full moon rising

between layers of clouds.  It's hard to think that it's August tomorrow (even if, indeed, we've both been working/writing as hard as we intended to do, all summer) ...

 

in which Moth contemplates a modeling career

or, just possibly, how soon in the afternoon/evening she might ask for dinner with some possibility of success.

 

at last, our own!

These may not be the.most impressive hollyhocks in the southwest - but they are ours.  And they are - well, if not exactly full height, at least not midgets, unlike the one at the other end of the yard that has a bad time with both caterpillars and, I rather think, that rabbit.  This one emerged from under the flourishing catmint - probably a seed that I planted a year or so back.  One never quite knows what will come up ...

 

Not from Roswell

... although honestly, one would be forgiven for wondering: all this needs is a couple of big eyes and some radar wands.  It's actually the rear end of a Sac Spider who wanted to share my chair when I was having breakfast outside, and is - in real life - about the length of a third of my little fingernail - maybe 30mm long, max.  Thank goodness - imagine if it were any longer ...

 

first of the year!

Grandpa Ott is out!  The first (self-seeding) morning glory of the year.  I could see that this was imminent - what I hadn't been expecting was to come out this morning and find that so many of his relatives had been nibbled to within an inch (or lower) of their leafy lives.  The pansies had already gone, I knew ... and two days ago, I also saw the culprit - one of the culprits? - who had come through one of the drainage holes in the patio wall: a small, young, brown, fluffy rabbit.

I have just been sticking large stones in the drainage holes - ones that I'll be able to remove quickly were the yard to start to flood.  Let's see if that does the trick - I'd like a few more of these to flower ...

 

rain!

I realize that to many of you, Rain may not count as Big News - but here, it was a wonderful and welcome sight - maybe twenty minutes or so.  No need to worry about the plants needing water tomorrow (which is officially a Non-Watering Day.  And (even though by no measure has the monsoon yet arrived), maybe this is a kind of vanguard?

 

no seaweed involved (and the weird synchronicity of research)

This sculpture sits outside TAI Modern, a gallery opposite Site Santa Fe: it's by Celeste Roberge, and called Chaise Gabion (2006), in waterjet cut stainless steel filled with river rocks.  Apart from thinking that it looks singularly uncomfortable, I confess I've not given it much thought before this week, when I found myself working on Roberge because her current work is about seaweed, and climate change, so of course she'll find her way into the book.  I'm particularly enamored with a piece called Sea Will Be Lapping at Your Doorstep - a sculpture of a pair of seaweed encrusted boots.  

So of course I looked at this today with new eyes. Chaise Gabion [or sofa cage] is part of her long fascination with the fact that the elements will eventually reclaim the material world.  But not before she's had a chance to inhabit it first: here she is, on another version of the piece - completely swathed in kelp.

 

hummingbird

They were very slow to arrive this year - not just in our back yard but, it would seem, elsewhere in Eldorado (at least according to that utterly fallible site, NextDoor).  But now they're out in full force (which usually means the Rufus bearing down with aggressive buzzing on the Black Throat).  I'm having to do rapid turnarounds on the sugar water in their feeder - it goes off so quickly in this heat ...

 

butterfly of the day

I believe this is some kind of Cabbage White - probably pieris rapae, or the Small Cabbage White, because pieris brassicae is not only bigger, but has dark patches at the end of its wings.  On the other hand, this butterfly seems to have a very badly chewed set of wings, so one can hardly tell.  The other day I saw a mockingbird with a butterfly - or moth - in its beak, so there are definitely predators out there: perhaps it had a lucky escape?  Anyway, it's much enjoying the catmint, and since I'm not growing cabbages, I hope that its caterpillars will find lots to feed on somewhere else.  Inevitably, it's an invasive species - native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa, it was accidentally introduced to Canada around 1860 and, well, spread.  I don't think it'll find a space in my book pages, though ...

 

lunch in Las Vegas (NM)

It's been an age since we were last in Las Vegas.  I think we have passed through once or twice en route to Colorado - but the last time that we really stopped, I think, was with our friend Barry en route to Fort Union - and when was that?  2008?  It certainly was before I began this blog, and that was 2009.  I know it was after No Country for Old Men came out - because the Plaza Hotel featured in that, and I was expecting (wrongly) hordes of location sight-seers to be milling around.  That's the hotel, on the right - not all that much changed since the 1890s, in many respects, but now run (as is the Casteñada, by the station) by the same team as restored and operate La Posada, in Winslow.  Las Vegas itself seemed decidedly empty, and even more dilapidated than when I was last there - it didn't, I suspect, wear well with the pandemic.

