Winter is upon us with cold temperatures, snow flurries, cloudy skies and gray light. The Sandias have been covered with clouds most of the day, and even with the thermostat set at 70 F (21 C), it felt cold in the house all day without the sun shinning through the windows.
I don’t think this lovely scarecrow is very scary, but she does cut a good hay figure. Fall is in the air — I saw a couple of sandhill cranes fly over this morning, so I went out to the river before sunset and a small flock flew by. The problem is the river is running really high and fast, so the places they normally roost are underwater. The Martinez House got its color coat, and the cottonwoods are turning yellow.
Open door in the Old San Ysidro Church.
While I’m on the old adobe theme, this old house on Corrales Road next to the Tijuana Bar is finally getting some attention.
Last year around this time, volunteers from the Corrales Historical Society helped prepare and apply new mud plaster to the historic Martinez house in Corrales. Little did they know they celebrated the annual event of applying mud to the Martinez House for the last time. The owner of the Martinez House must have grown weary of the age old-tradition, and rare practice, of mud plaster after this past summer’s brutal storms, because on Saturday, the Martinez House got a new coat of cement plaster to join the ranks of the vast majority of adobe structures in New Mexico that are plastered and stuccoed.
The first photo shows the north side of the Martinez House with its new plaster, while the second photo shows a similar shot of the wall as it had been prepared for the new coat of mud plaster last year. The third photo shows the south and east side of the house with its new “brown” coat of plaster. The fourth photo, from last year, shows the south wall with the newly applied mud plaster and the east wall waiting for new mud. The last photo is a view of the freshly plastered east an north walls of the house.
After the “brown” coat of plaster dries completely, they should apply a color coat of stucco that I assume will be very close to the color of the mud they covered with cement plaster. The cement plaster and stucco will provide a much more durable and weatherproof covering than the mud plaster, but the old adobe blocks do not breath properly under cement plaster/stucco finishes, which is not good for the blocks. But the durability and protection of cement plaster has obviously become preferable to the cost and burden of applying mud plaster every year, a finish that offers little protection from severe storms like we had this past summer.
The summer monsoon was not nice to the mud plaster on the old San Ysidro Church in Corrales. The north side of the church is weathered and cracked with some large chunks of the mud plaster missing — washed off by driving rains in July and August. We were at the church for the opening of the Old Church Fine Art show, which runs through October 13th. Susan Graham, friend and fellow photographer, has two pieces in the show and won third place for her photo Floral Fireworks, a fantastic explosion of colors that has the appearance of a photo-realistic watercolor. Congratulations, Susan!
After our trip to Jemez and Gliman Tunnels, I got photos of old adobe houses in Corrales and San Ysidro. The first two are in Corrales and both are doing worse after the major storm that hit Corrales at the end of July. The last photo is of an abandoned adobe house in San Ysidro.
Continuing on our drive to Jemez, we could see the thunderheads over our destination. The junction of US 550 and State Road 4 is at San Ysidro. The San Ysidro Church has perfect Spanish Colonial/New Mexican style doors and a great little bell tower.
A few things you can find in Corrales.
When the old Territorial House burned on July 23, 2012, I was saddened by the damage to the historic landmark I had grown up with, worked on, and even performed in. The demolition started last week and the first two photos show all that was left of it at 8:00 am this morning. I took the last photo of the orange barrels on my way to class this afternoon as I imagined the stormy sky marked the time that the last vestiges of the T-House were dumped in a trucked to be hauled away. The site where the 213 year old hacienda once stood was vacant and scraped clean when I passed by on my way home tonight.
Off Center & Not Even 