This Day...

... will be an historic one:  former President Trump spent it attending his trial in New York.  We shall know in a few weeks what the outcome will be. 

Meanwhile, on a more pedestrian and botanical note, the Nature's Notebook gang was out in the Cottonwood Gallery today.  Besides tracking the usual suspects, we saw Abronia in bloom and a probably Townsendia incana right in the middle of the path.  There was also a Fendler's dandelion, Taraxacum fendleri and a small hedgehog cactus with a mighty flower. 

Abronia fragrans

Townsendia incana

Taraxacum fendleri

Echinocereus rigidissimus

Kodama

A quote from the Arnold Arboretum e-newsletter this morning:  

In Japanese folklore, kodama is the name of the spirit that dwells within old trees. I found it fascinating that Japanese culture has developed a vocabulary to describe that energy. In Western culture, such notions are often associated with spirituality or mysticism. Most everyone I know, spiritual or not, has had some experience when they were awed by the natural world. To stand with this katsura, connecting with an organism that has been present on Earth for generations, it felt possible to sense its kodama, or at least my interpretation of it. How fortunate we were to have such an experience, and to know such elder organisms are found and protected in our natural world.

This past Wednesday I worked on my 36-year old Ginkgo, getting it ready for the Bonsai Club's Mothers Day Show.  I removed all the wire (just in the nick of time) and trimmed some leggy bits.  I've put a few of the resulting cuttings in water, but I'll have to move them to a rooting medium if they are to have any chance at all.  

Before

After

I'll wait until the leaves have reached full size before I consider another light trim to get this year's growth into shape.  Going for the classic candle-flame profile.  

Lilacs

This week the French lilac on the east side of the house finally opened its blooms.  The fragrance is intoxicating.  The buds have been swelling for the past two weeks and looked like they would be open any second.  

The Great Eclipse of 2024

 Schlepp and friends were at it again, viewing an eclipse.  Last year it was an annular one, right over ABQ.  Back in 2012 it was also an annular eclipse.  This one was partial, the centerline going south and east of NM.  We got to see 77% through high, thin clouds.  

Hanami Continues

Caro & I had a multi-faceted Friday:  browsing at Duran Central's gift shop, Covid booster at their pharmacy, lunch at the restaurant, then over to the Botanic Garden for a stroll.  The weeping cherries were largely beat up by last Tuesday's storm, but in the back of the Sasebo Japanese Garden along the wide ADA path there were some fresh explosions of cherry blossoms.  Even though the Magnolia by the stream was spent, smaller Magnolia × soulangeana were full of magenta color.  

The Acequia Ride

After a busy day in the yard, moving bonsai out from winter quarters, putting away the cold frame/green house, sealing the bamboo fencing, etc., etc., it was warm enough to tempt me to take a bike ride.  It's still a little chilly (long pants, t-shirt) but the sun was pleasant and there was no breeze to speak of.  

I went up the Griegos Lateral to the north behind the high school. Along the way there was Rumex, Arundo, and Sisymbrium leafing out.  The latter was already in bloom with tiny yellow blossoms everywhere.  The ditch was running happily since they started putting water in it about a week ago.   

I took advantage of the water in the acequia to take the new CrowdWater app for a test.  I was surprised how much detail they take in.  One point of ambiguity:  is an acequia a temporary or permanent water feature.  I chose permanent because it runs uninterrupted all through the growing season.  I may go back and change that because it is a seasonal flow, dry in winter.  

Goodbye, Standard Time

Daylight Saving Time has begun tonight.  My body says it's 3:00 a.m., but the clock on the computer screen shows 4:00.  Later today I'll get out the step ladder and change all the clocks around the house.  Have to remember how to do that for the cars, too.  I think Caro's Cube didn't get changed, so it won't need any tweaking.  

Lucky for me, I don't have a Nature's Notebook rotation at the Botanic Garden this Monday.  I've got two weeks to adjust.  I'm definitely not a morning person, least of all this time of year.  

In the backyard, the birds will come to the feeders as is their want, irrespective of human time.  I just need to remember to refill them today.  Fluffy will still be at the back door, waiting for dinner at 5:00 MST, which today will be 6:00.  But breakfast will be late for her.  

I had just gotten used to the lengthening days in the late afternoon.  Now the evenings will be preternaturally longer.  The Hibiscus will continue to bloom in its natural rhythm.  They usually open in the early morning and fade by day's end.  The last couple of cloudy, cool days have prompted them to remain open well into the evening, sometimes until the next morning.

No matter--its a relaxing Sunday.  I'll water the bonsai juniper, fill the bird feeders, feed Fluffy (perhaps Stella, too), and bake zucchini bread.  