But lunch in the Plaza Hotel was great (if shockingly indulgent.  Reader, I didn't finish it all, or even come close).  This is a plate of "Not Starvation Peak Nachos" - Starvation Peak being on the highway between Las Vegas and Santa Fe, and, by legend, the site where some Pueblo people chased some Spanish invaders, and held them up there until they starved to death.  It's a dramatic volcanic plug - the plate of nachos was shaped rather like it, deliberately ... [And Alice had a Frito Pie.  I don't think I've had a Frito Pie since Woolworths closed on Santa Fe Plaza.  That dates me].

Las Vegas is one of those place where one never quite knows what one's going to find in a store window. 

Also, it didn't rain on us - but we could see it coming down in torrents up to the north-west, over last year's burn - a flood warning beeped loudly on phones at some time during lunch.

 

painted lady

The catmint today was irresistible to Painted Lady butterflies (and to bees, too - a regular little pollinator haven).  I think I now know why my hollyhocks have a somewhat lacy appearance - their caterpillars love them, apparently - but if this is the result, I'll forgive them.

 

slightly wilting sunflowers

Even though it was only about seven thirty this morning, the sunflowers were already starting to look as though they'd had somewhat too much of the sun.  They're not alone.  That being said, there are faint, very faint signs of the monsoon season starting to arrive, very late (usually, we expect to see it by July 4th).  There were some large drops of rain this afternoon - I rushed outside to greet them, and came back to find that - in the way that critters have of suddenly emerging when there's the faintest sign of damp - that Gramsci was staring at a pink praying mantis in my study.  So I escorted that out ...

 

gooseberries

I love gooseberries so much - and they are all but invisible in the US.  I may once, about twenty years ago, have spied (and presumably purchased) a punnet in Wegmans - I have a dim memory to that effect, but that's it - until yesterday!  And the Farmers Market, where, at the stall where I always buy apricots when they're in season - there were Gooseberries!  Apparently they planted the bushes a couple of years back, and this was the first year there's been a crop ready for sale - three varieties of them!  The woman in front of me in line was asking what they tasted like - had never heard of them.  I, of course, bought two punnets - these have been stewed with a couple of spoonfuls of Los Poblanos's lavender honey, and a portion (well, two portions, since Alice had some too) were served with a slice of Sage Bakery's lemon ricotta almond cake.  Plenty were left for breakfast.

I've looked into buying gooseeberry bushes in the past - I tell you, I really am serious about them - butt we couldn't guarantee to water them year round in NM, and Los Angeles really doesn't have the right climate.  This had me wondering what happened to the gooseberry bush at 20 Hillside - I don't remember seeing it for decades, but don't remember the moment when it disappeared...

 

The Solacii

The Solacii is a toweringly huge three headed (past, present and future) figure standing outside the Form & Concept Gallery  - by Tigre Mashaal-Lively and Anastazia Louise Aranaga, it's "a new beacon of resilience for the Santa Fe BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and arts community."  The "resilience" comes into play not just because it's an Afrofuturist monumental piece by  genderqueer artists, but because it's in fact a reincarnation.  The original Solacii debuted at Burning Man in 2017: as well as its huge cloak, that incorporated many people's memorabilia, it had a soundtrack that played inside it - a soundtrack of a beating heart (and apparently your own heart would adapt to its beat after a few minutes of standing under the canopy - a calming, meditative effect, that was part of the love and compassion and offering of solace that the piece symbolized.  It was installed in late July 2021: on August 21st, it was destroyed (can of gasoline, matches) by an arsonist.

And so it's been rebuilt.  The very striking white fabrics are donated garments - including a nineteenth century lace piece - and yes, they are now coated in flame retardant material.  It's a bit like a Zozobra not for burning, but with its own narrative that now symbolizes the community interconnection, and, yes, the resilience that it stands for.

