Harvest Unreaped

Weather: Some rain Sunday and Monday, but cold mornings continue to send signals of changes coming. Last rain, 10/9.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, Maximilian sunflowers, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Leather leaf globe mallow, purple asters.

In my yard: Large leafed soapwort, calamintha, winecup mallow, chocolate flowers, anthemis, blanket flower, French marigolds, chrysanthemums.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, sweet alyssum.

Inside: Zonal geraniums, moss roses.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, goldfinches in the Maximilian sunflowers, geckoes, ants.

Weekly update: This is just not a self-perpetuating fruit area, despite the many apricot and apple trees. Bees may have been imported to fertilize the flowers, but there are few animals to spread the seed by eating the fruit.

Even natives like junipers don’t always have their berries plucked.

But what’s a plant to do when its bounty dries on the vine or twig?

Apples shrug off their fruit to save themselves from carrying the extra weight into winter. I don’t know if apples behave like the watermelons described by William Weaver that nurture their seeds inside their moist wombs. In the past, when apples were pressed for cider, the unused debris was thrown away. Ian Merwin said, seedlings "sprouted naturally in pomace piles." Saplings certain seem to appear wherever they can begin undetected.

My neighbor’s Russian olive has a different strategy: it throws off the fruits with a few leaves to help them fly away a bit. One landed in my drive this past week. I’m not sure how all the others I cut down got here.

The buffalo gourd down the road uses gravity. It’s growing at the top of a road cut where it’s vine tumble down the bank. The fruit accumulates at the bottom. One must have rolled across the road, and on down the slight grade to lodge in the grass around a fence. On the other side is an active hay field, whose owner cannot be happy to have to worry about its fruit infesting his bales.

Notes:
Merwin, Ian A. "Apple Tree Rootstocks," Cornell University website, summer 1999.

Weaver, William. His observations on watermelon were discussed in the post for 30 August 2015.

Photographs:
1. Pyracantha berries are eaten in other parts of the country, but never here. Ones in town, 4 October 2016.

2. Privet berries are also neglected here; 5 October 2016.

3. Juniper berries in my yard, 5 October 2016.

4. Sand cherries drying on the twig in my yard, 5 October 2016.

5. Apples fallen in a nearby orchard, 4 October 2016.

6. Russian olives in my drive, 5 October 2016.

7. Young buffalo gourd vine hidden in the grass near a hay field, 4 October 2016.

Of Lemmings and Lummoxes

Weather: More clear skies than clouds, with bits of rain; last useful rain was 9/23.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, datura, morning glories, Maximilian sunflowers, zinnia, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Bindweed, leather leaf globe mallow, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.

In my yard: Large leafed soapwort, calamintha, winecup mallow, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, French marigolds, Sensation and yellow cosmos, chrysanthemums.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, sweet alyssum, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums, moss roses.
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Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds, geckoes, small bees, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: It’s that time again, between the first cold morning and the first hard frost, when one ponders the ways leaves respond to their imminent demise.

Some trees are dependable. As soon as they detect cold, they send signals and their leaves turn yellow. One down the road with finely cut leaves is always the first to respond.

The fruit trees are rarely so dramatic. Leaves on my peach were turning yellow and dropping almost as soon as the branches shook off the last of their fruit. An apricot down the road is showing more stress. Some branches have turned yellow, and others are green. The light color backlights others on the southeast side that had died, but weren’t visible before.

Other plants just ignore the weather, following their own internal clocks. Leaves on corn that was planted early have turned brown and their stalks have been cut. But plants seeded later are still green, and the ones I planted very late are still producing new ears though the lummoxes will never ripen.

Way too many plants just never recovered from the heat of summer and like lemmings are continuing their slow walk to oblivion. My friends tell me his tomatoes still have done nothing. My melon plants only put out some more leaves and flowers, but never grew. The one person I think had squash just tore his out when he cut his corn. As near as I could tell, they finally did start to vine, but I never saw any squashes.

Catalpas never grew comfortable. The leaves were smaller than usual so bare branches showed through. At their best, they looked like newly shorn poodles. The leaves never became fully green, but always kept a hint of yellow. Now, at the first sign of fall, that green is retreating.

