watchful eye

We're not sure if we have one Cooper's Hawk or two.  Either way. Coopy (and maybe Coupette) have been watching me all day, with breaks to do hawk-like things, like sit on the roof, or chase after a small bird.  They must have discarded a small deceased rodent in the yard at some point, because a raven came and removed that.  I do find this supervision a little pressurizing, as I grapple with these final book stages, rewriting, reordering, anxiously word-counting and counting again, and finding that the picture captions (which aren't the kind of thing one can argue with) are taking up a whole lot more words than I would like them to.  It's as though they know that the emphasis of my book is on the non-human natural world, and they feel justified in asserting their presence.

 

chile time!

There's nothing like arriving at the Farmers Market and smelling the first chile roasting of the season.  Hatch chile gets all the publicity, and I don't know if any has arrived in town yet, but my favorite chiles are those grown at Romero Farms, which are at La Cienega, just on the south side of Santa Fe.  And here are the baskets of chiles waiting to go into the roasting hopper ... and with the Turquoise Tuners playing traditional fiddle and banjo music under the water tower, I was very happy...

And sunflowers, etc.  And then back (bearing produce) to the book ... 

 

next year's hollyhocks

Somehow, we more or less missed this year's hollyhocks - or should I say hollyhock?  It was just starting to bloom when I was here in April, and now we're only left with the seed pods.  But since I have very little luck with growing h'hocks from planted seed, I've taken to relying on self-seeding, and this promises well - unless it turns into finch food.

 

bee time

There were lots in our plant pots today, and that seemed suitable: I'm nearly at the end of the current go-around of book revision, which means that the bee chapter/conclusion is approaching and today I had a terrific brief correspondence with Wolfgang Buttress - he who designed The Hive in Kew Gardens and the Bee exhibition at National Museums Liverpool, both of which I write about at some length.  So I went and cheered on some live pollinators outside, in the sprit of it all.

 

manicure time

It's been quite a week for Gramsci: the vets for a check up yesterday (both cats passed with flying colors), and today Alice trimmed his little murder mittens.  Alice has a particular talent for doing this: I have always been too terrified.  He looks remarkably resigned here, but I think he may just have been living through his considerable disappointment after the England loss.

 

what's for breakfast?

A very fine Cooper's Hawk - just up the road - waiting patiently for something tasty to scuttle or fly past.  A small finch then became the object of its pursuit, but happily escaped ...

 

garden pots

A good view of my outside office: here, the cats (since they aren't allowed out) don't try and take over my revisions for me.  

And these pots are real!  Our nextdoor neighbors' house has just gone on the market, and I'm quite appalled by the photos of it - which of course, taken with a wide-angle lens, make it look enormously spacious (don't get me wrong - it's a lovely house, but even though ours is half the size, I prefer our views).  But - Photoshop! - or whatever realtors use these days.  I've been saying for a week or so - when are the pots of geraniums going to arrive outside, for the staging?  Today - they were there!  But ... on-line, only.  Front and back - lovely blooming planters.  Jugs of flowers inside.  And, worst of all ... they had built, fairly recently, a lovely little self-contained casita.  And here, again online, are pictures of it ... as a painter's studio (with easel, and paints); as a TV watching room; as a private gym; as a potter's studio ... worst of all, our lovely previous neighbor was, among other things, a talented potter, and, well, somehow this rings a little strangely. People are going to come round and view it, and are going to be shaking their heads, puzzled.  Or am I naive?  Are all real estate photos these day aspirational and fictional in this way?