 

not a gate

The shadow from one of our locust trees was falling on the back wall in such a way that it made it look, this morning - if you didn't look too hard - as though we'd grown a wooden gate.  It was still bearable, outside, at breakfast time.  Actually I exaggerate: there was a light breeze this morning, and I even worked there for a while,  but the temperatures have climbed higher and higher all day - although nothing, I know, to those in Southern Europe.  Meanwhile I was, quite suitably, writing about the origins of petroleum, tiny zooplankton, and the very large plastic snails made by the art collective Cracking Art.

 

recharging

Of course, there's a literal meaning here: this large sphere is a wonderful electric light, that can be set to glow in a number of colors - white, blue, purple, red ... But it was also a recharging day (though I did write a couple of paragraphs about bronze Banana Slugs in Vancouver) - the kind that one wants to store up against the incoming semester (and yes, there were stirrings from that, too) - a visit from a friend, brunch at Cafe Fina, and so on ... 

The print in the background?  A present to us from my parents, years ago - the Owl and the Pussycats, by Ditz - who used to live opposite them in Hillside (and on various occasions borrowed local cats for her compositions).  Ray commissioned a painting of one of their cats, Sam (why not both of them?? I never liked to ask ...) for Joy on their 50th wedding anniversary - we have it now on the dresser in LA.  I don't know which tabby modeled for this (Sam was a long-furred Somali, so not him), but clearly they were, as Dr Johnson would say of Hodge, a Very Fine Cat Indeed.

 

marigold

An image that could very well be entitled "a very hot marigold," but it's bearing up ... (probably better than the humans around here).  

 

a very hot Gramsci

It goes against my principles of fairness and equality to let Gramsci star here two days in a row - but really, how could one resist this view of my study floor?  And who can blame the young man for his sleepiness - the temperature hit 98 here today, which is Too Hot.  I realised this when I went to the Post Office to express-mail off to London my signed contract/transfer of deeds on 20 Hillside - at last!  This is such a relief.  Admittedly, exchanging contracts isn't the same thing as completing the sale - that has to wait for the interminable grind of probate to complete (as a friend of mine here in Santa Fe said yesterday, he knows a good firm of lawyers in London called Jarndyce and Jarndyce ...).  But it's a whole big important step further along, even if it doesn't seem to matter much to our Grammy.

 

paw tangle

It wasn't a very good day working today - one of those days in which one fears that an Original Thought may never come to one again - until I had a shower around 5 p.m. and my addled brain cleared, and I could see where I was going, after all.  On days like this, I can never decide whether it's very comforting to turn around and see an utterly laid back Gramsci - or whether it's comfortingly endearing.  Probably the latter, since I've been trying to write about snails in relation to slow architecture, slow aesthetics, slow everything ...

 

SITE and water

To SITE Santa Fe, to a panel about (local) water resources - in conjunction with the exhibition Going With the Flow, co-curated by Lucy Lippard, who was chairing the event, and who was her usual sharp and vibrant self and held the discussion together.  What was great about it, above all, was its emphasis on the local - on the distinctive water systems of Northern New Mexico, including the 400 year old + use of acequias, or irrigation channels (may I recommend this very recent PBS film on them?), for example, but also the efforts that the City of Santa Fe is making to conserve and store water; and also the potentially terrible effects of the recent Supreme Court ruling which has stripped so much water from its protections.  I know other SC decisions have received much more publicity, but the outcry here and elsewhere should continue to be loud and forceful - this affects 90% of NM water channels, for a start ...

 

howling for the mail

We have some new neighbors up the street, and they have just ornamented their mail box with this coyote - a more magnificent specimen than the rather mangey one that we saw skulking past yesterday.  I suspect this was made by Kim, a metal work artist (among other things) who lives a street over - a number of local mailboxes have her ravens, and other wildlife, sitting on top of them.  

And yes, it is recycling pick-up day ...

 

rehung

This painting, of Banburgh Castle, hung on the top landing at 20 Hillside for as long as - well, since 1961.  It's now looking good in the hallway in Santa Fe.  I've been exporting art work from the house since January, and have been pleased to bring some pieces here.

