So, we meet again. Drawn together by the mutual attraction of plant propagation and the desire to rob plants of their reproductive organs and store them in a warehouse…

Still chipping away at a target species list for seed collection/propagation for the ol’ Taos Plateau.  It’s quite an assignment. I’ve been consulting with local specialists, reviewing literature, and consulting again. The challenge is answering how many should be collected, and of that collection, how many should actually be grown out. Some of these are greater fundamental conundrums beyond my pay grade. At least the ordering is done and I am freed from requisition forms! The next step, which is a rather large one, is to develop a management plan for the growth facility, the Rael property. This will entail several weed treatments, some minor construction, and most likely tree thinning and pruning. Selfishly, I want to release a small herd of goats on the field and then have a luau when they’ve eaten all they can. If you haven’t had roast goat, you’re missing out.

The monsoons have brought some much needed moisture back to the Taos field office. This also presents some unique driving situations. Driving down a wet bladed road is akin to driving on sheet ice. You will slide down into the bar ditches. You will probably need to call someone to come get you out. I’m thinking of implementing a baked goods rule for every time you get hauled out of a ditch. The day following a ditch incident there should be a mandatory dispensing of doughnuts to the entire office. Shame doughnuts. Getting stuck happens, but I think enough shame doughnuts will impart discretion in which roads to go down on a rainy day. For the record, I’ve avoided self-disdain and shame doughnuts.

Lately, I’ve been assisting with the AIM crews. I was a crew lead for AIM for nearly three years before I took this position so I have graced them with my field expertise (*cough). On one plot in particular, I found a pottery shard along a transect. I’ve found arrowheads in the field but never a pottery shard. For those who don’t know, New Mexico is one of the longest continually inhabited areas in the country. Euro-American presence goes back around 500 years, whereas most other areas of the west are around only 200. And going further, Ameri-Indians have been here for eons before that. This particular plot was at the juncture of several major historic eras where there has been consistent human habitation from multiple time periods. There were also petroglyphs adjacent to the plot dating back a few thousand years and signs of the inevitable conquest of the railroad in the west (which historically ran about a half mile from the plot and north to Santa Fe) memorialized by an antique railcar. I garnered some of this information from the ranch manager, who was a Kiwi and had just returned from wrangling a rogue bison named Hercules. It was like a Hitchcock film. The intersection of time and space illustrated by the petroglyphs, the railroad, a Kiwi, the shard, and Hercules. I’m pretty sure there were crows circling.

There’s not much else to report. Working on the management plan, tackling an environmental assessment (EA), and finding time to plan a campground reclamation. The proverbial train is gradually gaining speed. Sooo…. Until next month.

More plants. More dirt.

-JD

This is round two for me as a CLM intern, and a lot has changed since the first time around. For one, this blog. People blog? I didn’t realize this was a thing, and someone would actually be interested in what I do on a daily basis. The mundane rituals of sipping coffee and debating the finer points of seed collection and soil fertility. Which, apparently, is interesting to someone, somewhere in the greater cosmos of plant nerdom.  Therefore, I venture forth with constructing these blog entries detailing my occupational duties, because, who doesn’t like a good botany story, right?

So, what I do. At present, I am the Conservation Land Management Intern (Botanist) for the Taos Field Office, Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico. Whew. It’s a mouthful. Glad that’s over. What this all means: I was lucky enough to be selected for a three year position via CLM to govern the Seeds of Success Program (SOS) for the Taos Field Office. Additionally, there is a new national monument (Rio Grande del Norte) which has some rare plants and could use a few veg treatments here and there. Lastly, there is an historic ranch outside of Santa Fe which is available to grow native seed on. This is what I’m most excited for, playing in the dirt and literally seeing the fruits of my labor. To bring it full circle, the seed collected via SOS will be grown out at the ranch and used for restoration/reclamation at the district level. Waaaay cool. It’ll be nice to use locally harvested, locally grown seed on local projects. Hopefully, this will lead to greater success on restoration projects, because seed is already acclimated to the general area.

Overall, I’ve been prepping for next year and technicians to collect seed. Lots of supply ordering, list development. I have gone to the field a couple times, toured the countryside and taken in a New Mexico lightning storm. Granted, I’ve only been here about two weeks, most of which is spent doing things like driver’s training and information systems security. BUT, I have learned a few things about New Mexico. There’s a state question: red or green? Which refers to chili types, which you can get on just about everything. The appropriateness of which I have yet to decide (chili wine?). New Mexico has its own lingo and uses Spanish to describe things, i.e. acequia. An acequia is an irrigation ditch. That’s it. A ditch. Acequia rolls off the tongue and has far more linguistic charisma than ditch, but thrown quickly into casual conversation you wonder if someone is inviting you to partake in a delicious wine or some sort of afternoon activity involving a pool. I suppose such colloquialisms will come in time.

Whelp, I don’t have much else to report. Drudging through ordering SOS supplies and piles of requisition forms. The upcoming months should be more rousing. More plants. More dirt.

Until next month,

JD