Colors of Spring: Return to Winter

Snow! Glorious wet snow! Well, you'd be excited about snow, too, if you lived somewhere in the grip of a deep drought. My brain is delighted, for in March the snow won't stay long, and instead of subliming as it can in January or even in February, it will actually melt and soak in. This really isn't much, but it's four to five inches of moisture-laden snow, already melting as the temps climb up to 40 degrees or so. It will be muddy later, of course.

My heart is conflicted, though. Snow and cold in late March can do really awful things to plants just coming out of dormancy, and in other places than out here in the middle of nowhere some of the trees have begun blooming--the apricots in particular. Here nothing has been blooming yet other than the crocuses, though my lilacs and golden currants have started leafing out. But this kind of thing can damage the fruit crop in the northern part of the state along the river valleys (last year most of the apple farmers were completely wiped out). We'll have to wait and see if it warms up quickly and then doesn't freeze solid again.

Two days ago I had to go into Albuquerque for an Herb Growers Association meeting and was struck by how much more color there was there already than here. It's a short distance by Interstate over the mountain pass, but it may as well be a different world. Trees were blooming all over the place--the pale pink of apricots and the purple plums, and along the Interstate where they've been landscaping lately, there are what I think are crab apples in profusion. They are a particularly bothersome shade of deep mauve pink, guaranteed to clash with the orange barrels. One would think highway landscapers would understand about the persistance of orange barrels, but maybe they're not from around here....

Some of the larger trees are leafing out, too, notably the cottonwoods and Siberian elms. The elms are covered in chartreuse green blobs, rather as if a child stuck handfuls of green on with glue, but it's a cheat--these aren't leaves out, but the billions of developing seeds soon to be released on an unsuspecting world. In a couple of weeks these trees will appear to have succumbed to this March blizzard, but it's just that the mature seeds with their wings will have turned tan, the better to blend in with garden dirt, where they will sprout. After that the leaves will show up and turn the trees deep elm green. And gardeners all over Santa Fe and Albuquerque will begin cursing the elm sprouts.