Bedding plants also continue to nurse their grievances. The French marigolds died about the time some reseeds came into bloom. The snapdragons have finally started to blossom, but only one flower at a time. The moss roses only recovered when I brought them inside.

But then they rarely have a chance to thrive. Growers always put too many seeds in a cell to make single threads look like full plants. They fight one another for water, and lebensraum for their roots.

Photographs: Most taken in the area on Saturday, 1 October 2016.

1. Heavenly Blue morning glories are another seed that simply didn’t grow this year. What morning glories are blooming are mixes from reseedings. I put some seeds in when I planted the corn in a shaded area, and, perhaps because it didn’t go through the harsh transition to July as a seedling, it has started to bloom.

2. Virginia creeper is one of the most predictable plants; it always turns maroon. This one is near the village.

3. The unknown trees with finely dissected leaves down the road.

4. An apricot with patches of yellow that reveal its dead branches.

5. My experimental corn plant.

6. My cantaloupe plant plants with leaves and recent flowers, and nothing more.

7. The prematurely yellowing catalpa.

8. Moss rose plants bought early in the season that finally are blooming indoors. The number of colors indicates how many seedling fought with one another. 3 October 2016.

9. I bought some single plants a few weeks ago, mainly because I was checking out with one brick, and needed something more to make a credit card charge They cost much more per plant, and it remains to be seen if they truly are what they claim. At least they are blooming in clusters, not single strands. 3 October 2016.

Trees without Walls

Weather: The first really cold morning, last Saturday. Some rain fell Thursday and Friday, but most stayed west of the Rockies. Last rain was 9/23.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, datura, morning glories, Maximilian sunflowers, zinnia, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Yellow evening primroses, bindweed, leather leaf globe mallow, broom snakeweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.

In my yard: Large leafed soapwort, calamintha, winecup mallow, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, French marigolds, Sensation and yellow cosmos, chrysanthemums.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, sweet alyssum, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums, moss roses.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckoes, small bees, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: There is no such thing as an environmentally friendly building, or an ecologically neutral footprint. No matter the materials, the design, or the intentions of the owners, walls introduce change.

If a wall faces south it absorbs heat from the sun, then reflects it back in the evening to protect areas from the worst winter temperatures. On its other side, it casts a shadow where snow doesn’t melt and the ground stays colder longer in the spring.

Depending on its orientation, a wall deflects the wind, which in turn diverts the rain. One side has wind erosion, the other side drought. If a wall is freestanding with a broad top, or if it’s part of a building with a roof, its overhangs create drip lines.

Plants exploit these microclimates.

Down the road from me, a man had an apple tree outside his trailer. I don’t know that he had ever did much for it, but it flourished.

I don’t know what happened to him, but one day in 2013 I saw a couple men dismantling his added entry porch. A few days later the trailer was gone, and the ground scraped bare.

However, the men saw the apple tree, and had that superstitious regard men have here for fruit trees, and carefully worked around it.

The tree survived, but it had lost its passive water source. Drips from the roofs of the trailer and the porch had kept it alive. It barely made it through this past winter. There were leaves on only one side this spring.

Then came July, that month when afternoon temperatures were in the 90s, not their usual 80s, and humidities fell below 10%. The tree is now barren in a field of Russian thistles that returned.

A catalpa on the road to Chama experienced the same bereavement. A roofed area stood near the road. I assume it once had been a produce stand, because no one stores anything of value like hay or heavy equipment that close to a highway. I suspect the owners had retired or died, and the trees survived on water from the roof.

In December of 2014 I drove by after a dozer had leveled the house, and was clearing the grounds. A few days later the owners installed a pipe rail fence near the road to replace the barrier created by the stand and scrub vegetation.

The catalpa and another tree managed to survive. The drive on one side has been paved, and asphalt, or whatever it is that’s used these days, doesn’t absorb as much water as gravel. The surplus rolls to the side and creates it’s own drip line at the edge. The roots must have spread into the spillway, though the branches showed no indication of the underground patterns.

