Float

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again. Alexander Pope The weather is being ideal for plant growth, cottonwood dispersal, and toad courtship. Temperatures are good, with some moisture and slight winds. This means the ecosystem is thriving now, with plants growing, attracting insects, which in turn bring birds into the Corrales trees.

This insect is the larval form of Orchestes steppenis. common name Elm Flea Weevil. When elms in the US began to become affected in 2003, the culprit was actually undiscovered in it's native Europe and it took a graduate student's thesis in 2018 from Ohio State to figure this all out.

The weevil larvae starts feeding by a process called "leaf-mining. Where it eats the leaf from the inside, effectively walling itself from the outside world of dehydration and attacking insects such as praying mantids and parasitoid wasps. When it matures in the hot summer is seems to drop to the ground and go into a torpid state until the following spring.

There are many predators of the weevils that keep things in check. Spiders are a common one and not often recognized for their services to gardeners. This spider has two names, depending on the fear it inspires, either the cupboard spider, or a false widow. Both names belong to the genus Steatoda and refer to the same insect

""The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water."   Alexander Pope

irrigation is a very old form of land management and is still used in Corrales. It not only irrigates fields for crops, but can also be used to prevent weeds from forming. The muddy water from the surface water chokes out kochia and other weeds that grow, letting the farmer chose when and how the plants should grow. The depth of water, clarity, composition, and temperature all help decide which seeds grow and which will wilt. Here you can see the short grasses geting flooded while the floating water plants such as Didymosphenia geminata continue to grow in the sunlight.

Other plants grow preferentially in the shallows. The succession of plant growth from pond to meadow are quite well known and often start with tall grasses, such as rushes. As detritus collected between the plant stems the ground rises until it is dry most of the time. Here you can see a surface sheen that looks pearly, this is a mixture of dust and pollen that slowly over time forms a fossil record of the plant activities of past seasons.

Pollen is released by insects but also on the wind. These are the catkins of the coyote willow. They don't look much like typical flowers but are able to send out large clouds of pollen when the time is right.

Ants and wasps are part-time pollinators but come in a dazzling variety of species. This ant is actually a small wasp. There are probably about 40,00 unrecognized wasp species but this one is probably a braconid genus..

Most people fear wasps but often forget the insect eating abilities of those such as this scolid wasp that hunts for underground beetle grubs to use as living larders of the eggs.

"All nature is but art unknown to thee; / All chance, direction, which thou canst not see." Alexander Pope

Woodhouse toads need flooded fields, with semi-permanent water and night time temperatures above 60 degrees. In a few weeks their little progeny should be jumping all over the ditch banks as if by magic.

"Truth needs not flowers of speech." Alexander Pope

The range of plants is quite staggering. Its not surprising really as they have been evolving for about 140 million years. This flower is called a paintbrush and produces heavy amounts of nectar to attract hummingbirds. They are a hardy plant used often in xeric landscapes, however they are hemi-parasitic, dependent on host plants and react poorly to transplanting. Oddly, it is used to produce a black dye for deerskins

This delicate flower is called an evening primrose, but it is not related to those species. They are drought hardy and have many medicinal uses ascribed to them. It only has four, heart shaped petals which are semi-transparent.

The salsify flower is a rugged species of aster, much like a dandelion but much larger. Its full name is Tragopogon dubis and is another introduced European plant. Apparently the cooked roots taste like oysters. There is a paradox in that we have an almost infinite variety of choices of what we eat and consume but the easiest, is the one that takes the least thought and effort, always the choice that others are selling to us.

Many people are fascinated by birds. They seem to express something that human seek within themselves. They are exquisitely adapted and also endlessly adaptable. Often they seem so smart in how they look for food, how they migrate and how they present themselves to the world. This wren shows the classic thin beak of a insect catching species.

After the rains many birds examine the lay of the land. This finch has a large beak well designed for many feeding tasks. The brief monsoons have unleashed a large number inf insects that birds spend most of the day looking for and catching. Later in the year this same bird will switch to a diet of fruits and seeds as it can find them.

The red wing blackbird relies on water and swollen acequias to provide nest cover for the female. The male uses a loud voice and a pair of flashy epaulettes to draw attention away from her and towards himself.

    For a land dominated by dry grassland, fresh rainfall moisture can certainly change how the bosque operates. The plants insects and animals all go into a sort of overdrive as the hot dry road of time continues. Often I wonder why humans don't appreciate the stability of the world around us. We focus on the negatives in our own lives but the vast majority of the world seems to amazingly be able to spin around without any kind of intervention on our behalf at all.