Turtleback Hike

This is Turtleback Mountain as seen from our front porch. Yesterday, I went on a hike with a couple of friends around the back side of the mountain.

Lloyd and Mark were my hiking companions. We parked on the east side of the Rio Grande and took a ridge trail up the northern end of the mountain beside some deep canyons filled with amazing jumbles of rock. The Rio Grande is in a rift valley with the native volcanic rock thousands of feet deep. The valley is filled with sediment from millions of years of erosion to the north.

Here's the summit from our takeoff point.

We hiked up a well trodden trail to the Crystal Cave. Not much crystal but some interesting quartz in the ceiling (too dark to photograph.) It was in the 80's and the sun was intense, but there was a nice breeze to keep us from frying.

Here's a shot from the backside of the mountain looking east toward the Jornada del Muerto, (Journey of Death) part of the Camino Real that extended from Santa Fe south to Mexico City. Lloyd remarked on the vast expanse, but I thought it was only half vast. To see vast, we would have had to have reached the summit, something we didn't quite have the legs for yesterday...maybe with an earlier start in the cool of the morning.

Here's Mark on the way back down with the Rio Grande and Truth or Consequences below us.

COMPOST!

Our first batch of compost, now screened and bagged. I got some chicken manure from a neighbor and brought home bags of cow manure from the desert and the piles are producing!







I've got 4 big bags of compost now, ready to be worked into beds and two more bins of compost working.
The wind has been fierce the past few days so I made a small shadecloth fence to protect some tender jasmine and honeysuckle vines we just planted at the corner of the porch.

We had lettuce, pak choy and broccoli rab out of the greenhouse the other day.

Bea & Fox et al come for a visit

Bea and Fox came for a visit in February. (Oh yeah, they brought their parents too) Unfortunately, Annie and I got a bad case of the flu a few days after they arrived and missed great chunks of their visit. The cold weather we had in late January - early February departed, so they had nice weather while here. Bea even tried out the wading pool.

Our yard is full of goatheads, little seed pods with very sharp spikes all over, so Bea had to be very careful around the pool. Fox enjoyed splashing around on the porch ..

We haven't had a frost for about a week now, although it's possible for temps to get down to freezing at night into April. We have stuff greening up, however, and bushes, shrubs and trees are beginning to leaf out. Our newly planted plumb tree has lots of buds, as do several unidentified bushes in the back yard. I finally got a back deck built and put up a pully clothes line by the back door so Annie can finally hang out the wash, something she has missed for the past few months.

Our greenhouse is holding up to the spring winds and we have lettuce, pak choy, beets and chard that are all doing famously. Some we'll leave inside and some we'll transplant outside soon. We bought a fan palm and planted it out front last week. Always wanted a palm tree in my yard, now I've got one. Took a drive into the desert yesterday and got several bags of cow manure. (It's just laying around waiting for someone to pick it up, kind of like the coal on Bishop's Beach) Ive been soaking it to make manure tea for the garden and adding it to our compost. I've got a couple of great compost bins going that are really heating up and we should have finished compost in a month.

Even though we haven't had a drop of rain since last September, there are little shoots of grass coming up in the yard and our neighbor's apricot tree is in bloom. And it's not even St. Paddy's day yet!

More pics of Gray Street

Here is a link to a bunch more photos of our remodeling project.

http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/523GrayStreet#

We Have Fallen Down on the Job!!!

Good Lord--has it really been four months since we've made an entry? What, you may ask, have we been doing? Well, we drove to Maine in September, with stops in Ohio (to see Oberlin College again after 40 years), Maryland (to see Lucas and family), Virginia Beach (to see Jenny and family), Memphis (to see good friend Holly after 30 years). On the way home, a friend offered to sell us a home she'd just purchased, so since the end of October we've been moving, cleaning, and remodeling. Above is what our manufactured home looked like the day we moved in--you cant see the color, but it is grey with lime-green faux shutters. The yard used to have a huge organic garden on it, but several year's of neglect has turned it into a breeding ground for tumbleweed and goatheads (vegetable caltrops that stick in your bare feet at night on the way to the bathroom and make you swear something terrible and wake your spouse...). To the left is what it looked like after some paint and shutters. There will be pics coming of the new entry and porch, but you'll have to wait a few days for that. Here's a pic of the living room wall, complete with carpet and mirrors. Oh yuck... But David worked like a dog, and me, too and we painted walls and cabinets, David laid tile and bamboo flooring and so now it doesn't look so terrible anymore. We're happy, and paying $300 a month--will eventually own the place in a year or so. Amazing that we would ever own anything ever again, but once again Grace has found us. We're the luckiest people we know!!!

