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.

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.

Duff

Weather: Afternoon temperatures are still climbing into the 90s. The Forest Service found another small fire it could escalate into a major one with aerial ignitions. This one was in Valles caldera. For three days now I’ve been suffering from the effects of the polluted smoke.

Last useful rain: 8/11. Week’s low: 47 degrees F. Week’s high: 93 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red-tipped yuccas, Russian sage, buddleia, bird of paradise, roses of Sharon, purple garden phlox, datura, coreopsis, cultivated sunflowers

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Buffalo gourd, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, leather leaf globe mallow, goat’s head, yellow evening primrose, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, pigweed, Russian thistle, Hopi tea, native sunflowers, gumweed, wild lettuce, horseweed, goldenrod, golden hairy asters, quack grass, seven-weeks, side oats and black gramas.

Áñil del muerto has been blooming much of the summer in fallow market garden fields. It has only now begun to bloom along the roadside.

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior and miniature roses, yellow potentilla, garlic chives, Royal Standard hosta, catmints, calamintha, winecup mallow, sidalcea, white spurge, large-flowered soapwort, David phlox, perennial four o’clock, Mexican hats, African marigolds, chrysanthemums, chocolate flower, plains coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, purple coneflower, Mönch asters, bachelor buttons

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, pansies, sweet alyssum, nicotiana, snapdragons

What’s Coming Up: Early summer seedlings have not grown; some are still at their second leaves. The ones that did come up have to be watered every day when the temperatures return to July highs. This is now September.

Tasks: With the moisture in early August, hay and other grasses revived. This past week people have been mowing.

Insects and fungus are taking advantage of the disappearing moisture and heat: powdery mildew has appeared on the Dr. Huey roses, and leaves on the peaches and cherries are getting disfigured. When I treated them with the available sprays nothing happened. I’m sure the base chemicals work, but I’m not sure the products do.

One thing I noticed this year was it was difficult to even find insecticides in the plant stores and local hardwares. This week I finally went to one of the big boxes to get something I hope works. I don’t know whether the chains or the manufacturers have instituted exclusive contracts, but I do know it seems as if they have.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, chickadees, hummingbird, geckos, bumble and small bees, heard crickets, grasshoppers, hornets, small ants

The Flame red grapes have been ripening for the past two weeks. I was able to eat a few each day. Saturday morning they were gone; not even a stem was left. I assume the rabbit leapt up, bit the cluster stems, then ate the fruit. It tries the fallen peaches, but only eats a little.

Weekly update: Earlier this summer, I cleaned leaves and dead shrubs from under the cottonwood. Recently, I’ve been doing the same under the Russian olive and some sandcherries. The tasks were similar, but the execution was not.

In each case, I first have to cut low dead branches to create a clearance. I was helped with the cottonwood by having someone cut some of the biggest limbs this past winter. All I had to do was cut smaller branches and winterfat.

The Russian olive was a different problem. The winter of 2013-2014 was particularly severe. Wikipedia said a polar vortex broke down in November, "which allowed very cold air to travel down into the United States, leading to an extended period of very cold temperatures. The pattern continued mostly uninterrupted throughout the winter." [1]

I wasn’t keeping detailed weather notes then, so don’t know exactly what happened. I did post an entry on 11 May 2014 on the consequences. Russian olives are not Siberian, but from a more temperate, moisture climate. [2] Trees everywhere in this area died back.

Once I cut or broke off the biggest branches, I had to defang the tree. It produces sharp, hard, wooden thorns. They aren’t poisonous, but pieces do produce infectiongs if they break off and get lodged under the skin. I didn’t always nip off the ones pointing up, but anything pointing down had to be removed.

It was after I had removed dead wood that I noticed the differences in the duff beneath the three species. Standard texts tell you that the duff is composed of three layers: the top strata of leaves and twigs, the bottom one of humus, and a middle one of organisms converting the one to the other. [3]

I know this basic model is valid. I remember seeing the various sorts of insects and worms that inhabit the middle world when I was in camp in Michigan. It was second growth hardwood, and I remember I would see them if I kicked over piles of oak leaves. But, of course, that was more sixty years ago, so I wouldn’t swear they were oaks.

That model does not appear here. As I mentioned in the post for 9 June 2019, the cottonwood leaves were fairly large and created a mat that stopped water from penetrating. It probably evaporated before it had time to seep down. [4] There was no humus, just bare dirt under the leaves.

Sandcherry leaves are smaller and seem to blow away. One is growing under a catalpa, and its leaves also move on. What falls to the ground are the dried shells of the seed pods. They create a web that allows water to go through. There were no signs of humus, but the soil had darkened from contact with decaying materials.

