Bullies in the Hood

Weather: The solstice was the first day with low humidity in Los Alamos and Santa Fé. That it coincided with that solar marker may be chance.

Last useful rain: 6/17. Week’s low: 43 degrees F. Week’s high: 92 degrees F in the shade. Smoke from Mexican fires continues to enter area; sometimes it was replaced with smoke from Arizona.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, catalpa, desert willow, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, red-tipped yucca, lilies, daylily, red hot poker, Spanish broom, sweet peas, purple salvia, blue flax, larkspur, snow-in-summer, hollyhocks, golden spur columbine, datura, yellow yarrow, coreopsis, blanket flowers

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, cholla cactus, showy milkweed, white tufted evening primrose, tumble mustard, buffalo gourd, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, alfalfa, wild licorice, nits and lice, plains paper flowers, goat’s beard, Hopi tea, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, native and common dandelions

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior, Dorothy Perkins, rugosa and miniature roses, catmints, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, smooth, foxglove, coral and purple beard tongues, bouncing Bess, Maltese cross, California poppy, Dutch clover, coral bells, pink evening primroses, Queen Anne’s lace, Mexican hats, white yarrow, chocolate flower, plains coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, anthemis; pansies that wintered over

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

What’s reviving/coming up: Friday I put in more seeds, because so few had come up. Ant hills have been multiplying, and the sidewalk ones were patrolling the beds. I tried sprinkling an insecticide over the beds when I was done to slow the depredations.

Tasks: One man finally planted his vegetable plot this week. Another, waited to last week to put out plants he protected with plastic cylinders. He probably has a problem with rabbits.

Two people erected small canopies to sell produce on roads in town. One listed cherries, onions, and sugar peas.

I continued to pick peaches from low limbs, either to protect the branch or my forehead. So far the unripe fruit hasn’t started to smell or attract insects to their trash bags. Apparently, the chemicals that cause rotting haven’t developed yet.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, gecko, monarch and cabbage butterflies, bumble and small bees, red and brown dragonflies, heard crickets, hornets, mosquitoes, small ants

Now that the sweet cherries are gone, so too are the birds. I managed to get four sour cherries this week, my entire harvest for the year.

Weekly update: We all know the bullies, the plants that naturalize and crowd out their neighbors. Most are prolific seed producers, and many have deep roots that penetrate under the plants with radiation fibrous ones.

Golden spur columbine has been one of my problems. The two I planted in 1997 have taken over a fifty-foot bed. Every time I clear a space to plants seeds for some other perennial, the seeds it already deposited wake up and take over.

A couple years ago I noticed the red hot pokers that had self-seeded from another area were able to hold their own. Even when the Aquilegia chrysantha seeds came up directly under their leaves, the Kniphofia uvaria cultivars managed to survive.

That led me to think maybe plants with bulbous roots would be able to withstand the siege on their space. I bought a variety of hybrid daylilies in colors that contrasted with the columbine’s butter yellow. The Hemerocallis cultivars survived, and bloomed, but every year the columbine grow so close the daylily leaves are lost to view. And, of course, the flower colors weren’t exactly what was described.

Last fall I ordered some bearded iris to see if they could work. Unlike the daylilies, which send up several shoots from the crown the iris leaves are closely united near the ground. That makes it hard for the columbine seedlings to germinate within the plant’s domain. The Iris germamica bloomed in spring, and so far are holding their own.

I also got enticed by a catalog that offered Asiatic lilies for naturalizing. The price was much lower than the specimens sold by the local big boxes. They too made it through the winter, no small achievement for bulbs. Many fail that first test.

Now the Lilium are blooming. It will take another year to know if they will succeed. Bulbs usually bloom the first year, because they spent the summer in ideal conditions. It’s the second year that matters.

Notes on photographs:
1. Unidentified daylily cultivar and golden spur columbine, 1 June 2019.
2. Golden spur columbine seedlings, 22 June 2019.
3. Red hot pokers and golden spur columbine, 22 June 2019.
4. Daylily cultivar surrounded by golden spur columbine foliage, 22 June 2019.
5. Asiatic lilies, so far free of golden spur columbine plants, 22 June 2019.

Magpies

Weather: We went from mornings that were cool with hot afternoons, to nights that didn’t cool and hotter days, to cold mornings again. The little rain we got last night was enough to relieve the stress of plants that couldn’t cope with the heat.

Last useful rain: 6/15. Week’s low: 42 degrees F. Week’s high: 94 degrees F in the shade. Smoke from Mexican fires continues to enter area.

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

The catalpas have been blooming from the bottom up. The smaller trees and branches nearer the warm ground bloomed first. Toward the end of the week, with warming night temperatures, the taller trees and higher branches started flowering. They have bloomed toward the end of May in the past.

