From Thursday afternoon until Saturday afternoon we have been on the east side of the Sandias at Desert Harbor Retreat, completely off the grid with no cell phone coverage or Internet. I have a lot of photos to process of landscapes, plants, flowers, insects, lizards and a large snake we encountered during our two night, day and a half stay at Desert Harbor. Today’s photo is a panorama of the storm clouds over the east side of the Sandias on Thursday evening.
Woody the wood duck was paddling around, took a break on the bank, and then paddled out to check out a hen with her ducklings. I can’t say whether the hen and ducklings are wood ducks or not.
A Cooper’s Hawk in the bosque by the Rio Grande near Alameda Bridge.
I got a drive-by of a 1954 Bel Air complete with fuzzy dice on the dashboard, open wings and a “hippie” as it was cruising down I-40.
Just south of the Alameda bridge, there are various ponds filled with muddy water from the Rio Grande, that reflect nicely on a still day.
Following the ducks is a bit of “macro madness” — I found various interesting critters in the iris and roses. While I was out moving hoses to hook up drip systems, this female mallard hopped up on the neighbor’s wall. Then she hopped back down, and I could hear her making little quacking noises. When I looked over the wall, she was marching off with four ducklings in a row behind her.
We had several thunderstorms move through yesterday, including a heavy hailstorm. When I got home, Laurie told me the pink peony had bloomed and ask me to go out and see if the flowers survived the hailstorm. Many of the blooms were a little beaten down, but they survived the storm. I couldn’t resist photographing the wet roses while I was out, and I ended up pretty wet myself.
We went to a talk by Jane Butel on the culinary history of the Rio Grande Valley in the Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales.
Off Center & Not Even 