Mid-August Garden

Here are a few more garden pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/AugustGarden#slideshow/5509121440239505746

Time for another update

The Red Sox just lost in the bottom of the 9th to Toronto. What's up with those guys? We watch most of the Sox games on streaming video from MLB.TV on our computer. Hooray for technology.... when it works.

Summer is here with a vengence with temperatures in the triple digits. Our swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) was acting up so I bought all kinds of parts to repair it. Unfortunately, they no longer make that model and I couldn't replace the blower fan. The shaft was so corroded I destroyed the fan getting it apart. I did manage to gump together the fan temporarily, but it's slightly out of balance and vibrates so much we can feel it in the house. Shaving is a challenge as the bathroom mirror trembles when the cooler is on. So, yesterday we made a trip to Las Cruces for sax reeds, guitar strings, and a new cooler. Here it sits in the carport. I think I'll wait for the cool of the evening to take the old one down and install this one early tomorrow.

I've been having too much fun making band related stuff. Here's a keyboard stand I just finished for Annie. It comes apart for transport into four flat pieces of 3/8" plywood. I painted the logo to hang on the front. I also made sax and guitar stands.
We're playing several Saturday Nights a month at the Turtleback Oasis, a local Natural Food Store. They pay us in coupons for free eats at their deli. Our friend Tracy cooks there and the pies and pastries are wonderful. On Sunday's we play at the Lee Belle Johnson Senior Recreation Center (she was a "Cowgirl Poet" who passed away a few months ago). The crowds have been small, to say the least, but maybe they'll pick up as word gets out. Those who do show up seem to enjoy our music.

Our gardens continue to thrive. We've been eating lots of zuccini, along with chard and beet greens. Some of the chile peppers are getting ready to pick but the tomatos seem to be waiting for cooler weather to really set on. Lots of flowers, but not many tomatos yet. Last year they peaked in early October. We've got about a dozen various melon plants that volunteered from our compost pile. Here's a small watermelon, but we've also got cantelope and several unidentified melons of equal size.

A few weeks ago we found a bunch of bamboo beside the road. There is municipal trash pickup here and folks leave their yard litter beside the road to be hauled away. I couldn't see this stuff going into the landfill so salvaged a couple of vanloads. It makes great trellises and we've stuck a bunch in the fence for the birds to perch on. The finches, sparrows and assorted doves come to be fed every day and some days there must be 75 birds at once sitting around our yard waiting for a chance at the feeder. (that's the empty house next door) I've got several projects in mind and will post some photos at a later date. I have more garden pictures, and if I get ambitious I'll put them in a Picassa album and post a link here.

A trip to City of Rocks State Park

Our friend Kathy Stingley visited from AK for a couple of days and we took a trip the the City of Rocks a couple of hours southwest of us. What a magic place. She also helped serve refreshments at a Senior Dance the Turtleback Trio (Annie, Brian and I) played for Sunday evening. She's on her way back to Homer and here are some photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/CityOfRock#slideshow/5496078853840197442

Some pictures from our camping trip

Click on the link for more.

http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/GilaCampingTrip#slideshow/5490570116271585826

Cactus in the Alley

We found these spineless prickly pear cactus in the ally next to a dumpster earlier this spring. Someone had been trimming and were throwing out these cuttings. We just stuck them in the sandy gravel outside our fence and "Voila!"


When we returned from Alaska earlier this month, we notices a few bumps on the paddles, and now they're flowering.






The flowers smell a little like watermellon, according to Annie. It's hard to believe something as rubbery, tough, and dead-looking can produce such a beautiful flower, but here's the proof.











