The skies over San Miguel this time of the year are frequently cloudy, but that's only a tease. They promise rain but deliver only a couple of timorous sprinkles of little benefit to the plants and trees, except to rinse the dust off the foliage. Last night we had one of those teasers: It came …
Stew checked our rooftop weather station a couple of days ago and found that, so far this year, we've had 0.07 inches of rain. That's damn close to zero. He also found that relative humidity during the past week has been in the low double digits, sometimes dipping down into the single digits, particularly inside our …
Continue reading Mother Nature cuts through the gloom of current events
San Miguel newbies are shocked to discover that we do have a winter season here after all, with some overnight freezes, sere vegetation and spells of gloominess that might seem interminable next to the eternal sunshine they expected. Our winters are not nearly as bleak, mind you, as the one Gustav Holst depicted in his hypnotic …
During the past three weeks vegetation around the ranch has gone through a startling yin-yang cycle, swinging from somber brown to a myriad shades of emerald. Trees and bushes have leafed out, and hundreds of wildflowers appeared everywhere, each a unique celebration of the near-constant rain we've had. In years before I have tried to triage the …
Continue reading Mao says "Let a thousand (wild) flowers bloom!"
Don't you love the peace and quiet nowadays when you wake up in the morning? Ever since the Former Occupant's departure from the White House on January 20, we can safely open our IPad or Kindle tablets and read the news without fear of getting knocked over by reports of demented overnight tweetstorms from the White …
Yesterday morning Punxutawney Phil, the weather-prognosticating groundhog wizard, came out from wherever he hides in Pennsylvania, looked around, and saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. That's bad news for the people in in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., already buried under several inches of snow. At our ranch, we've received mixed signals …
Last week, before we left for the beach, I asked Félix to turn over the soil in the two raised beds, as a prelude to our yearly fantasy of an orderly cornucopia of vegetables—a few types of lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, chard, beets and what-have-you—that by midsummer, inevitably turns into an riot of vegetables on …
Initially my interest in succulents and cacti (the latter a subset the succulent family) was mostly practical. The soil around here is very poor and rain comes only during a narrow, three- or four-month window; the rest of the year the landscape is bone-dry. Succulents seemed custom made for such harsh conditions, though I quickly …
The spring solstice won't arrive until Tuesday at 10:15 a.m. but at the ranch we've been enjoying a spring greening since late February, thanks to the succulents, cacti and other xeric plants already blooming even though not a drop of rain is expected for several months.Longer days and warmer temperatures spur this spring hubbub. Shallow-rooted …
Continue reading Spring arrives early at the ranch and succulents and cacti lead the festivities
It's time to plant now that the rains have finally arrived As Saturday Night Live's premier journalist Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, "It just goes to show you, if it's not one thing it's another." A month ago the ranch was tumbleweed-dry, the levels of the rainwater in the cisterns had dropped down to eighteen inches and brush …
El Rancho Santa Clara 