Happy Chriskwanzanakkuh

It's nearly midwinter's eve and the holidays are coming fast and hard.  We went to the old San Ysidro Church in Corrales for their version of Las Postadas.  Little Schlepp is decked out in his "Naughty List" sweater.  

The house is more-or-less decorated for the season. 

And the BioPark's River of Lights is a smashing success, especially the north side of the Japanese Garden. 

The Bonsai Club has held its annual pot luck meeting, complete with festively decorated bonsai. 

Tonight's Cold Moon was also the farthest north lunar standstill for the next 19 years.  I will have to be 90 years old to see the next one.

Swale Paintbrush

Swale paintbrush with Centaurium sp.

The latest news in the New Mexico rare plants world is that Castilleja ornata has been listed as an endangered species.  Prior to this week, NM had just 13 federally-listed threatened or endangered plant species.  

The location of the only population in NM is closely guarded, but from photographs on iNaturalist, Flickr, and Instagram, one can get a pretty good idea of the approx. location in the NM boot heel.  Best I can tell, the location is near Whitmire Canyon where County Road C004 meets the Battalion Road.  Of course, that doesn't narrow things down very much.

Habitat with Animas Mtns in the distance

It has been seen in Chihuahua in the Cumbres de Majalca National Park.  Otherwise, we're having to deal with just old herbarium specimens.  Speaking of which, the SEINet portal is down this evening.  I'm getting http 500 errors with my browser. 

I am Thankful

On this post-election Thanksgiving, we can still be thankful for the natural world.  Despite continued environmental degradation, an ongoing sixth mass extinction, and the expectation of further insults from 45/47, we can find places of beauty and wonder.  

I am thankful that whether 1.5°C or 3°C, 280 ppm or 480 ppm CO2, life will find a way, with or without humankind.  

I am thankful that I can volunteer as a docent in my local botanical garden, where I can help visitors understand and appreciate the wonder of our natural world, where I can help them understand the need for saving it.   

Sandhill Cranes

I've heard them in the early morning, where "early" means 10:00.  Wedges of 50-100 fly overhead, circling a few times to get their bearings before winging south again.  They'll be heading for the fields further south:  Valle de Oro, Bernardo or perhaps down to Bosque del Apache.  

I've seen a few on the ground--near Los Poblanos, in an abandoned farm off Montoya, and today finally in our nearby crane-fields north of Veranda.  There the Rio Grande Nature Center manages crops for the benefit of wildlife.  

This year (above) it is decidedly wilder looking than in previous years (below) when we had entire fields of grain planted for them.  The cranes now forage in amongst a variety of dried plants.  At some point, I'll have to get a closer look and ID the mix that they've planted.  

I think the neighborhood around Veranda have stopped feeding them.  Ten years ago, they would be found next to the fence just off the street where people would toss cracked corn or birdseed to attract them.  Now things seem to be aimed at a more natural situation.  

One more detail:  if you look closely at the top photo, you can make out a strip of tilled brown earth in the background.  The folks at the Nature Center are up to something, perhaps a fall planting or just a cleared zone to reveal more seeds on the ground for the cranes.  Again, a walk to the new observation platform off of the Duranes Acequia will give me a close-up view of that part of the field and answer my questions.  

 

Four More Years

Before I get into my main topic, let me digress.  I was inspired by a sentient blob of spinach in a Calvin & Hobbes comic to revisit Hamlet's soliloquy.  

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. 

I guess we'll have to "take arms against a sea of [Trump] and by opposing, end them." 

Further on we have the list of troubles: 

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes

The orange guy scores 5 out of 6, although I should look up "contumely."*  

By way of providing an image for the algorithm, here's this one that summarizes the thoughts of either Yolanda or Bernice King: 

Now back to the topic in the title, I'm trying to get my head around what 4 more years of orange climate denial will due to our planet.  It's expected that 45 will pull us out of the Paris Accords.  That alone will make us irrelevant for any further international climate discussions.  

Then we'll enter a phase of "drill, baby, drill" that will crash the global price of oil-based products.  With cheap gas encouraging people to drive more, we'll also emit more CO2, not to mention methane leaks from oil wells.  

