ABQ and back

This is such a quintessential New Mexican view ... I took Alice down to the airport in Albuquerque this morning, before doing a final hunt-down of footnotes in UNM library - which has a top-class Fine Arts Library and, I must say, a top-class Fine Art librarian, Aaron Blecha, who helped me to track down something that has taken me an age to locate (a reference in Archibald Robertson's 1802 Elements of the Graphic Arts, the first drawing manual to be published in the US: for some reason, UNM had, WorldCat told me, an e-version of it.  And, eventually, it emerged, from the depths of their system).  It's one of my favorite libraries to work in, and I polished off the other fns, too, before driving back down Central - the old Route 66.  It's change a huge amount in the last 30 years - in the last 10, indeed - many new blocks of housing; vacant (and bulldozed) lots; endless cannabis stores ... But there are still a few of the old Route 66 motels standing;

and some re-purposed signs to give a sense of the past ...

Then back up the 14; 42 to Galisteo - half way along I took the top picture - and I just made it home before the heavens opened and huge hailstones started to hurl down.

 

not a hosepipe

Isn't he handsome?  This is about five foot of Red Racer, who was hanging out by the front of our house today, and doubtless slithered off fast (they are not called "racers" for nothing) to decimate some pack rats or mice or lizards or anything else that they can find down the many holes and burrows.  S/he isn't dangerous - in that they aren't venemous, though apparently can deliver a "nasty bite" is cornered (or if you're a pack rat) because they have very sharp teeth.  We are delighted to have such a spectacularly colored and scaled rodent operative.

 

sunflowers, view

This morning's walk: those are the Sandias in the distance, rising above Albuquerque.  You can see how dry it all is ... we had half a teaspoonful of monsoon rain this afternoon, at the most optimistic.  But the sunflowers in the foreground are flourishing: flourishing on some of the mounds of soil that have been by the side of Monte Alto for a few months, as they slowly, slowly replace the water main.  It may not be as elderly as the one that broke catastrophically in LA - I should think it's a little over 50 years - but there again, although LA has to put up with earthquakes, heat, and occasional heavy rain, it doesn't have to weather frosts.  Right now, they are digging it all up near the school - which should make for some ill-timed chaos in a few weeks time.

 

two different lunch locations

Ours, at Cafe Fina, just up the road (relatively speaking): I'm sure this sculpture didn't have all these extra figurines and Things on it a few weeks ago, but it was good to catch a break for an omelette.

And this raven, outside my window, was having something unidentifiable for lunch.  Maybe a half-beheaded lizard?  I preferred mine.

 

and today, the ravens

Very Poe.  And it wasn't just one of them - at one point there were eight or nine in the tree outside my study window, flapping around, and apparently having a party on the roof, too.  I suspect they were clearing up after whatever carnage the hawk(s) dropped off there - at one point one dropped past my window trailing some very long entrails, with a couple of others in hot pursuit (rabbit?).  This was a lot more entertaining than lining up picture sources and permissions, of course ...

 

watchful eye

We're not sure if we have one Cooper's Hawk or two.  Either way. Coopy (and maybe Coupette) have been watching me all day, with breaks to do hawk-like things, like sit on the roof, or chase after a small bird.  They must have discarded a small deceased rodent in the yard at some point, because a raven came and removed that.  I do find this supervision a little pressurizing, as I grapple with these final book stages, rewriting, reordering, anxiously word-counting and counting again, and finding that the picture captions (which aren't the kind of thing one can argue with) are taking up a whole lot more words than I would like them to.  It's as though they know that the emphasis of my book is on the non-human natural world, and they feel justified in asserting their presence.

 

chile time!

There's nothing like arriving at the Farmers Market and smelling the first chile roasting of the season.  Hatch chile gets all the publicity, and I don't know if any has arrived in town yet, but my favorite chiles are those grown at Romero Farms, which are at La Cienega, just on the south side of Santa Fe.  And here are the baskets of chiles waiting to go into the roasting hopper ... and with the Turquoise Tuners playing traditional fiddle and banjo music under the water tower, I was very happy...

And sunflowers, etc.  And then back (bearing produce) to the book ... 