This summer was brutal, but one side of the catalpa has leaves. More important, those leaves are green. They didn’t bleach out from the iron in the soil become too dry to feed the roots.

Some Siberian elms have just suffered a similar set back. A trailer burned on one of the busier two-lane streets in town in 2014, and for some reason it wasn’t cleared.

At some point, the owners put up some yellow tape to keep people out, but that was the only warning the remains were probably unstable. With no owner to keep them cut, a row of elms sprouted in the drip line.

Finally, this past March the trailer was cleared but not the grounds. I wonder how long those elms will survive, because even an elm will eventually die if you can manage to withhold the water long enough.

Photographs:
1. A house in the village, 29 September 2007, when morning glories covered the front wall and a pink rose bloomed by the entrance.

2. Same house this week, 23 September 2016. The person living there, who may not have been the same one who was there in 2007, let things go wild and erected coyote-style privacy barriers. A couple weeks ago, whoever owned the house had scraped the land clear, removed every sign of vegetation, including iris which usually are left alone. The rose may be huddled against the porch.

3. The Apple Trailer down the road, 19 April 2012.

4. Apple tree after the trailer was removed, 24 August 2013.

5. Apple tree this past week, after a brutal summer, 25 September 2016.

6. Produce stand, 12 September 2014. There’s a tree at the back left corner that’s surviving on water from the roof.

7. Produce stand, 7 December 2014, after the produce stand was razed.

8. Catalpa growing where the edge of produce stand had dropped water, 23 September 2016.

9. Burned out trailer in town, 9 December 2014. Whatever trees had grown in front had been singed by the fire.

10. Trailer space this past week, 23 September 2016, after the trailer was removed. A row of bright colored elms grow at a fairly uniform height where water had fallen from the charred frame.

Learning from Failure

Weather: Some rain before dawn Saturday, but mostly sunny days with futile wind gusts and thunder in the afternoons.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, bouncing Bess, sweet peas, datura, morning glories, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Yellow evening primroses, bindweed, scarlet creeper, green leaf five eyes, goat’s heads, alfalfa, leather leaf globe mallow, broom snakeweed, Tahoka daisies, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, golden hairy and purple asters.

In my yard: large leafed soapwort, calamintha, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, lead plant, Mönch asters, Mexican hats, Maximilian sunflowers, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, French marigolds, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, sweet alyssum, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums. Brought the moss roses inside to see if they could survive.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds, geckoes, small bees, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: Gardeners face two kinds of failures. In one case, one should learn after so many attempts that the plants sold by a particular garden center will not survive. There comes a time, when one realizes its not one’s own fault, there really is something wrong. Of course, there are those who take the opposite view, and assume it is always the shop’s fault. We ultimately come to the same conclusion, but they run out of suppliers sooner.

The second type of the failures are the ones we ignore, for if we didn’t, we’d give up completely.

I have a bed I call the island, though it’s actually a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the runoff ditch. Most things I planted there didn’t grow, so when the pinks and snow-in-summer survived several seasons, I thought, "aha - an alpine bed."

Of course that’s not what it was. But those members of the carnation family exist somewhere on that elevation schematic that shows alpines blooming at the top and the dandelions dominating the bottom.

I thought some more, and said "aha - a scree bed." All they need is a little more water and some glacial till to trap it. I duly bought some small-sized shale gravel and covered the surface, then put a weeping hose on top.

Did they thrive?

They didn’t get a chance. The golden spur columbine, garlic chives, vinca, and winecup mallow all invaded, dropping themselves along the hose. The stones make it all but impossible to dig them out.

I learned one of the secrets of post-glacial succession. Those plants that live higher on the side of that mythical mountain side are the ones that have been driven there. They can’t compete with more vigorous species, and only survive at an altitude or temperature where they alone can breathe.

As I weed to protect them anyway, I look out over the yard where I tried to preserve the native grassland vegetation and see scrub advancing everywhere. One cause is my buildings which redirected the flow of water, and other reasons include the actions of neighbors who redirected water or scraped their land bare to create seed beds of disturbed soil.

There’s no point in cursing them - too much. They’re only aggravators who are accelerating changes that are happening anyway.

