Watching Ice Melt

Weather: Several storms passed that dropped a little moisture, but no real snow. Afternoon temperatures have gotten into the high 40s, and the snow from 16 January is slowly melting.

Last snow: 1/16. Week’s low: 16 degrees F. Week’s high: 54 degrees F in the shade.

What’s green: Everything facing north and west is under snow or ice. The junipers, yuccas, and other evergreens, grape hyacinths, vinca, and coral bells are still green.

What’s turned red: Alfilerillo and coral beards tongues.

Tasks: For some reason, the local big box had picnic tables for sale today. Indoors, there were large displays of weed killers clogging the aisle. The corporate headquarters are in central North Carolina. The temperature there today was only about 10 degrees warmer than here. Why would a promotions manager think the whole world was like Florida?

Animal sightings: Footprints in snow show the rabbit now is entering my yard from my east neighbor’s side. My north neighbor has dogs that bark and make a habit of going through their fence to use my drive as an outhouse. The rabbit wasn’t the one to figure out this was the safest way to bypass them. It was a cat who pioneered the path.

Weekly update: Watching ice melt probably ranks with watching grass grow as a metaphor for boredom to a city person. Of course, they probably don’t have to think about how to get out of their house after a storm.

When it snowed 16 January I thought I’d play it smart. I didn’t shovel the snow the next morning. Instead, I thought, since my car was already parked outside the gate, I’d let the snow melt away.

Alas, it turned to ice so high it prevented me from opening the gate.

Late this afternoon I finally went out with a hoe and chopped the ice. Underneath it was a layer of mud.

It’s that time of year when water is trapped between the frozen ground and whatever snow still covers the ground. That snow lies in the shadow of fences, buildings, and shrubs. In my drive, the snow sweeps out around the winterfats, and narrows to ice where no tall plants grow. That area is too soft to walk — or drive — upon.

I thought at first I had created the ice problem for my gate when I built the retaining wall last spring. It wasn’t quite two feet high, but it still created a shadow. I realized instead the shadow was cast by something my neighbor had installed in the area.

I had an area where my feet sank several inches outside the gate. When I looked at it this morning, I realized it was a ramp between the compacted general drive, and the hardened drive to my house that’s several inches lower. The ramp was soft dirt.

I went to the big box to buy some bags of river rock, a fancy word for stones. I dumped some in area of the ramp, and walked over it to get it to sink into the mud.

Then I looked and saw my neighbor’s yard, where a tire had broken through the hardened crust to the mud below. His drive is slightly higher than mine — it’s the reason his dirt drifts down into my drive. The water probably also flows down from the shadow of his house to the ramp and area in front of the retaining wall.

Watching ice melt may not be exciting, but it’s the only way to discover what otherwise is invisible about the workings of wind and water.

Notes on photographs: Taken 27 January 2020.
1. Leaves on Coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea) are still green, under a protective blanket of leaves from a flowering crab apple.

2. Damage done in my neighbor’s drive by driving on soft ground.

3. Snow remains in the shadows of fences and shrubs in my drive.

Snow at Last

Weather: Snow, real snow, the kind that comes down and stays a few days. The last time that happened was January 2016. I’m sure the sky basins have better records for when they last had an adequate snow fall to sustain themselves without water filched from reservoirs converted by machines.

Last useful snow: 12/28. Week’s low: 14 degrees F. Week’s high: 54 degrees F in the shade.

What’s still green: Stems on roses; leaves on cliff roses, juniper, arborvitae, and other evergreens, yuccas, red hot pokers, sweet peas; most are covered in snow

What’s gray, gray-green, or blue green: Four-winged saltbush, fernbush, winterfat

What’s red: Stems on sandbar willow and bing cherries, new wood on peaches and apples

What’s yellow: Stems on weeping willows

Animal sightings: Rabbit came out yesterday morning, hopped across the yard and drive, then down the path beside the house to head out toward the prairie. It also came through this morning with a slightly different path.

Weekly update: Last week when I was driving through the village I noted some cottonwoods still had leaves on some lower branches that hung along side trunks. Gravity probably pulled the snow off those branches.

The trees that may have had greater problems with the snow that stuck on all horizontal surfaces are the trees of heaven that still had full canopies of seed pods.

The only shrub in my yard to have a problem is the Apache plume. Tiny branches crisscross one another to create a mesh that supported the snow. In addition, while many of the leaves had died, they hadn’t fallen. So, it’s under full mantle with a protected cave under it.

The plants that have the greatest challenge in my yard are the ones under the back porch drip line. Snow melts off the roof, and drops onto the rose and shrub branches below where it freezes. Fortunately, it’s only the stems directly in the fall line; the rest of the plants are safe from the freezing.

The indomitable sweet pea leaves have stayed green even when the rose the vines climbed was covered with snow, then ice.

Notes on photographs: Taken 30 December 2018.