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, showy milkweed, white tufted evening primrose, tumble mustard, buffalo gourd, bindweed, datura, green leaf five eyes, alfalfa, wild licorice, fleabane, plains paper flowers, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; rice, three awn, and brome grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior, Dorothy Perkins, rugosa and miniature roses, Asiatic lilies, catmints, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, smooth, foxglove, coral and purple beardtongues, Maltese cross, California poppy, Dutch clover, coral bells, pink evening primroses, Mexican hats, white yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis; pansy and Rocket snapdragon that wintered over

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

What’s reviving/coming up: The warm nights encouraged a few seeds to germinate, but so far nothing more than one of a kind came up before the mornings cooled again.

Tasks: I spent more time cutting winterfat and raking excess leaves from under the cottonwood. The rain Saturday evening did not penetrate the leaves and reach the ground under the tree. The ones near the river, before humans, must indeed have gotten their water from the rise in the river when it rained, rather than from the rain directly.

I cut more unripe peaches from the twenty-year-old tree to relieve the stress of so many fruits on the ends of branches. There often were clumps of four to six. As I cut them, I could see the branches lifting.

The hoses that spray started to fail this week with the afternoon heat. That meant trying to make them lie flatter so the water went into the bed and not into the weeds. It also mean experimenting with partially opening valves to see if lower pressures would force more water into the beds. It’s still trial and error with hoses that are questionable, but all that’s available.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, gecko, one sulfur and many cabbage butterflies, bumble and small bees, heard crickets, hornets, mosquitoes, small ants

Weekly update: Thursday and Friday afternoons a flock of magpies descended. The members of the crow family are noisy and leave large droppings. They also do not scare away easily. I felt like the abandoned stage characters who cry "Alas, why me?"

Why now isn’t any easier to answer. This is the southern end of the range of black-billed magpies. They evolved three to four million years ago in the Pliocine, [1] and spread when temperatures cooled in the Ice Age. [2] Today they are associated with riparian parts of cold-weather steppe vegetation. [3]

Pica hudsonia are not migratory, although they may move to lower elevations in winter. [4] They also "may erratically wander" after the young are self-sufficient. [5] In Santa Fé on 9 July 2014, Anne Schmauss said she had heard "more than the usual number of magpie reports right in town in the last week or two" but the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited could provide no explanation. [6]

Thomas Hall said congregations often are found around food sources. In the past that was bison and cattle herds. They fed off the insects in their hide hairs. Today it more likely is road-kill or "ripening fruit and nut orchards." [7]

Cherries have been ripening this past week. However, I don’t think there are any orchards in the immediate area, and the scattered large trees are at least a mile away. The quail got all my ripe ones, and left the unripe and half-eaten on both my sweet and sour trees.

The other possibility is some disturbance in their home range. The only local fire is about five acres in El Rito, which is 55 miles north. It has been burning slowly since started by lightening 7 June. [8]

There might be some construction project somewhere. People continue to move into empty land, especially west of the Río Grande.

The magpies landed in the trees around my house, and in the grasses in the back yard. When I chased them off, they didn’t fly toward the open land of the prairie, but circled looking for another place to roost.

They were most attractive when they were leaving. That’s when one could see the black, white, and blue stripes that turned into Vs when the wings were spread.

Notes on photographs: All taken 16 June 2019.
1. Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa); the low horizontal branch has more flowers than the upper one.

2. Clusters of unripe peaches (Prunus persica).

3. Smooth beardtongue (Penstemon laevigatu) that naturalized.

End notes:
1. Wikipedia. Black-billed Magpie."

2. Gang Song, Ruiying Zhang, Per Alström, Martin Irestedt, Tianlong Cai, Yanhua Qu, Per G. P. Ericson, Jon Fjeldså, and Fumin Lei. "Complete Taxon Sampling of the Avian Genus Pica (Magpies) Reveals Ancient Relictual Populations and Synchronous Late-pleistocene Demographic Expansion Across the Northern Hemisphere." Journal of Avian Biology. February 2018.

3. Charles H. Trost. "Black-billed Magpie." Cornell University website. 1 January 1999.

4. Thomas C. Hall. "Magpies." Prevention and Control of Wildlife Damage. Edited by Scott E. Hygnstrom, Robert M. Timm and Gary E. Larson. Lincoln: Great Plains Agricultural Council. 1994.

5. Wikipedia.

6. Anne Schmauss. "Reports of the Fascinating Magpie Abound in Santa Fe." The [Santa Fé] New Mexican. 9 July 2014.

7. Hall.

8. cnfpio. "Carson National Forest Preparing for Firing Operations on Gurule Fire." New Mexico Fire Information website. 15 June 2019.

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.

Smoke without Borders

Weather: Dry blizzard on Wednesday when we got very high winds and little moisture. Another bout of very high winds Saturday, with a little rain.

On Tuesday, things started blooming, especially area roses. The next day a gecko ventured out.