Ray painted this on a summer holiday that we took in 1960, staying in a cabin on the clifftop just north of Banburgh - with a wonderful beach down below.  Rama, our cat, was fascinated by the waves, which rolled slowly up the very shallow shore, and I loved the sand - quite apart from building castles, I drew endless, complex, intersecting railway tracks.  And my parents gave me a pair of (bright red plastic) toy binoculars, which, when I could focus them, were excellent for looking at seagulls.  Every time I look at this picture, it all comes back ... It's now hanging above some carved wooden apples and a bowl that Ray bought just a couple of years back at a craft fair at, I think, Merton Abbey, and which he gave us for Christmas that year.  They look good together.

 

two years ago today ...

... we brought home our dearest little monster kitty, Gramsci.  He's mostly calmed down ... but sometimes, like this morning, he still doesn't understand why Moth doesn't find him an irresistible play companion.  But for the most part, they now get on remarkably well.  We never thought that we'd get to this point ...

(LOOK at those TEETH!)

 

outdoor dining

An excellent meal with friends at Horno, on Marcy Street ... we chose to have an outdoor table (a) because, well, it's good to eat outside - that may be a particularly British take on things, because of all those years being conditioned by British Weather and (b) we thought that it would be quieter for talking.  We'd forgotten to factor in the low riders with full blast music, and the souped-up motor bike engines - for it was Saturday Night in Downtown Santa Fe...

 

sunflower

When I came through Winslow a couple of weeks back and stayed at La Posada, it was all hollyhocks.  Today ... still plenty of hollyhocks, of course - but the sunflowers were out, too.

Mercifully, back in Eldorado, the plants made it through the last few days, despite the heat - I'm sure the. mulch helped.  It's good to be back ...

 

on the road ...

Someone is really quite happy (and wearing his barrister expression) in Winslow, at La Posada ... earlier, here they both are, looking out of the window ...

 

our Gramsci

 

Gramsci knows we're hitting the road very soon - the kitty carriers are out, and most of today, he's been in one of them, just in case we might forget him.  He also explored inside a clothes closet, and took a bit of a rest in the sunshine.  Given that he also had a whole lot of tuna juice left over from making a tuna salad, I'd say it was a pretty good day to be a cat.

Our Mothy

Here she is, looking laid back mid-afternoon - that would have been before the fireworks started (though by this point we'd had three hours of a circling helicopter, because of someone who'd been threatening people with a gun a quarter of a mile down the road, and then run off.  That was my welcome back to LA - here for 36 hours, maybe, punctuated, so far, with a lot of loud bangs.  Interestingly, Gramsci doesn't seem particularly concerned.  It was touching how very very happy both of them were to see me.

 

Nuclear War is Bad For Kittens

And which of us is going to argue with this?  Indeed, it's almost so self-evident as to have no shock value, despite the undeniable cuteness of that small feline.  On the wall of Site Santa Fe, this is part of its ongoing Billboard Project - there are nine of these panels, made collaboratively by a collective called Artists Against the Bomb - and were produced in conjunction with Pedro Reyes' show DIRECT ACTION, which alas I missed (it closed May 8th). This is by the Center for Tactical Magic, which among other activist and strategic performist interventions (this is curiously static, for them) has since 2005 had a Tactical Ice Cream Unit, which hands out printed information produced by local activist groups, nourishes protesters, acts as a mobile surveillance device with satellite capability for transmitting footage, and, yes, gives away ice cream, as well. That is my kind of pop-up.

 

full moon on a windy night

A magnificent moon rising tonight ... but look how a three-second exposure displays how hard the wind is blowing!  It's been thinking of storming all afternoon - there was a double rainbow at one point, over towards Pecos - but nothing actually precipitated. Sometimes, it's hard concentrating when all you want to do is look at the sky ...

 

research at the farmers' market

I didn't know that I was going to come back from the Farmers' Market with a bottle of Dandelion and Cardamon Bitters (and I'm still trying to think quite what kind of cocktail I want to put these in ... and then, rooting around on line for inspiration, I found a recipe - not using bitters - for dandelion cupcakes, which look extremely pretty.  But I digress ...).  But here they are!  

I was hardly going to buy a great deal at the market, since I'm only here - for now - for two more days - but it was so great to be back there.

And I did (as well as carrying back some garlic scapes, and onions, and goat cheese, and spicy green leaves) purchase this treat: yes, it's a lavender, lemon, and Earl Grey donut.  It tasted as good as it looked.  And then I carried on writing about dandelions on Victorian wallpaper.