Solstice and Snow

Weather: Cold afternoons; last snow/rain 12/19/12; 9:45 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens, yucca; Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, sea pink, snapdragon leaves.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot and sandbar willow branches; coral beardtongue, exposed pink evening primrose leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, pink, winterfat leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias. Found a small brown mushroom in one of the petunia pots.

Animal sightings: Rabbit tracks in the snow Sunday; small brown birds.

Weekly update: The solstice occurred this week. I’ve slowly learned at this altitude with our clear skies and arid rain patterns, it usually is the coldest time of the year.

We had the hope of more snow on Wednesday. Temperatures warmed as the clouds moved in, melting some of the little snow we got a week ago Friday and Sunday. By the time they arrived, it was too warm to snow and some rain, very little, fell instead, washing away more of the precious cover.

Since Wednesday, temperatures have been cold. Mornings have been around 10, not quite as cold as two weeks ago, but who quibbles with how much below 10, so long its above zero? Several afternoons, the temperature just rose above freezing late in the day. Little snow has disappeared since.

There are two snow patterns in my yard: those created by man and those by nature. The snow always disappears on the east side of my house and the south side of the garage. I think the white stucco amplifies the effects of the heat.

The only plants that do well are those from even colder, harsher climates like the snow-in-summer and the sea pinks. Others cuddle their green leaves under their mantles of last summer’s growth.

The north and west sides of buildings and fences are shadowed and keep their snow longer.

The roofs, with their drip lines, create their own environments. On the south side of the house the dripping creates a wet area, which is the one place I’ve been able to grow some types of roses, mainly floribundas and root stock. I think part of the success has been the grasses which have come up and provide mulch that cannot blow away. The height of the stalks helps keep the roses’ own leaves in place.

On the west side of the garage, it is always so cold the drip line turns into an ice trough. It’s along its edges I’ve been able to grow lily and tulip bulbs which need winter cold. Otherwise, cold weather garden phlox survives.

The rest of the yard is under nature’s control. To the north, up hill, the land was destroyed before I arrived, and supports very little grass. For a while snakeweed threatened, and now winterfat is spreading.

When I looked out on the Solstice, the winterfat bushes had no snow around them. Either their woolly coats kept if from landing, or the warmth emanating from their biomasses warmed the immediate areas. But between the bushes, snow persists. Hopefully, it creates an incubating environment for recovery by grasses, counteracting the space aggrandizing tendencies of the shrubs that want to replace prairie with steppe.

About midway down the gentle slope, my neighbor to the east built his metal barn, with a culvert under my drive to direct the excess water. Of course, it doesn’t quite work. Whenever it rains in the summer, the winds also are blowing, and the water on the roof lands below the culvert line. But it still must do something, because there’s a line a grass that grows every year along a boundary that slopes southwest from the culvert.

That area has grassed itself. The grasses have kept more of the snow.

Directly west of the house, more damage was done to the land when the house was built, and it never has quite recovered. Salt bushes and winterfat try; June grass sprouts when the spring is wet, then dies. This summer, the surface was being to shell over, so water couldn’t penetrate. I hope the snow trapped by the shadow of the house is breaking that hardened surface with its daily freeze and thaw cycles.

The salt bushes and winterfat took over the area southwest of the septic field. The salt bushes aren’t as hostile to the snow as the winterfat, but then their mere size intimidates anything that might want to grow too near. They allow some snow in their north side shadows which will melt and run down to their roots.

Behind the house, I was able to preserve the original needle grasses. There the snow also melts, but like the area maintained by the culvert, there are snow covered swaths between the bunches of brown vegetation. The area shadowed by the fence keeps more than the open area between the fence and the house.

Photographs: All pictures taken 21 December 2012.
1. Sea pink on east side of house, surrounded by a little snow.

2. Snow-in-summer on east side of house, with no snow.

3. Green leaves of large-leaved soapwort, buried under debris on east side of house; no snow in area.

4. Lead plant in undisturbed snow on west side of house.

5. Rose with no snow in drip line of south side of house, protected by leaves from nearby beauty bush.

6. Iced in drip line on west side of garage.

7. Winterfat in open area north of house, with no snow near it.

8. Pattern of winterfat in open area north of house rejecting snow.

9. Natural grasses north of house, with snow between bunches.

10. June grass clumps in shadow of west side of house, with snow between bunches.

11. Salt bush copse in open area southwest of house, with little snow.

12. Natural grasses south of house, with more snow near fence.

13. However, some snow survives in areas in back beyond the shadows of the fence and house.

Snow Catchers

Weather: Finally some snow Friday, with some more last night; 9:46 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Rose stems, juniper, pine, and other evergreens, yucca, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot and sandbar willow branches.

What’s grey or blue: Winterfat leaves.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Robins, chickadees after the snow stopped Friday. The robins must have been migrating when they got caught in the storm. When I first saw them, there were in the road on the river side of my land, and scrounging for seeds among the native shrubs. Later, they moved a bit inland to my cherry tree, and then to the locust. Yesterday, I saw one in the densely branched rose of Sharon.

