Month: February 2013

There is a road that goes through a Douglas Fir grove on its way from the pond down toward the creek. So I have begun calling it the Forest Road. It is actually a nice road and not as steep, or nearly as long, as the road to the creek camp by Mermaid Rock. The problem is that the road stop about 50 yards above the creek. It is too steep to walk straight down to the creek from the end of the road so we are building a walking trail with a switch back. This last Sunday Alina, Arturo and I scouted out the best course for the trail, and got to work. Its going to be a nice trail and not too hard to build.

So there is now a new bat box in the old Cottonwood Tree next to Ann & Bobs pond. ( see prevous post )

The first bloom of bulbs this spring!  They are on the side hill of the back patio.  Over the next several weeks they should start coming up all over the place. Come see!!!

Some how some agave plants made it to the canyon.  They certainly had some help from two legged animals and I don’t mean birds!  Agave is native to the southwest and Mexico. It is also often called the century plant, because it take a long time ( ” a hundred years” ) to  flower.  After flowering, which is amazingly dramatic, the plant dies.  So yesterday as I was climbing down from above the cliff where I am working on the fire safe zone around the homestead, I noticed that the group of Agave plants had spit out a little Agave plant.  Taking that as a sign that we are supposed to grow a bunch more Agave and start our own tequila production I thought I would plant the little buddy near Ann & Bobs pond. It can’t be any tougher to make a life there than on the side of the cliff above the house.

Some years ago Ann & Bob started a pond.  They damned up a natural wet spot at the base of the cliff behind the shop, next to a solitary old cottonwood tree.  Some how that cottonwood tree got there.  Not sure how. Cottonwood trees are not canyon dwellers.  Its the only one for miles and miles around. There are plenty of their kind down in the great valley below and along the streams in meadows in the mountain above.  But some how this cottonwood found her way here, to the Canyon. She found about the closest thing the Canyon has to offer like a meadow and planted herself.

Now Ann & Bob weren’t thinking so much about the Cottonwood when they started the pond as much as they were thinking about the frogs. That wet spot in the spring was wet enough to somehow be home to some frogs that would serenade the live long night and day if they felt like it, and that sounded pretty nice.  But Ann & Bob wondered how the heck those frogs were going to survive when they knew that the wet spot come about August would be dry as a bone.  So they gathered stones and dirt and built a lip along the down hill side of that wet spot and sure enough a little pond of water about 8 inches deep stayed around until about July and then it became dry as a bone.  Funny thing though, next spring there were frogs again and they were signing just as loud. This year the pond has had a good charge of rain water and I am waiting for spring time warmth to get those frogs singing again.

Now the bat box is a whole other idea that is now connected to the pond.  First of all we all know that bats are good for eating mosquitoes and other pesky insects. So since we need the pond for the frogs, and the pond will also grow some mosquitoes it would make sense to have some bats to eat the mosquitoes.  Besides bats need places to get a drink of water which they like to do on the fly so a little pond is perfect. But bats live year round and can’t disappear into the earth to wait for rain like the frogs so we will help the pond out this year by diverting a bit of the creek water into the pond year round. We’ll see how much water it takes to keep the pond with some level of water for the wildlife year round. Certainly the old Cottonwood tree, she will like it.