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Mar - Oct (photo by Mac Womack)
Photo journal of Carolyn Ohl-Johnson.
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Lucifer Hummingbird
Mar - Oct (photo by Mac Womack)
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About Me
- Carolyn Ohl-Johnson
- I have lived in the Christmas Mountains since 1976, and started my oasis in 1996. For visiting instructions contact me at christmasmountainsoasis@gmail.com if you are a birder or naturalist. No minors unless pre-approved by me and are avid birders. No pets.(When emailing, be sure to get all 5 s's in the email address or I won't get it.)
Is the top cactus a native there or did you plant it? Looks great as does the one below it.
ReplyDeleteI wrote of my experience as a kid planting San Diego Coastal Cholla joints I had rescued from development towards the coast. The cacti is now mostly extinct from many of it's traditional range. Over the decades as the cacti got bigger and produced more jointed limbs, I would did a small hole and put these in the ground. There must be a couple of hundred plants up there now and Coastal Cactus Wren and Mourning Doves are nesting in them.
Here's the link to my post on chaparral, though I'm writing another deeper one that I have not released yet. I also had replanted and propagated Coast Barrel Cactus and Torrey Pines in this same area. A Development finally came to the area in 2005 and the area I deveoped high up the canyon was roped off with environmental sensitive area tape after they did the impact studies. It's one of the collest things I've ever done.
Curse That Invasive Native Chaparral !!!
Thanks for sharing your pics - Kevin
Wow, that's awesome. I'm impressed. That Prickly Pear I posted here came up by itself. The cholla I planted and it's the one I collected all the joints from for my cholla patch that I'm hoping will eventually host nesting Lucifer Hummingbirds.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoyed the link you posted. I'm really into stuff like that. Since I'm now in my 70s you can understand my impatience to create habitat where none had been in modern times. Except for the trees I planted, hoping for a quick canopy for native stuff to thrive in, my place started on its own with the grasses, wildflowers, then shrubs. A few trees have started under the canopy I made, but due to this record drought, nothing will survive, native or otherwise, without supplemental watering. I'm contemplating letting the non-native canopy go for the most part and focus on the native. At least with watering it does good, unlike the non-native that is barely hanging on.
Keep a look out for newer articles I post. I'm incredibly into studying and replicating exactly how nature accomplishes what it does and making practical applications in the landscape, garden and in general habitat restoration projects. You should try yourself some of the Nurse plant experiments and document it for others. Not only will others benefit, but you yourself will never forget the experience and it will be burned quick literally into your memory like uploading invaluable info into your own human CP called the brain LOL
DeleteI have another blog site that gets more technical into mycorrhizal connections between plants. I call it "Earth's Internet" which scientifically explains how the fungal grid or network under the ground functions and operates for the benefit of the whole eco-system. I don't have the time now, but you can take a look. I try to use common everyday modern intelligent terms and everyday illustrations to make it come alive and interesting. When people want to create or restore a habitat, you should intelligently engineer it the way it is found in nature. You should never look at any ecosystem on our earth as nothing more than a lucky bundle of compromises. Look at it as an intelligent piece of sophisticated complex machinery that needs proper care for self-mainenance and sustainabilty. Do that and it will pretty much care for itself perpetually.
I don't know if you've ever inoculated you shrubs and trees roots with any of the available mycorrhizae of beneficial bacteria from the reliable source, but you will never regret you did.
Take a look also at my discussions on terms and phenomena such as Hydraulic Lift and Redistribution and also something called Hydraulic Descent. All of these features are mechanisms which allow everything to thrive and more efficiently utilize the resources around them.
Here's the other link - Just bookmark or save and refer to periodically. If you have specific questions, please ask on any post.
Earth's Internet: A Layman's Guide to Installation and Maintenance
I bookmarked your sites and will definitely delve into them when I have the time. Right now I'm hosting birders as it's the middle of spring migration, plus hauling water every chance I get. What works against me is my age and the drought, two things I can't change. I did treat my madrones with mycorrhizae when I first planted them. Still lost a bunch of them but have 4 that seem healthy, all things considered. I've also mulched heavily and stuck with natives as much as possible. Having said that, all that was native to my oasis before I started planting was creosote and an occasional yucca. To change that I had to plant stuff that would grow well here with water, which means either doing without, or watering. For 15 years my catchment handled the water needs until this drought, so I just hope I can ride it out. I've lost some things but don't mourn them because they weren't well enough suited. Mesquite and acacia, juniper, hackberry, etc thrive with not so much water. I'll be content to end up with that stuff but meanwhile I want to have a couple of canopy trees until they make canopies. It's all a college education for which there are no textbooks.I would sure love for you to visit and discuss all this with me, and maybe help guide me in the right direction.
ReplyDelete