Russian olive leaves are small ovals that do drop. What I found under the tree was a caked layer of leaves and twigs, completely dried even though I watered the area every three days with a sprinkler hose. It had so much integrity, I could pick it up. It seemed like something that, given enough time and water, would turn into peat moss.

Under that layer, the ground was even darker than it was under sandcherry. Ironically, this hated invader seemed to be the only species capable of creating soil in this arid environment.

Notes on photographs:
1. Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), 24 August 2019. You can see the dead branches at the base of the tree on the right. I have a limited ability to cut thick limbs. Often the loppers act pliers that twist and break what I can’t cut.

2. Russian olive thorns, 15 March 2014. They are aborted twigs.

3. Russian olive as it was recovering on 19 April 2014. All the low growth was dead, and it was putting out new stems from the trunk. All of that still has to be removed. I haven’t worked that far under the tree yet. I’m still removing pigweed from the periphery.

4. Cottonless cottonwood (Populus deltoides) duff, 30 August 2019. Different colors marked the different generations of leaves, with the grayer ones the older. You can see in the bare spot that there has been no creation of new soil. There’s a volunteer juniper growing with it.

5. Sandcherry (Prunus besseyi) duff, 24 August 2019. The bare shot shows this duff is sitting on the bare ground, without interacting with it. However, you can also see that debris allows water to penetrate.

6. Dried Russian olive duff, 30 August 2019, seen from the side.

7. Duff under the Russian olive after the caked layer has been removed.

End notes:
1. Wikipedia. "2013–14 North American Winter."

2. Kris Zouhar. "Elaeagnus angustifolia." United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service "Fire Effects Information System" website. 2005.

3. B. J. Stocks. Moisture in the Forest Floor - Its Distribution and Movement. Ottawa: Canadian Forestry Service, 1970. 1.

4. Stocks discussed the problem with evaporation from the duff.

Cottonwood Maintenance

Weather: A week ago morning temperatures sometimes were down to the mid-30s. This week, they’ve been in the high 40s and afternoon temperatures have reached the high 80s. Still no seeds have germinated.

Last useful rain: 6/1. Week’s low: 45 degrees F. Week’s high: 95 degrees F in the shade. Smoke from Mexican fires continues to enter area.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock, wild pink and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, catalpa, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, Arizona yucca, red hot poker, purple locust shrub, Spanish broom, sweet peas, purple salvia, peonies, blue flax, larkspur, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, oriental poppy, yellow yarrow, coreopsis

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Russian olive, tamarix, narrow leaf yucca, showy milkweed, white tufted evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, tumble mustard, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, fern leaf globe mallow, goat’s heads, alfalfa, fleabane, plains paper flowers, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; needle, rice, three awn, and brome grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior, Dorothy Perkins, rugosa and miniature roses, raspberry, beauty bush, privet, Asiatic lilies, catmints, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, smooth and purple beardtongues, Bath pinks, Maltese cross, Dutch clover, coral bells, pink evening primroses, white yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower; pansies that wintered over

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, snap dragons

What’s reviving/coming up: Corn is up about 6" in one market garden field; yellow mullein leaves recognizable along one drive

Tasks: Most of the hay fields were cut this week

I made one of my Sisyphean attempts to kill ant hills, especially those of the harvester ants. It’ll last a while, then some queen eggs will hatch somewhere and the small ones will be back. Still I’ve made some progress. Last year I was dealing with more than a hundred hills in my gravel drive. This year, I only treated about fifty.

Animal sightings: Neighbor’s cat, chickadees, gecko, cabbage, sulfur and monarch butterflies, small bees, heard crickets, hornets, mosquitoes, small ants

Weekly update: I planted a cottonless cottonwood in 2004 in the path of a culvert that was fed water from the roof of my neighbor’s house. I hoped that would provide enough moisture.

But trees have a way of creating demands. They respond to water by getting larger, and thus need to have an increased water supply. When a branch broke off the tree in 2013, I assumed it was lack of water, and started running a sprinkler every couple weeks. I wanted to keep it alive, not encourage profligate growth.

Last year leaves turned yellow early on a number of low branches. It had been a hot summer, and I already had increased the watering times. Some of those branches have not come back this year, although most have lots of leaves at their junctures with the trunk.

In February I had man come cut the dead wood. When he was inspecting the tree, he noticed the cut off limb and wondered if I had borers. Cottonwood borers (Plectrodera scalator) are related to locust borers, but a different species of longhorn beetle.

Since he didn’t see any sawdust, he thought I was safe. But doubt was planted. I was told a systemic insecticide was the only thing that handled borers. Since I refuse to mix chemicals, I looked for a dry one that could be sprinkled around the base of the tree.

