Want

It's been over two weeks now since Avo's untimely death and I have been distracted by handymen replacing our crumbling and clogged 80 year old pipes. I decided to buck up this afternoon and go out to the sheep pen and visit Finley.

He was very stiff in stance and looked older, less innocent. A small trickle of blood was coming down one of his horns which appeared to have a small puncture wound, like maybe he butted his head against a nail...or perhaps it was part of the unfortunate scenario. (Later Rick and I flushed it out. He had noticed it, but badly needing new glasses, thought it was just a glump of dirt).

I went to the shed and began picking up feathers, making a little bouquet in my hand, tears streaming down my face. As it started to come together and look like a familiar chicken Finley came over. I held it out to him and he sniffed it. Then he lowered his head and used his hoof to make the 'I want' sign and I started weeping.

I want him back, too, Finley.

So whatever happened involving the sheep that ended the life we knew as Avo it was very clear Finley was missing him, too.

Sunday Stills: Horses

For several reasons, this has been the hardest challenge yet, as Ed (facetiously) said. Yesterday's plan to get out and photograph horses was set aside for Phoebe, whom I posted about yesterday. Usually when I let Avo out in the morning he thump-thump-thumps (he's the most heavy footed rooster around) over to wing her and this morning he winged me a couple times and then cautiously walked around looking for her. I think not only do we need a new ewe for Finley's companion, but perhaps we need a real hen to be Avo's.

Anyway, I'm posting a photo of the only horse I own: Milda's Horse. It has an interesting story.

In the early 90's I was volunteering at the booth of a nature preserve at a fair being held at the Austin Botanical Gardens. On my break, I discovered a booth with these quaint little paintings, and one of a horse caught my eye. I had brought no money with me, and the artist was also on break.

The image haunted me for weeks. I called the organizer, and since it was the only art booth at the fair, was able to determine the vendor was a woman named Milda. Fortunately she was in the phone book, so I called her up and inquired about the little horse. She said it was $10 and gave me her address.

When I drove up, I realized she lived in an assisted living tower on the lake. Milda, in her mid 80's, not unlike my own Ruthenian grandmother, was under five feet tall and spoke with a thick Latvian accent. She had prepared Latvian almond cookies for my arrival, as she would for each of my visits over the next year. I bought the painting of her horse.

She had fled Latvia during the communist rule for France, where she studied at a national art academy. Her eyes gleamed talking about the European countryside she had travel and painted. I showed her my own paintings, which were large and realistic still life. My problem in painting landscapes was a matter of scale; it seemed I could not paint anything smaller than it actually was and make it work. Milda was sure she could help change that.

In reality I became her vehicle to get away from the home, as we would take our paints out into the surrounding hill country. She was always 'tinking' (thinking) about us having shows together. In fact, every time she was tinking it involved doing something together. Like me, Milda also played the guitar, only hers was tuned to an open G so that she could play chords by barring with one finger. She liked to sing Latvian folk songs, which we did if it were too rainy to go out and paint. She finally determined I was hopeless as small landscape painter. So we sang and ate cookies.

Then one day she told me her daughter had just died of cancer. I had never met her, nor had I known she was sick, but she lived nearby and apparently assisted Milda in whatever I didn't. Her grandson and his wife had just had a baby and were moving her to California to live with them. As it turned out, the little horse had become something altogether different and very big in my life that I was about to have to part with.

She gave me her daughter's knife and coffee grinder. Milda asked me if I wanted to have one of her paintings as a goodbye gift. I had really admired one of a blackbird sitting on a tree stump, but she said that was the only one she intended to keep. I asked her to pick, and she gave me one of a flower bouquet. We have lost touch. I wonder if she is still with us, and if so if she is still painting, singing, and making almond cookies.

Now the blackbird on the stump haunts me, so much that one day I may paint it in her memory. But at least I have Milda's horse.

For more horses, visit Sunday Stills.

Macro Monday: Maple Seeds

I remember the first time as a child I found a maple seed floating in a small lake at summer camp and thought it was the wings of an insect. The counselor assured me it was plant life and nothing to be worried about.

There is a nearby canyon of Bigtooth Maples, an isolated remnant of ones from the north. These photos are from mine, even more astray. Since my macro shots didn't come out as crisp as I would have liked them, I decided to make them more artsy with filters.

I've already seen the first of the migratory Viceroy and Monarch Butterflies coming through to feed on our Frostweed, and I think the maple seeds back lit by the sun greatly resemble their wings. It's interesting how much mimicry there is in nature. In the case of the Viceroy, it is a comimic of the Monarch butterfly. But what is the purpose of the maple seed to resemble insect wings?

For more up close views on the world, visit Macro Monday!

All Our Ducks in a Row

Today, when we woke up all our ducks were in a row!

Farmer Rick and I have much to be thankful for--we've made it through another year together including our better foibles in chicken husbandry and accidental gardening, and our worse drought in history. His love did not waver even when I persisted on having curved walls in the new coop, and admits his carpentry skills improved with my nagging encouragement.

