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| A 5' tumbleweed |
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| a second view |
A view from the Painted Pony Resort outside of Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town.
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Saturday
Tumbleweeds
This year has seen a bumper crop of tumbleweed on the landscape. Since the guests at Christmas I have been hauling dead tumbleweed from around the Painted Pony Resort. The quarter mile of fence at the north end of the estate has been cleaned 4 times to keep the driveway open. The west fence line has also been cleaned and worked has centered around the houses, filling the tractor bucket and placing the dead tumbleweeds over the fence so they can continue their free range existence on the surrounding state land. A problem arises with old fence lines where the buildup of tumbleweed can take down a fence so I'm always adding new t-posts to old fence lines to insure they stay in place, keeping cattle out and protecting existing landscape restoration efforts. While cleaning yesterday I found this monster 5' tumbleweed by the front garden. Coming from somewhere south of the estate it was completely dried and spreading seed as it rolled north crossing fence lines on the landscape. Fortunately, herbicide keeps all graveled areas free of major tumbleweed problems but garden areas always have a crop of free range tumbleweed which I pull before they get big. The only way I know to get rid of tumbleweed on the landscape is to out compete them with native grasses which means landscape restoration, encouraging both topsoil deposition and new grasses on the estate, but there is nothing I can accomplish with the surrounding state and federal lands except encourage and promote wise land management practices.
Labels:
desert landscape,
estate management,
New Mexico,
tumbleweed
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That's the biggest one I've seen! Wow!
ReplyDeleteI had to stop and clear our road between two fences.[near Rte 80] Seems the tumbleweed must have come over BOTH fences from BOTH directions as they weren't there the day before I could not drive down that section without first clearing it. Tumbleweed are 5 wide from each fence making the road a single lane in that area.
Hubbie thinks we should make trees out of them for tourists. Ha ha
Most of the winds come from the south and mornings are generally characterized by a katabatic flow (downhill), but afternoons generally have an anabatic (uphill) flow, so it makes sense that tumbleweed was on both sides of the fences.
ReplyDeleteI made a mistake and left the pool cover partially open one night and ended up with a crop of tumbleweeds in the pool, aarrrggghhh.