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.  

Woden's Day

Autocratic Legalism by Kim Lane Scheppele is a 2018 essay in the University of Chicago Law Review.  In it the author presciently describes what Trump and his cronies are doing to our democratic and constitutional system.  Basically, they are overthrowing the government, not with an army of soldiers or revolutionaries, but with an army of lawyers.  

So for now, I minimize the news I'm watching and concentrate on more pleasant things like repairing the damage from last week's heavy snow storm.  Baldo and I under Caro's expert supervision cut out the broken and split branches in the desert willow and the sand cherries.  Then we shaped them as best we could to regain some semblance of their shape.  Finally, we topped the elms growing in the no-man's land between the Candelaria Village wall and the Matthew Meadow wall.  In the end, Baldo's truck was overflowing with cut branches and the trash barrel was completely full.  

In the end, the result was pretty good, considering how much damage there was.  

Then while Caro was off to the St. James Tearoom, I cooked up a batch of Spam Mutsubi.  Looking forward to that for dinner.  

It's amazing what you can do with an old Spam can.  I'll have to post the detailed process in a follow-up item.  

The Election

Tuesday's election is just a horrible memory.  Today I'm vacillating between Kübler-Ross stages Anger and Acceptance.  No denial, no bargaining, no depression.  While Trump rolled up very nearly the same number of votes as he did in 2020 (81M), Harris underperformed on Biden's 87M with a measly 72M.  Where did those 15M voters go if the polls were showing things as tied or certainly within the margin of error?  

In AZ, Trump won and so did Democratic Senate candidate Rubin Gallego.  Is it just that the Trump brand doesn't transfer to low quality down-ballot candidates?  Senate losses in MI, WI, and probably NV (but not PA) seem to indicate so.  

 Over in the Senate, it looks like 52-48.  There goes the Supreme Court.  In the House, final numbers are still not out, but the GOP is inching closer to control.  If they gain a trifecta, things will go very bad, probably very quickly.  Having an unfettered criminal grifter in the White House means that he'll have free access to new methods of self-aggrandizement and almost complete lack of judicial accountability.  

Trump will once again pull the plug on the Paris Accords.  His oil & gas-friendly policies will result in substantial damage to pristine areas as drilling resumes and atmospheric CO₂ will increase its climb.  Global warming is having significant effects on climate change.  Expect more hurricanes, tornados, coastal flooding, and intense rain, flash flooding, along with raising sea levels, higher summer temperatures and warmer winters for most areas.  Then there's the flipside:  drought, extreme temperature swings, wildfire, and other frequent severe weather events.  

We've just had an all-together unsatisfactory biodiversity COP.  Now COP29 for climate change is looking to follow suit.  The CEO of the event in Azerbaijan was filmed making side agreements with petrochemical executives.  Has the oil & gas lobby already won the next round?  

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In my biological reading this week, I came across a year-old article about the loss of pinon trees and the collapse of pinon jay populations.  I'll be curious if we see a flock of them in the neighbor's large pine tree this fall as they migrate across the valley to the lower elevation P-J areas on the West Mesa.  

We're still seeing plenty of finches and lesser gold finches at the feeders.  Spotted Towees and doves feast on the seeds that are dropped to the ground by the messy eaters on the feeders.  Fluffy Cat doesn't seem to bother them or else they are simply too wary to be caught.  

Speaking of Fluffy, she spent the snow storm in her heated space under the table.  The snow made her quite skittish, but now (Saturday) she's back to her normal behaviors.  We were expecting colder temperatures tonight but it's barely below freezing.  Amazingly, some flowers in the garden are still blooming or at least not frozen off.  Salvias under the tree, Gaura next to the house, and Verbena near the heated fountain seem to be doing best.  The two Ginkgos under the Chinese pistache have finally turned yellow, but not fully.  It may be several days before leaf drop.  

Snow

It rained most of Wednesday afternoon.  Just hours before, Baldo had helped us with the last of the autumn gardening chores:  moving bonsai into shelter, packing away the umbrellas, covering furniture, cleaning up leaves.  A few had started to fall.  Yes, we know about "leave the leaves," but the sand cherry leaves carry black spot spores from this summer's infestation.  To control the fungus, the leaves have to go.  

Still, the garden looked surprisingly un-Novemberish.  Only the week before it had been 84°.  The Salvia were blooming prolifically, bees were flitting around, an occasional butterfly would work the guara.  There was even a single blossom on the desert willow in front.  The Chinese pistache was loaded with fruit and pretty much had 90% of its canopy.  Some red was beginning to show in its upper leaves.  The Wisteria was only beginning to turn.  The bonsai Gingkos under the tree were just barely changing to their  seasonal lemony yellow.  

We adjusted Fluffy's bedding under the table and battened down the tarp that protected it.  Last week's rain had dampened everything.  Now it was much more water resistant.  She, of course, was nowhere to be seen while we worked on her "nest" and Baldo used the yard vacc.  

It rained into the evening.  We went to bed listening to the sound on the roof of much needed rainfall.  

