Weed Ranch Cotton

It is all about the cottonwood cotton and fallen cottonwoods and cottonwood limbs. And weeds. The old female tree I decided not to build under - thereby moving the i-house's bright orange flex unit into a neighbor's view of the Sandias, a source of no small amount of ill-will - is busting with cotton this year and sending huge cotton chunks airborne in what will be an ultimately unfruitful attempt to multiply after sprouting in horse water buckets and mudholes.

Before the green pellet-like balls burst open, the weight makes the soft wood prone to cracking even on not so windy days. I lost an entire tree in a recent wind gust and two other trees shed huge branches recently - making magnificent crashing sounds like T-Rex in the bosque.

Breaking up branches right after they've fallen is much easier for the same reason they fall off the tree. They crack easily and you can break them into movable pieces which makes you look strong and so who needs a chainsaw. 

Mistletoe adds to the weight of the branches too.

Other Weed Ranch news:

Mustard weed is shedding seeds now. Too late if that didn't get chopped. Bindweed is starting to flower and that's not good. It's bad enough when it doesn't seed. Foxtail is everywhere including my socks. Goatheads now have those tiny little innocent yellow flowers that turn into nasty rock-hard spikes soon.

My volunteer invasive crop of bundleflower is thriving. Repeated tilling and reseeding with oats and sudan grass have done nothing to slow its advancement. Its seed is featured in the Plants of the Southwest catalog where its drought hardiness apparently outweighs its bad-boy reputation. I think it thrives on the attention. The Charlie Sheen of the weed world. No stopping it now.

Comments

[Rocky]

Ah, life...winning!