The Final Push

August 13, 2023

Howdy folks,

Our heat wave finally broke...more or less.  We only hit 90 once this past week and actually dipped down into the 50s about half of the nights.  It's stayed at 60 or above at night for the last three weeks, so we'll take the dip in temps.  We've already started to feel chilly in the early morning, but something has definitely switched and you can tell that fall is not too far off!  The wind has returned and has been whipping around a bit, much more than usual in the summer, and we've had multiple storms, too.  Erin keeps processing food from the garden and is slowly starting to transfer her pantry from our little casita next-door to the boss's old house.  There is actually one little room that is solely for pantry items and Erin is just tickled pink to have somewhere that she can seal all of her goodies up away from the animals.  Almost everything in our casita is open-shelving, except for a few cupboards.  Now, everything will have its own drawer or lazy Susan to live in once we move and we're barely able to contain ourselves with the thought of our impending move.  Our washer and dryer that we have now are great and new...but ridiculously loud in this little, one-room house.  Next-door there is a laundry room all on its own with its own door!  We'll have a porch on two sides of the house to hang out on, plus some kind of patio or courtyard on three different sides!  One even has the remnants of the oldest part of the house, with nothing more than a few walls still standing, but with an intact kiva fireplace still in one corner.  We can't wait to sit around that on a cold winter night, huddling close to the flames as we look straight up at the darkest night sky you've ever seen!  We even bumped up our WiFi for the new house and are trying to figure out how to get some of our bigger pieces here from storage.  Most will easily fit in the ranch pickup, but I do have a piano that might require the tractor.  I already envision a two-car parade, with Erin following behind me in her car with her four-ways on, as I putter down the road with a huge piano strapped to the forks!  Storage is behind Pecos River Station, known locally as the Campground, a scant 2.5 miles away, so, moving all of our stuff over from there shouldn't take too long.  Apparently, no one has much in the line of storage units available anywhere these days, so we might just hold on to these two primo storage units for the rest of our lives...we've already played around at making one of them my garage, Erin's soapmaking center, a future building supplies depot, or one of many other ideas to give us a getaway nearby so we can get off the ranch once in a while.

We are keeping up with our weekly dips in the local Montezuma Hot Springs and we always meet the most interesting people.  The other day was a gentleman from Houston into sustainable farming who moved two miles away from the springs to be able to use them regularly and to be closer to nature.  Then, we met the owner of Albuquerque's indoor soccer team, the New Mexico Runners, and his family on a trip back to the springs for the first time in 25 years.  Our typical spot is out in the sun without much tree cover, but we've discovered a new one that we think was just recently built that is tucked away in a grove of cottonwood trees and is just perfect.  Now, we find ourselves hanging around for almost two hours some weekends, since we're not getting burnt to a crisp out in the open.  We're still mainly going on Saturdays at a time when you almost have the whole place to yourself, but once in a while we go on Sunday mornings and enjoy that, too, as we've now gotten to know most of the regulars that come on Sunday mornings.  Pretty soon, there's upwards of a dozen people hanging out in and around three different pools, with conversations ranging from the deeply philosophical and spiritual to the latest gossip and dirt from town about who did what to whom, when, where and why.  We also meet people from a little further out of town, like us, who have to drive a half-hour or more to get to the Hot Springs and learn from them some of the great spots in the villages of the area that we haven't made it to yet.  Usually, we act upon such things, and next thing that you know we're an hour away in the greatest little cafe that you've never heard of, soaking up a different view of the Rockies or the plains that we haven't seen yet, before then hitting some local hiking trail or swimming hole that only the locals know about.  Even though they're a little outside of Las Vegas, the Montezuma Hot Springs are truly the beating heart of the town and area!

Now, another batch of pictures for everyone's enjoyment!  First up, the boss's cat, Forest, hanging out in his very own Kitty Tube just outside the kitchen door.  Then, Willow soaking up some sun on the couch as we wait for the day to finally cool off.  Next, five shots from around our soon-to-be house showing all the scaffolding set up, ready for stuccoing.  Then, five shots of the horses: four of Blossom rolling around in the dirt with Starvation Peak in the distance; and, Xena, Annie & Hidalgo watching to see what all of the commotion was all about.  Next, tent caterpillar control...previously, we would burn the nests out of the trees, but that just seemed to torch the tent, leaving all the caterpillars to drop to the ground and crawl back to the tree.  So, now, I cut the nests out and torch them in the burn barrel.  One and done, no survivors!  Then, two shots of the little patch of sod that I put in a couple of months ago with the sprinklers cascading down over them.  And, finally, our little fleet of German cars...3.0 liter diesels, one and all, and all 25mpg and up!

See you soon.