Nor did he admonish me for the outrageous debt we incurred from me having to take rabies shots after being bitten by the fox. Yea, he understands and supports my need to rescue critters, stick fingers into their wild mouths and to nurse them back to health. He loves my cooking--even when I forget that I am cooking and serve dinner a la charra y el carbon.

I have come to enjoy being awakened at 4 a.m. when he begins playing Chopin etudes and Joplin rags, mistaking my back for the piano in his deep slumber, and have begun to see it as a new way to get a jump on my busy day. I look the other way when he consumes all the household pickles, and gleefully cap the toothpaste and shampoo after him, because secretly I think I got the better end of this deal. He assures me we are equally fortunate!

People tell us we were made for each other. Indeed, we are cut from the same recycled cloth, quilted together by the poets, nobility, explorers, and farmers of our ancestry, having since discovered an 8th great-grandmother and 21st great-grandfather in common. When we cross the creek, neither of us can remember what we went there for.

Honey?

Uh hum?

Look, all our ducks are in a row! How cute!

But...we don't have any ducks!

Oh...You're right!



Y'all better go home!

Farewell Rooster-o

In the beginning, we never planned to have roosters, but we didn't read the fine print that said there was a small percentage of error on sexing peeps on the first day of their life. Soon after our original batch of layers began to grow, we noticed something different about this one. It looked like a rooster.

Soon we were absolutely, positively sure he was a rooster, and thinking he was the only one, named him Rooster. You could say he was our first rooster, even though much later we were to discover three other of our 'hens' were also boys! They happened to already have girls' names that we could change to the masculine by adding an 'O'...thus Ava became the infamous Avo, etc. This is how Rooster became Rooster-o.

He was the smallest of all our roosters, and we never knew exactly what unusual breed he was. As a young cockerel, he excelled at sports, namely 'grape ball'. This is where we would toss a grape into the flock and he was like a quarterback that would run around dodging the other chickens who also wanted the prize.

Rooster-o was also a gentleman, always very kind to the ladies who, quite frankly, adored him. Especially the ill-behaved Egyptian Fayoumis. They knew he had the biggest wattles around and took advantage of that any chance they could get. He was the only rooster I could not easily pick up and handle--that is until he became sick. Because of this I never knew he was losing weight. Birds have a way of disguising illness by fluffing their feathers.

At first I thought he was malnourished from having a very hooked beak, which you may recall in an earlier post I clipped and filed. This definitely helped him eat more, and he had a voracious appetite up until the end. He regained his strength, and I moved him from the utility bathroom back into his coop apartment when the new peeps expanded into all our spare space.

But his health went slowly downhill. After the new flock moved into their coop, he came back in the house where I could more easily tend to him and he didn't have to endure the summer heat. I began cooking for him, meals that Farmer Rick says were better than what I cooked for us! In the afternoons I'd take him outside where he'd flirt with the hens from the comfort of my lap.

Farewell, Rooster-o, you will be missed by all of us!

Was I Really That Fashionable?

This morning I was catching up with my blog friend Dana over at A Cat in my Lap, and--being a purveyor of blog fun that she is--was introduced to yearbookyourself.com where you can upload a photo of yourself and see how you might have appeared over the various years in yearbooks.

It looked like loads of fun, so I gave it a try...only to find out I really did look like that in those years. In fact, I think they must have been using my yearbook! See what you think...

1970's

This was when I tried to have Farrah Fawcett hair only we didn't own a blow drier and hair conditioner was not invented yet. I think there were only about three choices in shampoo then, all of which were pretty harsh on natural curls. I was probably singing some sad folk song by John Denver when this was taken.

1980's

These were the years of big hair, and I had just come from Dallas, Texas, where the bigger the better. I believe this volume was created by a root perm (invented for Rod Stewart?) and hot rollers. This shot was taken by the newspaper for a write up on a one-person show of my paintings. I had just begun modeling high-end clothes for a department store because computer graphics hadn't yet been invented and there wasn't much I could do with an art degree.

1990's

This was the decade I dispensed with makeup, high heels, and uncomfortable clothes and embraced my more natural, laid-back self. I became proficient in computer graphics and also had a successful nature tour company. These were the years I felt and looked my best.

And of course the fun one for me was the '60's since I was still a kid. But I still had the 'do'.

1960's

I think I was the only kid that had a Tressy instead of a Barbie. You could change the length of her hair by pushing her belly button. Growing up, I always felt unfashionable. Awkward. A misfit. But in retrospect I was more fashionable than I remembered!

What did you look like in those years?

Jemez Springs or at Least Looking for Them

Driving up from Bernalillo, through the Jemez Pueblo and the mountain town of Jemez Springs, we stopped at the Soda Dam. It has been over a decade since I was here last and it was sad to see that all the little dams within the cave had been broken away by people crawling through it.

Some creative soul, though, had made snakes and lizards out of nails hammered closely together on the entrance logs. Pretty cool.

There were probably 50+ people swimming here in the Jemez River, so it was quite a feat to get photos without them in it. We stopped at the first campground where I'd stayed before and it was full! Guess I'd never come during summer before.

Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls picked them every one.

The Jemez Falls campground also said full, but the park host let us know someone had just left and the site was ours if we could claim it before anyone else. It was a beautiful site.

