Los Lobos open the Summer Bandstand

You'll have to take my word for it, that Los Lobos (bringing LA to Santa Fe, including a Dodgers cap) are in there, playing away ... a somewhat strange set, with Something For Everyone - rock and roll to TexMex to psychedelic sub Grateful Dead, but so long as they played Can The Wolf Survive? (which they did) I was happy (at least until the slightly weird guy standing in front of me started his wolf-howl).  How wonderful to be in a town where Los Lobos play for free, and cram the Plaza, to open the summer bandstand series...

 

the first of the season

And so my Morning Glory horticultural obsession rolls round happily for another year's blooming.  As usual, Grandpa Ott is the first to make an appearance.  Usually they wait until they've climbed a little higher, but it's wonderful to have a flower before we've even been here for two weeks ...

And for good measure, our first good sunset of the summer ...

 

Farmers Market

A very quick break from The Recalcitrant Chapter to go to the Farmers Market, which is just coming into full swing: sunflowers, and many onions, and apricots, and lettuces, and and and - and, most miraculous of all, the woman selling smoked onion powder.  This is a sensational ingredient to - well, anything savory or vegetable-full.  I told her how happy I was to see her there, and that I'd looked for her in vain last year.  Well, she explained, she can only smoke onions for this purpose early in the year, because they get too tough later on.  That's a useful fact to remember - assuming I've used all three packets that I bought today by next June.

and a reminder, walking past SITE Santa Fe, EVERY AMERICAN FLAG IS A WARNING SIGN.

 

smoke? steam? evening mists?

After a reasonable amout of stormy rain this afternoon, I'm hoping that the McCauley Fire - over on the Jemez, has been very damped down.  It's currently at over 700 acres, churning through brush and ponderosa pine.  Impossible to tell whether this is thin smoke rising from it, or, I'm hoping, steam and general moisture.  At least ... I thought this is where the fire was, and I just looked at the map to see how far away it is, as the crow flies (about 70 miles), and I think my geography is skewy - it's a bit further north.  Probably.  Anyway, it's a pretty evening, whatever the climatic conditions ...

 

growing

A couple of days ago, I thought that this pot contained an apple-blossom geranium, and two slightly sulky marigolds.  But ... Whereas when we arrived this summer I thought that quite a few of the pots contained the usual, welcome signs of just-sprouting morning glories - and that was a relief, because we were late this year, and there hasn't been a whole lot of rain -others seemed seed free, and so, with a top-up of potting soil, were ready to receive new plants.  Which I watered.  And look what's happened!  With luck, it'll be another bumper summer of MGs - the only thing, other than catmint and edible herbs, that I seem reliably good at growing, here.

 

book revision

I wish I could say that it went well today, but for various reasons, it didn't ...

 

green on blue

Give these another couple of weeks, and these will be startlingly yellow sunflowers against the blue wall at Cafe Fina.  Lunch there was very welcome ... a respite from revising, rewriting, etc.  Sunflowers aren't, I know, dandelions - but they are yellow ... I was procrastinating by looking in the Bridgeman Images collection for images that I almost certainly won't use (but in case of emergencies, it's good to know where one might be able to lay one's hands on something at the last minute), and found this exquisitely awful painting by the Swedish artist Sven Richard Bergh, The Knight and the Maiden (1897), which is simply too good not to share ...