It simply may be a matter of theology. The idea of the Rapture became popular in the 1970s, and remains so. In this scenario, God will rescue His believers before life becomes unbearable in the final days. Alternatively, for many interpretations exist of the book of Revelation, the faithful simply will be spared while the heathen suffer.
For them, the potential challenge a virus makes to Genesis is unimportant. What matters is the possibility of immunity through salvation.
Notes on photographs: Driveway plants, 23 May 2020. These are native plants I let grow because they bloom, stay low, don’t get woody stems, don’t have thorns, and don’t produce annoying seeds. They bloom in different seasons and different times of the day.
1. Alfilerillo (Erodium circutarium), 7:50 am; a morning flower; it’s season has peaked.
2. Strap leaf aster (Xanthisma spinulosum spinulosum), 11:26 am; a daytime flower; it’s just beginning to bloom.
3. Green leaf five-eyes (Chamaesaracha coronopus), 11:27 am; an evening flower; it’s been blooming for a few weeks.
End notes:
1. Constructed from Wikipedia. "Betacoronavirus," "Coronavirus," "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2," and "Virus."
2. G. Bordenave. "Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)." Microbes and Infection. 5:553–560:2003. Cited by Wikipedia, Virus.
3. Wikipedia. "Tobacco Mosaic Virus." It had been identified a few years earlier by Wendell Meredith Stanley. The image was made by Gustav Kausche, Edgar Pfankuch and Helmut Ruska.
4. E. C. Holmes. "Viral Evolution in the Genomic Age." PLOS Biology 5:e278:October 2007. Cited by Wikipedia, Virus.
5. Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster. "Phylogenetic Network Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Genomes." National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings 117:9241-9243:2020.
6. As near as I can tell, there have been more posts on the internet explaining why any attempt to connect the current disease to doomsday follows from a misunderstanding of Revelation than ones that do so. Even the minister who made news for suggesting homosexuality excited God’s wrath, denied he was connecting them with the disease. [7]
7. Brooke Sopelsa. "Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Says Gays Cause ‘God’s Wrath’ in COVID-19 Blog Post." NBC News website. 25 March 2020. The minister was Ralph Drollinger.
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