 

next year's hollyhocks

Somehow, we more or less missed this year's hollyhocks - or should I say hollyhock?  It was just starting to bloom when I was here in April, and now we're only left with the seed pods.  But since I have very little luck with growing h'hocks from planted seed, I've taken to relying on self-seeding, and this promises well - unless it turns into finch food.

 

bee time

There were lots in our plant pots today, and that seemed suitable: I'm nearly at the end of the current go-around of book revision, which means that the bee chapter/conclusion is approaching and today I had a terrific brief correspondence with Wolfgang Buttress - he who designed The Hive in Kew Gardens and the Bee exhibition at National Museums Liverpool, both of which I write about at some length.  So I went and cheered on some live pollinators outside, in the sprit of it all.

 

manicure time

It's been quite a week for Gramsci: the vets for a check up yesterday (both cats passed with flying colors), and today Alice trimmed his little murder mittens.  Alice has a particular talent for doing this: I have always been too terrified.  He looks remarkably resigned here, but I think he may just have been living through his considerable disappointment after the England loss.

 

what's for breakfast?

A very fine Cooper's Hawk - just up the road - waiting patiently for something tasty to scuttle or fly past.  A small finch then became the object of its pursuit, but happily escaped ...

 

garden pots

A good view of my outside office: here, the cats (since they aren't allowed out) don't try and take over my revisions for me.  

And these pots are real!  Our nextdoor neighbors' house has just gone on the market, and I'm quite appalled by the photos of it - which of course, taken with a wide-angle lens, make it look enormously spacious (don't get me wrong - it's a lovely house, but even though ours is half the size, I prefer our views).  But - Photoshop! - or whatever realtors use these days.  I've been saying for a week or so - when are the pots of geraniums going to arrive outside, for the staging?  Today - they were there!  But ... on-line, only.  Front and back - lovely blooming planters.  Jugs of flowers inside.  And, worst of all ... they had built, fairly recently, a lovely little self-contained casita.  And here, again online, are pictures of it ... as a painter's studio (with easel, and paints); as a TV watching room; as a private gym; as a potter's studio ... worst of all, our lovely previous neighbor was, among other things, a talented potter, and, well, somehow this rings a little strangely. People are going to come round and view it, and are going to be shaking their heads, puzzled.  Or am I naive?  Are all real estate photos these day aspirational and fictional in this way?

 

sunset, two directions

Take your pick: we came out of our house this evening for a walk, and saw this to our right; on our way back, this was on our left.  Not bad ...

 

dryness

It really is dry here, and windy, too, which dries everything out even more.  A marker: I haven't yet pulled or murdered any tumbleweeds in the driveway or the yard - and that's the first time in twenty odd year.  Above, a soapweed yucca, down by the railroad - looking like a porcupine.  Below - yes, this looks like a sudden wild shower, but actually it's us watering the trees, a weekly treat for them.  Only this morning I managed to set up the vacillating spray so that it was inadvertently washing my study window, and here's Alice bravely stomping out to wrestle it into a more sympathetic position.

 

a catering arrangement

For the next two weeks, Alice will be doing the (evening) cooking, while I, supposedly, finish off The Book.  In practice, that means about five or six more paragraphs in the introduction, and a few more bits of tweaking elsewhere, and checking and checking, and some more checking, and changing around a few words, and panicking, and holding my head in my hands, and all the stuff like writing Alt Text captions for the images ... in other words, two weeks (plus a few days more) when cooking would provide some very welcome time-consuming procrastination.  But since I don't really have that time, I am very very grateful when some excellent stir fry appears on the table ...

 

Moth is getting washed

This is not the most elegant of positions, but I promise you - Gramsci really was doing his best to groom Moth, starting with her left ear and moving downwards.  It might look a little bit like Graham Platner behavior, but I promise you, nothing untoward was happening.  He truly does want to bond with her, whatever her agonized expression might reveal about her views on the subject.

 

usually the first

This sunflower - or, more accurately, doubtless, seeds from this sunflower - is usually the first to bloom, year after year.  However, this year it was beaten to it by a competitor next door to us: a much shorter plant, to be sure, but undoubtedly the first.  Honestly, and as I noted yesterday, it's so dry that it's amazing anything is flowering at all ...