Leap Post

It's leap year... again.  Seems like only yesterday that our national nightmare with Trump was "finally" over.  Biden was in; life was going to get normal again.  While history may not repeat itself, it certainly is rhyming this year.  

Today SCOTUS decided to do what it declined to do months ago, take up Trump's presidential immunity case.  By slow-walking the case, they have pushed the trial until late in summer.  If it gets delayed until after the election, the U.S. will be voting blind, without having seen the evidence of Trump's malfeasance.  

Stepping back from what could be a blistering post on SCOTUS political shenanigans, I'll instead try to stay on target about what this means for biodiversity, the environment, and climate.  

Today VOX rolled out an article about how freakishly warm the North Atlantic is right now.  2023 was a record breaker and 2024 looks to go beyond that.  With an expected La Niña this summer, we're in for a hot summer, a significant hurricane season, and more extreme weather.

Here in NM we've had a winter without winter.  Yes, we had a couple snowfalls, but nothing stayed long.   Surprisingly, the mountain snowpacks are close to or even somewhat above normal for the date.  Temperatures dipped below 20° a couple of times.  Nature's Notebook observations rarely required long underware for the occasional cold morning.  The pollen season has begun and counts are hitting incredible highs.  Just ask my itching eyes.  A look at Siberian elms reveals that they have shed most of their pollen already.  

And with spring temperatures comes the wind.  We had two days of strong gusty wind this week.  That's fueling wildfires in Texas as I type.  Between the lingering effects of last week's cold virus and the wind, my bicycling on the acequias has been cut short.  The MRGCD will be opening the ditches tomorrow, so soon irrigated fields will be turning green.  

Things are popping in the backyard, too.  Crocus are blooming, the hardy bonsai are back outside.  Soon the spring cleanup and planting will begin.  

Out in the bosque, in the canyons, and on the mesas this last bit of snow may help the spring annuals get a headstart.  With a hot summer ahead and who knows what for a monsoon, let's hope for a good seed set of the early plant species.  Time to unlimber the plant press and get ready for the field season.  

Nature had an article in their Conversation section about the dearth of taxonomists and what it means for conservation of biodiversity.  More field workers are needed to accurately assess what is out there, what might be lost if things go too far.  While the IUCN works on identifying individual species at risk, entire ecosystems are falling apart.  Citizen science is carrying us part of the way.  iNaturalist has some amazing datasets, but most of their observations are taken within a mile of a road.  Huge swaths of territory remain under-explored.  

Looping back to politics, a Republican administration and Senate would seriously undercut Biden's efforts to reign things back.  Haaland in the Interior Dept. continues to do good things, but with SCOTUS undermining federal agencies' ability to regulate using best available science and information, we may be seriously handicapped just when we need the agility to adapt.

I'll just close with this link from today's NY Times... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/project-2025-trump-administration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE0.YzGH.FPmO8A8ygZqV&smid=url-share 

Bread Week

Winter into spring seems to be a good time to spend in the kitchen.  Between chilly, cold, snow, windy weather and the ever-increasing pollen count, time spent with my glutinous friends is particularly well rewarded.  

When my tea loaf pan arrived from King Arthur, I put it immediately to work with a classic lemon tea cake. 

Even while I was under the weather, so to speak, I managed to pull together a London Fog Tea Loaf for a social event.  I masked and gloved to prevent transmission and, alas, had to forego the party.  Caro took the cake and I even got to see a couple slices returned for my enjoyment.  

 

Then yesterday I wisely put to use two over-ripe bananas.  Rather than turn them into compost, I turned them into banana bread.  

Today I'm trying my hand at pan cubano, the soft Cuban bread for their classic sandwich.  It's in the oven now as I type this.  

We should know in about 8 minutes how things worked out.  Meanwhile, the pork and ham are thawing.  The ham is honey baked and already thin sliced.  The pork is in the form of thick loin chops, which I'll marinate overnight.  They'll be cooked in the immersion cooker for about 2 hours at a 140° temperature.  

For the moment, the bread seems pretty OK for a first whack.  

Infection du Jour

About 10 days ago, I had a little tickle in my throat.  Since then, it's developed into a full-fledged snot-filled sinus crud.  That's keeping me close to the house and taking long naps (not a bad thing).  Sniffling and coughing during the night has not been pleasant, but I hope I'll turn the corner soon.

Meanwhile, to top off my sinus woes, the warm (>50°) weather has the trees popping off.  Juniper (my nemesis), elm, ash, and oak pollen are out there at moderate levels.  If my itchy eyes are any indication, juniper pollen will hit high levels next week.  

Despite the warm weather, there's still a patch of unmelted snow in the front from last week's storm.  

