A happy dragon fly was flitting around this morning. We did a lot of yard work today. Can you find six differences between the 2nd and 3rd photos? Rosencrantz was sitting in the window by the front door wanting in, but I was on the deck. Instead of going through and letting him in, I photographed him through the glass in the door to the sunroom. He finally gave up and walked around the house to join us on the deck and lay on the table with Guildenstern.
The roses don’t look too bad, but they are definitely stressed by the heat and limited water they are getting. Rosencrantz is as feisty as ever.
I tried to bring rain home with me from Paris, but I couldn’t get it past TSA — no liquids on the plane. Even though there has been zero rain in the Albuquerque area in 2013, Tristan and David ran the drip systems and soaker hoses I set up before we left, so we at least we came home to a colorful garden.
Austrian Copper put on its first bloom yesterday. We had hard frost the past few nights, so some of the older tulips are showing cold damage. The purple parrot tulips finally bloomed, despite hanging their heads from the cold the past few mornings; and a hummingbird moth was making the rounds when I was out photographing the tulips.
Guidenstern came up with a new kitty fashion for laying around on the deck — “Leaves and Filtered Light.” Kitty fashion is like sand painting — it only lasts one day.
Black roses and a black Rosencrantz.
Cleaning out a travel trailer this morning, I found an old scale and iron that made for a nice vintage B&W photo. We had strong winds all day today that blew clouds overhead. At one point the clouds were thick and low, and looked like they might produce a little rain, but alas no, only cold, dry wind.
Laurie distributed the flowers and roses from Reyes around the house adding extra color, beauty and cheerfulness to each room. I got up in the wee hours of the morning to find one of the ghosts lying on the floor under Laurie’s robe. I thought Laurie was laying on the floor in the darkness, but I could see she was still in bed with cats on her as they were light the moonlight streaming through the window. I grabbed my camera and set it to high ISO, ghost mode and snapped some photos. The phantasm filled out the body of the robe, but it had no head, arms or feet. When I pushed on the robe, there was nothing solid under it to fill it out, but it was filled out, and the robe would pop back into shape when I took my hand off — I thought I heard a faint giggle each time I poked it, but I would not swear by it. When I got up in the morning the robe was laying flat on the floor — I guess the spirit, warm and comforted by the robe, had gone off to wherever it hangs out during the day.
On the 12th day of Christmas we made Spanish Chocolate, almond biscotti, and Spanish tortillas, put out queso Manchego, got lots of flowers, and then we partied like it was 1699. People brought wine, guacamole, chips, pastries, cheese balls and bread and we had a great celebration of Reyes / Epiphany. We made about 2 gallons of Spanish Chocolate and we ate almost all of it. Now that’s what I call the good life!
It was a “real” Monday Monday. First of all, my weather widget on my computer said the low in Corrales would be 25 F, so I figured 15 F or so. When I got up the thermometer on the fence showed 5 F, which means it was near zero in other parts of the garden. The roses and flowers that were holding up against lows in the high teens and low twenties under the protection of the canopy are now freeze-dried, and my water filter, which I forgot to disconnect, was busted into pieces by the hard freeze. The weather widget says the low tonight will be 29 F — Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! The temperature is already down to 20 F. We are definitely doing our part to fight global warming.
But the Monday Monday didn’t stop at near zero temperatures. After I got the work one of the modules in the phone system went on the blitz, I had to restart a server and it didn’t want to reboot, clients upgraded their computers and their browsers were not reading javascript properly, so our web apps were acting up — just one thing after another.
Although one bright spot for a Monday is our Christmas Cactus bloomed (3rd photo). I think this is the sixth year in a row that it has bloomed for us.
Off Center & Not Even 