We spent most of the day clearing sunflowers, tall grasses, trees and black bamboo used to block the view of the houses we had torn down. Now that they are down we are clearing out most of the tall stuff so that we will have an unobstructed view of the cleared property, cottonwoods and Sandias.

We left some of the Mammoth sunflowers and other fancy ones. I noticed a bumblebee, other bees and beetles were all sharing the same sunflower. The first Monarch I’ve seen this year fluttered around me and then landed just long enough for me to get a photo before it took flight again and disappeared over the bamboo.

 

The crew cleaned up around the old house first thing this morning, exposing the one room adobe and the two room frame addition that we discovered was built in April 1947 according to a piece of the footing on which someone used his finger to inscribe the date in the cement.  The demolition has been like archaeology as the crew demolished the additions from most recent backwards, giving us a glimpse of what the house looked like at various stages of construction, down to the original one room adobe, that could have been as old as 100 years. To have been much older that 100 years it would have had to survive a major flood in 1904. Given it stood less than 1000 feet form the Rio Grande, I believe it would have been washed away in the flood waters (to get an idea of what the flooding, raging Rio Grande was like before all the flood controls were finished, look up the descriptions of the flood that washed away San Marcial, NM from the eastern banks of the Rio Grand near Socorro in August 1929).

As Laurie and I walked around the property this evening, we noticed the soil where the houses stood is different from the soil that surrounded them, and markedly different from the soil that has be irrigated over the past 53 years. Laurie commented that we’ve peeled back the layers to reveal how the land would have been in the 1800’s.  Some of our neighbors, the demolition crew, the building inspector for Corrales, and other people have reacted with surprise to our answer to their questions about what kind of house we were going to build after the houses were cleared off the property. I suppose it’s like so many things influenced by the popular culture that people are conditioned to believe in the idea that clearing houses off land in Corrales in order to farm the land or plant fields of alfalfa is something a normal person would never do — all they seem to be able to visualize is a huge house sitting it the middle of the property. I find it’s sad that wanting to build and live in big, obtrusive houses is considered “normal” in this culture, while living in a small house and cultivating the land is considered weird.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who would have ever thought that demolition would be so entertaining?  Laurie, Susan and I spent all morning into the early afternoon watching, photographing and filming the demolition of the houses. Victor “The Redecorator” is extremely talented with the backhoe. He would take out large portions of roofs and walls, and then pick through the rubble to separate out the cement  and block, wood worth saving and metal from the rubble.  One of the most amazing things they did, using the backhoe and the front-end loader together, was to fold up a 10′ x 40′ iron trailer frame into a 10′ x 10′ x 3′ mass of steel, and set it aside for recycling.

After the casita went down, I went inside and worked on replacing the water heater. After six hours of sweaty, frustrating, to the point of maddening, labor, we have a new hot water heater. We got almost 30 years out of the old one. After no less than four trips to Lowe’s, we also have an extensively reworked hot and cold water distribution system, and shut-offs to the bathtub, which will make life a little easier when I install a new tub.

 

 

 

One of the things I do while waiting for our cars to be serviced at Quality Mazda is photograph the building and the new cars. Although the price stickers are a bit distracting, the cars are clean, colorful and fun to photograph.

Ready or not, the demolition of the houses starts tomorrow. We got the few remaining things we wanted to save out this morning, and then I cut down several trees and piled them up to be hauled off with the houses. One of the trees I cut down was a black walnut that died several years ago. I noticed the wood is nicely cured after I felled the tree, so I made some inquiries with wood carvers and wood turners to see if any of them wanted the walnut tree —  so far no interest in the walnut tree.

 

The soft shell turtle in the first photo was alternating between the back stroke and treading water before it noticed me and disappeared in the murky water of the Duck Pond at UNM. With only its head showing clearly and the rest of it fading into a blurred mass behind the reflections, it looked more like a monster than a turtle. One duck had ducklings and other turtles, mostly large, red eared sliders, where sunning themselves on the rocks in the middle of the Duck Pond. We had a busy day today that produced too many photo ops from the Mazda dealership. to Nob Hill, to UNM, its Duck Pond, Laurie’s parents house and then at home — I only posted photos from UNM and the spider/web at Laurie’s parents’ house.

