Puck was very grateful we let him out tonight and posed for me on the VW. We didn’t get home until 7:00 pm, and usually don’t let Puck out that late because he tends to want to stay out late. But since Laurie is going into school again tomorrow, we decided to take the chance of him staying out to all hours, and let him out instead of listening to him mournfully complain to us about not letting him out.

 

 

 

When I went out at 3:00 am to turn in the irrigation water, there was a hot wind on my shoulder, which reminded me of the opening lyrics to Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio”.  The warm air also explained why the house didn’t cool down during the night.  When I went out at 7:00 am to shut down the irrigation gates, the spider in the lead photo had her web built out over the water.

Guildenstern has been getting out by pushing the screens out of the front bay windows we leave open for air circulation. I closed them down leaving only a 2 inch crack. When I opened the front door at 7:00 to go out and check the water, Guildenstern was sitting at the front door.  When I came back in I looked and the window and he had pushed it up enough to slip out.  I still find it funny that none of the other cats figured out that he had pushed out the screens.

Laurie is a very nice math teacher. She baked a large batch of chocolate chip cookies to give the her algebra students tomorrow if the majority of them get the on-line homework done by 10:00 pm tonight. The cookies on the table in the last photo were left to cool before Laurie could bag them up, 4 cookies per bag, for distribution.

While she was working on cookies, I cleared out a bunch of small elm trees and wild plums on one edge of the property and discovered some barrels of oil and cans of tar hidden by the brush. So now I have more toxic waste to dispose of. I also found another ham radio antenna, metal stands and various pieces pipe and steel laying under the leaves and branches, as well. I’m starting to think that junk breeds.

While I was down working on clearing the trees and brush, I also had batch processes running on Photoshop and uploads going on that took a couple of hours. When I got the trees and brush down to where I needed a chainsaw the thunder sounded close and it started to rain, so I decided to go back inside and work on cooking up a 20 pound green chile, chicken, blue corn tortilla enchilada, while Laurie was finishing up her cookies. I started a new batch of processes on Photoshop, and more uploads, while I was cutting up and frying the ingredients for the enchilada; so by the time the enchilada was done, I had finished doing a whole lot of photo processing and uploading that I had been needing to do for weeks.  I just ate some of the enchilada for dinner. It’s super!

I spent all afternoon making forty pounds of carne adovada — definitely one of my best batches so far. During the moments between preparing the beans, potatoes, spices and the carne, I helped Laurie look up info on Tunisia for her presentation in French class on Wednesday.

The stump is all that remains of the cottonwood the demolition crew knocked over for us. The tree crew didn’t have room on their truck for the stump, so they’ll pick it up when they come back to start cleaning up the neighbor’s trees.

 

I found this Nifty Albuquerque soda bottle in the center of the roots of the cottonwood tree we had the demolition crew push over. I found one museum site during my Internet search about Nifty Albuquerque that had a list of soda bottles and when they were made. They placed Nifty bottles between 1945 and 1950. The bottom of the bottle shows it was bottled by Dr. Pepper in Albuquerque and includes the number 48; however, I don’t know if the 48 refers to the year, the batch the bottle was produced in, or some other number. But given the fact that we found “April 1947” inscribed in the footing of the two room addition, I believe it would be safe to assume this bottle was discarded at the base of the young cottonwood in the late forties or early fifties.

 

 

 

 

A zipper spider had a beautiful web on one of our David Austin rose bushes this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an ant fest on one of the dishes waiting to be washed this morning. A daddy longlegs set up a web int the path of the ants and was getting quite a haul before I had to wreck its web to wash the dishes.

Either Guildenstern has figured out how to transport himself through walls or he has a secret tunnel in the catio that he hasn’t told the other kitties about; because he’s been outside three mornings and this afternoon without either of us letting him out. As a matter of fact, he came in this morning and was meowing at the door and acting pitiful before we left and I told him “Just go outside, since you seem to have a way out!”  Sure enough, when we got home this evening all the cats were in except Guildenstern, who was sitting on a chair on the deck  with his paws crossed.

The dew was beautiful as the sun came of the mountains. I got home at dusk and photographed the cleared land without the tractors and trucks.  I had the crew push over a cottonwood that was getting old and brittle since there was nothing for it to crash into but the ground. Pushing it over takes up the roots and all so we don’t have to grind out the stump. A couple of the guys from the crew are going cut up and haul off the tree, and trim dead branches out of some of our other cotton woods.

I dreamed the houses were still standing last night. I was looking looking out our window and could see them clearly, in every detail, but I knew they were gone. I would look the other way and then look back, and they were still there like ghosts haunting my dreams. I knew I must be dreaming, yet it all looked so real. Then I was standing outside with Tristan looking at a mini VW bus they had pulled in. I was telling her “We are trying to get rid of junk, not acquire more junk!” I remembered I photographed the curtain in the casita, and it seemed a fitting representative of the house’s ghost.

The demo crew are down to one pile of rubble from the houses and a couple of piles of stuff that was laying around, so I think they will be done tomorrow.

I had over 3500 junk mails in my inbox at work this morning. It was mostly architectural, construction and management related junk mail with only a few for Russian brides, miracle weight loss, space bags, penny auctions, taco shell shapers and things like that. It took me awhile to separate out the legit mail from the junk.

This cattle loader has been at the top of our road for as long as I can remember, so I’m sure it’s older than I am. I don’t remember ever seeing cattle loaded with it, but I do remember Doctor Salvasi running cattle on the 16 acres just south of us. I was working on the road and clearing weeds along the road when I noticed sunset with the rays of light streaming through the clouds.

Our bathroom remodel is getting sabotaged at every turn. First I had to return the tankless hot water heater because our water is too hard. Then we found a linoleum we liked at Lowe’s, but when I went to order it tonight, we discovered it’s been discontinued. So now we have to find another linoleum we like, or another type of suitable floor covering. One place in Albuquerque had their stock of linoleum on line, but none of it looked appealing. Laurie doesn’t want the stone, ceramic or marble tile because she thinks it’s too cold and hard. We have oak parquet floors throughout the rest of the house, and super plush carpet in the bedroom, but a wood floor just doesn’t seem right for the bathroom, and carpet in the bathroom would be just plain silly. Now that I have a new hot water heater installed, the floor covering is the next step, but I don’t want to start taking out cabinets and fixtures until I have the floor covering in hand and ready to install.

 

The lead photo was taken on Monday afternoon when Susan and I were walking around taking the last photos of the houses before their demolition. Susan took a wonderful photo of the same flowers from inside the room. There was a 1980 calendar laying next to the vase that she got in her photo. They’re all just memories now — a lifetime for me, 30 years for Laurie, only this century for Susan, but we bothered to record it, and took the time to watch as the layers of time were peeled back and demolished, unfolding for our imaginations the history of the houses and the land.

The photo of the clouds reflecting in our glass top table is our current view from the deck without the roof top and antennas in the background. Now we are going to explore the possibility of getting the power moved, so we can take down the power pole. Taboo poked a cane through the trumpet vine and akebia, and I found the Preying Mantis on the little chiminea when I was out cutting back the black bamboo at sunrise.