Gettin' cooler

I think maybe it's time to switch the system from "cool" to "warm!" Yesterday was an overcast day (rare, here) and it was kind of chilly.

We got to the gem and mineral show in Silver City ... lotsa rocks, lotsa rockhounds. Interesting, though.

I've reached the point where I put on my eyes and ears in the morning and take them off at night. The hearing aids are starting to buzz and beep, so I've sent them off for maintenance. And the glasses I got a few months ago don't fit right, so I've scheduled a new appointment in Las Cruces to get that fixed. Comes with getting old, I guess.

While we were in Deming to find an audiologist, we went by the Mountain View Cemetery there to photograph a couple of headstones. What interested me most was the series of little concrete plaques with "Desconocido" (Unknown or Stranger) inscribed on them. Not new, either. It appears they were burials that were relocated from an old cemetery in another part of town, ones that no longer had legible markers and, apparently, no records of who they were.

We were part of a VIP tour of Fort Bayard ... gave us a chance to see how much deterioration has occurred just since we started photographing the buildings last November. Sad! There's a big celebration this coming weekend - Fort Bayard Days - which promises to have kids' events, Buffalo Soldiers and other living history enactors. Should be interesting and fun to photograph.

And sometimes the most interesting living things downtown on Farmers Market day is a dog with beautiful eyes!

This weekend was one of the two big musical events for Silver City: Pickamania! Mainly bluegrass, some old (musicians and songs), some young (musicians and songs) and two beautiful afternoons of free music in Gough Park. How pleasant!

Two musical instruments were raffled and the picture is of the handcrafted mandolin, being held by Faye McCalmont, executive director of the Mimbres Region Arts Council. That's the organization that puts together the Blues Festival and Pickamania! and a dozen or more other, smaller events around the area and I can't heap enough praise on them! MRAC has been a key part of all the community development projects we can see that have taken place in the last 20 years or so ... art, music, public sculpture, school programs, youth-in-art programs ... you name it, they've done it (or are about to!). Wonderful group and they mobilize SO many volunteers to make things happen. tv

September Morn

Dawn is just striking the hillside behind the house ... the birds are starting to come to the pool for a drink, then preening themselves, doing their morning wake-up activities.

And I'm realizing it's been a while since we checked in! One of the big days for us was a trip to Kingston and Hillsboro, on the east side of the Black Range and west of Truth or Consequences.

Someone had asked us to take pictures and measurements of the Percha Bank in Kingston, so it made a nice day trip (he's doing a scale model of the facade). While there, the owner came out and we got to visit with him and he took us inside. He said Kingston now has "20-odd residents, mostly odd," but it once was a city of 7,000, before the silver crash in the 1890s. The painting shows the size of the town in its glory. The vault was put in place, a little shelter was built around it, and then the bank was built around the vault and its housing!

There really isn't much to Kingston today; this is one of the main sidestreets! Virtue Street, which is on the other side of the main drag, does have paving for a block or two ... there used to be a bordello at the end of it.

Down in Hillsboro, we enjoyed the specials at the Barbershop Cafe (open three days a week in what appears to have been a saloon).

Our explorations led us to the windswept cemetery above Hillsboro, where I was deeply moved by the handprints and the wrench in this monument to "Dad."

There was also a monument to a Medal of Honor holder, a Buffalo Soldier from Iowa who went on to be a local resident and, allegedly, a member of a local outlaw gang. He had an interesting 60 years!

We visited again the old jail and courthouse, probably the most photographed buildings in Hillsboro.

On the way back, we also visited the cemetery above Kingston, where another soldier who was awarded a Medal of Honor in the Indian Wars is buried; this one was born in Ireland. This cemetery is sprawling under the trees and pretty much untended.

Back in Silver City, we got down to the Fiesta held by the Catholic Church (lots of activities for kids, including this roping bale).

It's chili roasting time and we've taken the plunge and gotten into it. This roaster was outside the food co-op. We've processed some fresh-roasted chilies and tried drying some ... not sure how that's going to work out!

Finally, we had a good time downtown last night at the First Friday event, was a tasting tour of 15 eateries. We made it to 11 and enjoyed all of them. Two we had never been to before and two we've only been to once before, so the goal of getting people to visit the downtown stores was accomplished with us. There was a good group playing music at the side of one of the stores and everybody was moving to the beat! tv

It's Mid-August already ...

And the days just roll by!

We were commenting yesterday that the heat of summer is past and it really hasn't been bad. We had maybe six weeks of "hot" weather, with the daytime temperatures reaching the mid-90s, rarely hitting 100. In the evenings, it always cools down as the cool air flows down from the Continental Divide a few miles north of us. Now it's mid-80s during the day and it was 66 when I got up this morning. The "monsoons" (daily afternoon/evening showers) were late in arriving this year but once they started, everything greened up and cooled off. Very comfortable!