While Laurie took her last PhD qualifying exam this morning, I got new tires on our Mazda Speed 3 and took photos of the shop area, exterior and some of the cars at the Mazda dealer while I waited for our car. I have to stack and stitch many of the photos of the Mazda dealership, which I didn’t have time to do tonight.  Friends came out to do photos of the houses before they are demolished on Wednesday. Susan brought a delicious pepper steak, rice and sangria ingredients for dinner, and I fried up some alligator as a side dish — I happened to have a pound of alligator on hand, and neither Susan or Lois had eaten alligator before tonight. Alligator is interesting because when it’s raw it looks like pork, but when it’s cooked it has a texture similar to monk fish, and I would say it tastes like, well, alligator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This woman was definitely not “afraid to come out of the locker” and walk around Lowe’s in her itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot… miniskirt. The reason I wanted to replace our standard hot water heater with a tankless hot water heater was so I could make room for the bathtub pictured below. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out any practical way to make enough room with the standard hot water heater to fit a claw foot tub. I did mange to buy new mirrored doors for our closet in the bedroom this afternoon, but when I came out of Lowe’s with the mirrored doors, it was pouring rain, so the mirrors and I got totally soaked before could get them in the car. Then I ran over to Walmart to pick up a few things. While I was standing in the checkout line, the guy behind me was soaking wet, as well, wearing a tank top and shorts. He was buying a sweatshirt and I noticed he had a skateboard, so I asked him how far he had to skateboard to get home. He said “too far” and that he had called for a ride, but he came in to buy the sweatshirt while he was waiting for his ride because he was freezing. The temperature had been around 90 before the rain, but the rain cooled the air very quickly, and if you got wet, it felt really cold.

I usually post photos in color or B&W, but I have not posted the same photos in both color and B&W before. I thought this set worked very well showing the color and B&W version of each photo.  The first rose is Pink Promise, the ARS’s rose that benefits breast cancer research. Princess De Monaco is one of the new roses we planted this spring, and Sceptred Isle is a David Austin rose that we have had for years. The David Austin roses are very hardy and all our David Austin roses have survived all the deep freezes and hard frosts we get at the end of May every year.

I finally got some Ham Radio aficionados to take all the old radios, meters, vacuum tubes, transistors, capacitors, transformers, and multitudes of electronic parts out of my dad’s radio room this morning. I’ve been trying to get anyone to take the stuff for years, but I think the vast quantity of it was too overwhelming for any one person to consider. Three Hams filled a full-sized pickup truck, and trailer and an SUV with the various equipment and parts my dad had in his radio room, and they still left a lot of it because they ran out of room in their vehicles.  Frank, who has been hauling off old scrap metal my dad had laying around the property for me, filled his truck with scraps of metal, nuts, bolts, metal cases and other stuff the Hams didn’t want, and there is still stuff left.  What got really funny is that I kept finding vacuum tubes tucked in corners and cubbies — I just kept handing off more and more vacuum tubes to the hams.  When we finally got the counter cleaned off and I lifted up a board that covered a sink, the sink was full of equipment and vacuum tubes. That stuff had to be in sink for 40 years or more, because I don’t recall my dad ever moving any of the stuff that was sitting on the board covering that sink. All three of the hams said that their wives, kids and grand kids would be facing the same task of getting rid of all the stuff in their radio rooms when they die.  Although they said they are going to give the stuff to young radio buffs (or “budding hamsters” as Laurie put it), I’m not so sure their wives will be very happy with them dragging all that stuff home before they give it away.

I had planned to start in on the bathroom remodel today by installing a tankless water heater; however, when I opened the instructions the first warning was about hard water. Our water is 4 times harder than the recommended maximum hardness for the unit to operate properly. I packed up the water heater, returned it and started rethinking the bathroom remodel.  With all the rain, working weekends though most of July, and dealing with demolition preparations, the sunflowers and morning glories are taking over the garden. I spent a good portion of the day today chopping down giant sunflowers, pulling morning glories off of our grapes and roses, and cutting grass and other weeds with a scythe.  After I got the roses uncovered I noticed we had quite a few nice blooms, so I went out on a rose photo expedition in the late afternoon. A dragonfly was following me around and kept landing close to me every time I stopped to photograph a rose. He let me get close and he even stayed in place when I stooped down to get shots from low angle below him.

The first photo is Gingersnap, and the fourth photo is Granada. They are new roses we planted in the spring. They are both settling in and putting on some very nice blooms.  The pink day lilies came out a little lighter pink in the jpeg that what they were in the late afternoon light. The last photo is a luscious B&W of Touch of Class. Touch of Class consistently produces gorgeous, well-shaped blooms.

 

When I went out to turn on the drip system last night, this spider had built a huge web across the steps on the south side of the deck which gives me direct access to the faucet. I took the long way round and photographed the spider by the light of my flashlight. Although she is an ochre color, she reflected blue on her underside. I went out first thing this morning to photograph her in early morning light, she and her web were gone. All I can figure is a raccoon or kitty or some other critter got up on the deck and snagged the web and took it out.

 

 

 

When I was finishing up separating stuff out of the houses this afternoon, and consolidating more junk to be hauled off in preparation for the demolition next week, I felt something on my shirt, looked down and this big preying mantis had hitched a ride. She is very large and looks like she’s ready to lay an egg case. I finished the task at hand, then she came down to the house with me. I put her on a butterfly bush, and then she hammed it up for the camera. To get a good exposure of her heavily backlit, she reflected the green around her, and came out looking like she has a copper patina in the second photo. The last photo was her doing an insect version of Marilyn Monroe eyes.