When I moved here the front yard was some winterfat and lots of ring muhly grass. Some dry summers, and the grass died. The winds stripped the bare surface, and dropped seeds that sometimes germinated. A few years ago it was Russian thistles.

This year in the heat of July the erosion accelerated and broom snakeweed nestled amongst the expanding copses of gray shrubs.

I don’t like it, but I know if I went out to pull them I’d leave loose soil where seeds would drop as I removed the plants. The mere act of helping would be destructive.

It wouldn’t matter what any gardener did. The dynamics of ecological competition will triumph. In the face of that massive indifference by the universe, I weed and cut the small scree bed several times a summer, and observe the rest.

Photographs:
1. Broom Snakeweed, Gutierrezia sarothrae, blooming with the winterfat, Krascheninnikovia lanata. 18 September 2016.

2. Island after it has been weeded. The gray leaves are snow-in-summer, Cerastium tomentosum. The gray-green leaves are Bath Pink, a Dianthus cultivar. There are also some coral bells and a taller chrysanthemum. 15 August 2015.

3. Blooming snow-in-summer with golden spur columbine invading in front. Garlic chives have hidden the pinks in back. 28 June 2016.

4. Snakeweed and winterfat along the property line, where the snakeweed continues into the dirt road. 18 September 2016.

5. Barren soil that’s created an erosion bath between the shrubs. 18 September 2016.

6. Garlic chives resprouted within a week of being removed from the shale gravel. 18 September 2016.

7. Blooming pinks invaded by vinca from the left and garlic chives from the year. 15 May 2016.

Walls and Birds

Weather: Last real rain was 8/27. Several times we had confrontations of hot and cold air that result in winds, clouds, and thunder. However, there wasn’t enough water in the atmosphere to get more that some splashes.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, bouncing Bess, sweet peas, datura, morning glories, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Yellow evening primroses, bindweed, scarlet creeper, green leaf five eyes, goat’s heads, alfalfa, leather leaf globe mallow, broom snakeweed, gum weed, golden hairy and purple asters. Tahoka daisies are everywhere along the roadsides, áñil del muerto and native sunflowers are flourishing in favored places.

In my yard: Garlic chives, large leafed soapwort, larkspur, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, lead plant, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, Maximilian sunflowers, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, white yarrow, French marigolds, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, sweet alyssum, moss rose, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds, geckoes, small bees, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: Whenever I hear someone trumpeting the merits of gated communities, I think of Poe’s "The Masque of the Red Death." I wonder, how safe is George Zimmerman from mosquitoes? The homeowner’s association for The Retreat at Twin Lakes may spray the grounds, but how high are those walls?

I’ve put up fences for all the usual reasons, and learned their limitations. I began with wide-mesh farm fence. The intent was to define a boundary so people would no longer consider my yard public land. So far as I know, it has kept out intruders. They simply park their cars as near to the fence as they can, and walk past the "no trespassing" signs to enter pueblo land.

Dogs are another matter. The ones who lived on the west would saunter along the fence to the gate, then walk through the rails. They knew what the fence was for, but that didn’t stop them.

Then, my neighbor on the north thought fresh eggs would be nice. Her chickens and turkey came through the mesh. They weren’t as smart as dogs. They couldn’t remember how to get out. They had to be directed.

So, I reinforced the northern fence and gate with vertical boards. That stopped the domestic animals, but rabbits and ground squirrels go under. I’ve watched cats go both under and over. Birds don’t even notice the barrier.

This past week I found three thriving Virginia creeper vines that had started from dropped pits. I also cut or otherwise tried to kill unwanted Russia olive trees.

Some insects are even worse. The ant queens join the mosquitoes, hornets and locust borers who fly over six-foot-high boards.

One unanticipated benefit of the fence was it stopped some weeds from invading from the north. That is, until we had a very dry year with stronger winds that usual. Then, the Russian thistles flew high enough to lodge above my head in the black locust.

People here have one problem that can’t be solved by walls. They use flood irrigation. By the time they get the water, it has traveled thirty miles through weedy banks. They can’t install filters without blocking the flow of water. I saw one lawn owner out this week standing in water with a rake. I’ve seen another in waders with a fish net trying to capture debris before it sank with the water. Their weed-and-feed chemicals can’t stop everything.

