Birthday Month Continues

I had thought all the birthday celebrations were over.  After all, surgery on the 22nd kinda put the kibosh on anything more on the 26th than eating Debbie's cake and opening gifts from her and Caro.  I have even cashed in my free birthday chocolate éclair at Flying Star.  But this morning Baldo delivered a package from Jane, bless her heart. 

Inside the bag were 3 boxes, small, medium, and larger.  First, I discovered a small bottle of green ink.  That's a hint that there might be a pen or brush involved.  Sure enough, the larger "box" was a beautiful leather-bound journal.  And of course, the middle-sized box contain a wonderful fountain pen. 

I shall be making good use of these... as soon as I remember how to fill a fountain pen with ink.  

Now on closer inspection, I find that it takes both ink cartridges and has a piston converter for bottled fountain pen ink.  Easy peasy, I pop in a black cartridge and I'm set to go!  

Acequia Guide #1 -- Griegos Acequia

The Griegos Acequia is my nearest ditch and the one I ride up most often, especially when I just need a 30 minute cardio workout and don't want to load the bike onto the Prius.  It flows north to south, like most do and technically ends just west of Valle Lane and my neighborhood of Candelaria Village.  What's left continues into Matthew Meadow as the Menaul Lateral.  

The northern beginnings of the Griegos Acequia is vague on the MRGCD maps.  Map 31 shows the Griegos Lateral coming down from the north behind Los Poblanos, going under Montano Road via an enormous siphon, and arriving at the edge of Dietz Farm.  The Griegos Wasteway splits off here and strikes to the west to empty into the Atrisco Feeder.  

What water doesn't head down the wasteway flows southeast along an unlabeled section of channel crossing Rio Grande Blvd, going over the Griegos Interior Drain, and eventually being identified as the Griegos Acequia near Guadalupe Trail and Griegos Road.  From that point it runs south until it goes under Candelaria Road just east of Valley High School and surfaces in the short section west of Valle Lane.  

The Griegos is not only a great local cardio workout, but the gateway acequia to many of my North Valley favorites.  Let's peddle north and see how it goes.

I have to bike a 100 yards or so up the sidewalk of Candelaria to reach the ditch by the high school where I cross at the light.  The bit to the south deadends at a wall at the edge of Matthew Meadow, so I ignore that, but it's an obvious hangout for students who keep cutting the lock on the ditch gate. 

On the north side of Candelaria, the west bank runs behind the auto mechanics shop of the high school into the Broadview Addition, a very normal North Valley neighborhood.  The path drops down to cross Cherokee Road.  You can take that west to a pedestrian walkway the gets you on Valley Pool Road and points west.  

North of Cherokee staying on the west bank one crosses Van Cleave Road and shortly after come to San Lorenzo Avenue.  At this point it's easiest on a bike to pop a few yards east to San Clemente and bike a hundred yards until there's easy access to the east bank of the acequia via someone's driveway where the street turns hard right.  This avoids hopping a curb and struggling with a rough, narrow patch.  

The east ditch bank trail continues behind residential properties (with a side branch going west to Avenida Cristo Rey) until it comes out on Griegos Road at Guadelupe Trail.  The traffic volume means extra caution needs be taken when crossing--there is no light.  

Most often I ride up Guadelupe Trail to Colombus Park and then return for a 3 mile trip.  One can also head further north from the park, cross Montano, and make your way into the Los Poblanos Open Space... but that is another trip.  

If one stays on the east bank past Griegos, the acequia runs by larger homes and fields.  At one field there are two awkward styles that requires some careful maneuvering to squeeze your bike through the fence.  Beyond that, it's an easy peddle curving to the northwest until one reaches the Griegos Interior Drain and its very wide access road.  

From here one can go south a bit along the drain to Dietz Place and thence to the Flying Star and other shops at the Dietz Farm Plaza.  Continuing mostly west on our acequia, one quickly comes to Rio Grande Blvd.  On the west side of the street, the acequia's source is found where the Griegos Lateral bubbles up after passing under Montano and the wasteway tumbles off towards the river.  

