stripey morning glory

My morning glories here self-seed, year after year, and natural selection seems to have ensured that by now they are mostly Grandpa Ott, with a smaller number of deep pink ones.  But this morning ... a solitary pale blue and purple Harlequin made its appearance above the petunias, and very lovely it was, too.

 

wildlife

A couple of days ago, I threw out an orange that had gone bad - threw it at a distance, as if it were a baseball - to see whether something would eat it.  Obviously a bird or a critter has opened it up, and it's now been occupied by huge black ants.  Which would be fascinating in its own right - but was upstaged, half an hour later, by our going for an early morning walk and encountering ... a bear!  A brown, furry, positively cuddly bear (they have been coming down from the mountains because it's so dry and parched this summer), which ambled across the road and then, realizing we were looking in its direction, lolloped off down the green belt and towards the railroad tracks.  

This is the first bear I've seen in Eldorado in 23 years.  A few years back, someone posted to Nextdoor in rather disgruntled fashion that they'd moved here because they'd become fed up with bears in California, and they'd looked out of their window that morning and seen one in a tree.  But this is not ... usual.

 

pickled tomatoes

Last week, I pickled a whole lot of cherry tomatoes that looked like they weren't going to make it for very many more days; tonight I opened them up (perfect with salmon), and they were completely delicious.  I should credit one of my colleagues, Corrine Collins, with the inspiration, since she posted to Instagram a picture of some focaccia that she'd made with pickled tomatoes: I doubt that I'll take this jar to such culinary heights, but I'm super-pleased that I made these, and it won't be the last batch.

 

inspecting a table

Today, our now-departed-for-Brooklyn neighbors held an Estate Sale (a term I thought for a long while only applied to the dispersal of items belonging to deceased people, but apparently not - at least, not in this form, run by a professional firm who do all the sorting and labeling and arranging).  How could we resist?  I mean, there was a lot we could resist, like the unfathomable number of plastic spatulas (spatulae?), and so on, but we came away with a few trophies - a flower jug, a Mexican metal waste bin, a garden pot, and this small blue outside table, which now I've hosed it down is outside the front door.  But while it was drying, it was visited by a Towhee, which perched, and then flew off ...

 

posing

It's only mid-August, but these two seem to have decided that today was the day in which they'd model for their Christmas card portrait (to be found, as always, on the front verso).  Of course, it's really a concerted presence just before their teatime, in case somehow or the other we forget to feed them, and they starve.

 

morning (glory), evening

A strangely illuminated morning glory this morning (when I was fiddling around with the camera); and then a glorious storm sky this evening - a very small storm, all things considered, but at the moment we, and everyone in these parts, will take all the rain we can get, as the Frijoles fire churns on, and on, and we read briefings and maps, and hope that firefighters continue all of their wonderful work to bulldoze lines between it and homes ... (it's about sixteen miles away from us, as the crow - and indeed the smoke - flies - so I'd hate anyone reading this to think that we're in any immediate danger.  But some properties and little villages, let alone lots of animals, are ...)

 

dinner decor

The decor for dinner this evening was almost as good as the food itself: Alkemē, in Santa Fe, bills itself as Vietnamese Heritage Cuisine Reimagined, and was ... wonderful.  I wish we had the stomach capacity to manage the tasting menus, but as it was, I had an extraordinary soup of shrimp and Mapo-style (call it Sichuan, more or less) sauce and dashi custard; followed by a most complex mushroom and tofu filled cabbage roll or 4 in another equally complex sauce, and with some woven rice noodles, lots of pickles, and so on.  We will be back (if we can ever get a table, again - it's not exactly a walk-in spot) ...