Weekly update: A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend in Santa Fé who was recommending I water my plants, especially the new fruit trees. He’d been irrigating some of his, and said it took nearly half an hour to put enough water in the ground for it to begin puddling on the surface.

I mumbled something about it being much too cold to water where I was. Our temperatures, morning and night had been running at least ten degrees below his. Once trees enter their dormancy phase, I’m afraid to do anything except leave it to nature and hope.

I’ve thought some since about our dissimilar reactions to this fall. Some can be attributed to the differences between being raised in Michigan and in eastern Texas where watering does save shrubs in cold spells. But then the plants there are not as cold hardy as the ones growing here.

My biggest concern was that we were having very cold mornings, with temperatures below 10f, and no snow cover to insulate plants against daily extremes. When it snowed Friday, the first thing I did was check that snow indeed had filtered through the grasses and was covering the interstices. Yesterday, I looked again, hoping the twenty-fours of melting had not removed too much protection.

The grasses had detained their snow, but the barren areas were unprotected against the depredations of sun, wind, and heat. They already were exposed. There is a reason even the weeds huddle next to the bunches, and nothing colonizes the intervening areas that have been stripped of vegetation.

When I was out Friday surveying the grasses, I began to wonder what else was happening I couldn’t see in those few hours just after the storm when snow still covered exposed parts of plants as well as their bases. In some cases, snow that landed on unshed leaves was weighing down branches.

When I went out yesterday, some of those leaves had fallen.

As I wandered Friday, my friend’s concerns with water came to mind when I noticed the junipers hadn’t just amassed snow, they had clutched it.

I wondered if the evergreens, which must have some heartbeat in the cold, were able to absorb moisture through their needles. When I looked at them yesterday, some branches looked much worse, as if they had been damaged by exposure to the cold, either from the snow or from the earlier brutal weeks.

I wondered if the same thing happens with the cholla, which not only have many horizontal surfaces, but prongs to hold on to the snow that lands.

I also began to wonder about the effects of that snow on seeds: was it simply going to loosen them, or cold stratify some. The lily capsules began opening in mid-October.

Friday they trapped snow, which turned to ice. I looked them up in Park’s guide. Ann Reilly says that, with some lily species, one needs to maintain a temperature of 70f for three months after sowing them, then refrigerate them for six weeks. After that, temperatures need to return to 70f for germination to occur in three to six weeks.

I wonder if yuccas have similar requirements. They are members of the same lily family. Friday the uncut yucca heads caught the snow.

Yesterday, the heads were bare again.

As I started thinking about seeds, I noticed the Virginia creeper with snow on its hoods of leaves and dangling berries.

Since they hadn’t been eaten, I wondered if perhaps the plants were designed to capture snow to rot the remaining fruit and release the seeds. The next day, I noticed some of the berries had fallen amongst the Russian olive leaves blown loose from my neighbor’s tree.

I also wondered Friday about why nature designed so many plants to capture snow that long since had given up their seeds. Coneflower heads, like the cholla and the juniper, have arrays of long, sharp spikes. I thought possibly it was to capture water which would hasten the decay of the stems. They never just break off and blow away. Nature must have some way to keep them manicured that doesn’t work when they are in captivity, next to a house or garage that blocks the winds.

Yesterday I saw something I’ve never noticed before. Under the coneflowers, and a few other plants, there was stains in the snow caused, I assume, by pigments leaching from the plants. They indeed were being digested by the weather.

Notes:
Reilly, Anne. Park’s Success with Seeds (1978).

Photographs:
1. Open grass land at the end of Friday’s storm, 14 December 2012; winterfat among the grasses.

2. Cholla after Friday’s snow, 14 December 2012.

3. Shrub corner with a thick base of snow, partly captured by the wooden fence behind, 14 December 2012. Dr. Huey rose to the right, forsythia behind.

4. The next morning, some of the snow had disappeared in the shrub corner, but green triplets of rose leaves and brown forsythia leaves had fallen on top of the blanket; 15 December 2012.

5. Open grass land after temperatures had risen above freezing for some hours, and melted or evaporated some snow. The grasses kept their snow, but the barren areas between lost their’s; 15 December 2012.

6. Juniper clutching snow to itself, 14 December 2012.

7. Juniper branches, some looking scarred by the cold, 15 December 2012.

8. Chinese trumpet lily seed heads in the snow, 14 December 2012; purple coneflowers in rear.

9. Narrow leaved yucca heads in the snow, 14 December 2012.

10. Narrow leaved yucca heads the day after the snow stopped, 15 December 2012.

11. Virginia creeper leaves and berries right after the snow, 14 December 2012.

12. Virginia creeper berries fallen on the snow, 15 December 2012, along with Russian olive leaves blown loose by the winds.

13. Purple coneflower in the snow, 14 December 2012; other stems are David phlox.

14. Purple coneflower stains in the snow, 15 December 2012; other stems are Silver King artemisia.

15. Áñil del muerto in the snow the day after the storm, 15 December 2012: the existing seeds have been dampened and the warmth of the organic matter in the stems has begun melting the snow in the immediate area. A little staining also has occurred.