Last useful rain: 5/21. Week’s low: 32 degrees F. Week’s high: 89 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow, wild pink, and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, Arizona yucca, Dutch iris, peonies, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, oriental poppy, purple salvia, yellow yarrow

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, sand bar willow, narrow leaf yucca, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, plains paper flowers, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, rice, three awn, and brome grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior, Dorothy Perkins, bourbon, rugosa and miniature roses, cliff rose, raspberry, beauty bush, privet, chives, catmints, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, baptisia, Bath pinks, Maltese cross, vinca, sweet peas, 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 back in bloom

What’s reviving/coming up: Flax seedlings, áñil del muerto

Tasks: The wind broke a branch on Tuesday. I was able to find a balance point and move it to the burn area. The next day the high winds lifted it off the burn pile and dropped it 10 feet away. Yesterday, I ignited the burn pile. The branch was too long for the pile, but the thick end did get charred.

When the branches and other debris had burned, I used a long-bladed shovel to move the larger pieces together into a log fire.

The heat apparently dried the more remote branches of the green limb so I was able to break them off and feed them to the log fire. (Of course, I hadn't tried this before the fire, so I may be wrong about the effect of heat). The limb was reduced from a kite to a skeleton that shouldn't get wind borne again.

Animal sightings: Neighbor's cat, chickadees, gecko, cabbage and monarch butterflies, bees on beauty bush, crickets, hornets, mosquitos after rain, harvester and small ants

Weekly update: Last Sunday I started panting while walking along the driveway. I wondered if my lungs had really gotten that much worse. Then I thought to check the air quality forecast of the weather bureau website. As you can see from the above illustration, the area was covered with smoke coming from México. [1]

Apparently, all this moisture we 've been getting this spring is water that didn't go to México. The drought conditions along the border remained unchanged, but aridity increased to the south. [2] A Mexican website reported more than more than 4,400 fires this year. The worst were around Mexico City, but Chihuahua had 182 that burned 20,559 acres. [3]

Smoke, of course, does not stop at the border, and no wall, and no expeditionary force, is going to stop it from crossing over.

It may not actually be the smoke that causes my problems. When I was burning yesterday I took off my mask. I didn't want anything flammable near by skin. I didn't have any breathing problems, though I know inhaling smoke isn't good for me.

The smoke in my yard was a natural product: tree limbs and clipped weed stalks. The smoke from a forest fire is contaminated, first, by whatever chemicals are used to suppress the flames. Then, as it travels, I think it mixes with other pollutants like those from vehicle exhaust and whatever is emitting smoke along the way.

What was causing me problems was that environmental mix that gets trapped by clouds in the night and settles down into the valleys.

Notes on photographs:
1. Back yard with tamarix (Tamarix rubra) and purple leaf plum (Prunus cerasifera); branch of Dr. Huey rose in foreground. 1 June 2019.

2. Vertical smoke forecast for 1 June 2019 at 4:00 pm. Inset map from bottom of display.

3. Partially burned peach branch (Prunus persica), 3 June 2019. Dead rose wood cuttings have been placed under right end to feed the next firing.

End notes:
1. To find the Air Quality display, go to the National Weather Service forecast website and enter the town. In the right hand column, at the bottom, there's a "National Digital Forecast Database" heading. Click on the map marked "High Temperatures. At the top of the next display there's a tab for "Air Quality." Click on it, then click on the map for New Mexico. At the left, place your cursor over "1 Hr Vertical Smoke Integration." I'm not exactly sure what "vertical smoke" means except it coincides with my breathing problems.

2. National Interagency Fire Center. "North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook" for May, June and July 2019. Issued 10 May 2019.

3. "108 wildfires are burning in 17 states, most in central and southern regions." Mexico News Daily website. 14 May 2019.

Cheat Grass

Weather: We got rain on Monday and Tuesday morning, but temperatures stayed above freezing: indeed, they rose slightly in the night when it was raining. But since, morning temperatures have fallen to 32 or below for a short time between 5:15 am and 6:15 am.

The shrubs I transplanted that didn’t like the heat may be happier, but bedding plants aren’t ready for severe cold. So far they’ve all survived, but the wax begonias look a bit shrunken. I’m not sure how the warm soil seeds are doing that I planted last weekend, but the ones that like cold stratification may germinate.

Winds continue to develop in late morning as soon as temperatures begin to rise: the warmer the day, the sooner they form. The soil surface is dry a few hours after I water. I suspect the clouds I’ve seen are Monday’s rain being leached back into the atmosphere.