Cottonwood Gallery Species List

It occurs to me that I should combine the Nature's Notebook phenology observations with general botanical observations this year.  I've pulled down the NM Native Plant Society's bosque botanical checklist and will start cross-referencing it against my findings plus iNaturalist. 

Starting off, here's the list of plants we're observing for Nature's Notebook:

• Populus deltoides sub. wizlizenii
• Ulmus pumila
• Forestiera neomexicana
• Prosopis pubescens
• Atriplex canescens
• Cylindropuntia imbricata
• Asclepias subverticulata
• Asclepias speciosa
• Ericameria nauseosa
• Ribes aurantum

Other species that I've seen:  

• Elaeagnus angustifolia
• Tamarix chinensis 
• Solanum elaeagnifolium
• Datura wrightii
• Dalea scariosa 
• Senecio flaccidus
• Kochia scoparia
• Salsola tragus
• Machaeranthera parviflora
• Ephedra viridis
• Mentzelia multiflora
• Parthenocissus vitacea
• Verbascum thapsus
• Zinnia grandiflora
• Cymopterus constancei
• Juniperus monosperma
• Anemopsis californica

 That's all I got for now.  Watch this space.  

Pollution and Pollinators Don't Mix

What a surprise, pollution degrades the attractiveness of flowers.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/science/pollution-flowers-pollination.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UE0.cCfJ.ZboCGTTixE-I&smid=url-share 

Another Day, Another Loaf

 Took the new tea loaf pan out for a test drive.  Baked my classic standard:  lemon tea loaf.  With a tablespoon of lemon zest in the batter, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in the icing, and another tablespoon of zest massaged into granulated sugar for the topping, how could it not be delicious.  

No scurvy on board this ship!

The Other Side of 71

It's now the 28th and I'm two days into my 71st year.  My mathematically-inclined nephew Peter assures me that 71 is a "prime" age.  

I've had a gentle landing with nothing special planned for the entire weekend.  Yesterday I started out with coffee and a King Arthur Flour recipe for sandwich bread baked in my new Pullman loaf pan.  

The bread turned out excellent.  

Then to take things up another notch, we made panini on my new panini iron.   

Not a bad way to start off 71.  Today the plan is to take advantage of the warm weather and go for a walk along some acequia here in the North Valley.  Although it's still cold at night, the days have been pleasant.  Inside the cold frame, a Delphinium is about to bloom. 

At the Botanic Garden last week, there were snowdrops pushing up and blooming.  Winter jasmine is breaking bud.  Lenten rose is happily going about its business.  I suspect I'll see the first sprouts of Sisymbrium tomorrow in some sunny microclimate.  Somewhere upwind, juniper is shedding pollen, much to the dismay of my allergies.  

Monday starts with Nature's Notebook.  Tuesday will have us at the ABQ Art Museum for their new exhibit of Canadian indigenous art.  Wednesday will have us at St. James Tea Room.  Probably on Thursday, a bike ride is in order.  Then there's rain and wind forecast for Friday.  With luck, things will be pleasant for the Bonsai Club meeting on Saturday.  Sometime this week I'll need to move some of the hardier bonsai trees out of the garage and back onto their display benches.  

And there we have it--in my mind, already a week into 71.  

Countdown to 71

 

Seems appropriate to write about soil (aka dirt) today.  Such a complex yet under-appreciated world beneath our feet.  

One of my favorite stories is of Rapamiacin.  A team looking for antibiotics in soil samples found a novel one when then tested material from Easter Island, aka Rapa Nui.  Hence the name Rapamiacin.  It was found to successfully treat some common fungal infections in AIDS patients in the 1980s.  Later, it was discovered that mice treated with Rapamiacin lived longer.  Diving into that detail turned up a protein called mTOR, mechanistic Target of  Rapamiacin.  mTOR is the mysterious factor that controls some large part of aging in mammals.  Yes, a bit of dirt from a remote Pacific island may hold the secret to longer human life.  

This story speaks to me about conserving biodiversity.  Living systems are complex chemical factories and you never know what value will turn up in the most trivial organism.  You don't have to be an aspect-dominant tree or a keystone animal species to have value.  But you'll have no value if you're extinct.  

So this year I'll focus on telling the best stories I can to BioPark visitors, trying to keep Democratic political enthusiasm up, and making a spiritual pilgrimage to England.  Kew Gardens is high on my list.  Maybe I'll get to see their herbarium and some of Linnaeus' sheets?  

