bzzzzzzzzz

On this morning's walk, a particularly fine bee inside a sunflower, harvesting.

And off he goes, pollen-laden.

 

neatly lined up

We're at that point in the summer when the morning glories greet us in profusion every day - especially these Grandpa Otts.   Let's hope tomorrow's batch don't get shredded by the large storm that seems to be bearing down on us this evening ...

 

from out of town!

It's fun when people visit!  One day we'll have somewhere large enough in Santa Fe to put people up, but in the meanwhile, we can at least show friends the way to our local restaurant, Fable - this summer's tremendous boost to Eldorado.  Here, from Los Angeles/Mexico City are Phil and Marcella ... with many stories of their recent travels to pueblos/Hopi country/Navajo lands, and Taos.  Sometimes evenings just aren't long enough.

 

arboreal candyfloss

We could stand copyediting/promotion letter writing/graduate handbook revisions for not a moment longer, so headed off to Harry's for breakfast (the kind of breakfast that renders any more food during the rest of the day more or less superfluous - and a long, long evening of thunderstorms and rain has meant we haven't been able to walk it off, either ... but it was good!).  I think this is a Smoke Tree outside its front door - it's certainly very pink and fluffy, like arboreal candyfloss.

 

wisps

It's been very hot today, so the sun had already dipped down by the time of this evening's walk.  Not pictured ... this morning, when I did a noble rescue job on about three foot of gopher snake who was sunning herself on the road: had she stayed there, she surely would have become squashed snake.  As it was, I eased her into action with a couple of long twigs, and she slid off ever so sinuously and gracefully into the scrub.  

 

MGs

They're coming along: non-dramatic, but by now, flowering every day, and the promise of many more behind them.  I've also got to a point where I feel it's flowers/cats/clouds in rotation - which it may be.  Another day of copy-editing (A) and promotion materials reading (me) - and if the clouds aren't spectacular on either of our walks, and the cats are just their habitual wonderful selves, that leaves ...

 

evening walk

Magnificent sky this evening!  A small monsoon storm (thunder, lightning, ten minutes rain, double rainbow) was on its way out, and the sunset was hitting the remaining clouds.  This morning's walk was all clear and blue; this evening's much more startling.  Just as well, since it was another day at our desks (Alice copy-editing; me still going back and forth with our administrator over revisions to the Graduate Handbook: let's just say that it's unreasonable to expect a sudden and arduous piece of work - which involves amalgamating our own department handbook with the university one - in July.  To put that in perspective: turning 27 well-crafted pages into 61 cumbersome and legalistic ones (to be shared with faculty after the weekend, but there's so much mandatory language there's precious little room for any wiggle room). No wonder I was grateful for some mild sublimity in the form of these clouds.

 

stretchy

It's a stretchy Gramsci!  He loves his stretches - so much so that sometimes we wonder if they're connected to his inability to jump very well, and if he's making his back feel more comfortable (though that wouldn't explain why he's making it so hard for me to type this, since he's draped round my neck ...

 

our hollyhock

Yes, I know that's singular, and hollyhocks - certainly in Santa Fe, and in Victorian watercolors of Surrey cottage gardens, tend to come in battalions.  But, late though she is, I've been very pleased to see this one, since she's a volunteer, and is managing to grow with an archetypal New Mexican wall behind her.

 

Salvar la gente

Salvar la gente y los niños - save the people and the children - the motto above a mural that's been painted on a blocked off doorway of what used to be the base of Warehouse 21, in the Railyard.  This was the site of a Santa Fe arts organization that supports teens and young people with, and in, various activities and events.  According to their website, they actually moved out in 2019, which makes me perplexed that I hadn't fully taken this on board earlier: that is, I'd seen that the building (which belong to the City of Santa Fe, and may well be for sale - at least, there's a dilapidated sign suggesting as much) was looking more and more run down, and graffitti was starting to cover some of the murals, but despite going regularly both to the farmers' market and Site Santa Fe, next door, I just hadn't registered its utter inaccessible vacancy until maybe last year ... 

The motto seems very apt for our times.

 

a highly cultivated orchid

This is sitting on my desk, and is definitely, unequivocally, a cultivated plant - albeit a slightly puzzling one, with pale and darker pink flowers in the center, and much browner ones on either side of these.  Strange.