Last useful rain: 5/21. Week’s low: 30 degrees F. Week’s high: 82 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow, wild pink, and hybrid roses, spirea peaked, yellow potentilla, pyracantha, snowball, silver lace vine, broad leaf yucca, Dutch iris, peonies, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, sand willow, narrow leaf yucca, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, plains paper flowers, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, feather, rice, three awn, brome, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Wood and rugosa roses, cliff rose, beauty bush, skunk bush, chives, baptisia, Bath pinks, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansies that wintered over

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, nicotiana, sweet alyssum

What’s reviving/coming up: Datura, toothed spurge, goat’s heads

Tasks: Several men cut their hay. Onions are up in one market garden field.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, gecko, cabbage and monarch butterflies, heard crickets, harvester and small ants, earthworms

Weekly update: Grasses are flourishing this year: with the increased rain the stems have gotten taller and seed heads fuller. That’s all well and good on the prairie where the needle grass shimmers in the sun, but the Gramineae are less welcome in the garden.

Smooth brome grass has been a bane ever since some seeds blew in from some farmer’s hay field. Bromus inermis roots are tied to runners an inch or more below ground, that break when the tops are jerked too strongly. I’ve been using a spade to get under them.

It’s cheat grass cousin isn’t as hard to remove: Bromus tectorum roots are shallow stars that usually can be removed by inserting a chisel under them. The problem is the seeds drop and replant themselves in the disturbed soil even as I’m removing them.

Last summer I tried again to level the main flower bed by adding soil from elsewhere. Naturally, it had been broken up before I used it, so was fine grained. If it didn’t come with seeds, it collected them from the wind.

Cheat grass invaded every place I put down soil. It didn’t just settle in the open spaces between the daylilies I’d planted, but it cousined up to them, and rose between the leaves of the Hemerocallis. Sometimes all I can do is break off the stems and leave the roots, which is OK since it is an annual.

Brome grass is a perennial, and its seeds too were stopped by the daylily leaves. One can’t dig them out without disturbing the perennial. Sometimes the chisel will get between them and the desirable plant and remove some of the root. The runners, however, sometimes go under the existing plants to come up on the other side.

I have no hopes of removing the main brome grass patch that developed on the edge of the drive. All I can do is cut the flowering stems, and chop it down like the local farmers when it gets too high. If I managed to dig it out, I would disturb the soil so much cheat and other grasses would come back with vengeance.

Notes on photographs: Taken 23 May 2019.
1. Cheat grass (Bromus tectorum).
2. Needle grass (Stipa comata).
3. June grass (Koeleria cristata).

Potting Soil

Weather: We must be in a cycle where the heat and winds are drawing up the water from last week’s rain, becoming clouds in the night that hold in the heat that in turn creates the next day’s winds as the lowering sun interacts with the heat.

First tropical disturbance of the week in the Pacific on Thursday.

Last useful rain: 5/12. Week’s low: 34 degrees F. Week’s high: 86 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow and wild pink roses, spirea peaked, yellow potentilla, snowball, silver lace vine, broad leaf yucca, Dutch iris, peonies, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, sand willow, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, plains paper flowers, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, feather, rice, three awn, brome, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Wood and rugosa roses, beauty bush, skunk bush, daffodils, lilies of the valley, chives, golden spur columbine, Bath pinks, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansy that wintered over

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, nicotiana

What’s reviving/coming up: Perennial four o’clock, lamb’s quarter, last year’s African marigold seeds

Tasks: Something bright green is up in two market gardens; it might be lettuce that was planted in a horizontal band crossways to the irrigation furrows.

One man got his first alfalfa cut.

County road crew cut weeds on Thursday along the shoulder; mainly tumble mustard and goat’s beards were affected.

Animal sightings: Neighbor’s cat, chickadees, hummingbird, cabbage and sulfur butterflies, bumble bee on pink evening primrose, hornets, dragonfly, ladybugs on goat’s beards, baby grasshoppers on dandelion flowers, heard crickets, small ants, earthworms

The ground squirrel is back. On Monday I found a dead hollyhock in an area it has tunneled in the past. On Tuesday the hose near a cholla was destroyed. It is bent on killing that cactus. It already has killed the other native one. My neighbors’ dogs and cat are not earning their keep.

I planted seeds near the cottonwood. A couple hours later I saw birds flying up from the general area. I laid some of the mesh fencing over the bed, but it probably was too late to prevent depredations.

Weekly update: We live on two calendars: nature’s and man’s. In the church, the one was borrowed from pagans. The other, the cycle of Christ’s birth and death with the various saint’s days was synchronized with the agrarian one at important points.

In a garden, one’s annual work patterns also follow two calendars. A week ago, when it was raining, I transplanted. Then, when afternoon temperatures grew warm this week I planted seeds.

The manmade cycle comes from the industries that support domestic landscaping. In the early spring, when I need to prepare hoses for the summer, I complain about poor quality control and cost accountants who find ways to cheapen products that work until they fail.