We have a long course of wound care ahead of us, but it's clear that the infection is gone and the dressing changes are only once a day now. Beth, the home health nurse, takes care of the dressing twice a week and her reports are consistently positive. So, good news, but still taking one day at a time.

Even at that, we do enjoy taking part in the many activities around the area. I just loved that old Studebaker Avanti at a car show a few weeks ago!

Tom was involved in getting news out and setting up for the Gila Friends Meeting's annual Hiroshima Peace Day Remembrance in Gough Park in Silver City. About two dozen people showed up and the event got good coverage, reminding us that we are still in the nuclear age and even peacetime uses carry hazards.

Tom also took in part of the public meeting Rep. Stevan Pierce held in Silver City ... he got quite a bit of push-back on his Tea Party stands!

Life in the backyard continues to be enjoyable. This brown towhee seemed indignant that I was taking his picture during his bath. The thrashers are still around, but not trying a third batch of eggs. The deer still come through regularly; bucks are still in velvet.

We're members of the Grant County Art Guild and we agreed jointly to take on the PR function, press releases and Facebook. It's had its frustrations, but we're getting on top of it. Our group had it's regular meeting recently, followed by a presentation for the members and the public by local artist and WNMU adjunct professor Judith Meyer.

Little short trips to neighboring communities have been fun and visually stimulating. We went to a fiesta in Santa Clara, to the east, and then west one afternoon to the little town of Gila. Their farmers market is in this painted building, next to brightly painted wall with colored adornments. The landscapes are beautiful, especially with the afternoon clouds over them. The post in the picture of the low water crossing, graduated in feet of water depth, is a reminder of flash floods!

Yesterday we enjoyed the tour and 145th birthday celebration of Fort Bayard, as well as hearing our favorite musical group, Bayou Seco, sing the "Tickle Song" at the Silver City Farmers Market. Plus, there was another, bigger car show downtown!

And finally, a bluebird at rest in the place of rest, Fort Bayard National Cemetery. TV

It's August already!

Well, the monsoons are still bringing evening rains, thank goodness! The afternoon highs dip quickly, even when it's just overcast, and the evening temperatures go down to the low 70s or high 60s. Quite tolerable!

One of the joys that came with this house is a flowering tree, which I think is called a Bird of Paradise tree (Caesalpinina gilliesii). Even the smallest seedlings can support this gorgeous, complex bloom; this happens to be on a recumbent branch, so it looks like it's coming out of the grass.

The poorer news part (better covered in Sandy's blog: sfeutz.blogspot.com) is that Sandy's infection flared up again Wednesday a week ago. Temperature spiked, redness increased, etc. The doctor who did drained the abscess was on vacation. So, Sandy contacted Dr. Wasif at the Mayo, who did the partial mastectomy, and he said, "Come on down." We left early Thursday, Sandy was seen by Dr. Wasif shortly after noon, got an ultrasound (which showed widespread inflammation) and she was scheduled for surgery early Friday afternoon. Dr. Wasif basically reamed out the opening, clearing it of all dead tissue and leaving a cavity with fresh, raw surfaces so the healing can be uniform and unimpeded by dead tissue. The wound care problems is much bigger now, in terms of volume of cavity to care for, and will probably take longer, but the process is the same, the redness is gone, the fever is gone ... all signs are good!

Hence the pictures of the Mayo Clinic Hospital just off N. Scottsdale Road in North Phoenix, where Sandy lived on IV antibiotics from Friday afternoon till Monday morning. The facade of the building hides the really beautiful "Angel and Paul Harvey Atrium" ... the rest of the story. The view north to the mountains from the seventh floor ain't bad, either!

And what could be more glorious than to arrive on the morning of Sandy's discharge and be greeted by a profusion of big, beautiful cereus cactus blooms (which only last a few hours)? The grounds of the hospital are really beautiful, with flowers and succulents everywhere, palo verde trees shading the parking areas and volunteers driving electric carts to help you get between your parking space and the entrance to the hospital, which I greatly appreciated when it was aroung 110 degrees!

Yes, I have a thing for bugs in blooms!

So, we got home Monday evening to 30 degrees cooler temperatures than when we left Phoenix. We found the curve-billed thrasher nest empty ... we're being positive and assuming the last remaining fledgling was able to fly away in our absence, not be carried away by a predator. The thrashers are still around, but it doesn't look like they're going to go for a third clutch this summer.

We're really enjoying the wildlife right around the house. In addition to the deer and the roadrunners and the thrashers, there are lovely bugs, like the tiger swallowtail butterfly I saw on the tree out front yesterday.

