spring wind

The winds came again in the night, a thief with impunity to steal and thus coming not in silence but with a malevolent roaring that seems almost a mockery of my impotence in protecting my charges. The train-wreck sound wakes me in the night, and as it continues, I lie awake in the dark, hearing the damage that it is wrecking on my garden. Morning shows the destruction. The lily stems have snapped.

Leaves are torn off the trees.

The steel chimney cap is hurtled yards down and fortunately narrowly misses the ‘Evelyn’ roses that have already suffered crushing damage in their lives. It also misses the lavender that survived last years rot-fest. Somehow the eight screws that hold it in place have been worked free by the relentless wind.

 

When I step out to take photos, I am pelted by chunks of ice, blown on winds the weather report tells me are gusting at 65 mph. The wires in the street lights usually tap the poles with a ding---ding---ding, now ring rapid fire staccato dada-ding-da-ding-dada-dada-ding-da, ceaselessly. The violence of it as the gusts slam into me take my breath away. I find it nearly impossible to capture the intensity in a photograph.I dash inside as it starts snowing, the wind blowing the stinging snow first this way, then that way, the unpredictability of the wind making walking an unsteady thing. This is spring in Albuquerque, perhaps a degree or two more severe than usual.

If you look closely, you can see the snow coming down.

Yesterday, I made a trek to Agua Fria Nursery in Santa Fe, purchasing more of my favorite blue/purple Penstemon linarioides for my gravel walk, whose gravel I finished sifting last week.

Just starting to bloom in my garden.

After this trip, another Penstemon caespitosus will keep my solitary plant company.

existing plant, just starting to bloom

new friend

 I also bought Campanula sarmatica which I had in my old garden and was sad when a very wet monsoon season caused them to rot. Now I’ll have the dusty blue bells in my garden, and the almost too-vigorous self seeding. I have also been missing the  Echinocereus reichenbachii var. albispinus I had in my old garden, and now I have a replacement, as well as a cultivar called ‘Kimble’ which seems to have spines almost like Echinocereus rigidissimus, tiny regular octopi of spines in rows, but of pure white. I don’t think I’ll be planting my new purchases today. Maybe it’s time to give up on plants such as lilies.