This past week I have been having my annual problems with potting soil. "Soil" is a courtesy title, or perhaps like so many other things, has been so redefined it has lost its earlier meaning. I heard a commercial on radio telling listeners dirt is what you get under your nails while soil is that plants grow in. It then went on to list its products that eliminated the need to improve dirt.

The artificial media used for annual plants is worthless. It only needs to function for a few months, and it’s highly desirable that it weight as little as possible to lower transportation costs.

Its worst characteristic is that it remains alien in the soil. That means water does not seep from the dirt to it. If you don’t target the water for the root ball, it does not absorb water a centimeter away. Each year when I’m removing last year’s dead plants, the potting soil comes with them. Even when there’s no sign of the plant, the clod is obvious and comes out nearly in its entirety.

The industry has an answer. Build a raised bed; it will provide the materials. Fill it with potting soil like that used by the nursery industry; it will provide it by the bag full. Then, to keep it wet all day, it will provide a drip irrigation system with timers.

The alternative is to remove as much of the artificial substance as possible. The trick is doing it when it is so dry it flakes away, but not so dry it forms a solid mass. If the potting soil has any water, the roots break when you try to isolate them. Then, when you plant them, they need a long time to adjust.

If the weather remains cool, that will work. Unfortunately, temperatures went into the 80s this past week. Then the young plants go out of bloom as they struggle, and, if history is a guide, never become strong enough to produce more flowers.

The stuff nurseries use with shrubs is a little better, if for no other reason than it has to support life for more than a few months.

It usually is easy to remove the medium from the bottom roots, which are stronger than those of annuals. However, an impenetrable shield forms at the top that will not break away. One has to dig the hose nozzle through the plate to get water down through the roots.

When the temperatures soar as they did this past week, the shrubs die back and may take several years to recover.

Notes on photographs: All taken 18 May 2019.
1. The flowering crab apple started to produce fruit this week.

2. Pink evening primroses (Oenothera speciosa) have moved out of their bed into a path where they invade the grasses I’ve worked so long to nurture.

3. The fern leaf globe mallows (Sphaeralce digitata) are producing much taller bloom stems this year.

Fruit Formation

Weather: After another too hot Monday, rains started on Tuesday and continued through Saturday night.

Last useful rain: 5/11. Week’s low: 37 degrees F. Week’s high: 83 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Austrian Copper and Persian yellow roses, spirea, snowball, broad leaf yucca, Dutch iris, blue flax, snow-in-summer, purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, hoary cress, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, western stickseed, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, rice, three awn, brome, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Wood rose, skunk bush, tulips, daffodils, lilies of the valley, grape hyacinths peaked, chives, Bath pinks, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansy that wintered over; globe willow dropping catkins that have tiny white flowers.

Bedding Plants: Sweet alyssum, wax begonia, nicotiana

What’s reviving/coming up: Desert willow, trees of heaven, roses of Sharon, buffalo gourd, showy milkweed

Tasks: Men have been working in the market gardens.

I took advantage of the rainy, cool weather to plant some shrubs, oriental poppies, bedding plants, and seeds that like cold weather. Because such weather is so rare, I worked much longer than usual. When I finished, I changed into warm, dry clothes, and thought about men like George Washington and William Henry Harrison who were supposed to have died after they got chilled. Since I assume they had warm, dry clothes or blankets, I presume the problem for them was the lack of enough heat from fireplaces to warm the air in their houses. Only snobs sniff at having a furnace that ignites automatically, a supplemental electric space heater, and an electric blanket.

Animal sightings: Neighbor’s cat, chickadees, hummingbird, cabbage butterflies, small ants, earthworms

Weekly update: The mechanics of fruit production are one of those things I’ve known from books, but never seen in operation. Frosts kill the blossoms nearly every year. When fruit did form, it was high or in protected areas where I never saw the fruit until it was ripening.

This year the cold only affected the apricots. Other members of the rose family were beginning their fruit formation this week.

When the petals dry, they leave the ovaries and attached styles.

The ovaries begin to swell within their protective coverings.

Soon, the ovary takes on the form of the final fruit. The protective covering falls away.

The last thing to disappear is the style that had acted as the tube that guided the pollen into the ovary.

Over the next few weeks, the fruits will expand in size, and the peaches will become round. As they get larger, they also will become heavier, and limbs will begin to bend. Then, even before they are ripe, I may have to remove unripe fruit, especially from the peach, to protect the trees from the consequences of their fertility.

Notes on photographs: All taken in my yard on 11 May 2019.
1. One-seeded juniper (Juniperus monosperma).
2. Siberia pea pod (Caragana arborescens) with remains of its style.
3. Sweet cherry (Prunus avium) with remains of flowers
4. Crab apple ovary (Malus sylvestris) expanding in its protective covering.
5. Sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) emerging from its protective covering.
6. Peaches (Prunus persica) with and without the remains of their styles.