Total distance from Candelaria Rd to Montano, 1.67 mi (2.69 km).  

Back in the Garden

After about 2 weeks now, I've finally gotten back into my regularly scheduled Nature's Notebook work.  Today, on the way out to the Cottonwood Gallery, the arborists were busy working on the velvet ash (Fraxinus velutina) that lines the main pathway beside the Festival Green.  

It looks like they're doing thinning and removing troublesome branches, whether diseased, crossed, or otherwise weakened.  It's quite a production.  Possibly inspired by the fact that the NM Urban Trees Conference will be held in the next 2 weeks.  Of course, with the overhead hazard, we had to detour through the Spanish-Moorish Garden, the Jardin Redondo, and the Ceremonial Garden.  

Once out in the CWG, we had the usual debates.  Excitedly, flower buds are swelling on the Siberian elms even though we're still counting last season's fruits on the Forestiera.  There's even signs of sap rising on the Penstemon and Ribes.  Spring is around the corner.

There was a Nature's Notebook murmuration (their monthly Zoom chat) this afternoon.  I asked about our sad Forestiera fruits.  Erin says we should keep counting them.  

Now it's time I stop typing and get back to this afternoon's Focaccia baking.  

Curiosity Cabinets

I had a splendid time this morning listening to a Linnean Society webinar entitled "Rearranging the Universe | The Enduring Spell of Curiosity Cabinets" by Geovanni Aloi.  It was an evening  lecture in London, which meant it was an 11:30 event here in ABQ.  That suited me perfectly as I am not terribly active as I recover from surgery.  

The discussion was quite wide-ranging and touched on several points that are relevant to not only my own office (a sort of curiosity cabinet itself) but to botanical gardens in general and herbaria in particular.  It's timely in that I just got word that the BioPark Society has setup one of it's donated herbarium cabinets in there offices down on 10th St.  

Thank you, Rotary Club

Herbaria began to take their modern form 4 centuries ago.  By the 1700's we had fairly standard methods as collections began to take on the role of name bearers.  The concept of the type specimen became central to botanical nomenclature.  We continue to have a myopic focus on named species.  The NM Rare Plants Technical Council focuses most of its energy on listed species and only secondarily on endangered habitats.  Our phenological observations are predicated on data from specific individual plants that we revisit every week.  (In February there is a confluence of these things as the Rare Plants TC meeting and a Nature's Notebook presentation and tour occur on the same day.)

Collections of natural objects have long been a human preoccupation.  Our very survival from deepest times probably owes a great part to our ability to notice our environment and pass on our observations to subsequent generations.  

Our own consciousness at root focuses on patterns:  similarities and differences that have meaning.  Our perception is constrained by our senses, which scan the environment like a searchlight in the dark, sweeping a narrow beam of attention.  Alan Watts, in his work “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are,” Chapter Two: “The Game of Black-and-White” put it eloquently:  

“Attention is therefore something like a scanning mechanism in radar or television [...] But a scanning process that observes the world bit by bit soon persuades its user that the world is a great collection of bits, and these he calls separate things or events. [...] The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it consists of separate things [...] We do not see that the world is all of a piece like the head-tailed cat.”  

I consider myself both a plant taxonomist and an ecologist.  At that intersection is a world where at first individual species are all important and then, with a twist of the mind, not important at all.  The important thing then becomes the system with all its glorious chaos and moving parts.  As it turns out, both view points are valid and important.  

Returning to the subject of curiosities, whether a garden, a room, a shelf, or a herbarium, we find that they all reflect a great deal about the culture of the times and its values as well as the personality of the collector.  