About 3:00 I awoke, as I am prone to do.  I checked on the backyard through the sunroom windows and was astonished to find 3" of heavy snow weighing down the bamboo and sand cherries.  The two-story house behind us--normally well screened by foliage--was clearly revealed.  

A quick look out the side window revealed more bamboo bent under the white stuff.  But the scene out the front was most surprising.  

The desert willow was crippled under the weight, bent to half it's height.  Surely there would be broken branches galore.  The snow was continuing to fall heavily and a check of the Weather Underground website showed us to be in the middle of a large area of winter weather.  Looking at the NM DOT road map showed closed roads in all directions except south.  Traffic cams showed snow-packed highways empty of vehicles.  

At least we were warm and dry.  Fluffy would be hunkered down safely in her warm bed under the table.  The trees would have to wait until morning.  

And in the morning there was snow shoveling to be done straight away.  If it wasn't removed, a single footprint or tire track would turn to ice and remain for days in the permanent shade on the northside of the house.  

Caro used a broom to knock the snow off the desert willow.  Some branches eased up as the weigh came off, but others were found to be broken.  Most of the problems were high in the canopy where two top branches will have to have the damage pruned away.  

Caro continued the wet work of knocking the snow off the bamboo and sand cherries.  Only a couple minor breaks were found.  Remarkably, the Chinese pistache escaped without problem.  

I cleared the snow out of some areas so Fluffy wouldn't have to walk through snow to get around the yard.  She was skittish and was obviously put off by the sudden snowfall.  

As the day progressed, we learned that thousands of people, including many of our friends, were without power.  Downed tree branches took down powerlines throughout the city.  After PT I stopped by Debbie's house... she had been without power since midnight.  I dropped off a "brick" for charging her phone and Kindle.  In her backyard, a huge ash tree had split and one half fell into her swimming pool.  The tree can't be saved and will have to removed.  

As I drove home down Rio Grande Blvd., the scale of the damage was manifest.  Crews were clearing downed branches everywhere along the road.  At the Flying Star, a drift of golden leaves on the shoulder was the result of many branches breaking under the heavy first snowfall.

With a little sunshine and slightly above freezing temperatures, the snow disappeared.  But the damage was done.  Debbie's power came on briefly, only to go out when the neighborhood transformer exploded under the surge.  She's been in the dark for over 24 hours as I type this.  PNM's website says she'll get power by 7:00 a.m.  

It's still cloudy and so not expected to go much below freezing tonight.  As the storm clears away tomorrow, we'll see the nighttime temperatures crash.  Trees that hadn't lost their leaves will probably have them freeze in place, a brown reminder that fall was too late in leaving and winter came too quickly.  Abscission layers hadn't fully formed and the work of scavenging nutrition before leaf drop hadn't been completed.  The cold season may be ugly.  

I worry about the Botanic Garden.  It had been glorious only a two days before.  The usual suspects had been in the Cottonwood Gallery taking Nature's Notebook observations in Monday's cold rain.  Afterwards we walked through the Japanese Garden where the plants were showing their best autumn colors.  

How many branches have broken there last night?  The ash trees along the main path may have suffered the same fate as Debbie's tree.  Their canopies were just as full.  The cleanup will be massive.  The damage to River of Light displays may be considerable.  

I may still be disheartened by Tuesday's election results, but I'm reminded that Nature always prevails.  The GOP with their denial of climate change, their refusal to make evidence-based decisions, and their policy of replacing experts with loyalists will reap a harsh reward.  Sadly, it is their own voters in vulnerable Red states would will take the brunt of flash floods, hurricanes, tornados, rising sea levels, and severe weather.  

Diminished and Disheartened

America, what have you done?  Millions of my fellow citizens have given power back to convicted felon, a rapist, a grifter, a con man, a fascist authoritarian who will do everything in his power to destroy democracy.  His Project 2025 is a blueprint to our undoing.  

I weep for America.  I weep for my grandniece, who will grow up with few freedoms and greatly diminished health care.  I weep for my nephews, who will suffer the insults of this president and his sycophants. 

I weep for immigrants and asylees who will be denied a safe haven.  I weep for climate refugees with nowhere to flee the coming disasters.  I weep for Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Gaza, places where despots will now run unchecked.  

I weep for a climate that will not survive four years of his denial.  I weep for a natural world that will be lost.  

Dark days are before us.  The rule of law is untethered with a Supreme Court already beholden to the felon.  Our flourishing economy will be sold to billionaires.  The poor will be driven further down.  Our health system will be undermined.  Our public lands will be despoiled.  

Sad times are upon us.  Selfishly, I am saddened for an old age that will no longer be easy.  We may die of a disease easily prevented by a vaccine that now never comes.  Friends and family less well off than I will suffer terribly when health and social safety nets are removed, destroyed, or sold to profiteers.  

I do not recognize the mindset of my fellow Americans.  Are we living in Germany 1933?  How long before war envelopes the world?  When the deportations begin will I be able to speak up?  A friend with overseas family connections is talking about getting dual citizenship.  Should we leave while we still can?  Where would we go and who would take us?  

At least, for the moment, I live in a blue city in a blue state.  But how long can New Mexico resist?