Global Risks

The World Economic Forum released its 2024 Global Risks Report with this warning about biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse:

"GRPS respondents disagree about the urgency of environmental risks, in particular Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse and Critical change to Earth systems. Younger respondents tend to rank these risks far more highly over the two-year period compared to older age groups, with both risks featuring in their top 10 rankings in the short term. The private sector highlights these risks as top concerns over the longer term, in contrast to respondents from civil society or government who prioritize these risks over shorter time frames. This dissonance in perceptions of urgency among key decision-makers implies sub-optimal alignment and decision-making, heightening the risk of missing key moments of intervention, which would result in long-term changes to planetary systems."

https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2024/

 

A Quiet Saturday

Having an unspecified day after a busy week (for a retired guy).  Been reading a variety of interesting papers and I'll list them here so I can find them again.  (Funny thing how bookmarks don't help me that much, now that I have so many of them.)  Been trading these with McGoey and that's always good for reciprocal infobricks.  

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biad108/7486329?login=false

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad059e

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00368504231201372 

The weather in ABQ is chilly but gradually warming over the next week.  If it stays sunny with no wind, I might manage a winter bike ride in the bosque.  Otherwise, it's walks in the Botanic Garden, at the Nature Center, or on the treadmill.  

Which brings up the rationale for exercising:  England.  Plans are rapidly forming for a multi-week trip to the U.K. this fall.  Probably close to 3 weeks long in September.  Initial thoughts are to follow the pattern we used successfully in Scotland--fly in to London, stay a few days to get past jet lag, take a train out into the country, move on to a second rural destination, take the train back to London to finish up whatever we missed earlier.  Here's the link to the UK rail map, since that's a key ingredient.  https://assets.nationalrail.co.uk/e8xgegruud3g/1eaveB2ciZEVT5uBiavJBC/a589d57c574579b0ac430a3111be8c58/Blue_route_AS_Metro_map_v26.pdf

As for a photo for the blog label, here's yesterday's attempt to get in the British culinary spirit with a London Fog Tea Loaf.  I managed to get it mixed, baked, cooled, and frosted yesterday before meeting up with Janine at Town & Ranch for an early happy hour. 

 

Go Dark Brandon!

With the new year, it's refreshing to see President Biden give an impassioned speech from Valley Forge.  It certainly resonates with me.  A friend sent me a link -- https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/27/2214142/-Unequal-Presidential-Expectations -- to an article in The Daily Kos.  Spot on.  

Without going into U.S. and global politics, let's just review what a return to The Former Guy's environmental policies would mean.  

• Pulling out of the Paris Accords
• Reversing the gains of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
• Gutting the EPA, OSHA, the Interior Department, and others
• Killing any chance of climate change reparations (nationally or internationally)
• Resumption of fossil fuel exploration and drilling 

Need I go on?  Vote Blue no matter who.  

Meanwhile, in NM environmental stalwarts are once again pushing for a green constitutional amendment.  That would bypass the governor's desk and provide protections like the ones in Pennsylvania and Wyoming.  

I'm not optimistic considering that it's a short session.  It's crazy to thing a 21st century state can be run on 30+60 days of legislative activity every year along with a volunteer legislature.  

Nuff said. 

Happy New Year!

With 2023 in the books, it's time to reflect on 2024.  Foremost in my mind at a macro scale is the U.S. presidential election.  At the micro scale, I'm thinking about a trip to England in September.  In between, there is the BioPark.  

Were Trump to become the GOP nominee and then win the general election, we'd be cast back into the dark days of 2016, except with better planning and experience on their part.  Retribution in the form of a politicized DOJ and reinstituting Schedule F for federal employees would be a horrible start.  Pulling out of NATO and cozying up to Putin would doom Ukraine and destroy American foreign influence.  Isolationist immigration policies would starve us of much needed labor for agriculture, construction, and others. 

But rolling back environmental progress would doom us all to unsustainable climate change.  Extinctions would soar, agriculture would suffer dramatically, and climate refugees would surge.  The crisis over western water would be exacerbated.  Oil and gas would continue to be pumped, EV's production would be reduced, and solar/wind projects would languish.  U.S. participation in international climate affairs would all but stop.  American influence would be destroyed on this front, too.  

Bottom line:  Vote Blue no matter who.  We desperately need to hold the White House, keep the Senate, and regain the House.  Not to mention state and local government offices.  

On a lighter note, I continue to consult a small amount at Sandia, provide docent services at the Botanic Garden, and still manage to put some time in for plant labels.  Very enjoyable and therapeutic.  It's been 9 good years.  

Tomorrow (a Tuesday) is the first observation session for Nature's Notebook.  Should be cold, but the forecast for next Monday (our usual day) shows an inch or two of snow.  If it really happens, the Japanese Garden will be stunning.  

Snow lantern, 27 Feb. 2015

As for the trip to England, there's guaranteed to be a visit to Kew, possibly a canal boat ride, a pilgrimage somewhere, a grand hotel in London, and a quaint seaside cottage somewhere else.  Stay tuned.