Spring is busting out all over!
This year, February and March were warm and very dry here in the Southern Rockies of northern New Mexico. It was looking like it was shaping up to be a scary fire season. But thank goodness, there was snow in April, and some cold weather. Rough on the apricots, which always bloom first, but otherwise good news. With that moisture, and it getting really warm lately, the whole world has leapt to riotous life. Three weeks ago today, there was a blanket of wet spring snow on the ground:
This week, from a house in the neighborhood:
Most all of our common fruit trees are from the rose family, taxonomically speaking: plums, pears, apricots, peaches, apples, cherries - the whole lot of 'em. Roses are symbols of passion, and I figure that's because they respond to warmth. The sensible plants take a measured approach, and respond to day length. But not roses.
And not fruit trees either. Apricots are always the first to bloom, and as often as not don't produce any fruit, because the blossoms get frozen off. But they do have an extended blossom period, so at least there's that.
It got really cold right after that snowstorm, but since then nights have been in the 40s. Generally, a "set" fruit will survive a little more frost than a blossom. And close inspection found a few apricot fruits swelling at the base of the finished blossoms. So this might turn out to be a pretty good year for fruit. That'll be nice after last year's hard hard frost in early May.
The asparagus has started, so every coupla days for the next few weeks includes a quick run around the yard to clip the latest shoots before they bolt.
It doesn't take long:
Where I live, the dirt under your feet is 7000 feet above sea level. Being at a relatively southern latitude, it makes for a lot of variation in weather from year to year both in terms of precipitation and temperature.
And wind. First year here, I painted a screen door and propped it open to dry. Friggin' wind tore that sucker off the hinges. This may be the solar capitol of the world (just ask former "let's legalize marijuana" Republican Governor Gary Johnson), but it's got good potential for wind turbines, too. And spring is our windy season.
This little valley acts as a funnel for wind, and also catches a goodly share of patchy storms. It's also a tad warmer than nearby villages, meaning it's been a favored location for planting orchards since the first Spanish settlers turned up some 400 years ago.
400 years before that there was a massive, pervasive drought throughout what is now the southwestern US. That's what the people who study tree rings tell us. That was when the Anasazi abandoned their homes (at Mesa Verde, Cañon de Chelly, Chaco Cañon, and so on.) One version of the story is that they moved over to the Rio Grande and became the Pueblo tribes.
Just a few miles up the road is an archaeological site called Pot Creek. It was inhabited for only a few decades. There's oral tradition says the village split up in a dispute over a murder, forming the modern-day Tiwa-speaking villages of Taos and Picuris Pueblos. That was some 800 years ago, so the story could have drifted from the "truth" in the meantime.
From the archaeological record to the present day, there's a lot of subsistence activities in the local economy. My neighbor "Nibs" found the arrowheads on his hat within a quarter mile of where I sit as I write this. Over the years, I've found a few stone tool artifacts, too.
He spent his teen years with his grandmother, a traditional curandera. He knows the local plants - what their properties are, how to grow them, when and where to find them. He's a trapper, too, licensed by the state, to deal with relocating "problem" animals. And he does know these mountains. Perhaps a bit of a throwback to an earlier time, who still does much of his living subsistence. (He helped me plant some trees today, and that pays for his fishing license - probably won't see him again for awhile now.)
The snowmelt's largely done now. There's snow left on the north faces, higher up, but mostly it's already barreling down the mountain streams now. It changed so fast from dry and warm, to wet and cold, and then back to warm with snowmelt. In the blink of an eye! Everything is a riot of life now. And happening so fast! These three pictures are from one plum tree, a Mirabelle plum, all from this week.
Just a coupla days later, the flowers aren't so picture pretty, and there's a hint of swelling that says there's fruit starting to set.
I know there's bees around. I grabbed a doorknob earlier this afternoon and got stung! Still hurting a little to remind me. But so long as you're not allergic, ya kinda gotta take a bee sting as a good sign. Pollinators. This just six days after that first picture. Fruit has set.
Mirabelles are small, yellow things. Incredibly sweet, one of the most intense bursts of flavor I've ever encountered. When you've got tomatoes and peas and Mirabelles around, who needs refined sugar?
Because of my shoulder being out, I needed help irrigating for the first time of the season. Nibs is gonna plant half an acre or so of corn here this year, and so he pitched in to patch the leaks, and clear out the litter. That was two weeks ago. We were pretty much cracking up at all the gophers emerging from their burrows with the first water of the season, after a fairly dry winter.