And because "climate change is a hoax," serious research will be under- or unfunded, resulting in a huge gap in the data time-series.  If NOAA is privatized, we can expect some truly horrific outcomes when severe storms impact communities without adequate warning.  

There's an entire side topic on HHS being headed by an anti-vaxxer who promotes things like raw milk and cockamamy cures for Covid.  But that's beside the point that we're going to lose 4 years that could've been used to draw down CO2 emissions and we're forfeiting any leadership role in the process.  Renewable energy research leadership will be ceded to countries like China, France, and Britain.  Electric vehicle manufacturing will whither, possibly even Teslas.  It wouldn't surprise me if 45 sticks Elon in the back and cuts all EV tax credits and withholds federal funding for all new charging stations.  

I'm hoping that Obamacare, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act survive.  They probably will because they are enormously popular, even in Red states. 

For now, I'll keep chugging away at the BioPark, working with IrisBG, labeling plants, collecting Nature's Notebook data, and managing the herbarium. The least I can do is to continue to spread the word about conservation, protecting biodiversity, and how every little action helps.  

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* Insolent or insulting language or treatment

Geo-coordinates

Monday I was in the herbarium working on student sheets that needed to be filed in the cabinets.  There were some beautiful ones.  I was particularly struck by the vibrancy of some colors.  The cacti seemed particularly well preserved, both the yellows of an Opuntia and the reds of an Echinocereus.   

Afterwards on the walk out, I took the time to photograph some of the trees that still had foliage, even after the snowfall 10 days ago.  I targeted the trees in the BioPark's Tree Tour.  

The process is simple enough: 

1. Take a picture of the entire tree from a reasonable distance.
2. Take a closeup of the leaves. 
3. Take a photo of the bark from a foot or two from the trunk. 
4. Download images onto harddrive.
5. Using IrfanView64 freeware, open the image.
6. Click on 'I' to view the metadata. 
7. Click on 'EXIF data*'. 
8. Click on 'View in Google Maps'.
9. Copy GPS coordinates into spreadsheet. 

Trunk of Bald Cypress*

Eventually the information will be entered into the IrisBG accessions database.  From there, we hope to be able to push this out to our visitors using one of the web-based accessory programs.  Being able to view an interactive map of our plants may make labeling superfluous.  

Of course, being able to simply look at a label is quicker and less intrusive than dealing with your phone.  I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to being distracted from the beauty of the garden by my gadget.  

Meanwhile, we're waiting on the City graphics people to provide the final design of the Backyard Wildlife Refuge labels.  These will be labels with QR codes that identify plants that the Valle de Oro has included in their list of wildlife-friendly plants for homeowners.  That list is 200+ species, so there will be quite some work when that batch of labels are finally delivered from Lark Labels.  

Winter Wetness, Herbarium Work, and Petroglyph Memories

The day started off cold but sunny.  By midafternoon now, it's quite cloudy and dark.  The weather radar shows that we're in for a wet evening.  The Nature's Notebook folks (not my rotation tomorrow!) will have a muddy time of it, but at least the rain will have stopped by morning.  

The plan is to meet up with Sheila Conneen to work in the herbarium.  We've got a large backlog of sheets to get into the cabinets in the correct order.  In fact, now that I've sorted the spread sheet, I see that we have 131 to file and only 128 in boxes.  We'll see how much we can get done in the 90 minutes she has.  

Also tomorrow, I need to track down the 21 trees listed on the BioPark's Tree Tour webpage.  Conveniently, there's a sketch map that shows approximate location, so finding the right tree should be easy.  

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As I was looking for photos to illustrate this post, I stumbled across 8-year old images of our expedition to Mesa Prieta, aka Black Mesa, with it's incredible petroglyphs.  Nephew Ty as a friend of the owner had access through the locked gate.  Kent, Ric and I had a grand time and the petroglyphs were some of the most spectacular I've seen anywhere. 

Upside Down Man probably represents someone important who has died, perhaps a shaman.  Easily 8' tall, it is a remarkable piece of stone art. 

There were numerous horned serpents with this one being about 15' long.  The tiny serpent on the right would be noteworthy if it were not overshadowed by the enormous one along the entire panel.