A dahlia’s stem broke, so Laurie put it in a vase by my computer, giving my point of view a nice touch of purple.

 

If anyone wants to use my special coffee cup they have to deal with my guard spider. I bought this cup from Pier One Imports when we were first married. We couldn’t afford to get a set at that time so we bought just one. By the time we could afford to buy more cups, they were no longer available. I’ve used this cup pretty much daily for the past 30 years.

I put together a video of the final demolition of the casita. You can view it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUHdxDQTUKo

 

I find interesting people on the street corners when I’m on my way home. The low sun and varying levels of dust and debris on the car’s windows add some nice effects.

 

 

 

 

Puck was very grateful we let him out tonight and posed for me on the VW. We didn’t get home until 7:00 pm, and usually don’t let Puck out that late because he tends to want to stay out late. But since Laurie is going into school again tomorrow, we decided to take the chance of him staying out to all hours, and let him out instead of listening to him mournfully complain to us about not letting him out.

 

 

 

When I went out at 3:00 am to turn in the irrigation water, there was a hot wind on my shoulder, which reminded me of the opening lyrics to Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio”.  The warm air also explained why the house didn’t cool down during the night.  When I went out at 7:00 am to shut down the irrigation gates, the spider in the lead photo had her web built out over the water.

Guildenstern has been getting out by pushing the screens out of the front bay windows we leave open for air circulation. I closed them down leaving only a 2 inch crack. When I opened the front door at 7:00 to go out and check the water, Guildenstern was sitting at the front door.  When I came back in I looked and the window and he had pushed it up enough to slip out.  I still find it funny that none of the other cats figured out that he had pushed out the screens.

Laurie is a very nice math teacher. She baked a large batch of chocolate chip cookies to give the her algebra students tomorrow if the majority of them get the on-line homework done by 10:00 pm tonight. The cookies on the table in the last photo were left to cool before Laurie could bag them up, 4 cookies per bag, for distribution.

While she was working on cookies, I cleared out a bunch of small elm trees and wild plums on one edge of the property and discovered some barrels of oil and cans of tar hidden by the brush. So now I have more toxic waste to dispose of. I also found another ham radio antenna, metal stands and various pieces pipe and steel laying under the leaves and branches, as well. I’m starting to think that junk breeds.

While I was down working on clearing the trees and brush, I also had batch processes running on Photoshop and uploads going on that took a couple of hours. When I got the trees and brush down to where I needed a chainsaw the thunder sounded close and it started to rain, so I decided to go back inside and work on cooking up a 20 pound green chile, chicken, blue corn tortilla enchilada, while Laurie was finishing up her cookies. I started a new batch of processes on Photoshop, and more uploads, while I was cutting up and frying the ingredients for the enchilada; so by the time the enchilada was done, I had finished doing a whole lot of photo processing and uploading that I had been needing to do for weeks.  I just ate some of the enchilada for dinner. It’s super!

I spent all afternoon making forty pounds of carne adovada — definitely one of my best batches so far. During the moments between preparing the beans, potatoes, spices and the carne, I helped Laurie look up info on Tunisia for her presentation in French class on Wednesday.

The stump is all that remains of the cottonwood the demolition crew knocked over for us. The tree crew didn’t have room on their truck for the stump, so they’ll pick it up when they come back to start cleaning up the neighbor’s trees.

 

I found this Nifty Albuquerque soda bottle in the center of the roots of the cottonwood tree we had the demolition crew push over. I found one museum site during my Internet search about Nifty Albuquerque that had a list of soda bottles and when they were made. They placed Nifty bottles between 1945 and 1950. The bottom of the bottle shows it was bottled by Dr. Pepper in Albuquerque and includes the number 48; however, I don’t know if the 48 refers to the year, the batch the bottle was produced in, or some other number. But given the fact that we found “April 1947” inscribed in the footing of the two room addition, I believe it would be safe to assume this bottle was discarded at the base of the young cottonwood in the late forties or early fifties.

 

 

 

 

A zipper spider had a beautiful web on one of our David Austin rose bushes this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an ant fest on one of the dishes waiting to be washed this morning. A daddy longlegs set up a web int the path of the ants and was getting quite a haul before I had to wreck its web to wash the dishes.

Either Guildenstern has figured out how to transport himself through walls or he has a secret tunnel in the catio that he hasn’t told the other kitties about; because he’s been outside three mornings and this afternoon without either of us letting him out. As a matter of fact, he came in this morning and was meowing at the door and acting pitiful before we left and I told him “Just go outside, since you seem to have a way out!”  Sure enough, when we got home this evening all the cats were in except Guildenstern, who was sitting on a chair on the deck  with his paws crossed.

The dew was beautiful as the sun came of the mountains. I got home at dusk and photographed the cleared land without the tractors and trucks.  I had the crew push over a cottonwood that was getting old and brittle since there was nothing for it to crash into but the ground. Pushing it over takes up the roots and all so we don’t have to grind out the stump. A couple of the guys from the crew are going cut up and haul off the tree, and trim dead branches out of some of our other cotton woods.