The insecticide I bought contained imidacloprid. It’s supposed to act like nicotine as a poison. The label said borers, but its inside instructions only mentioned aphids. When I went on-line, I saw the base chemical was good for caterpillars (which are related to butterflies and moths, not beetles). The only borers mentioned were for ashes and elms (of which the less the better). Still, it was the only option.

Rain was forecast for Wednesday, so Tuesday morning I raked all the leaves out from around the cottonwood and sprinkled the insecticide. I ran the sprinkler for about 10 minutes, just in case it didn’t rain. And, of course, the rains never appeared. I ran the sprinkler an hour on Thursday.

Now my problem was how many leaves should I rake back over the bare ground. I had never done much maintenance on the tree. Since the vertical board fence on two sides, a thick layer of leaves had accumulated.

It’s impossible to see the ideal natural environment of these members of the willow family. The various dams built to control flooding and flow have reduced the moisture in bosques. Cottonwoods, which no longer could reproduce, have been replaced by tamarix. Trees that sprouted along irrigation ditches, now have paved roads to channel water toward them. Heavy traffic blows the leaves away.

The cottonwoods that sprouted in an unregulated arroyo have nothing around them but bare sand. They don’t need anything to trap or hold water because water flows through the area whenever it rains.

As near as I can tell, the cottonwoods near the Río Grande grow in grasses that get about a foot high.

In a few places, where dead branches have fallen, leaves have collected. This resembles the condition under my tree where dead winterfat branches have created weirs.

Yesterday, I began cutting out the winterfat, and raking out the leaves, but leaving a thin layer. One thing I know is more leaves will fall in the autumn and the supply will be replenished.

Notes on photographs:
1. Cottonwood (Populus deltoides wislizeni) growing in bosque before Arroyo Seco enters the Río Grande, 23 December 2010. The bosque has responded to the reduced water flows of the river.

2. Cottonwoods growing near the Río Grande within the Española city limits, 14 February 2009. I assume the city removed any dead wood to prevent fires. Thus, the leaves blow away.

3. Leaves trapped by winterfat branches under my cottonwood, 8 June 2019.

4. Cottonwoods growing in an unregulated arroyo near my house, 25 October 2011.

5. Cottonwoods near the Río Grande in the area of Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo), 13 February 2013.

6. Cottonwood branches and leaves near the Río Grande, 23 December 2010. This is the same as area as the first picture.

7. Leaves raked over the cottonwood roots, 8 June 2019. They gray is a winterfat that was not removed.

Spring Greens

Weather: Rain after dark several nights this week; when I went out to see the darkening sky Thursday around 7 pm, there was a full rainbow. last rain 4/16. Ditches are running.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples, crab apples, cherries, purple leaf sand cherries, purple leaf plum, flowering quince, red buds, daffodils, moss phlox, donkey spurge. New leaves visible on apples and crab apples.

The local big box is now carrying pink and white flowering cherries and pink and white dogwoods. It’s getting more and more difficult to know which trees actually are blooming.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tansy mustard, alfilerillo western stickseed, and dandelions blooming. Scurf pea, green-leaf five-eyes, velvetweed and first round of pigweed coming up. Seeds blowing from Siberian elms. New leaves on Russian olives and cottonwoods.

In my yard: Sand cherries, Siberian pea, grape hyacinth, and vinca blooming. Raspberries, hostas, lilies of the valley, David phlox, sea lavender, catmints, blue flax, Saint John’s wort, Rumanian sage, tansy, anthemis, coreopsis, purple coneflowers, Maximilian sunflowers and Mönch asters emerging. Leaves opening on apricots, snowball, and beauty bush.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbits, small birds, ants, bees around Siberian peas, bees and smaller insects around sand cherries.

Saw a quail walking in the drive Wednesday morning. Later they were trying to colonize my back porch. Years ago they disappeared when my neighbor’s dogs were running loose. It’s the first I’ve seen them since other neighbors insisted he keep them inside his fence.

Weekly update: I visited a friend in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco last week. I expected things to be greener. What I didn’t expect was the green would look like a thick covering of algae.

The clouds cleared enough as the plane entered the state that Mono lake was visible. Snow fields in the Sierra Nevada followed. Then, as we traveled west and the mountain elevations decreased, a bright green appeared at the tops of ridges with the darker evergreens below.

Even when we landed, the same green covered the tops of hills along the road, both inland and along the coast. It was even the same color in the grasses in the vineyards and on the vines. It had to be grass, but it couldn’t be the same grass in all the locations.

I was only able to take pictures at a turnoff near the coast. By then the clouds had returned, and the lowered light exaggerated the colors.

