August 19, 2008

I thought they had the flu of 1918 figured out and that they had decided it was bird flu. Apparently not.

Spent much of the day reading Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, recommended by weblog reader Ron. Leopold lived in Wisconsin, on a swamp, and was a naturalist. He died in a prairie fire in 1948.

Leopold talks about the natural history of the northern woods and plains. Although we view the eating of bark on young trees by rodents and rabbits as a nuisance, Leopold viewed it as a ten year cycle. Only once every ten years were oak seedlings allowed by the deer, rabbits and mice to mature enough to develop the corky bark which could fend off deer, mice and rabbits--as well as prairie fires.

Only burr oak survived the prairie fires. Thus, when the settlers arrived, there were islands of oak in the middle of the prairie. All of the other possible underbrush was burnt in the prairie fires.

Annual prairie fires kept the prairie as a prairie. When farming arrive and the prairie fires were stopped by the crops, woods grew up where no woods had been before.

That might explain why in all pictures I have seen of our nursery from about 100 years ago, the trees are quite small.

Leopold observed the same phenomenon in Wisconsin in 1945 that I have in Minnesota in the past years: Very few oak are ever over 130 years old. They arrived that long ago. Leopold has his theory about what happened. His theory includes the population cycles of the mice, rabbits and deer.

Those theories are just a small part of this elegant little book.

August 18, 2008

You can find a lot of great food in Santa Fe, even on the street. Here is a fajita stand on the square.

New Mexican cuisine has its own twists on traditional Mexican fare. The most obvious are the sopapilla, deep-fried chunks of bread which come with the meal. You dip them in heavy, dark honey. They are not a substitute for dessert.

Santa Fe is a mix of natives, who are split between Native Americans and Hispanics, and wealthy newcomers who have sort of driven the natives out of the historic areas of the city by raising property values to astronomical heights.

Last night, we were entertained by the best sushi chef I have seen yet. We put in a little order. Then he kept bringing us new dishes until we put up the white flag. The chef's English was somewhat stilted, so it was funny to hear him come back to see how we liked his latest concoction? "Is it spectacular?" he said, fully expecting that we'd say yes. And we did–because it was.

My favorite part of any sushi meal is the fish eggs. Once you get a taste for them, you won't forget them.

August 17, 2008

Some aspen bark rots off, above, while carvers get to others, below.

The aspen grow thick as hair on a dog above Santa Fe.

Today, it was cloudy and rainy in Santa Fe. Storms come up quick here. We drove to Aspen Vista, at 10,000 feet elevation and sat in the car for about half-an-hour before heading out on the trail. There were many flowers in bloom.



The raindrops still clung to the aspen leaves.



There were many of this trumpet-type flower along the trail.



This hardy geranium, not related the the geraniums people use in pots, was familiar.

August 16, 2008

Unseasonably cool here in Santa Fe. And cloudy. But the cloud formations are spectacular at these high elevations.



After 10 years of drought, this year's monsoon season in Santa Fe has brought some good rains. Here is a typical Santa Fe suburban neighborhood during a rain yesterday afternoon.

August 15, 2008

Joe, left, leads a tour of the gardens last Saturday.

August 14, 2008

For the past two days, I performed for the Retired Senior Volunteers Program banquets in Crookston. They split up the group so there were 160 some the first day and over 230 the second day. I think I knew most of the people. They probably had all heard me before, but they were in a good mood and things went well.

Yesterday, I was on a bit of a high after performing. While driving home from Crookston, a word came to me: hubris. Don't think things are always going to go so well. In fact, I was already waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When I got home, there was a nasty email from a customer who had been fishing through this weblog and found that I attended the Obama/Clinton speeches in Grand Forks. Well, he said, he could no longer in good conscience purchase from our nursery, even though he liked our plants, because he didn't want any of his money going to "support the establishment of socialism in our country." On and on he went, telling how he has 9 siblings and 100 cousins and he's going to recommend to all of them that they not go to our nursery, and so on.

I wrote back in the heat of the moment but, wisely for once, didn't press "send" until I had purged the email of most of the nastiness that I wanted to include.

I was going to reprint his email here, it was so entertaining, but last night of all things all of the emails I have gotten since June, 26th of this year disappeared! No trace. Nothing in the trash. Nothing in the deleted items. Nothing. Sobering.

So, I guess that's what I get for feeling good about how things went in Crookston.

Tonight, I am in a hotel in Fargo, and a seedy one at that, ready to take a flight to Albuquerque tomorrow morning. I have never seen the Southwest in the summer. We're going to stay in the higher elevations, so it shouldn't be too bad.

August 13, 2008

While at the Fertile Hilton today, I saw a group of neighbors. Vern, left, lives at the intersection of our road and Highway 32. He turns 90 next month. He was visiting the home today. He looks hale and hearty. He just sold his cattle last year.

Rudolf, in the back, is one of the Johnson boys. They are legends in this area for their prowess at building their own farm machinery. If they had bothered to patent their inventions, they would be still collecting royalties, as some of their innovations are still in use today.

Palma, in the front, suffers from Alzheimer's. She has a sweet disposition, and when I showed up in a tie one day, she put on a big smile and said, "Nice! Nice! Nice!"

Vern was happy to see Palma as they were old neighbors. But what caused me to run and get my camera was Vern's memory that he and Rudolph had shivereed Palma when she got married. Apparently, there was a stick of dynamite involved. Rudolph smiled when Vern brought that up.