May 24

May 1 The other night at the Texas Master Naturalist April meeting, the speaker was Bary Nusz and his topic was slot canyons. Seems the Panhandle has quite a few of them, particularly in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Learn more and view his pictures at barynuszart.com.

May 12 Our weather so far this month has been pleasant, unlike the same time last year when there were unusually warm days. We have even had a little rain, close to half an inch from two separate weather events. That isn’t enough to keep the grass green, though. Abigail has the place mowed up nicely. Between cool mornings and her getting started early, she has managed to work around Big John’s idiosyncrasies.

It seems like to me that the area flora is more lush than last year. In addition to the warmer temperatures this time last year, there had been less moisture through the winter and early spring than this year, certainly nothing like the two inches of rain in April this year. The wildflowers on the Bluff are really showing out, as are the flowers, foreign and domestic, here on good ol’ SA (see pictures above). I do not anticipate nor would I welcome the nine inches of rain that fell on the place last year late May through early June. We do need more than has fallen so far, though.

The comics in my paper this morning were funny,. Not always the case. I even tried to read Tank McNamara but only succeeded in confirming it, along with Mutt & Jeff, isn’t funny enough to wade through the too plentiful verbiage and small type.

Just hours after writing the above, the clouds turned loose a torrent of rain and hail. There are drifts pea-sized hail and the ground looks like there was a dusting of snow. The vincas I put out on the patio earlier to harden off certainly got it good and hard. Fortunately, there wasn’t much damage, maybe a little to Kari’s garden, but the nearly an inch of moisture was welcome.

May 19 This past Friday Kari joined me on my quarterly inspection of Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument. It was a cool sunny morning with calm air. That area was the epicenter, close to it anyway, of one of the biggest wildfires of February. I’m happy to report the area has recovered wonderfully. But for the charred remains of mesquite and yucca, it would be hard to tell there ever was a fire.

I learned something about prairie wildfires I didn’t know. They seem to behave like tornadoes in that their destruction can be hit or miss. Take the area of the Alibates QNM for example. It lies in the Canadian River valley. To the north towards the river is a large open area bordered by upland, sort of a natural funnel aimed right at the visitor center. The large end of the funnel towards the river was burned clean of grass and weeds. Like so many other similar areas, it looked like a golf course. There is an area in front of the visitor center where they have a xeriscape garden. Along the east side of this area is a raised garden area. That area was burned to a crisp as was the area on the west side of the visitor center while the visitor center and the garden to the east were spared.

Overall, I have never seen that area greener. The February fires cleared out the old brush and the rain in April produced a bumper crop of wild flowers.

We also visited McBride Canyon and I’m happy to report there wasn’t much evidence of fire. There were a couple of fellows working on the rock house and we stopped to inquire. One of them told us he, Garret, and his associate Mike were with the National Park Service Historical Restoration group. Garret is from Tucson and Mike is from Albuquerque. The get assigned to projects all over the country and were making repairs to the rock house that would eventually make it possible for tours to be offered to the public.

The repairs they were making were extensive and I’m glad they were being done. Kari had never seen the inside of the house but now she has. I look forward to seeing it once it is fully restored.

May 21 Today was the first sighting of Mississippi kites this spring. I wonder if they will nest on SA like they did last year. I’ve read they will sometimes reuse a nest.

May 28 It was a beautiful, cool morning yesterday when Kari, Abigail, Rebecca and I visited the cemeteries. This time last year it had been very dry most of the winter and, though it had started raining, the plants hadn’t had time to respond. Consequently, there were few flowers to make bouquets to lay upon the graves. This year has been the opposite. The rain we got in April plus lesser rains throughout the winter months kicked things off in timely fashion and I had no problem arranging bouquets to go in the fruit jars. Funny how that works. Many of the flowers were from those last year that survived the winter or reseeded themselves. Saturday, I planted the asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed/flower) I got at the Canyon’s Edge nursery. I’ve planted around half a dozen of those over the years and only one survived. It is a pretty nice plant, lots of nice orange blossoms, dies back to the ground but comes back in spring. It is next to the lily pool and has motivated me to buy a couple more and plant them in one of the front beds at the house. I also got a lantana I couldn’t resist. I think that’s it for me as far as planting goes this year. We are dry as a bone so keeping things watered is the challenge now. There are chances of rain in the forecast the next few days, but of the severe weather variety, which makes for mixed emotions, you know, like when your fifteen-year-old daughter comes home at 3 a.m. with a Gideon bible under her arm.

May 31 Abigail and I wrapped up the month at WCB this morning. We’ve gotten about .34 inches of rain over the last few days and, so far, no destructive weather events. As usual we pulled weeds in the garden first thing and determined there was moisture in the ground, so we didn’t do any watering. We finished the sock weed project in Kari’s garden mid-week and are satisfied with ourselves for making the garden a little more pleasant for Kari to work in. She likes to go barefoot, and the sock weeds made that impossible. They are bad enough when you have shoes on.