The thunderstorm really cooled things off tonight, so I thought Hot Cocoa was in order.

I never thought of fireworks in dill until tonight. I was mentioning to Laurie there wasn’t many critters out tonight, and she thought the dill might attract more, then she noticed the dill had a galaxy look to it. It turned out to look more like fireworks to me.

Stretch was being  cute and posing for Laurie on the microwave this morning. He is doing pretty well.

Rio Samba was in fine form this morning.

The irrigation water is black from the ash and burnt soils being washed into the Rio Grande from the areas burned by the Las Conchas fire.  It’s pretty strange to see black water, and it leaves a black residue behind. We’ll see if the plants like it.

While I was out watching the thunderstorm move in about 20:45 this evening, I saw a flash/crack and the top of a dead cottonwood crashed down into the horse arena. I couldn’t see well enough if it hit their barn, but It didn’t sound like any metal crunching after the initial crack. The birds loved to sit in that old tree!

I took Stretch in for blood work this morning. He’s holding steady, so the vet told us to give him 200 ml of fluid every other day and see how he does with that. That way we don’t have to water-board him every day.

I made a giant stock pot of green chile stew this afternoon. It’s almost one of my best ever. What kept it from being my best is that we are out of Wagner’s green chile, so I had to use frozen green chile form Costco.

I’m very sore from fotóplanking this afternoon. I set up one camera on a tripod and set the timer, which gave me 10 seconds to get into position. I tripped the shutter, ran to the post and planked myself on it. Needless to say, it took many tries before I got into a fairly straight position, while balanced on the post!

Before I did the fotóplanking, I put a new cover on the canopy over the deck. That is definitely contributing to my soreness, because I installed the new cover under the old cover. Not an easy task. We’re thinking that by putting the new cover under the old, the old cover will protect the new cover and help it to last longer. These covers are supposed to last 10 years, but  we got less than a year out of the first cover before it got dry rot and ripped. We got a little over a year out of the second cover before it started getting dry rot holes where it sits on the top bar of the frame.  Having a double cover has the benefit of cutting the heat gain by about 10 degrees, as well.

Stretch is getting stronger and harder to handle when it comes to water-boarding him. He hid tonight and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I finally asked Rosencrantz to help me find him — he lead me into the laundry room and meowed at the washing machine. I crawled up on the washing machine and shined my flashlight down behind it — there Stretch was crouched down hoping I couldn’t see him. He refused to come out until a got a can of air and sprayed it behind the washing machine. Stretch shot up and out over the top of the machine with a look on his face like the devil was after him. I felt bad for him, but he needs the treatments. He growled at us the whole water boarding session.

Sisters at Heart had really nice blooms tonight, and while we were sitting on the garden swing watching the cats, birds and other critters, a really nice wall of clouds formed in the northern skies.

We have a colored lily in our white “moonlight” garden around the deck. Laurie got a photo of it in the morning light.

Pink Promise is the official rose of the National Breast Cancer Foundation and ours is a survivor. We put in six new Jackson and Perkins roses in a new bed in 2009, and Pink Promise is the only one that is thriving after the sub-zero temperatures in February.

We didn’t plant sunflowers this year but we have some coming back from last year’s seeds. We thought they were hybrids, so we are surprised they are coming back as the same sunflowers from their seeds.

Our Ronald Reagan rose is trying to come back from the cold winter. I think this is the first bloom he’s managed to put on. His rose is red and white with a slight hint of blue.

Unfortunately, we lost both of our Nancy Reagan bushes to the cold. She produced beautiful peach colored roses.

Laurie snapped photos of rain falling on the Sandias out the window of the car as we drove home on Coors tonight. I don’t think we got a half inch of rain in Corrales, like Susan was reporting for the NE Heights, but we got enough rain to get everything wet, so the plants looked very happy, and the air smells fresh.

You may have heard of “planking”, where people are photographed lying prone on various things, often dangerous places; or “owling”, where people are photographed perched on various things, often dangerous places; or even “leisure diving”, where people are photographed on their way into a pool in various leisurely positions that probably end up as painful belly flops, side flops and back flops.

Well! All of them are passé. Fotógraphing, made up by Ben and me this afternoon, is the latest. The idea with Fotógraphing is that you are photographed photographing the photographer photographing you in some interesting place or situation — the more impossible the situation the better.

Today’s set of photos also illustrate what happens when photographers encounter one another in a parking garage — they end up in a Fotógraphing duel!

You may have heard of the the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. Well, I managed to get a photo of a rare occurrence of the Spider Borealis or Southwestern Arachnids.

Laurie forgot and left a sack of birdseed on the counter in the outdoor kitchen yesterday, and the coons got into it and ran amok rummaging through everything and ransacking the outdoor kitchen. The photo of Lola helping me survey the mess is after I picked up some of the stuff. The coons had opened two bottles of charcoal lighter fluid (one of the wet spots on the deck is lighter fluid), among other things. It’s a good thing they didn’t figure out how to use the lighter!

We recycle cardboard boxes by taking them apart, laying them on weeds and spreading mulch over them. The cardboard helps keep the weeds down and eventually composts into topsoil. I took the box the 55″ monitor came in apart, put in on some weeds, and covered it with mulch — it took six wheelbarrow loads of mulch to cover the box.

While I was checking out the garden this afternoon I came across a blue dragonfly, a black and white butterfly; the fly catcher was busy catching bugs, and Disneyland had a decent bloom.