One Week til Alaska

We're in countdown mode. We're getting last minute stuff done in preparation for a month's absence from our little New Mexican hacienda. Yesterday we picked and washed lettuce, kale, pak choy and arugula; then bagged it up and took it to the natural food store. A friend of our neighbor's is house sitting for us, but doesn't arrive until a few hours after we leave, so I hope she can follow our watering instructions and all our tomato's, peppers, flowers etc survive until our return.

This afternoon we drove into the desert to see what was blooming. Saw lots of yellow prickly pear blossoms, but all in places where it was impossible to pull over and take a picture. The south-facing slopes going through the hills east of town warm up first, thus bloom earlier than out on the flat. Unfortunately, that's the area with twisty roads with no shoulders.

(I have no idea why the above is underlined...I tried to remove the line, but no luck!)
In case you missed all the pictures of local flora & fauna, there's an album at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/SpringFlowers#slideshow/5465360070501828466

Had to share this picture. How western is this. We were on a dirt road through the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) and came across a couple of windmills. There were also a bunch of buffalo and lots of cattle. The Jornada is the route the Spanish took north from Mexico. It's part of the Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Instead of following the Rio Grande, where local pueblos and rough terrain made travel by oxcart hazardous, they crossed this barren, dry and pretty inhospitable waste... no water for days, not much forage, and temperatures in the triple digits. The car thermometer measured 104 this afternoon, but a steady wind and humidity under 10% made it quite comfortable.
At the end of the pavement, about half an hour east of town, Spaceport America is due to be finished next summer. They had an educational launch last week, taking experiments designed by area high school and college students into space. The plan is to privatize spaceflight, send very rich tourists into space, launch satellites and generally promise enormous benefits to the local economy. This is as close as you can get without running over a security guard. Right next door is the Cutter Cattle Company, which is leasing out a bunch of land for a solar/wind hydrogen generation facility. Again, lots of talk, but I'll wait until I can buy a can of hydrogen to blow up my blimp before I believe it. Guess that's all the news that fits today. Stay tuned for Alaska and new grand baby pics.