Our bird-seeded sunflowers continue to bloom and we're seeing a few more ripe tomatoes each day. Last night we had chard from the garden and today we're having store bought corn on the cob for breakfast. Coughed up $19.95 the other night to listen to the Red Sox games streamed from WEEI in Boston. Great to sit outside in the cool of the evening and watch the birds while listening to the Sox stumble along. Last night they beat the Giants despite yet another addition to the disabled list.
We played music at the Farmer's Market yesterday morning for tips and handed out a few business cards. Might get a few actual paying jobs out of the exposure. We're aiming at pushing the envelope so far toward the square that we're actually hip. Lots of Old Standards and Western Swing. The locals seemed to enjoy it so I guess we'll be doing it again.

It Hatched

We returned from shopping this morning to find that our swallowtail chrysalis had hatched. The caterpillar moved from the parsley, where it had been feeding, to the blue sage plant next to it. Nine days later, voila!

You can see the discarded chrysalis in the picture below. We've planted lots more parsley, so hopefully the next crop of caterpillars will have lots to eat.

Avian Ant Destroyers

We went for a walk the other day and saw a curved bill thrasher sitting in a cholla cactus. I think this might be the one that visits our yard and scoops up ants.












Closer inspection revealed a nest with two babies. I don't see how the adults can navigate onto the nest without impaling themselves on the cholla spines.

OTHER AVIAN NEWS
Here's a young white-winged dove we found in the yard. Don't know if he fell out of the nest or was pushed out because (s)he's sickly. He can barely walk-shuffle along, so we kept him in a box over night and put him out under the bird feeder this morning in hopes an adult might try to feed him. We'll keep you posted.

Caterpillars have eaten our parsley

But what the hey? they are making beautiful chrysalises (chrysalae?). Summer is definitely here, no matter what the calendar says, but our swamp cooler is keeping the house a comfortable 76 degrees and we've been spending an hour a day in the municipal swimming pool a half a block away. We're watering every day and have already eaten a few tomatoes out of the garden.








This is a poinciana, also known as a bird of paradise bush. A bird dropped a seed in the garden and we didn't have the heart to pull it out. They grow everywhere around here, and it's taking up room that could be growing tomatoes, but, as with the caterpillars, we hate to get rid of something that beautiful, just to make room for more food.














Another volunteer from our bird feeder, this sunflower has over 20 flower heads on it. We've got sunflowers all over the yard now. They're very cheery and the birds will thank us later.


We sit out on the porch in the evening and watch the finches, sparrows. doves and red winged blackbirds at the feeder. We also have a thrasher that visits the yard to gobble ants. As the sun sets, nighthawks and bats come out and scoop up whatever flying insects are around.









I've been slowly putting down landscaping cloth under the rock borders of the gardens in order to keep the weeds down. Eventually I'll put pea gravel down in the yard. Having a hard-scaped yard makes sense in this heat... NO MOWING... no watering the lawn... and no goatheads (a noxious weed that has a thorny fruit that looks like a caltrop (you can look it up) and sticks in your feet.

We arrived in T or C last year at the end of June and didn't get anything planted until sometime in July. We still had plenty of tomatoes and peppers, along with lots of flowers. With the jumpstart we got this year, I can't wait to see what the yard looks like by the end of summer.

Back in the Garden

We returned from Alaska to find a few extra weeds, but mostly our house-sitter did a great job watering. The cauliflower is just starting to head up, there are flowers on the zuccini and there are volunteer tomatoes, melons and sunflowers everywhere. The sunflowers came up from the bird seed and some of them are amazing. This one must have 20 flowerheads. The peas didn't survive the heat, but the tomatoes are flourishing. We spent yesterday in the desert gathering dried yucca stalks to make more trellises for them to climb on. (The ladder leaning on the porch is made of dry yucca tied together with wire.

Here's a picture of our sacraficial parsley. We came home to find it covered with caterpillars. They're black swallowtails and we're waiting for them to form their crysalis cases. They've eaten all the top leaves of the parsley but haven't touched anything else. It's the second year for the parsley, and we don't need the whole plant anyway, so we're sharing with these beautiful creatures.

More baby pics

There are more pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/FoxwellGeorgeStrobel#slideshow/5481597211605484178