I’ve often wondered why anyone would plant anything as water-hungry as bamboo, or whatever that is in a ditch outside their wall. Then I realized, they probably didn’t. But someone, somewhere did.

As Donne might have said, no may can create an island.

Notes:
Donne, John. "Meditation XVII." Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. 1624

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Masque of the Red Death." 1842.

Photographs:
1, 2 and 5. Tall plant growing in a ditch in the village, 8 September 2016. I doubt they planted it, and several times a year someone cuts it to the ground.

3. Buffalo gourd down the road, 8 September 2016. I don’t know if these people planted this or not. They cut it down in the fall. Right now Tahoka daisies and pigweed are with it.

4. Virginia creeper that I didn’t notice until it poked through the porch floor, 4 September 2016. The nearest plants are about a quarter mile away.

6. My neighbor’s Russian olive leaning over my fence, 8 September 2016. Every year he cuts it down, but so far hasn’t found a way to kill it. There are some along the near arroyo with is less than a quarter mile away.

Show Places

Weather: Clouds have occasionally dropped a little water, but the last real rain was 8/27.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, bouncing Bess, sweet peas, datura, morning glories, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, pampas grass; red on Virginia creeper stems.

Buddleia and silver lace vine flowers are more noticeable. Both have tiny florets that only show in masses from a distance. Apparently the water and cooler temperatures encouraged the individual florets to grow larger.

Produce stands back are back along the roads. They disappeared in mid-July. A friend tells me tomatoes have produced leaves but been slow to set fruit this year. In my yard, the tomatillos have grown into long, dense vines, but fortunately few that I’ve broken off had pods.

Beyond the walls and fences: Scarlet bee blossom, yellow evening primroses, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, leather leaf globe mallow, broom snakeweed, horseweed, goldenrod, native sunflower, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisies, gum weed, golden and purple hairy asters.

Brome snakeweed is taking over the dry areas this year instead of Russian thistles.

In my yard: Garlic chives, large leafed soapwort, larkspur, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, Maximilian sunflowers, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, gazania.

Bedding plant French marigolds are dying out, and been replaced by much stronger reseeds.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, hornets, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: A friend asked me this week if my yard was a show place. I said no, it always had weeds running loose.

I’ve since thought more about what characterizes the places in the area that would qualify for that label. Most have flood irrigation, and with it real lawns. One can snipe all ones likes about ecologically wasteful expanses of green, but they do keep down weeds. The dense roots of turfing grasses don’t provide harbors for most seeds. Dandelions, of course, are an exception. But, once you commit to a lawn, you don’t quibble at a few chemicals to maintain it.

Most of the nicer yards also have paved driveways. Weeds only colonize them when cracks appear. Weedeaters and lawn mowers can control whatever emerges in the run-off zone at their edges.

I suspect a great many also hire yard men, though I’ve seen people with lawns doing their own mowing and fertilizing. I don’t know who does the deadheading, but it has to be the owners unless they have daily or weekly gardeners.

What these wealthier gardeners buy isn’t labor. It’s time and energy. After all none of the work mentioned is arduous. But, unless you have money, you either spend hours a day maintaining a yard or you make choices.

In my drive, the car keeps its path clear by compressing the ground and running down things, but I still have to keep the crown clear of tall, woody stems. That’s a priority, but is it necessary to keep the edges clear as well?

Not all weeds are created equal. There are ones that must go like pigweed and goat’s heads, and then there are ones I’d rather not have like wild lettuce and horseweed. Only the one merits going out in the sun and stretching my hamstrings. The other isn’t worth the sore hand and leg muscles.

Then there are ones that are acceptable, so long as they keep their places and don’t attack. Tahoka daisies, sunflowers and áñil del muerto are not allowed in areas I water, but it’s not worth the effort to keep they away from the drive way edge.

After weeks of rain, everything needs attention at once. More decisions. Is it more important to keep the drainage ways clear or to fertilize? The question answers itself. I spent this week banging my knuckles on bricks that lined ditches, only incidentally tending the more desirable plants.

