by CKR
Natalie, at Philobiblion, featured last week's post on daffodils and a moth, so maybe I'll continue Tuesday blogging in that vein.
Spring has genuinely come, with soaking rain over the weekend. That made it easy to pull the cheatgrass from the daffodils and elsewhere. There's still a lot to go, though!
I can open the doors most of the day, so the house smells fresher and the temperature for sleeping is better.
I've been working in the yard for an hour or so each day, mornings mostly. A robin and another bird sang a duel the other day, territorial, no doubt! I couldn't identify the other bird, but I think it was either a white-crowned sparrow or a wren. The towhees were contributing commentary, as they usually do, but they stayed toward the ground while the other two fought it out in the treetops.
The leaves are breaking their buds on the Chinese elms, and I think I have decided what to do with mine. 
Chinese elms, like cheatgrass, are invasives here. They tend to grow bushy and weedy, and I spent a lot of last summer removing them from where I didn't want them. I've just got a few left--one large patch and one other, in fact.
But I have a soft spot for Chinese elms in a way I don't for cheatgrass.
From Almaty, Kazakhstan, to the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Alatau, I traveled a stretch of the Silk Road, sometimes crowded into the back seat of a Zhiguli/Lada, a few times in Institute Volgas, and in the city buses for which I paid about thirty-five cents for the forty-kilometer ride. Beautiful tall trees canopied the road along fields below the mountains. I couldn't figure out the trees for several days, and then I realized--Chinese elms! 
They were the tallest I have ever seen, probably because of the irrigation ditches along the road. We have some that are almost that tall by the Federal Building, but I decided not to try to take photos there because of the security guards patrolling the grounds. The trees in the center of the photo at the top of the post are Chinese elms, about half the height of the Kazakstani elms. Here is a pathway (lined with cheatgrass!) that is similar to, but much smaller than, that stretch of the Silk Road.
So I'll keep two in my yard. The one in the second photo above is on a slope, and I'm concerned it won't be stable. The other may be too near the overhead power lines. But I'll let them grow for another few years and remove them later if they don't work out.