It, and the other unarguably cultivated plants in pots on our terrace (morning glories, herbs, some sunflowers, geraniums, catmint, and a few miscellaneous other things) are having to console me today.  We had The Mowers - usually an October task, but the rains came early this year, the tumbleweed was high, and other things - our lilac, our chamisa - were rampantly out of control.  And in any case, our preferred company were booked up until November, apart from today.  And so we had the back yard inside the wall done (it now looks like a desert, or a dog park), and much more than usual of our property is now shorn, including, to my dismay, the grass and wildflowers (thyme, Mexican hats, a kind of sunflower, and others), right down by the road.  I'm sure that I'd said to stop further back - but the foreman had his own ideas, and the damage is done.  To be sure, it all looks immaculate, and is obviously much less of a fire risk, but it's a little heart-rending, and not what I'd have wished for the poor flowers.

Gramsci's exciting night

There was no sign of Gramsci in bed last night.  Moth slept with us, as usual, but Grammy?   

When we went into the main room this morning - chaos.  An open cupboard door; a miscellany of things on the floor (including half an old goose egg shell and some clothes pegs), and Gramsci transfixed by ... our new portable barbecue.  Eventually, we could see why ... his centipede had taken refuge inside it.  So I carried it out, and finally this emerged, rather battered and the worse for wear, but still alive, and relocated outside the garden wall.

Unfortunately, he's just - at 9.30 p.m. - alerted us to another one in Alice's study.  Sigh.  It's the monsoon rains that's stirring them up, but still ...

 

crow

There have been a lot of crows around recently - in pairs, in flocks - and some of them being pursued by the small birds whose nests they are presumably menacing.  This one was sitting on a dead tree down by the railroad this morning.  I particularly like the way that the early sunlight was hitting the east side of the tree.  One wouldn't think that it's mid-July, with temperatures hitting the low 80s, and a monsoon thunderstorm this evening heavy enough to prevent us from taking our evening walk (but it smells absolutely wonderful outside ...)

 

evening sky

The monsoon season is both definitively here, and happening all around us - but the only notable rain (perhaps we should be grateful?) in Eldorado happened before we arrived.  So we're waiting, one of these evenings, for the clouds to drop something ... meanwhile, this is one of the most stunning skies that we've had so far.

 

Good trouble

Here's Moth, recovered, and expressing solidarity.  Here, behind the camera, am I, and cursing the fact that I didn't do a better job with the lettering of "GOOD" - I realized, much too late, that even though I'd chosen a styrofoam board that was impossible to draft anything on, I could have separated some lines off with masking tape.  Doubtless I'm a perfectionist because my father used to work doing that fancy lettering at the bottom of group photographs in Oxford - year groups, and rowing crews, and rugby teams - and of course his penmanship was impeccable, just like his senes of execution.  So despite the concept - and I felt the Land of Margaritas deserved note - it could have turned out better ...

But it worked.  Speeches at the Round House, then a slow shuffle round the eastern side of the Plaza to the courthouse (more speeches), and then back past the Cathedral, not going through the Plaza this time, where, it turned out, my old favorites Lumbre del Sol were playing - sorry to have missed them, carrying on the memory and heritage of their founder, Chris Abeyta.  For years, they used to play for the summer dance when Bread Loaf was still in Santa Fe, and were a highlight...

But back to Santa Fe, now ... it was good to be out there marching, and being honked at from cars - maybe not as vigorously as in LA, but still.  For if we don't protest, and make Good Trouble, in the spirit of John Lewis, then what?

 

based on the birdbath

One of those days when the light was mostly grey and flat, and my eye was caught by nothing in particular, other than the rather faint reflections of locust trees and sky in the greenish colored birdbath.  All the same, these didn't make for an interesting photo ... So it's been a long time since I've played around in Photoshop - played around creatively, that is - and I haven't actually got a clear idea how I arrived at this, but I wasn't displeased ...

 

a stylish cart

I felt bad when I downloaded this picture - or rather, the larger picture of which this is a part - and looked closely at it.  I'd thought (at quite a distance) that I was taking a picture of someone selling the Santa Fe New Mexican at a road intersection; or rather, though what a great image they made together with this decidedly stylish cart.  But when I took the whole thing on board, he's a well dressed guy, quite probably with a military insignia on his cap, with a sign that says - what I can read of it - Disabled ... done in excellent lettering.  However, I didn't have his permission to take the picture, still less to post his likeness, so despite the fact that it is, as I thought it might be, an excellent portrait, I'm not going to.  If he's there the next time I'm at that corner (most likely, the next time I walk between the Farmers Market and Sage Bakery), I'll slip him a bank note, although that's still not going to stop me feeling that I've exploited him (and I should say, for the record, that that's not a feeling I get all that often when taking photos).

 

at last!

