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.

4 July 1826

I just finished David McCullough's biography of John Adams.  I'd like to recommend it, but at 650 pages it is too long for anyone with a social life.  John and Abigail Adams were patriots and public servants the likes of which have not been seen in America before or since.  I'll just leave it at that.  But, the thing that really caught my attention was that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Maybe everybody else knows this and I just missed it in history class, but it is a very interesting fact (at least, it is if you have no social life).

On the first of July 1826 there were three living signers (out of 56) of the Declaration of Independence:  Adams, Jefferson, and Charles Carroll (about whom I truly know nothing).  Jefferson was the author of the Declaration and Adams was its most powerful proponent in the Continental Congress of 1776.  On the fourth of July 1826, at 1pm, Thomas Jefferson died at Monticello.  On the fourth of July 1826, at 6:20 pm, John Adams died at Quincy, Massachusetts.  That strikes me as a remarkable coincidence.  John Quincy Adams, John Adams son, who was President at the time, did not think it a coincidence, but called it a manifestation of divine favor.  And perhaps it was.