When I got home, a walked up the road a bit to look at the equivalent kind of ridge. The junipers were scattered, and the just greening grass didn’t reach the tops.

Our bright greens come from newly emerged leaves. Among the earliest and most brilliant are the globe willows that can be seen across fields and arroyos.

Now the cottonwoods are beginning, but the green isn’t the same. It’s partly the difference in species, but it’s also the difference in bark. The willow trunks and branches are dark, and the cottonwoods nearly white.

I was told all that green I was seeing in California would turn golden in a few weeks, and look just like our grasslands. That part of the state had warmed earlier than usual, and there had been recent rains.

Here, it’s not just the grasses that ripen and dry. The Siberian elms, whose flowers were so chartreuse a few weeks ago, are now tanned by their seeds.

Photographs:
1. Rainbow over the prairie, 14 April 2016.

2. Algae in a settling pond on the north side of town, 10 October 2014.

3. Coastal hills in Sonoma County, California, 7 April 2016.

4. Grasses growing on a cone and ridges down the road, 14 April 2016.

5. Globe willow across the arroyo, taken with a telescopic focus, 14 April 2016. Badlands along route 30 in the background.

6. Cottonless cottonwood in my yard, 16 April 2016.

7. Siberian elm seeds, 14 April 2016.

8. Another picture of California, 7 April 2016.

Giraffes

Weather: It’s been a dry monsoon season, with the last attempt at rain on 9/4. Relative humidity was down to 7% in Santa Fé a week ago Sunday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, buddleia, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds, coreopsis, zinnias.

Beyond the walls and fences: Goat’s head, bindweed, green-leaf five-eyes, yellow evening primrose, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, native sunflower, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy, purple and heath asters.

In my yard: Yellow potentilla, garlic chives, calamintha, lead wort plant, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, Maximilian sunflowers, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold, gazania.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ants.

Insect webs appearing everywhere, especially high in the cottonwoods. When I kick those nearer the ground, they contract into denser webs protecting the eggs.

Weekly update: The wet weather early in the season appeared too late in the life cycle of perennials to increase the number of flowers this year. Right now, the peaches are forming next year’s buds. As a result, as I mentioned in the post for June 18, stems just got longer.

Now its time for the late summer annuals that germinated in the wet period and matured when the rains stopped. Most aren’t noticeably more floriferous or taller.

Native sunflowers are the exception. They apparently need water in the air as well as in the soil. Unlike many years, we’ve only had a few days when the relative humidity in Santa Fé was below 10%: August 6, August 20, and September 13.

They are taller, and the branches on the lateral stems don’t seem to be spaced more than usual. That means there also are more flowers.

The only way one judge height is by comparison. They usually get about five or six feet high. This year I see them nodding above six foot walls. I’ve even seen them towering above corn stalks that themselves were unusually tall.

Maximilian sunflowers are a different matter. For one thing, they’re perennials. Mine always bloom earlier than others. I bought them from a nursery in Santa Fé, so they aren’t the local ecotype.

Because they flower earlier, they must do most of their growth earlier. They are decidedly taller than the ones just coming in to bloom.

Not only are different strains of sunflowers different, but different species also behave differently. When the seeds of the native Helianthus annuus are ripe, they heads bend a little, but the stalks remain erect. When the farmer’s single flowered varieties mature, theie entire heads droop from the weight of the oil.

When Helianthus maximiliani are ripe, the whole stalk bends. When they’re in a clump, the middle ones push down the ones to their side, and the ones on their far side push them down until they cascade. It’s bad enough when six foot stalks collapse over the path. When they’re eight foot long, they bury everything. Fortunately, most of mine are across from some foot high tansy that doesn’t seem to mind.

I’m more worried about my cottonwood. A few years ago, it died back in the drought and one branch broke off.

This year the tree has flourished with the added water in the soil. It has added a good six feet. The old dead wood is barely visible.

I fear when the next dry year comes, it will die back again, and I’ll have problems with dead branches. They’re way above my ability to do any anticipatory pruning.

Photographs:
1. Native sunflowers growing down the road, 10 September 2015. The higher part of the wall is 6'.

2. Maximilian sunflowers in my yard, 5 September 2015. The fence is 6'.

3. Native sunflowers growing on the flood plain of the Río Grande. The tall corn is to the left.

4. Maximilian sunflowers two weeks after #2, 20 September 2015. The stems have leaned over.

5. Cottonwood with dead branches two years ago, 8 November 2013.

6. The dead wood has been engulfed with new growth; it’s only visible when the wind blows like yesterday, 19 September 2015.

7. You can just see the dead branch in the indentation on the right in the wind; everything above is new growth, 19 September 2015.