The truth about spring is that it isn't all flowers and beauty and showoff bird songs and reaffirmation of life. There's damage to be assessed. And the gophers did a lot of damage over the winter. First time since I've been planting trees that they went after the bark - lost a dozen trees, mostly apples.
Nibs, the trapper, knows his teeth marks, and put to rest my initial assessment that it was rabbits. Too bad, because rabbits are a little easier to block out with chicken wire or hardware cloth. Losing a whole cohort of trees sucks. Big time. A significant amount of work and money right down the tubes. Just a bunch of super expensive kindling now. Not good for anything else.
Plus the cows trampled a couple of 'em, too. It's tough fencing a river; there were floods in 2005 that tore out all the streamside fences up and down the valley. This thing has held for a few years, but this winter the cows busted it. They've gone to the mountains, thank goodness, but before summer's over, this will need some repairs:
So, there's fences needing mending and there's dead trees. And other work needing doing, too. And with the water gushing down from the mountains, it's time to soak the roots of everything with life-giving water - even if it is ice cold. At least the air's warm - up near 80 the past few days, which is the main reason it's melting so fast. The irrigation water gets diverted from the river, down the acequia, and this little contraption to direct it is known as a compuerta. This the other day while someone else was irrigating:
This with two boards in the slot which soaks the upper little shade garden, cottonwoods (and the new Douglas Fir that just went in.)
It also sends water through those two pipes under the driveway to the trees and shrubs on the other side. Pull one of the boards out, and it keeps flowing through the pipes, but also flows over the board, down to the trees in the back.
A week ago, there was snow visible on the peaks (some of the highest in the state of NM):
A week later, almost all the snow is gone, and the trees (peach on the right, pear on the left) are already leafing out, the blossoms are fading, and it's that crucial time - not especially photogenic, but full of life - when the fruit sets:
Usually, our end of the acequia (an Arabic word for irrigation ditch the Spanish brought here) gets water Sunday to Tuesday, but there's so much water coming down the Rio Chiquito below our venita's headgate that the majordomo wants us to take off all the water we can above it. All these various gates and you have to direct the right amount of water each way. At the gate from the acequia madre to the venita Two boards today because two fields are getting irrigated off the venita:
Then the water of the venita needs to be divided, too.
And on the way up to adjust the gate, the dog gets distracted by a magpie. They love to goad him into running after them, flying real close, then perching on a fencepost, and laughing. I swear, they're laughing! So I laugh, too.
I thought my computer was rattling something scary the other day. Turns out it was this Hairy Woodpecker looking for a mate by drumming on my satellite dish. Everything's so crazy in the spring, it's a wonder you can pay attention to anything.
There's plenty of beauty around the house and around the village, so a little spring eye candy is in order, while I ice up the shoulder again:
I love this tree. It's an American Elm - not any others nearby so it missed the Dutch Elm disease. It's way too big to hug, or I'd do it. Great tree. (The tulips are growing along the wall showing here.)
This church has been photographed and painted countless times, including by Georgia O'Keefe. Photographed by me, too, the other day. You have to get there pretty early to find the parking lot empty. In a few weeks, the parishioners will all be out to put a fresh coat of mud on the adobe. No stucco on this one.
I've been playing with saturation in Photoshop lately. Liking pushing just before the edge of surrealism. These blossoms are from what might be my favorite peach tree. The tree I planted died, back in 2001, but something sprouted from the root stock. I was too much of a bleeding heart to kill a living tree. So it grew to a purple-leafed thing that has very tasty small white-fleshed fruit with fuzzy purple skin. Not a hint of yellow color anywhere in the tree. I'm glad I let it live.
These are apple blossoms (Winesap):
Right on the other side of the church. There's a lot of storefronts gone empty lately. This one? It's about ready for historic landmark status as-is:
:
And, always, always, always - Agua es Vida. This is the acequia as it runs by the majordomo's place. Acequia's an ancient thing, and the association is legally a unit of government in New Mexico.
I replaced a few of the trees, too, but that's too much for this diary. Perhaps I'll do a followup. In the midst of all the chaos of spring, I'm trying to get 15 minutes of ice on the shoulder every couple of hours. And I have to juggle the various helpers, because there's so much I can't do yet. So if the diary sounds a little choppy and unfocused, that's just because life is wild and fast-paced here in the mountains just now.