Summer Fade

August 22, 2021

Hello from where the plains slam into the southern Rockies,

Well, all the signs are there, summer is slowly fading away. You can see it as surely as I can see my feet beneath me. Suddenly, I can't wait to do the horses until 8pm anymore unless I want to be doing it in the dark. And while the temperature hasn't dropped below 50F at night, it rarely stays above 60F anymore. That being said, it looks like 40Fs at night are just a week or two away! A fair amount of leaves on the few deciduous trees around here have yellowed and dropped off. The coyotes have grown boisterous and brazen...even following Kim and Erin one morning when they were out walking until Cheyenne chased them off. They seem to congregate around the pond every morning around 5am and cause a holy racket...yipping, barking and howling their lungs out. After a wet June the monsoon seemed to just peter out and we haven't gotten any worse with our drought conditions, although we haven't gotten any better, either. The horses are starting to come around a little more looking for hay and forage as all the summer grasses have shriveled up to much smaller versions of their former selves. Even the flies and mosquitos have slowly abated and aren't mobbing all the animals like they had been. Little by little, summer is on its way out the door in these parts.

A little closer to home, literally our home, the casita that sits next to Kim's house, we just got three new outdoor kittens on Sunday and Erin has been busy playing the role of Mother Goose. When we got here back at Christmastime, there were four outdoor cats here on the ranch. After the unfortunate episode with the litter of kittens back in May, the mother ran off and hasn't been seen since. A little while later, the one unmatched male that was left kept coming in less and less to the cat food dish over the course of a month or so until he quit coming in completely. We still have Big R and Bootsie, but now we've swelled the ranks with these three new kittens from a neighboring ranch close by. They're about nine weeks old and so far we've come up with this for their names: Quay(the lone male, named for a PA senator that advocated for New Mexican statehood back in the late 1800s and had a town and county here named for him because of that); Zia(one of the girls and named for both the tribe whose Pueblo is northwest of Santa Fe and their famous symbol that adorns the state flag); and for the other girl we're down to either Zarca/Sarca(light blue) or Silver. Erin has them in a dog crate right outside our side door and as of their third day here she's been regularly letting them out for a few hours to explore around the house before she calls them back in before dark with canned food. Usually one of them needs rescued from the top of the big juniper by their crate or at the top of the coyote fencing that makes up the fence for Kim's backyard, but otherwise they're sticking around and not getting into too much trouble. Our dogs have been going crazy watching them and worrying about them, spending literally hours at the screen door staring a hole through it to see what those little buggers are doing!

Now, for the best part, some more pictures for your perusal. First, an image that I created with a shot that I took of the mesa that came out blurry. Next, a series of three shots with Erin, the dogs and the kittens: first, the dogs keeping abreast of the latest developments; then Erin working her magic with them; and lastly them crashing after gorging their furry, little bellies. Then, a series of six shots from a trip to the pond two days ago: to start with Ela and Willow busy froggin'; next Willow working the shoreline; then two shots of Ela zeroing in on her quarry; then a shot of Rui in the cattails; and finally Willow bursting up over the bank as Ela keeps her nose to the ground and Rui's still down below. I almost lost the roof over my head when I tried washing them up in the bathtub, but that's a story for another day! Next, a lightning strike hitting the hills north of us while I was out feeding the horses...it was hitting all around us and I snapped continuously for a minute or two and was lucky enough to catch a bolt before I got myself back inside! Then, a shot of the mesa through wooden framing at the jobsite while I was working the other morning...I can't stop staring at it now that I've climbed to the top! I can't wait to climb it again, it's literally all that I think about! And, finally, four landscape shots for your enjoyment: first two different colorful sunsets; then a shot of the opposing side of the sky coloring up at the time of sunset; and then a nice, crisp shot of the mesa with all of its angles and curves...amazing!

Be good!