We opted to stay two nights. Each evening an electrical storm blew in and it rained. This might have discouraged some campers, but since we haven't seen much of the stuff lately we were delighted. Rain--what a concept!

Sunday we spent the day looking for hot springs. We got up very early to beat the crowds the park host had described, and hiked the trail to Jemez Falls. There were numerous wild orchids blooming in the pine duff.

These little falls above the big falls were delightful...

as were the Harebells, Campanula rotundifolia.

Jemez Falls is always a lovely spot.

We backtracked up to the trail head and followed the trail sign toward McCauley Springs. Now, all of the hot springs I've ever visited were right alongside the river they were associated with.

The trail was strenuous, up and down, and kept climbing up and away from the river. Maybe because I was out of shape it seemed like we had already gone the 2.5 miles. Looking down from this precipice I could not imagine us further away from them. We came upon a little stream, and in retrospect, I should have stuck a foot in it. But at this point we gave up and turned around, retracing our way. The parking lot was almost empty, where were the throngs?

We met only a woman and her daughters looking for the springs. We talked again to the park host, who admitted he wasn't sure where they were as it had been a while since he had been. We decided to drive up the road where lots of people park, assuming hot springs were nearby.

Nope, folks were just going down to some part of the river where it was deep enough to jump from cliffs. Along the way we saw this flower. At first I thought it was Apache Plume, but I think it's something else I'll have to study. The locals here told us we should go to Spence hot springs as they were easiest to find and right on the river.

We got there and a strangely dressed man from Russia greeted us. I said hello in Russian and he corrected my pronunciation. He was wearing a dress shirt, shoes, and socks, but with outdoor shorts and sort of a woven safari hat. Maybe his luggage was lost, or is this how they look adventuring in Steppes? Or, perhaps a nuclear scientist (or spy) from Los Alamos with a small wardrobe?

Anyway, he seemed well versed on how to get to all the local hot springs, and in recounting our earlier trek to find McCauley he said we were basically there when we turned around! Rats! The newest problem, though, was both trails to Spence hot spring were closed due to landslides. While we were talking numerous locals ignored the signs and headed for warm waters. He did not want to risk his visa, and we really didn't want to incur any fines so we left.

Down the hill, and around the bend was a day use fishing park...might not a short hike up the river lead us to the springs? We were off, pushing through brush. And snakes. And crossing the river. And displacing fly fishermen. Finally, we saw the highway above and hiked out, realizing we still were no where near the springs.

Our solution? We drove down to Jemez Spring and rented a hot spring at Giggling Springs.

Years ago I rented this as part of an accommodation...there was the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and the small cabin I stayed in, the Skinny Dipper! But the owners turned that into the dressing room, and now make their money renting the hot spring by the hour.

No wonder, as it's impossible to find the others!

Sunday Stills: Water Towers or Grain Silos

We don't exactly have water towers here in my ghost town (or grain silos, either), a place that is ultimately all about cool, clear water--but I hope you'll enjoy this brief history of our water storage through the colorized photos I took today. It's 106 degrees today and I'm drinking lots of water!

The river water is so clear, you can see to the bottom of a 20 foot swimming hole.

In 1868 pioneers dug a ditch (otherwise known as an acequia) eight miles long, diverting water from the river to irrigate 800 acres of farm land. They originally named the town "The Ditch" which prevailed until a post office was opened about seven years later, when it was named after the river: Rio Frio.

The ditch ran for over 100 years. Now it is dry, but locals whose property it crosses must pay the state a water use right. Go figure.

Many of us living on the original plots have hand dug pioneer wells. This is one of my favorites--with a classic wishing well look--since it still has the wood to throw a bucket over. They are all about 40-50 feet deep, through solid limestone, sized just wide enough for a man to swing a pick axe.

Most of the houses built in the 1800's had spring houses. You could say these were private water towers, but also refrigerators. The water was stored on top, and a room was built below where food was kept. The soil is too rocky here for building a cellar, and the water is much cooler than the ground.

Old timers remember playing in them as children, because it was the coolest place around in the days before electricity and air conditioning came to the canyon.

Some folks still use windmills to pump their water. It's a beautiful way to harness the wind. I wish we had one.

This is our well house, with an electric submersible pump. (There's a better photo on this previous post showing the beautiful door). The pioneer hand dug well is behind it, covered with a large iron trap door secured with large rocks and a tangle of vines for good measure. The well service company told me if I liked the way my water tasted, I should never look in the well, as I would likely see hundreds of crickets or the occasional unfortunate squirrel.

Of course, I had to look. It's about a 4 x 4 foot hole through 40 feet of solid rock terminating in a little cavern where the water flows through it. Just like a river.

To see photos of water towers and silos, visit the other photographers at Sunday Stills.

Memorial Day

My Aunt Elsie called today, remembering my mother's birthday. She hasn't done this in the past, but I guess by the time you are 89 you are filled with memories, and it was a good day for sharing them. My mother passed away over three decades ago.

Mom accompanied my father on some of his foreign duty during his two decades of service. So to honor them today, I have colorized one of my favorite photos of her as a young lady.