The friend who asked actually has a show place. But then he runs his business out of his home, and it has to be at least presentable. He’s in Santa Fé where lawns and water use are discouraged. The former owner installed black plastic and gravel to avoid maintenance. My friend hired people to break through the barriers in selected places and hauled in good dirt.

The display area is limited to the front between the concrete drives and the sidewalk, much like an expensive facing is confined to the first story on the front wall façade of a brick town house. It frames the entrance and defines boundaries that limit the width the eye associates with the building. Lawns and fences establish the same limits here. It doesn’t matter that the areas beyond have been degraded. All one sees are islands of beauty.

Without clean frames, one notices the weeds.

While I’ve known him, my friend has extended his attention to the side patches between the concrete drives. They were left to dirt and weeds, and he’s slowing reclaiming them. The back, he says, is unmentionable. There is only so much time.

When time is rationed, it’s the enemies that get attention and friends that get neglected.

Photographs: All taken, 3 September 2016.

1-2. Goldenrod. I had always wanted goldenrod, but it would never grow for me. Then, when I learned it was the preferred food for the locust borers that attack my tree every year, some came up. I thought about ripping them out, but remembered nothing I’d don’t to stop the insects from perpetuating themselves had worked. I thought why not let it grow? Things can’t get worse. The insect on the left is a hornet. I don’t know what the one on the right is, but it doesn’t look the photographs of borers.

3. Driveway with an áñil del muerto near the garage and some Tahoka daisies. The rest of the plants lining the drive path are horseweeds I’d rather weren’t there. But, it’s not worth the effort to remove them or the plants I’ve poisoned in the crown. That’s a task for winter, after they’ve done everything they can to perpetuate my problems. The drive is show place only in January.

4. Tahoka daisies have colonized the drive edge. You can just see the bricks edging the line were hoses carry water to the trees. They got unsightly during the summer heat, but revived with the rain.

5. So far I’ve only cleaned a few feet of the ditch that carries away water that empties from a down spout. I installed the side bricks when I established the garden. It was only after the winecup mallows took over the water course, that I put down the pavers. Of course they don’t fill the spaces the way they would in a show place.

6. I don’t let native sunflowers into my beds, but tolerate them along the drive. This one has chosen to spread outward rather than up. The only priority this week was clearing the space in front on an entrance that lies between it and some golden hairy asters. The low grasses in the crown and the dead stem will stay until I think to bend down sometime when I’m walking by.

Rain’s Slow Drips

Weather: Some solid hard rain Saturday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, bouncing Bess, David and purple garden phlox, sweet peas, datura, Sensation cosmos, zinnia; pyracantha berries bright orange; apples falling.

Beyond the walls and fences: Scarlet bee blossom, white prairie and yellow evening primroses, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod, native sunflower, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisies.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, hostas, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: Atmospheric moisture has fallen into a self-defeating cycle. Clouds appeared most days around noon, often with great rumbles of thunder. No rain fell, but the clouds kept air temperatures from rising. The lower temperatures subdues conflicts between warm and cold air, which delayed the formation of storms. They’ve been coming, when they’ve come, after dark.

Then, as more disturbances formed off the coast of México this weekend, we got several hard rains.

Wet mornings have perpetuated the cycle of weeds and ants taking advantage of my unwillingness to go out. White sweet clover seedlings are suddenly 2' high, though they aren’t blooming. Goat’s heads appeared every day, and they were blooming.

It’s taken a while for the water and cool temperatures to effect other plants. Perennials like bouncing Bess and sweet peas that had gone dormant in the heat are back in bloom. There are fewer returning roses, probably because they were able to open most of their buds in the long cool spring.

Even with the water, the leaves on catalpa trees continue to fade. If that’s a consequence of the soil drying at the base of their roots where they absorbed dissolved iron, then it means the water hasn’t seeped that far down yet.

It’s taken a while for monsoon flowers to open along the roadsides. Today was the first day I’ve seen áñil del muerto and Tahoka daisies. Native sunflowers are still scarce, but the daturas are finally blooming. Their morning glory cousins are not.