End notes: The female part of the flower is the pistil. It is composed of the ovary at the base, the stigma at the tip, and the style that connects the two.

Terracing

Weather: The rain late Monday afternoon was like a gully washer, though those usually come when the ground is dry in late summer. High winds, a little hail. The main thrust last half an hour, then it throughout the night and int the early morning hours on Tuesday.

With the early end of apple flowers, we’ve gone from early to late spring.

Last useful rain: 4/30. Week’s low: 32 degrees F. Week’s high: 82 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Flowering quince, spirea, lilacs, Dutch iris, blue flax, donkey spurge, lavender moss phlox

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: White tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tansy and tumble mustards, hoary cress, bindweed, western stickseed, leather leaf globe mallow, fleabane, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, three awn, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Choke cherries peaked, skunk bush, snowball, tulips, daffodils, lilies of the valley, grape hyacinths, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansy that wintered over

Bedding Plants: snapdragons

What’s reviving/coming up: Catalpa, caryopteris, Russian sage, buddleia, tomatillo, ostrich fern, black grama grass

Tasks: I’ve been cleaning under trees that were left wild because I couldn’t under the low branches that I had cut this winter.

When I removed cheat grass, I uncovered dandelions and leather leaf globe mallows. When those were removed, one area was thick with golden-spur columbine seedlings.

Animal sightings: Neighbor’s cat, chickadees, house finches, hummingbird, quail, small bees, cabbage butterflies, ladybug, small ants, earthworms

Weekly update: Gardening on a hillside remains a challenge. The slightest incline causes water to run away, taking with it any seeds or nutrients that have been added.

This year I’ve been adding backstops in some beds. They resemble what some called waffle beds when I done: series of small, walled squares. Native Americans created them in the southwest to create small reservoirs in the arid land.

Monday’s rain was an opportunity to see how well they worked. Most were flooded at the end of the torrent, but had drained within half an hour. As near as I could tell, the soil remained relatively level.

Notes on photographs:
1-2. Choke cherries (Prunus virginiana melanocarpa) have had a good year. Each of these flowers will turn into a small fruit that will disappear before I ever see them. 2 May 2019.

3. Retrofitted terraced bed with hostas and daylilies, 30 April 2019.

Pruned Hedges

Weather: This was the first week that temperatures did not go below freezing. We had a good rain on Tuesday with brief showers on Friday and Saturday that watered in fertilizer. The snowy winter may have killed a buddleia, but the spring bulbs and rhizomes are flourishing. The continued moisture may be setting up summer-blooming plants for hard times when it gets hot and dry.

Last useful rain: 4/23. Week’s low: 34 degrees F. Week’s high: 80 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples peaked, purple leaf sandcherries, flowering quince, forsythia peaked, lilacs, redbuds, Dutch iris, tulips, daffodils, donkey spurge, lavender moss phlox

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, hoary cress, western stickseed, oxalis, fleabane, native and common dandelions, June and cheat grasses; elm seeds in the air

What’s blooming in my yard: Sour and weeping cherries, sandcherries, choke cherries, fruiting crab apples, grape hyacinths, vinca; pansy that wintered over

What’s reviving/coming up: Cottonwoods, Russian olives, black locust, grape vines, Virginia creeper

Tasks: Spent my time digging out brome and cheat grass that were invading the mums and daylilies. I planted coreopsis and blanket flower seeds in openings, and fertilized the mums. It may not be the right time, but it’s the convenient time.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, cabbage butterflies, small ants. The small bees prefer the Siberian peas and lilacs to the crab apples and sour cherry. The neighbor’s cat is back. An earthworm was sluggish when it was uncovered.

The quail landed on my back porch rafters again. When I chased it off, it flew under the porch roof of my neighbor. I suspect it’s hiding from the black hawks that have been soaring overhead.

Weekly update: Neatly pruned hedges always mystify me. I wonder why anyone would bother to plant something that flowers, only to chopped the branches so it never blooms. If someone wants to go to the trouble of maintaining a clipped hedge, there are evergreens that are ideal, and they don’t even drop their leaves in the fall.

The shrubs that get this treatment are the ones that tend to have lots of dead wood that needs trimming out: spirea, forsythia, roses of Sharon. Apparently some garden advisor sometime in the past thought, since you have to do the work anyway, why not make the effort pay with something visible.

The spirea takes it, though it looks like it has mange when it blooms. One person keeps a row of roses of Sharon cut down to low squares. The lavender flowers looked pasted on in summer. The forsythia does not do well when it gets cut arbitrarily. Some years it can take it, and others it can’t.

Privet not only does ok, but volunteers to be a green hedge. Mine have begun to send out suckers along the wettest land, which means in a line. I don’t prune mine, so they fill in and bloom in late spring. As I mentioned in the post for 21 November 2010, my aesthetic reasons developed when I had a neighbor in Michigan with a privet that grew so large it resembled a tree.

