Field of Flowers

October 16, 2022

Howdy folks,

Well, we spent the whole week nursing a sick cat back to life. After running her down to the emergency veterinary hospital in Albuquerque Sunday night, spending a total of only six hours away from home, Zia returned and barely moved for the first few days. She kept hacking up what could only be described as snot, really sounding horrible, and slowly crawling around to different spots on the floor. After a day or two she seemed to be heading in the right direction, much more into eating tuna and even beginning to start to jump up on different things around the house. Then, after another day or two, she was even beginning to vocalize again. Now, think Siamese when I'm talking about her meowing, because nothing else could even come close to being comparable. We literally didn't hear a peep out of her for almost a whole week and she just sat around like she was in a stupor. By the weekend, she was much more back to normal and coming to visit us on the couch, although the whole ordeal(and being pregnant) has really changed her and she has even given up sneaking up on Jackie and scaring the crap out of her...much will be able to be gauged on whether or not that particular habit comes back. She seems very content, though, and you really can't even hear her breathing anymore...she was sounding like Darth Vader for a while! Otherwise, the days and nights keep getting cooler, with our 70s/40s split starting to include just as many 60s/30s days during the week. Erin even saw a snowcapped peak on her way to town on Friday and was very excited by it. We had rain at the beginning of the week, and then again a bunch at the end of the week, but it hasn't been cold enough yet to snow. One of the good things about the drop in temperature is that I can more freely run the dogs again. I'm pretty sure that we're not going to run into any more rattlesnakes for the near future, so, short of a huge spike in temperature, we're walking near and far. Well, by we I mean me, Ela & Willow. Rui starts out with us(sometimes) and will maybe do a loop around the new house with us, or maybe only even just to the garden, and then he turns back and starts rooting around in the brush seeing if there is anything for him to munch on. Later on, when we're all piled onto the couch, we can tell if he found much of anything good to eat, because if he did, he'll quickly start clearing the room with his ranch farts. And by ranch fart I mean that he might have eaten anything on his walk from discarded food at the jobsite, to cat poop, to horse poop, to sour alfalfa forage...let's just say that his intestinal flora must be very diverse, indeed!

And, with the drop in temperature, Erin has made it back into the garden. Gone are the mosquitos and, with more dry days than not, it hasn't been as much of a hassle to sneak through all of the overgrown flowers in the garden. Bed by bed, she cut all the flowers down and then stripped the beds of any vegetables that were left growing. Much to her surprise, there was much to be harvested, including: dry beans; snap beans; potatoes; tomatoes(she really didn't think that her shady garden had produced any!); onions; cucumbers; & bags full of all the cut flower heads, for their seeds. Now, she has a huge stash of four kinds of flower seeds heading into next year: calendula; zinnias; marigolds; and cosmos. While Rui pretty quickly makes his way back to our front stoop and starts barking to be let back in, when Erin is doing this in the garden, he patrols the edges of it, looking for any discarded beans or other treasures. Also, all the outside cats fan out across the hillside and take turns learning a little more about human behavior, as they watch Erin digging, pulling, panting and scratching around in the garden, perhaps wondering to themselves if she has made the world's biggest litter box, a thing that their neighbors at our house have probably told them about. We finally got all of our New Mexico drivers' licenses and car registrations in order, discovering what our proper EMS address was because of the huge fire a few months ago. Once we went back in with the right physical address that San Miguel County could verify, all the pieces fell together and we're official! Now, we can progress in some other directions, such as hunting licenses, with us being locals. Also, during the pandemic, for instance, you couldn't visit a state park out here without being a New Mexico resident, so this is a helpful step. We found it slightly humorous that, in the land of manyana, things would take so long to work themselves out, but somehow that only seemed the natural way for it all to happen.

And, now it's time for another batch of pictures from out here on the ranch. First up, an artistic piece that I made of Erin out in her happy place. Next, Jackie letting us know that Zia is invading her space in the bathroom...her eyes say it all! Then, some of the many ants that we have all over the place out here...I just read that there is something like 27,000,000 ants for every person on the planet. Think about that. Next, one of the Robins that have turned up here lately, taking advantage of the fact that I let the water trough overflow a little. Then, two shots of Ela & Willow out working the field with me before dark, trying to see if we could stumble across the scent of anything. Next, Rui doing what he does best, clowning around by the garden and close to the house, instead of out covering the countryside with us. Then, four shots of Erin out in her garden this week: first, the forest of flowers standing on the one end; then, two shots of Erin, midway through her bed cleanings, against the mass of flowers in the back; then, finally, some of the many vegetables that she uncovered, that were growing in her magic garden, under the protective shade of all the flowers. Next, my tools on one of the stone window sills at work, as I took a break from installing plugs. Then, four landscape shots of this wonderful ranch that we're on in the light of this wonderful time of year: first, a sea of grass beneath the mesa; then, two shots of one of our standing stones here, with the setting sun caught behind it in the crook of the mesa; then, a final, very Western scene of the high desert sun setting behind the mesa, with yucca, grasses and juniper everywhere that you look!

See you soon.