The Russian thistles, ragweeds, and pigweeds are blooming in places, but aren’t yet plentiful. The broom snakeweed has taken advantage of their retarded growth to colonize more parts of my yard that have been resculpted by drought.

Two Sides of Clouds

Weather: Rain after dark most night.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, David and purple garden phlox, zinnia.

Beyond the walls and fences: Scarlet bee blossom, white prairie and yellow evening primroses, velvet weed, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, yellow purslane, goat’s heads, alfalfa, Queen Anne’s lace, horseweed, golden hairy asters, goldenrod.

In my yard: Caryopteris, garlic chives, hostas, large leafed soapwort, leadplant, larkspur, blue flax, catmints, calamintha, hollyhocks, sidalcea, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, white spurge, Mönch asters, cutleaf coneflower, Mexican hats, chocolate flowers, coreopsis, blanket flower.

Bedding plants: Wax begonias, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, French marigolds, gazania.

Inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds and other small birds, geckoes, bumble and small bees, ants, grasshoppers.

Weekly update: I tend to hibernate in summer, and nature exploits my lassitude. For years, I thought the reason was the heat, since my body has a low tolerance for high temperatures. That was a useful explanation when I was working, and could only work outside when I got home.

When I retired, I thought, now I can spend as much time as I like outside in the early morning hours before the sun becomes too high. The problem with that vision was that it was formed when I was younger. I’ve discovered I now can work outside for several hours, and then nurse sore muscles for several days, or I can limit myself to an hour and go out every day.

With new resolve, I set the timer and went out each day. Then, a couple years ago I cut my hand in July, and couldn’t do anything. Last summer, as I was cleaning some of the messes that developed, I vowed to find a way to work in the winter and not let the elms get away from me again.

All went well this year until it started to rain the end of July. I discovered it’s impossible to cut plant stems when they’re wet. If I waited until things dried a little, the sun was beating down. Since the Los Conchos fire, the rains have been carrying something from the canyons into the valley. When I go out in the morning, my nose shuts down. I begin breathing through my mouth, which diverts the toxins from the lungs into my stomach, which starts to complain.

So, just as I needed to be out, I’m finding new excuses to stay in. As I mentioned in last week’s post, this is the time when the ants multiply. So far, there hasn’t been a new crop of Russian thistles or pigweed, but the goat’s heads are back, and the weeds I hadn’t yet pulled jumped in size. I’ll have horseweed and white sweet clover and wild lettuce again next year.

It becomes a matter of setting priorities. I decided it was more important to spray and crop the elms, locusts and Russian olives that keep coming back than it was to cut the nuisance weeds. I thought it more important to cut back and weed the ditches that carry water from the house than it was to prune dead wood from the Russian sage and caryopteris. I just look at the powdery mildew on the neighboring lilac and think, maybe I’ll remember to spray it next year.

When it starts raining, I stop running water even though I have no idea how much actually lands in the night. I wondered if some trees that had yellowing leaves were getting too much water. Then, I checked the one on the back porch. Its soil was dry.

So I ran a sprinkler on those plants that aren’t getting enough, but don’t water others areas. I hope they like alkalinity. When I looked at a pool of water this morning by the house, it had that telltale white scum that water company I hired can’t explain.

Life is a paradox. All summer I fretted about lack of water, and now that the monsoons have arrived I complain.

Photographs: All pictures taken the morning of 22 August 2016.

1. Russian sage. Last winter when I lined the eroding path with bricks, I cut the stems that lay outside. I cut them again a month ago. Some are back.

2. Caryopteris. I haven’t trimmed the dead wood on this or other shrubs in more than three years. The last time was before I cut my hand.

3. Ditch that takes water away from the house. I’ve cleaned it twice this year, and started again this week.

4. Wild lettuce buds towering above the garlic chives.

5. Yellow leaves on the weeping cherry where the hummingbirds nested. They left last weekend, but I had gotten out of the habit of watering it every day.

6. Water just out of my hose. I assume what looks like soap scum is something alkaline. Every year after there’s been a lot of rain, my well pulls this up from the aquifer.

7. Powdery mildew on lilac leaves nibbled by grasshoppers.