Opposite Ends of the Earth

Well.  Despite yesterday's post about 100 degree temperatures on The Homestead, Rural Ways actually spent the week experiencing another climate entirely.  A family reunion in Lake George, New York took us to the other end of the country.  It might just as well have been the moon.  Instead of 50 days of drought, the Adirondacks were in the middle of 50 days of rain.  The deluge was so heavy that nobody laughed when one guy started loading his boat with two each of every kind of animal.  Ha.  The thing is, in that climate, it doesn't even need to rain:  You can be wet just sitting in the house.  The other thing that stood out to the dry land farmers from Utah was the obvious floral aggression.  If you don't cut it, mulch it, mow it, spray it, or dig it up, it will take over your property.  Every living plant grows with such vigor that your main problem is keeping it from tearing down your house.  Quite a change from The Homestead and The Farm where nothing will grow if you miss even one turn on the irrigation spigot.

In any case, the point of the trip was to enjoy the classic Adirondack camp experience while celebrating the 50th anniversary of the patriarch/matriarch.  And, enjoy it we did.  There was basketball, tennis, canoeing, archery, sailing, swimming, hiking, craft-making every hour of the day—interrupted only by the time necessary to heap our plates at the dining hall.  We sat on the porch, walked in the woods, and, of course, enjoyed the white pines . . . between massive down-pours.  It has been nice to return to southern Utah for a bit of drying out, but here we could actually benefit from even a small portion of the daily rain falling on Lake George right now.

New Heat Record

There were no triple digit days at The Homestead during the summer of 2012.  There was at least one triple digit day at The Homestead during the summer of 2011.  For 2013, we have a new record:  The thermometer on the shed topped out at 101F at around 3p this afternoon.  It is bad out there.  We're coming up on 50 days without rain.  And, just like that long dry spell we had last year, this one is going to coincide with the 4th of July.  Put away those fireworks my friends.

Survey

When we purchased Parcel Four a couple of months ago, we became the owners of three different tax ID numbers.  That is, The Homestead, The Farm, and Parcel Four were all being taxed as individual properties despite being contiguous and under unified ownership.  The property taxes in Parowan are ridiculous (unless you're comparing them with those from the east coast) and we knew that we could save money if we had one parcel instead of three.

So, I talked with Cleve at the city office, and he told me that I'd need to have the property surveyed so that the new legal description could be recorded with the county.  He also advised me not to combine all three parcels.  The Farm is a legal, buildable parcel in Parowan with a pressurized irrigation connection.  Cleve told me that each parcel is allowed only one irrigation connection.  Since we also have one on The Homestead, combining The Farm and The Homestead would mean we'd have to give up an irrigation connection.  He said that there are currently no new irrigation connections available . . . and never will be.  He said that the connection is very valuable, and that we would be throwing that value away.  Besides, Cleve said, it would be really difficult to ever sub-divide again.  Well.  We aren't property developers and don't care about subdivisions, but, in southern Utah water is worth more than gold, and we don't really want to give it away.

Still, we don't need (or want) three parcels, so we called Steve Woolsey, a licensed surveyor, to help us.  His recommendation, which we accepted, was to combine Parcel Four with The Farm.  We will now have two pieces instead of three, but probably won't get a very big tax break because most of the land will be part of The Farm . . . where we don't actually live, so the rate is higher.  In any case, Steve came over this week to do the survey.  The Farm will now be about 1/2 acre, flat, fenced, and connected to the city irrigation system.  If we ever decide to sell it, we should be able to move to Monte Carlo on the proceeds.  Or, well, if not Monte Carlo, at least Milford.

First Peas; First Nineties

Last year, we were eating from the garden—just a little bit—in the last ten days of May.  This year, our first bite came on 7 June when VSO found a handful of peas.  Garden production in 2013 is probably about two weeks behind what it was in 2012.  Of course, 2012 featured an exceptionally warm spring, with temperatures nearing 90F in May.  That obviously had a lot to do with the early garden production.  Well, for 2013, the hot weather has now arrived.  Along with the peas, we've got nineties.  I'm happy to see the former, but not the latter.

Demise of the Bristlecone?

Western five-needle pines, especially those that typically grow at high elevations, are currently facing the triple whammy of a warming climate (approximately .5 to 1 C), a major insect epidemic (mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae), and an exotic fungus (white pine blister rust, Cronartium ribicola).  In fact, the combination of pine beetle and blister rust has killed so many whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) trees in the past ten years that the species has become a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act.  Mercifully, however, our own Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) has thus far been spared, though it seems only a matter of time.  (White pine blister rust has been found on a bristlecone in Colorado.)

All of this brings me to the question that has been bothering me all week:  If we don't have beetles or blister rust in our southern Utah bristlecone, what is killing them?  EDO and I were out walking in a locally famous bristlecone stand called the "Twisted Forest" earlier in the week (see top picture).  I'll grant that this is not a nice site, but these trees have been here for a thousand years.  And, when I was walking here a year or two ago, they all looked normal.  Now they don't.  They are dying at an unsustainable rate.  Look at the foliage on the specimens to the left of EDO's head:  going, going, gone.  Inside of two years, these trees have died from the tips of the branches in.  The pattern seems to be discoloration and dropping of needles from the ends of the branches.  Slowly the whole branch dies.  Eventually the entire tree is defoliated . . . and dead.

I thought about this for a couple of days, and then I ran out to my local (lower elevation) bristlecone pine, the one nearest to The Homestead.  It looks a little better, but is losing leaves just the same.  The big surprise, though, is that the die-back is happening in the local pinyon (Pinus edulis) forest (lower picture).  I really did not expect that.  The bristlecone and the pinyon are not generally susceptible to the same pathogens, so what is going on?  The only thing I can think of is a climatic effect:  drought?  winter desiccation?  frost?  But, if my reader knows the answer, I'm all ears.

Honestly, I don't really care about the pinyon pines.  They are prolific seeders, and can be found from sea to shining sea.  But, the bristlecone is fairly rare, and regenerates slowly, if at all.  On my walk through the Twisted Forest, I looked for cones and seedlings.  I found two cones, and about the same number of seedlings, but the seedlings were affected, too.  I hate to say it, but that particular stand is dying quickly and does not have the ability to replace itself.  The Twisted Forest is so named because of the gnarled, krumholtz forms of the older trees.  Those stems will not be going anywhere for a long time (dead or alive), so I suppose that the name of the area doesn't have to change.  But, this will soon be a skeleton forest.  If you want to see it while there are live trees, don't wait until next year.