[Thursday – Plants 101] Creative Vases 101

Vases don’t just have to be for flowers. Look at this creative use of vases at Hey Jhonny, an awesome gift shop here in Albuquerque:

Croton leaves! That’s one way (hopefully) to avoid spider mites on your Croton houseplants! Nice work, fellas!

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In other news:

I’m not sure how many of you are interested in New Mexico’s fire situation, but in case you are, I thought I’d give you a brief update.

Romero Fire: Yesterday afternoon, Albuquerque’s skies filled with smoke as a fire started in the bosque (the area on either side of the Rio Grande) in Corrales. For those of you not familiar, Corrales is a sleepy artist/farming community immediately north of the city. We were told that 150 homes were threatened on the west side of the river, as well as structures on the east side on the Sandia Pueblo (the fire jumped the river). As far as I know, they haven’t determined a cause of the blaze, but since yesterday it’s swelled to about 300 acres due to fierce overnight winds.

The thing about bosque fires is that the river flows through our communities here, so fires have the potential to be utterly devastating (as opposed to the Whitewater-Baldy complex fire in the Gila, which mostly burned wilderness areas). There was a fire along the bosque in the South Valley over the weekend, and now this in the far North Valley.

For being a rural community, Corrales is still connected to a big urban area. I can assure you, living in downtown Albuquerque, it’s terrifying to see so much smoke in the sky. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for Corrales residents.

Fortunately for us citizens, our emergency responders, firefighters and officials are top-notch pros. They are well-trained and fast-acting. Hundreds of firefighters have been attacking the Romero blaze overnight and protecting homes. They have some crews only protecting Corrales homes, while others fight the flames and others build containment lines. You absolutely couldn’t ask for more professional folks. We are lucky to have so many dedicated individuals working for us.

You may think that the areas along the river would be green and lush, but what happens is that the brush overgrows during the spring, then dries out as the months pass. The dried out extra growth becomes fuel for fire. Firefighters also have to contend with the cotton that’s accumulated in the growth – it’s highly combustible and makes their work that much more difficult.

Whitewater-Baldy complex fire: Burned more than 296,000 acres (the largest in state history) and is now 87% contained. 12 structures (vacation cabins) burned.

Little Bear fire: This is the fire in Ruidoso that burned more than 250 structures including primary and vacation homes and businesses. It burned more than 40,000 acres and is 60% contained.

Blanco fire: This was started by an illegal campfire, burned five homes and 352 acres, near Bloomfield, NM.

I think there’s a fire burning near Espanola and maybe in the Santa Fe National Forest, too. And of course, our neighbors to the north in Colorado are also dealing with huge fires. Our prayers are with them.

In lighter news:

I’ll be back manana with an all-new Ask the Experts panel, and a new plant puzzler. If you haven’t done so already, you still have time to guess last week’s puzzler, in which I asked if this plant was real or fake:

Should be a no-brainer!

The deadline is tonight at midnight MST (that’s 2am EST). Leave your best guess in the comments section or on my facebook wall. The prizes may be imaginary, but the link to your site is oh-so-real.

Hope to see you back here!