Lilacs are another shrub that sends out suckers that form copses. A couple people in the area have them in hedges. The one is tall and doesn’t look like it’s ever been pruned. Another died after people strung an irrigation line through the top branches and ran water in winter than froze. I don’t know if the ice killed it, or if it was suffering and the water was a fatal attempt to save it.

My lilacs, especially the uncultivated species, have created forests of stems. They compete with each other for light so the flowers appear up higher every year. I probably should cut them down a little, but I’m always afraid insects will invade if I do it during the summer.

Notes on photographs: Photographs taken 27 April 2019.
1. Common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) on left and Paul Thirion cultivar on the right. You can see the dense number of stems on both.

2. Common lilac suckers that found the hose laid down last summer.
3. Cheyenne Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) that has suckers to the left.

Trees Fight Back

Weather: Sweet cherry blossoms succumbed to the succession of cold mornings; they still are producing flowers buried in leaves but the ones that were visible and exposed are gone.

I’m not sure about the butterflies. Monarchs can’t withstand temperatures below freezing and, when it gets cold in México, cluster together on evergreen boughs. I still saw some, but each day’s group may have been a different set.

The hose failures last summer are affecting my plants this year. I have a row of fruiting crab apples and the two that were on a hose that developed a large hole survived the winter, but have no flowers, while the others all are in bloom.

My forsythia leaves started wilting in last summer’s heat. I did what I could to get the shrub more water. It survived the winter, but has not bloomed. Few flowers appeared on some 10' high plants near the river that usually are covered. A few lots down, the forsythia that grows in an irrigation channel was doing fine.

I talked to a woman who was buying a particular type of tomato plant. She’d tried Wall of Water, only it crushed the plant when the wind came up. Like the rest of us, she buys as soon as she sees something and nurses plants until the weather is right because she knows they won’t be available then.

Last useful rain: 4/17. Week’s low: 26 degrees F. Week’s high: 84 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples, flowering crab apples, purple leaf sandcherries, flowering quince, forsythia, tulips, donkey spurge

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, western stickseed, native and common dandelions, cheat grass

One of the difficulties of controlling the spread of dandelions by picking the flowers is they open at different times of the day in my yard, depending of when the sun reaches them.

What’s blooming in my yard: Sour and weeping cherries, sandcherries, fruiting crab apples, grape hyacinths, vinca; pansy that wintered over

Last year was the first time my flowering crab apple produced lots of flowers, and they were killed immediately by the frost. This year they survived, and are fragrant.

What’s reviving/coming up: Raspberries, Russian olives, weigela, sandbar willow, lilies, lilies of the valley, Rumanian sage, Siberian catmint, tumble mustard, David phlox, green-leaf five-eyes, Silver King artemesia, Mönch aster

Tasks: The warm weather has encouraged weeds. People were kicking up dust with weed eaters, and electric and rider mowers.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, quail, first gecko, cabbage and orange butterflies, ladybug on globe willow, small black ants, small bees on Siberian peas, sandcherry and flowering crab apple

From the sounds I hear in my drive, young birds in my neighbor’s metal building must have hatched.

Weekly update: I’m amazed at how little I learned growing up about trees. I suppose the reason is I was older than they, and I left home for college before I turned 18. I wasn’t around to see them reach adulthood.

This winter was the first time I had someone cut limbs off living trees. In most cases it was to removed dead wood, but in others it was to remove branches that were in my way.

They were cut in mid-February, and two months later they are replacing what was removed.

The cottonwood must have suffered more than I thought from last summer’s heat. Despite getting water every week, it dropped leaves on the southeast side early. This year that limb has no leaves, and should have been cut this winter.

It knew it had problems, and produced branch buds in its main trunk last summer. They have been leafing all along the trunk.

The Russian olive had the same problem, and I forgot to have it pruned. Now, I only see new leaves high on the west side. On the east side, leaf buds are opening on the trunk.

I imaging people who lived with trees eons ago observed these patterns in Nature and must have figured out they could stimulate new growth by dismembering. That, after all is the essence of pruning hedges and fruit trees.

I had some branches taken off an apricot that were reaching into the drive. I assumed it would put out new limbs higher up, since trees seem naturally to die up from the ground. But no, the tree wanted a branch at that level and is putting out new leaves around the cut.

Notes on photographs: All taken 21 April 2019.
1. Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia).
2. Cottonwood (Populus deltoides).
3. Apricot (Prunus armeniaca).

Monarch Butterflies

Weather: It’s time to start counting the days since the last rain. The clouds that moved through this week were like the robin, just passing through for some other destiny.

There’s still snow in the Jémez from Tchicoma south.

Last useful rain: 3/21. Week’s low: 21 degrees F. Week’s high: 85 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Cherries, peaches, Bradford pears, purple leaf plums, flowering quince, forsythia, daffodils. Cherries get tall and tend to be planted behind houses.

