I had planned to start in on the bathroom remodel today by installing a tankless water heater; however, when I opened the instructions the first warning was about hard water. Our water is 4 times harder than the recommended maximum hardness for the unit to operate properly. I packed up the water heater, returned it and started rethinking the bathroom remodel.  With all the rain, working weekends though most of July, and dealing with demolition preparations, the sunflowers and morning glories are taking over the garden. I spent a good portion of the day today chopping down giant sunflowers, pulling morning glories off of our grapes and roses, and cutting grass and other weeds with a scythe.  After I got the roses uncovered I noticed we had quite a few nice blooms, so I went out on a rose photo expedition in the late afternoon. A dragonfly was following me around and kept landing close to me every time I stopped to photograph a rose. He let me get close and he even stayed in place when I stooped down to get shots from low angle below him.

The first photo is Gingersnap, and the fourth photo is Granada. They are new roses we planted in the spring. They are both settling in and putting on some very nice blooms.  The pink day lilies came out a little lighter pink in the jpeg that what they were in the late afternoon light. The last photo is a luscious B&W of Touch of Class. Touch of Class consistently produces gorgeous, well-shaped blooms.

 

When I went out to turn on the drip system last night, this spider had built a huge web across the steps on the south side of the deck which gives me direct access to the faucet. I took the long way round and photographed the spider by the light of my flashlight. Although she is an ochre color, she reflected blue on her underside. I went out first thing this morning to photograph her in early morning light, she and her web were gone. All I can figure is a raccoon or kitty or some other critter got up on the deck and snagged the web and took it out.

 

 

 

When I was finishing up separating stuff out of the houses this afternoon, and consolidating more junk to be hauled off in preparation for the demolition next week, I felt something on my shirt, looked down and this big preying mantis had hitched a ride. She is very large and looks like she’s ready to lay an egg case. I finished the task at hand, then she came down to the house with me. I put her on a butterfly bush, and then she hammed it up for the camera. To get a good exposure of her heavily backlit, she reflected the green around her, and came out looking like she has a copper patina in the second photo. The last photo was her doing an insect version of Marilyn Monroe eyes.

 

The roses and sunflowers were soft and pastel from the little bit of sunlight that filtered through the thunderheads tonight.

 

 

 

 

Over the past several months we have been clearing stuff wanted save out of these houses, and taking everything off of them that could be recycled, in preparation of tearing them down. Originally, this was going to be my summer project in 2010, but our battle with my cancer and Laurie’s anemia forced us to put it off for two years. We had to start dealing with it again when sharp pieces of aluminum roofing started blowing off in the high winds in March, putting our neighbor’s horses, tenants, and dogs in danger of serious injuries, and the possibility of damaging their motor home. Since neither of the houses have real foundations, they are slowly collapsing, so neither of them are worth trying to renovate. After they are demolished, and the land they occupy is cleared, we are planning on making it farmland.  Since it’s easy to irrigate, I was thinking we might start with feed grass or alfalfa that we can have cut and bailed, and then work up to larger production of green chile, corn and other vegetables in the coming years. Maybe we’ll add some farm critters in the mix as well. How does a yak, a llama and a Yorkshire terrier to herd them sound?

 

 

 

I went for a walk in the bosque this afternoon. Since I’ve working weekends and prepping the houses to be torn down I haven’t walked in the bosque since it was re-opened after being closed over 4th of July. The photo of the Sandias with the thunderheads turned out to be a lot of work. It is made of up four images — two of the Sandias and two of the clouds (each set side by side horizontal). I first stitched the horizontal images of together, which was no problem, but stitching the merged images of the Sandias with the merged images of the clouds, vertically, turned out to be quite challenging. I ended up using more of a manual process incorporating three separate programs to prepare and finally merge the clouds over the mountains, because the panorama program I normally use couldn’t handle the vertical merge and crashed, even after adjusting the images to reduce the load on the program. I think the final photo turned out pretty well.

While I was walking around the garden a dragonfly I had not seen before presented itself, and allowed me to get close for photographs. As I get junk cleaned up around the our old house and take off everything that can be recycled before demolition, it’s starting to look more and more like the photos of it when my parents bought it in 1958.

The last photo is scarabs on a sunflower. Scarabs are part of Egyptian history and lore, and the black and white scarabs, which I believe are adolescents, looked quite mummified in comparison to the adults’ iridescent green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you remember Emerson, Lake and Palmer, they had an album by the same name.  When I was turning into the Sandoval County government complex yesterday, a crab spider descended from my visor and landed on my steering wheel. The spider had probably hitched a ride on me when I made my way through the trumpet vines, mermosa, roses and other plants that hang into our walk. I pulled into a parking spot, and before I got out of the car, I decided I couldn’t leave the spider closed up in the hot car. I got it on my key and then into my shirt pocket, locked the car and walked up to the entrance of the building to find a big sign that read “No Pets Allowed in the Building.”  Was I breaking the law knowingly bringing a spider into the building? Technically it wasn’t a pet, yet I put it in my pocket, and knew it was in there. It was probably silly to even think about, but given how some people react to spiders, and how serious government types have become over enforcing laws, I wondered if I could end up in a SWAT situation by bringing a spider into a county building.  I told the spider to stay in my pocket, went inside, took care of business, and safely left the building without incident. When I got home, I got the spider to crawl onto a plant — so all ended well.

 

For a wild day of running around dealing with paperwork, I managed to get lightning photos and photos at the Duke City Tattoo Fiesta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the horses next door had no rider as it stood and faced the storm.  Both Annie, who dropped by the office this morning, and the skull on the car next to me in slow traffic, liked my Cucaracha Crunch Coffee. I think I better trade mark it before Starbucks figures it out.

We were planning on watching the moonrise behind the trees while we sat on the deck tonight, but overcast skies blocked the moon while the wind whipped through the trees, rain pattered against the canopy, and lightning and thunder flashed and crashed all around us. The trees and rain backlit against the clouds by the lightening are quite beautiful, however.

 

 

 

If $100 for a cup Civet Cat coffee is out of your price range, or you’re looking for a new coffee experience beyond beans extracted from weasel crap, try making Cucaracha Crunch Coffee. It’s easy and costs no more than what you pay for your daily dose of java.  You can do the “found method” (pictured) where you leave out a coffee cup with a little sludge in the bottom, and if a cockroach happens to crawl in your cup to get a buzz (pictured), you pour fresh coffee on it, let it swim around in the coffee (pictured), then sip and savor the coffee (pictured). Eating the cucaracha is optional. The “Hunt and dip” method involves hunting down a cockroach, catching it, and dipping it in your coffee.  Either way, you get a whole new coffee experience, and dispose of a few cucarachas without using poison.