 

camouflage

We were up and out very early this morning, getting in a walk before it warmed up.  Half way down Monte Alto a rabbit shot in front of us - and it was immediately apparent why.  I like to think we may have saved its life: the coyote was a little more apprehensive about getting close to us, and the rabbit made its escape ...

I was relieved, though: there have been a lot of rabbits, and pack rats, around this year, but this is only the second coyote I've seen.  You can see how dry it is everywhere ...coyote-colored.

 

nearly a rainbow

If one felt meteorologically optimistic, it's beginning to feel a bit like the monsoon season: all the same, it rarely feels like it did a decade or so back, with the brilliant blue skies of the morning giving way to huge thunderclouds, a storm, and a cooler evening.  Now we get a quiet and sunny morning, and then cloud coverage building up, and if we're lucky, like this afternoon, ten minutes of rain.  And it's still warm, though it smells great outside.

Of course, I can only really see this in terms of my book ... like gleams of hope that I'll finish the revisions and tidying and and and on time, but with some dark clouds periodically impinging.  But I did some good bits of rewriting (and cutting) today ... onwards ...

 

deletion

Of course, Gramsci's adorable little murder mitten looks harmless enough here - but he tried to put it to work on the keyboard quite a few times.  He particularly likes stretching around the screen when I'm typing away ... or deleting away.  I had one of those days today that involved more excision than substitution, and that, in turn, meant getting rid of what I thought were, in themselves, good paragraphs that represented a good deal of research and thought... but did they actually fit my argument?  Thematically they were relevant, indeed - but the chapter, and indeed the book, has developed a sharper focus since they first made their appearance.  So I suspect that they'll stay out, not least because the book will be pressing up tightly against its word limit.  But cutting things away is never an easy thing to do ...

 

a metaphor, this 4th of July

On the next street, an American flag attached to the mailbox, decidedly inelegantly, by some strips of duct tape.  Or duck tape.  I've never known which ... and on checking, I find it was originally duck tape, invented during WWII to tape boxes tightly so that they can be carried safely through water.  Then it started to be called duct tape, and used - well, maybe used, on ducts.  It shouldn't be used on ducts, because the heat melts it, and it turns into a sticky mess - but there again, I don't suppose it should be used on ducks.  In any case ... the flimsy precarity seems about right for this particular 250th birthday.

 

bobble head

This is the inside of a Blanket Flower (gaillardia grandiflora), after it's bloomed - it has a fringe of yellowy-range petals before hand.  It's a member, roughly speaking, of the daisy family, and it's the state flower of Oklahoma - a fact that I've known for about five minutes.  I can't claim that I particularly like it (gardening here is a compromise: Alice likes yellow flowers - as well as others - my choices are always white and blue and pale pink and purple) - on the other hand, it is, as my father would have pointed out, Cheerful.  He did, mind you, call all yellow flowers daffodils, as a matter of course.

 

a relaxed attitude

This is what I had to contend with today, by way of example, or assistance, as I tried to move onwards with book revisions.  Their sense of energy, focus, commitment ... it's not infectious.

 

bzzzzzzzz

A very happy, very furry bee on one of the earliest sunflowers to come out this year (all on the very same plant!) - just down the road.

 

moonscape

It's very beautiful out there tonight: a bit of wind, a bit of drizzle coming back from town, but then this.  Admittedly this took several photographic tries and googling, and I did manage to take a couple of images with an absolutely clear, no-flare moon - but then nothing else is visible, either.  So this is a pretty spectacular way for June to exit.

 

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 ...

 

another mailbox (and other people's hollyhocks)

Another very local mailbox.  I can't imagine that the hand is waving two fingers while someone yells FIGHT ON, because when these relatively new neighbors moved in, their car number plates showed that they were from Texas.  But one never knows ... In any case, I think the fingers indicate the house number - 2 - and aren't intended to cause trigger responses in any passing Trojans.

This was a very quick walk before having a start-the-week breakfast at Harry's.  I'd hoped this would set me up for a hard day's work, but it would take more than that to super-charge me for re-punctuating footnotes and paying for images ...