At last, indeed!  We had three morning glory flowers this morning - and it looks as though there should be many more on their way (I must weed the youngsters out of the trough that I'm growing hernb in, in case we ingest their leaves by mistake).  Given the alarming nature of today's emails from the university administration (a $200,000,000 deficit in the operating budget?  Regret that lay-offs will be necessary?), pretty soon these posts will be about progress growing vegetables in raised beds.  As in so many places, things are looking dire.  Watch this gloomy space.

 

mendling hose

I've been tackling a closet here in my study, which if not strictly speaking untidy, certainly needs some work, and some firm decisions about what stays, what goes.  I do tend to keep sewing and mending things - one never knows when they will be useful; when one need precisely that shade of cotton; that sized needles; that button.  I did, though, tidy a showbox of things that had made its way here and that contained many of my mother's mending things - and that meant many of her mother's mending things.

So these spun nylon cards are relics of a time when stocking were expensive - expensive and fairly thick - and graced the legs and ankles of people like my grandmother Doris, and Auntie Jess, and Auntie Lilian - these had their origin in that house, I think.  I certainly wouldn't have been seen dead wearing flesh color stockings - I never had stockings - flesh color tights.  My first tights, c. 1967, were a pale cream color (worn with a Biba skirt, or with a Laura Ashley summer dress): if these and their descendants got holes, the only way to stop them enlarging was with nail varnish (and then, indeed, cream sewing).  Fairly soon after that, I shifted to black, if course, but nail varnish remained useful.  

As for that important advice: "Use several strands to darn feet" - believe me, when I darn my (usually black) socks these days, it's more like industrial strength cotton tying them up again as tightly as possible, figuring no one's going to see.

 

pots

We bought some excellent flowering plants from McCumber's at the start of the pandemic summer of 2020 - back when one pointed from afar, and a masked person placed them in the back of one's car, and one paid - how? on line? - and remarkably, some of these come up again summer after summer since.  But we haven't been back since, until today, when we bought a few more plants to fill in gaps in our own pots.  We didn't need any of their pots (indeed, we know that they always have a sale on these in the fall, which is doubtless the time to do it), but we admired them, all the same ...

(and Moth, fingers and paws crossed, seems pretty much back to her old self.  We are so relieved).

empty nest

This makes me so happy.  When I was here in May, there was a constant ferrying of grubs and insects to the first Mountain Bluebird chicks.  I trusted that all had gone well when we arrived here ten days ago, and there was another flurry of feeding into a wide open mouth - or two? - at the bluebird box window.  And then it stopped.  And I was very nervous, because it's been very hot, and last year the bluebirds lots their second brood just before fledging to the heat - at least, that's what I presumed happened.  Other years there have been depradations involving malicious house sparrows.  One year early mortality of tiny chicks.  So I gave it 48 hours, and opened the box with some trepidation, and - the bird(s) had flown!  I've cleaned it out, and left it to air in the sun: as soon as the frosts start, the bluebirds will, I hope, be back overnighting in there (usually a whole gang pops out in the early winter mornings), and then nest again next year.

In other news ... Moth seems to be doing much better today - eating her new food, using the litter box, and taking her meds like a pro.  Many, many thanks to all her well-wishers: it's been a scary time.

 

the first sunflower (and a Moth bulletin)

It's always great to see the first one ... which is almost always in the same (sunny) spot on Monte Alto: a true harbinger not just of midsummer, but also an indication that the monsoon has been kicking in.

Our attention has been firmly on Moth today: she woke up much more spritely, and with an appetite for her new food; by mid afternoon was without energy - completely flopped out - but, admittedly, had by this stage of the day had a lot of meds (and the anti-constipation meds had been perhaps a little *over* effective.  None of us would want that).  By early evening, she ate some food from my hand; by now, she has a bit more energy, and we're hoping for a quiet and restorative night.  Keep all fingers and paws crossed.

 

a day at the vet for Moth

Demure though she may look here, Moth wasn't feeling too good this morning - and wasn't interested in breakfast.  For anyone who knows Moth, this signaled something was very much Not Right.  Very luckily, we have a new emergency vet center here in town: we can't speak highly enough of Mosaic Animal Emergency and Specialty, and of Dr Sims (the whole post-pandemic set-up at Mosaic truly serves a need, and is owned and run by three women, two of whom are from Northern NM).  We initially thought the problem might be constipation, which may be a part of it, but eventually she was diagnosed with a UTI and crystals in her urine - like Walter G, many years ago - and so she will now need to go on a special diet.  She's now home, medicated, and eating her new food ravenously ... but it's been a preoccupying day.  Poor Gramsci didn't understand why we weren't celebrating his Gotcha day with him - 4 years ago today since we brought home the little adorable monster.

