Snow Day

     Yesterday and last night we got snow here at the house.  It's probably the most snow we've had at one time in the three winters we have been here.

     As the great mantra of the West goes..."We need the moisture."  and shot of beauty goes a long way,  too.

Day 7

Relaxing

Relaxing

Sometimes it's really nice to have a quiet mind-freeing past time. Gail likes to do jigsaw puzzles  and I like to knit.  Both have a wonderful quality,  they are easy to pick up and put down with minimal fuss. BTW.  I knitted the socks Gail is wearing.

Days 5 and 6

Tale of Two Plants

Tale of Two Plants.

Days 3 and 4 of picture a day for a year.

     In 2013 someone at Gail's work gave everyone a poinsettia for their office.  Naturally, she brought it home for the break.  If we thought about it at all, I both of us expected the plant  to die shortly after the holidays as every other poinsettia had in the past.  Well, it didn't and here it is 14 months later. It's looking a little peaked.  I think it might be root bound. But, maybe it is just worn out after producing five new blooms

     The second plant is a fig that I bought from the Fig Man at the farmer's market.  The poor thing had a rough first year.  I planted it according to the page long instructions, but it did not thrive.  In fact, we were pretty sure it was done for when by the middle of May it had not shown any sign of life.  While I was in Texas for Mother's Day, Gail yanked it out of the ground.  However, when she examined it, there was a tiny green sprout.  She wrapped it in wet paper towels and when I got home I planted it in a big pot and put it out on the patio where it would get lots of sun.  This autumn, I brought it in and put it in a western window.

As you can see, it's doing well.  

Despite the Fig Man's assurances that it would do well in the spot I described to him, I think it is now an indoor plant by winter and a patio plant in the summer.

   

The Spotted Towhee

This spotted towhee was feeding along after most of the other birds had finished.  This single bird has been at the feeder on and off all winter.  

Day 2

Project:  A picture a day for a year

February 22, 2015

About a week ago I got a new camera. I've been taking a lot of pictures since. With inspiration and encouragement from Debra Beck, an old UW friend, I've decided to work on the project of taking and posting on this blog a picture a day for a year.

To be realistic, I know I may not be able to post every day, but rules for myself are that I must take a picture a day...either with my Nikon or iPhone, then post as often as possible.

Here's my first effort, poor as it may be in illustrating what I wanted to show, canyon winds.
It's kind of hard to tell much from this picture, but the wind is really blowing the branches of this pine around.  I need to learn how to show the motion I want to capture without ending up with one big blur.

The canyon winds occur when a front crosses the area from the east or northeast.  The front  moves across the high plains and bumps up against the Sandia Mountains.  Looking for an easy  route through the mountains, the winds find Sedillo Canyon and pour down it.  Today we have had gusts to over 63 mph with sustained winds about 40 mph.  This puts all our bushes and trees in a frenzy of motion.  That's what I wanted to capture.  I hope by the end of this year, I'll be able to.

Tuna for Dinner

     Bit by bit I'm learning about life in the high desert of New Mexico.  One of the things I've learned this fall is how much dogs and coyotes like tunas.  No, not the kind that comes in a can, though they do like that, but the kind that grows on prickly pear cactus.  

The purplish growths are the seed pods of the cactus, called by some, tuna.  

One day last week the dogs and I were out walking on our usual path in the open space.  I started noticing purple poop on the trail.  On closer examination I saw that it was filled with seeds.  This answered a question:  Does anything eat the tuna?  Evidently, coyotes do.  Down the path we went, then the dogs started stopping and rooting around near prickly pear plants, something they have learned the hard way to avoid.  Root, root, root.  Chomp, chomp. Evidently, dogs like the well ripened tuna too.

Dream a Little Dream

I've wondered why some people remember dreams and others don't.  Articles on dreams suggest that you write down what you dreamed immediately when you wake up. It's hard to imagine a life where anyone would do that.  Most of us who launch out of bed do so in response to some urgent calling whether it's a crying baby, an insistent pet or a full bladder.  No time to say, "Hang on while I write in my dream journal."  For the rest getting up is such a struggle that adding a journal writing stop would probably mean they would  deem it another reason to fall back to sleep. 

Like most aging people, I've acquired many aches and pains I didn't have when younger.  Aches and pains which keep me awake or wake me during the night.  These nighttime twinges have taken the place of the nocturnal ruminations of my working and parenting lives when I worried about situations at work or what might happen to my children. There have always been things that bubble to the surface demanding attention when everything else shut down for the night. 

The result of these and other interruptions was that I didn't sleep very soundly.  I didn't spend much time in the land of REM sleep.  I know I had dreams, sometimes bits and pieces stayed with me, but not the way some other people seem to remember their dreams, vividly and in detail.

That changed a couple of months ago when my trochanter brusitis got so bad that I would spend most nights searching for a comfortable position which would allow me to fall asleep.

After a couple of weeks of this, I starting taking a couple of Aleve before I went to bed.

Then I began to sleep, and I began to dream.  My dreams were vivid, odd, and wonder of wonders, I could remember what seemed like big chunks of them.  

In the way of dreams there were strange happenings and juxtapositions with the wrong things and people in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But, I remembered them.  I could parse them.

Now I wonder if this change is due to better sleep, or the effects of yet another drug in my system.