Yesterday we took a little jaunt out to Mimbres for their farmers market (good peaches, squash and green beans) and stopped briefly to look into the Chino Mine, where Santa Rita, NM, used to be. To get a perspective on the size of the shovel on the other side of the mine, those are pickup trucks parked to the left of it.

Time for the morning wound care. Maybe we'll venture downtown for the First Friday music, shenanigans and pet parade this evening. tv

The monsoons, the monsoons ...

Beautiful, noisy rain last night! We really needed the moisture; we'd had a few brief showers in the last couple of weeks, but this one was a good rain, hard at times but prolonged enough to create puddles and rivulets and do some soaking in.

I found a ridge the other day that offered a good view of Western New Mexico University (bottom pic) and of Gila Regional Medical Center, where Sandy spent a couple of nights. She developed an abscess which had to be surgically opened and drained. Mission accomplished; all is well and Nurse Tom is performing wound care at a standard approved by the home health care nurse. That home health care program is, in my opinion, the most cost-effective medical program we have in this country!

In the meantime, while I was home tending the furry beasts, I saw not one but two roadrunners come by. I wasn't quick on the shutter, so I only got one of them.

Today is our 40th month anniversary ... an event in my life for which I am deeply grateful. Think we'll start the day by going down to Vicki's for breakfast! tv

Been lazy

I realized I haven't posted in a while. It's not that we died; it's just that we have kind of been enjoying being at home and have had a few other distractions.

Silver City did survive the Fourth of July with little fireworks-caused damage. Governor Martinez apparently has bipartisan support for a bill in this fall's special legislative session that would allow counties and municipalities to ban ALL fireworks in drought condition; right now they can only ban aerial fireworks, leaving sparklers and cherry bombs, etc., to set the place alight.

We actually weren't here for much of the Fourth. We spent three mornings helping Sandy's Kiwanis club strip and shred brisket for their annual Fourth of July BBQ ... and then we had to take off for a quick trip to Oklahoma for a family emergency. Nice, hot, steamy central OK ... where, after seeing "Larry Crowne" in an air-conditioned theater in Shawnee, we came out to 109 degrees and high humidity. (This morning, at 7 a.m., it was 72 degrees in Silver City and 36% RH!)

Along the way, we stopped at an elaborate Texas rest stop complex on I-40 east of Amarillo and my twisted mind enjoyed this warning sign ... made me wonder if rattlesnakes can read!

Sandy's daughter has a gorgeous red rooster, which Sandy beautifully portrayed in her blog. I sorta liked the silliness of this head-on shot.

And, of course, we got our Braums fix ... a couple of times! We almost religiously hit the one in Amarillo (the furthest west one we have found) ... as well as the Outback on the west end of Amarillo. For those not familiar with Braums, think GOOD ice cream (and good hamburgers, too)!

On the way back, as we were increasingly appreciating the drier and higher air, we stopped at the Blue Pool in Santa Rosa, out on the high plains of eastern New Mexico. Right in the middle of steppe country, there's a water-filled hole in the earth that is a SCUBA-diving mecca! Probably felt REAL good in the 102-degree sunshine.

Meanwhile, at home in Silver City, the thrashers have hatched a second clutch of eggs in their nest in the cholla. They are very active in their search for bugs for themselves and their brood (I've noticed they also get seeds from the bird feeder) and they drink from the little rocked-in pool behind the house. The deer come regularly to that same pool and we see other critters there, too, such as the fence lizards, towhees and the flame skimmer shown hanging from a leaf.

Overhead, we've been reminded each of the last few days that it's still dry and still burning in the forests ... the Sikorsky Skycrane and several fixed wing tankers have been making regular trips over us to fight some small fires (less than 4,000 acres total) about 50 miles north of us, in the Gila Wilderness.

We just finished two days of sitting the Grant County Art Guild gallery in the historic Hearst Church, up in Piños Altos, seven miles north of here, just on the other side of the Continental Divide. It's about 10 degrees cooler up there! Not much activity, but a few families stopped by from Tucson, escaping the heat.

Sandy and I agreed to take on the PR and Facebook presentations for the art guild, and I'm working on publicity for the August 7 Hiroshima Day remembrance sponsored by the Gila Friends Meeting, so I've been busily building a data base of media outlets ... hearkening back to prior times.

We've got one more class of pre-beginning (kindergarten?) Spanish. We missed one and I admit I'm not doing well, but we are getting the basics of pronunciation and maybe that will help us read signs, etc., and begin to build vocabulary. Sandy is also finishing up a Geo-modeling class and I start one on the history of Libya this week. WILL (Western Institute of Life-long Learning) is a real asset for seniors in this community!

Weekend after next we'll be back in Mancos for Mancos Days. Really looking forward to seeing the Mancos Valley and it's people again! tv