Thursday, September 3, 2026

more rearrangement ...


The stuccoing, the mending, and the rest of it continues ... We've had to pull all the plant pots away from the house and the walls and into the middle of the yard - where they look quite good massed together, especially with the solar powered lights stuck in them (relocated from the edge of the terrace, so workers don't trample on them) ...

 

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Zozobra week!

 


It's Zozobra week!  Old Man Gloom will go up in flames on Friday night in Fort Marcy Park (luckily a bear has descended from a tree there and ambled off), full of things that people want to get rid of written on little pieces of paper - bad things that they've said or done or thought (a bit like a confessional), or, let's say, the name of the president.  We won't, I think, be there (although I've always rather wanted to go) - but I'm happy to celebrate him in virtual form, here in a mural on the back of a closed dry cleaners on Cerrillos.  

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

September sky


Hard to believe that we've arrived at September, but when I went for a (literally) fast walk this evening, I could more or less tell myself that there was a faint sense of fall in the air.  Another way of putting it: it's time the Dodgers got their act together ...

 

Monday, August 31, 2026

rearrangement


The stucco work on the house began today - and the team managed to accomplish a good deal before a big storm struck.  We had to move plant pots, and furniture, and - well, everything, away from the house, which means we have this fetching little arrangement of chairs and table sitting as if we are about to take tea, or a margarita, overlooking the road, with a hint of sunset in the background.  The cats did not care for the power washing (nor did we).  And as a result of the storminess, we were without internet for about six hours, which was very far from a blessing when faced with various end-of-month deadlines: there's a limit to what one can do by way of tethering one's computer to the one-to-two fluctuating bars of reception that one gets on the sort-of grid out here.

 

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Geometry of dining


To dinner with friends at La Paloma - an excellent Mexican (as opposed to New Mexican) restaurant in town - with a view from our table through to a private room/courtyard - everything looking poised for an evening ... though no one else ever arrived there.

 

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Coopy


Our magnificent Coopers Hawk is back - looking for ... rabbits? 

We went to see Eliza Gilkyson (plus Ray Wylie Hubbard and Jimmie Dale Gilmore) at the Lensic tonight, and it struck me how, when I first heard and fell for Gilkyson's music which must have been ... maybe in 2000, maybe a little earlier ... the line in "The Beauty Way" that goes "Red hawk diving for a rat on Sunset" meant absolutely, absolutely nothing to me.

 

Friday, August 28, 2026

leaf


I haven't anything in particular to say about this young Morning Glory leaf - it's just a particularly nice leaf.

One of the regular exercises (or so it felt like) at my junior school - when I was eight or nine -was to find words to substitute for those bland, lazy four letters: "nice."  Ummmm - luminous? fresh? spiny and corrugated? cheerful?