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Alfilerillo, tansy and purple mustards, western stickseed, native and common dandelions

What’s blooming in my yard: Sandcherries, vinca

What’s reviving/coming up in the area: Weeping willow, heath aster, wild lettuce, pigweed, needle grass

What’s reviving/coming up in my yard: Beauty bush, catmint, Maximilian sunflower

Tasks: Men are still getting their irrigation systems working. One was out with a shovel in his ditch, another was letting yellowish water bubble out onto the ground. One house had standing water in its yard one morning this year. A man was out with a hoe working in another field around noon.

I spent several days testing hoses before I installed them. The first batch, which was made in China, all had connectors that leaked at the fittings. The second batch, which was from the same company but made in this country, had one with a leaking connector and another that only delivered water for half its length. The ones I installed only had functional water holes on one side, so I have to move the hoses from the centers of the watered areas to the edges. I have no idea how they will actually work when it gets warm and there’s less humidity in the air.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, robin, butterflies, small bees, small black ants, first house flies.

I found a hornets’ nest in the dead sweet pea leaves I was removing. I picked it out with the tips of my nippers. A few minutes later there was rustling in the trash bag and I thought I saw wings. I kicked the bag away from me, so the opening was in the other direction. There are limits to my curiosity.

Weekly update: I started seeing small butterflies this week. They usually were flying at a distance and it was impossible to detect their color.

Then, it must have been Friday, I was walking in the drive when a flock rose and flew off in different directions. I wasn’t expecting them, and was so disoriented by their movement I couldn’t focus on a single one to identify it.

Saturday this happened again. This time I had a sense they were gray and orange, and in the area of the sandcherry which had come into bloom on Wednesday. Prunus besseyi is densely covered with small, fragrant, rose-shaped flowers.

Yesterday I moved more cautiously and saw a number on the shrub, sharing the space with small bees and house flies that also started hatching this week.

I don’t think they are monarch butterflies, but I don’t know enough about Lepidoptera to be sure. The only ones I recognize in this area are the white cabbage and yellow lettuce ones. The woman who sternly told me several years ago that the latter were sulphur butterflies, also said the small orange ones I’d seen were monarchs. However, every monarch I saw in Michigan was much larger and had more definite patterns. Wikipedia says their wingspan is 3.5" to 4". [1]

As a child I must have assumed butterflies were like plants. The eggs hatched in spring, the caterpillars were around in early summer, and the butterflies appeared later. That narrative matched my observations and the things I knew about the life cycle of insects.

That image was one reason I had such a problem recognizing the butterflies this week. It simply was too early in the season.

I’d seen headlines about more monarchs wintering over this past year in México, but hadn’t bothered to read them. When I went back to the stories I found Danaus plexippus go through several generations in a year spread over a number of geographic areas. The differences between what I see here and what I remembered from the north fit that biogeographic pattern.

The butterflies fly south in fall to winter in forests a little northwest of Mexico City, where the air is moist and temperatures rarely fall below freezing. [2] For a time, scientists assumed they were in a hibernating state in which they neither ate nor drank. A reserved area has been established in México and observers have found they do go out in the day to seek water. [3]

The ones that migrate begin moving north in late winter, and lay eggs in the south that begin hatching caterpillars in March. They, in turn, become butterflies in April. Adults feed on nectar, and follow their food supply north, so that each of the four generations hatched in a year lives farther north. [4]

I couldn’t discover anything about differences in physical size by region or season. However, research has been done on the coloration. Females are more amber colored, and males are more orange. [5] More important, those raised in warmer environments, like New Mexico, are lighter colored than those raised in the Midwest. [6]

I don’t know if the quality of the milkweed the caterpillars eat or the kinds of nectar eaten by adultsl has any impact on size. The larvae feed on a number of Asclepias species, and their nutritional quality may differ by environment. Moisture, soil, and temperature may all make a difference within a single species. Most of the research is done in the Midwest where the butterflies spend most of their time.

Notes on photographs: All taken 14 April 2019. I lopped off the sandcherry branches that were crossing my paths; its shape is still asymmetrical.

End notes:
1. Wikipedia. "Monarch Butterfly."
2. Wikipedia. "Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve."
3. "No Food for Five Months?" University of Wisconsin Arboretum Journey North website.
4. "Annual Life Cycle." University of Minnesota Monarch Lab website.

5. Andrew K. Davis, Jean Chi, Catherine Bradley, and Sonia Altizer. "The Redder the Better: Wing Color Predicts Flight Performance in Monarch Butterflies." PloS One, 25 July 2012.

6. Andrew K. Davis, Bethany D. Farrey, and Sonia Altizer. "Variation in Thermally Induced Melanism in Monarch Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) from Three North American Populations." Journal of Thermal Biology 30:410–421:2005.