 

sign of the times?

If you're reading this on a tiny phone screen, and can't see the notice above the kale and the zucchini, it says "We are hiring summer field crew.  Ask me."  I don't recollect ever seeing such a sign before - which doesn't mean that people haven't advertised for workers in this way, and I just haven't seen it.  On the other hand, it does rather mesh with anxiety after voiced anxiety about whether field laborers are in danger of being icily kidnapped.  And beyond that: it was sobering to be reminded how many stalls accept SNAP benefits, and to wonder whether the reduction in these will also impact farmers.  New Mexico has the highest percentage of any state's population on SNAP (and, for that matter, on Medicaid). It's estimated that 58,180 people - that's 13% of 463,000 SNAP recipients - will lose their food benefits (and that's not counting those who, as with Medicaid, get tangled up trying to fill out all the relevant paperwork).  In case you're wondering, the beet leaves that I sautéed with young onion and garlic (not pictured, though the garlic was from this very stall) were very tasty - but I want to think of people who need the work to be paid for harvesting them, and anyone who wants to enjoy eating them to be able to do so.

 

morning glory update

They're coming along.  No flowers yet - though little buds are starting to appear.  But the early monsoon rains meant that the self-seeding plants germinated, and a few started to climb up their canes, and the ones that are scattered on the ground outside the pots are beginning t

It's such a change of pace: one week haring around Europe, and having a plethora of images to choose from; the next, back to our very tranquil lives in New Mexico, working, with a couple of walks a day around the neighborhood - which also, of course, returns me to this blog's long ago (2009!!) formulated principle of finding something - one thing! - a day to take a picture of, and write about.  These leaves fulfil that purpose beautifully: that daily principle does, indeed, make one look.

 

Mouse??

Could there be a mouse in the ceiling? Gramsci anxiously wants to know.  We haven't heard any ominous scuttling, but admittedly there was a faint whiff of deceased rodent when we came into the house last Tuesday - it had dissipated by the morning, though. Grams doesn't seem unduly concerned, and we do have plenty of evidence that he knows what to do, should one dare show its whiskers.

 

spiky

Or should that be Spiny?  Either way - from our morning walk (along the railroad and then up one of the greenbelt spurs), and I rather vaguely managed to put my hand on one of the sharp thingies when I was taking this (no harm done).

 

a marigold

You might have thought that this is a cheerful marigold (which I dare say it is), celebrating my first 4th of July as a bona fide American citizen.  On the other hand, given the politics of the day (and the fact that, back in LA, apparently ICE was using the parking lot of Gelsons as a staging post - with Gelsons' approval?  - should we still shop at Gelsons, which we only do because it's our closest LA food store?? - and and and), I think it's probably best used in its traditional role as a Dia de los Muertos flower.  Oh, and apparently, a couple of days back, ICE raided the flower stalls outside the Forest Lawn cemetery the far side of Griffith Park, and kidnapped seven of the eight men working there.  And men from the taqueria stall by Target on Eagle Rock.  It does seem like a very deliberate assault on LA.

 

double rainbow

From just outside our back door: this is just about as good as a rainbow gets ... (and the new plants were grateful for the rain, too).  I wish that I had it in me to see it as a totally optimistic political symbol, but the most I can muster is to see it as a sign of resilience (surely rainbows are too ephemeral for that, though?) and resistance ...

 

snaily (and plants)

Isn't she adorable?  And, really, her shell colorings indicate that she's a tabby snail.  Alice put her hand under a plant leaf at Agua Fria nurseries today, and felt - well, something that wasn't a leaf.  Here are a couple of plants, for good measure - visiting there and making our start of summer (yes, I know it's July ...) purchases is always a highlight, but Snaily made it special (and, of course, research-linked).

 

both ends of the day

Moth may look, here, perched on the end of the bed, as though butter wouldn't remotely melt in her pretty pink mouth - but that might have been the first time that she truly settled after about 10 p.m.  Grams was much better behaved.  I decamped to the sofa, and distracted her meowing self with little strokes from time to time (as in: every ten minutes or so, or that's what it felt like).  Maybe it was the trains, maybe the dogs, maybe it was - and I suspect this - that she was super-rested from having been snoozing in the car all day.

As a result (and after La Posada had redeemed its culinary self with an excellent breakfast), the 335 miles between Winslow and Eldorado seemed very, very long indeed.