My office collections feature books, family memorabilia, crafts (mostly gifts from others), photographs, and small figurines that have personal meaning to me.  Grandfather's Mauser, a WW1 war prize, hangs on the wall.  It hasn't been fired in over 100 years and is a testimony to the family's survival through two great wars and all the little ones since.  No Horak has been in the military since Henry was drafted in WW2.  Of course, there's also the teddy bear collection, which has now expanded to a large stuffed critter collection.  Each is named.  Each has a story.

But I digress. 

Turning to more public collections, the botanical garden itself is a horticultural showcase that demonstrates that Albuquerque is a place of cultured appreciation.  Having a noteworthy garden is a point of civic pride and its collections focus on New Mexico habitats, local conservation efforts, and comparisons with similar habitats worldwide.  

The herbarium at the Botanic Garden continues to flourish, albeit slowly.  Cabinets have been obtained.  The collection grows as Sheila and I harvest and press materials.  Summer students help with the mounting.  We have a meeting in two weeks to plot next steps.  At last the herbarium is moving beyond a curiosity, becoming both a notable educational tool and an important part of their IUCN work.  

More to come when I dig deep into the BioPark's conservation efforts like their seed bank and ex sito collections.  

Ecological Security

The Guardian today tells the tale of a UK national security report that was buried by their government because of inconvenient truths.  The long and the short of it is that the report highlights how climate change caused by fossil fuel emissions is not only an environmental threat but a national security threat as well.  

UK food security is at risk as drought, flooding, extreme temperatures, and population growth create stress with a very real possibility of ecosystem collapse.  By that the report's authors mean that basic ecosystem services like clean water, clean air, and food will be severely diminished.  One analysis concluded that the UK will no longer be able to support its livestock industry under future conditions.  A major shift in dietary patterns would be required.  

Elsewhere in the world, the catastrophic melting of Himalayan glaciers could result in mass migrations in south Asia and increased border conflict.  Water scarcity in south, east and central Asia will be a major disruptor.  The possibility of a nuclear exchange in the region becomes more likely under the expected climate change.  

One can only imagine that similar thoughts are running through those parts of the US government who haven't drunk MAGA's climate Kool-Aid.  Of course, there will be no report produced as the USG rapidly dismantles its climate monitoring and response infrastructure.  I'll try to track down the graphic I saw yesterday showing how the EPA and related agencies took huge hits in their personnel levels.  Only the Dept. of Health showed worse declines.  

Just to have a photo for the thumbnail of this post:  

Cylindropuntia viridiflora ripe fruit in winter

Another Trip Around the Sun

The birthday boy survived another solar orbit, thanks in no small part to Caro's tender ministrations.  Debbie dropped in for a while this afternoon and brought a delicious cake.  We toasted with Martinelli sparkling cider.  (The Acetaminophen has really put the brakes on drinking wine.)  Got a bunch of lovely gifts:  a couple books, a French rolling pin, a Norfolk Island pine planted as a kokedama, a set of hand-cut travel combs, a pair of spherical "ice cube" molds.  Cards and good Facebook wishes have poured in.  

Kokedama

All in all, a great day except that I'm recovering from Thursday's surgery.  Caro has been spoiling me since I'm limited in what I can lift.  So far there's been very little discomfort, so I've stopped the Tylenol today, but I'm keeping up with the Ibuprofen and other Rx's.  Last night I slept particularly well, so that's a move in the right direction.  

I learned this afternoon that Theresa Crimmins, Director of the USA-NPN, will be speaking at the Botanic Garden on the morning of the 12th.  Judith Phillips has made arrangements for us to give her a tour of the Cottonwood Gallery afterwards.  Looking forward to hearing her talk and then engaging with her out at our observation sites.  

Snow

Finally, a wee bit of the white stuff, just in time for Burn's Night.

The backyard with its bistro lights in the sand cherries illuminating the bodhisattva fountain is dusted in perhaps a ¼" of snow.  Radar shows another hour or so of possible snowfall.  Early morning might be magical... bitter cold, but magical.  

Perhaps Ric will get down to the Japanese Garden for photos in the snow?