Renewed Energy

March 5, 2023

Hello again,

Well, suddenly another week has come and gone and I'm sitting at the keyboard wondering what to write about and struggling to remember all the things that happened this week.  Once I seize upon something, like a cork pulled out of a bottle, the words and sentences come easily as I continue to remember things, one thing triggering another, over and over.  My initial thought is of Erin finally setting up a spot to start her seeds in the upstairs of our house.  Keeping in mind the 16 cats that we have in our casita currently and their ridiculous antics, she came up with the perfect tent to house one of her old greenhouse lights and a small fan, so that she can get things going without our little hellions rooting through everything.  It is kind of tall and goes right up to the ceiling of our pitched roof, so we're a little worried that they're going to try and turn it into their own personal climbing wall.  Still, a well-secured rope should do the trick, once we find the proper thing to tether the tent to.  Initially, she has begun with the following seeds as her first round of starts: tomatoes; hot peppers; sweet peppers; tomatillos; and ground cherries.  We got all of the mulch spread the week before and the garden looks fantastic again.  We even repurposed an old, curved piece of plexiglass from the jobsite that was a mock-up for the main shower and plopped it down right on top of one of the raised beds...and it fit perfectly!  It has sat in the grass by our little garden shed for the better part of a year because we figured that it was too big to fit over one bed and that it would need to be cut down; or, we thought that we'd have to specially build something out of bricks and 2X4s or 4X4s to make it work.  Weren't we surprised when we finally carried it over to see how much longer than the bed it was and saw instead that it was a perfect match.  Now, after a little bit of digging around through all of the leftover lumber and parts for the new house up in our Boneyard, we're pretty sure that we've found the perfect way to seal off the two ends of our new cold frame, which are currently still open.  The temperatures keep drifting upwards and we've seen our first flock of robins.  We're currently in a nearly three week stretch of warmer than average weather and I'm even seeing little patches of grass popping up here and there, ever so stealthily.  It's not hard to get overheated out here when the afternoons drift up into the 50s and 60s, because of the high elevation and the typically crystal-clear, blue, sunny skies.  So, the windows and doors have been open at home a lot, but I'm sure we'll have to pay for it soon enough with a late cold snap!

A sense of spring fever has taken over the two of us and we've been busy rummaging around through things from storage, cleaning up neglected areas  inside and finally getting around to tackling some projects that have been stalled out for some time now.  The other night I pulled my car down in front of the house and gave my trunk a good cleaning out.  I have had it nice and full of about every kind of construction tool that you could think of and it was really weighting my car down.  Now that it's clear that I'm not going to be commuting to Santa Fe or Las Vegas any time soon for construction(or any other kind of job), I felt that I should give it a good once-over.  I tend to get roughly 24 miles per gallon no matter what I do, and have even nudged it up to 27+ back when I was working in Santa Fe regularly.  I really feel that getting all of that junk in the trunk out of there might let me finally crack the 30mpg barrier!  Plus, Erin is even handier than I am and I've been hogging most of our tools ever since I started working construction.  We have her grandfather's huge tool chest in storage that is chest-high and on wheels, but really don't have anywhere to put it right now and, like a lot of our other pieces, we're waiting until we move next-door later this year to finally bring those things out here.  And, speaking of tools, Erin has begun to craft her soap molds and soon will be making her initial batch.  Again, we had enough wood and hardware lying around to supply everything for her, and now that I'm sharing our tools again and don't have them locked up in my trunk 100 yards from the house, she's really cutting loose!  For the ten years that we owned an apartment building, she really did every kind of repair and project and really became quite adept at it.  Now that we're seeing little sprigs of green here and there, it has also prompted us to begin in earnest our outdoor spring cleaning and to get everything caught up on trimming, weeding, mowing & mulching!

So, here is another batch of pictures for your enjoyment.  First, two shots from the hay barn early one morning when I awoke the barn cats.  Then, another two shots from the garden, showing how helpful the dogs can be when Erin's in there working.  Next, two shots of Freedom, Xena & Felipe from a very windy morning when they didn't want to eat out at the feeders.  Then, six shots from the jobsite over the last week: first, a custom-made cat door(with swinging doors!); then, some of the detailed cleanup that I'm doing, like removing the plaster that spilled over onto this wooden doorway; next, two wonderful shots of the work that the faux painter did to make these two circular WiFi routers blend into the ceiling; and, lastly, two shots of the brass that I've been grinding down and polishing for a railing in the main shower.  Next up, two shots of some of the gorgeous colors that sneak up on us out here, usually just before dark!   Then, an enormous yucca plant(tree!) that sits out in front of Pecos River Station, which is very close to the ranch.  And, lastly, a late winter shot showing the dead grasses and plants still standing from last year against the silhouette of the sun setting over the mesa.

See you soon.