With over 60 hours at the office this week, and a lot heavy yard work over the last few days, I feel very much like this old Chevrolet 6100 looks.

 

This dahlia has a lot of nice subtle colors.

 

Another long day, and late night by the time I got home from work. I got the photo of the rose as I left for work early this morning. The spider was hanging out on the wall when I got home tonight, and the last photo is what’s left of one of our ears of corn after the raccoons ravaged it.

 

 

 

 

The ladybugs and damselflies were out tonight scampering around in the dill and lighting of grass and the wisteria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The NM license plate on the trunk of this 1953 Bentley A-Type reads “Horseless Carriage” under the number. It’s parked at the gas station in Corrales — I presume it’s waiting to have some work to be done in the garage.  Laurie got a photo of our first white dahlia, and I drove home on Coors tonight avoiding the deluge, and resulting traffic problems on I-25.

The only thing good about my drive home tonight, besides finally making it home, was that I did get some photos. The first photo was taken while the downpour had the traffic stopped on northbound I-25. The soft focus effect is from the heavy rain. When I got off on Alameda, traffic was backed up to Jefferson, so I turned north on Jefferson and drove out to the Balloon Fiesta Park and photographed the storm over the Jemez. I noticed the layers were accentuated by the storm while I was northbound on I-25. When I got back to Alameda the traffic hadn’t moved and a police car was blocking access to Jefferson south of Alameda. I turned left on Alameda, got on southbound I-25, and made a circular route home via I-40 and Coors Road (the traffic was light, so the drive was fast, thank goodness). I ended up driving almost three times the normal distance to get home tonight, but I might still be on Alameda, otherwise.

What a tragic weekend. Unfortunate families lost 12 of their loved ones in the Batman massacre Friday morning, a friend died from a stroke/heart attack last night, and we woke up to find the old Territorial House on fire.  The only comment I have on the Batman tragedy is that I find it ironic that the only people who noticed there was something wrong with the shooter are the owners of a gun club who rejected  his application to become a member.  The death of our friend was a complete surprise, and especially sad because he was getting ready to publish a book of poems. The book will be published, but he didn’t live to see it happen.  I grew up with the old Territorial House (most recently called Ranchos de Corrales Event Center), and I still drive by it every day. It had gone through various renovations and had many lives from when it was built as a hacienda around 1800 until it burned this morning. I started working for a woodworker who had a shop in a broken down adobe house on Corrales Road the summer of 1974. I was 15 years old, and one of my first projects was routing signs and painting them for the renovation of the Territorial House that summer. Shannon and I also built cabinets and all the interior doors for that renovation. When we came back from Spain during the summer of 1998, I played flamenco guitar at the T-House once a week until we returned to Spain that September. By that time, the T-House had been purchased by the owner of Ranchos de Taos Restaurant and renamed Ranchos de Corrales Restaurant. Mr. Sandoval had done minimal remodeling, so all the doors and signs I worked on in 1974 were still there, as they were the last time I was in the T-House about 10 years ago. As we were walking up to photograph the T-House burning, Laurie said “There goes all your work!”

Just after sunrise this morning, a fresh Two-Tailed Swallow Tail butterfly was making rounds around the blooms on the butterfly bush on the north side of the deck. I included several photos of it as it made its way around the tiny flowers that make up the blooms. The third photo in the series is particularly interesting because I caught it with its upper and lower wings separated. The overlap of the wings can be clearly seen in three of the five photos in the series.

This is the first time in seven years that we have fruit on our trees. Normally we get a hard frost that kills all the blossoms, and last year after the fruit had set in late May, we got a hard frost that killed all the fruit and took out some roses and other plants, as well. We did have a mild frost the last day of May this year, but it only affected some of our tomatoes and peppers, so this we have peaches, nectarines, wild plums, apples, crabapples, and I believe a few pears.  We got 4 or 5 yellow bing cherries (first time fruit survived on that tree), and I ate them straight off the tree before the birds got them. It looks like our tomatoes will actually ripen before first frost this year, and we have picked a few ears of corn already — they were kind of small, but tasty.

What happened to the drum solo?  I started thinking about that while listening to a mix of modern pop and classic rock that spans the 60’s into the new millennium. I remembered back to when I was around 12 or 13 years old dancing through the whole 17 minutes of Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” and trying to figure out what to do during the drum solo. In a rather brave and daring move, I took the girl I was dancing with in my arms and we hung on each other through the drum solo, and the rest of the song. I felt like I was in the Garden of Eden with that girl in my arms. As I paid closer attention to the differences between pop rock from then to now, I changed my question from “What happened to the drum solo?” to “What happened to the drummer?”  It seems like most of the current pop music uses sampled rhythm tracts that produce a steady, often monotonous beat. Those steady beats supply a solid base for dancing, but they can become rather irritating to listen to.  I was listening to some old Black Sabbath, and while their songs are kind of silly, they tell stories, have introductions and conclusions, bridges that connect the changes in rhythm and keys, and, above all, they have interesting drum tracts that were produced by a real drummer. Ditto for Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Billy Joel, Jethro Tull, etc. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of interesting and creative music produced today, but it often comes up short on the drums… and guitar. Hmmm! Now that I think about it, “What happened to the guitar solo?”