NM 485 becomes a one lane road as it enters Rio Guadalupe Canyon, so we parked on a wide pullout about 1/4 mile from the mouth of the canyon, and walked along the edge of the road into the canyon. After photographing the “Falling Rock” sign, I turned around to find a humming bird moth working the flowers in the brush behind me. The first guardrail along the road was covered with graffiti.
After another “Monday! Monday! Everything breaks on Monday!” Monday, I came home, got out the macro lens, and went out to see what the small world in the garden was up to. The most cooperative critters were Bartle Bee, Evil the Boll Weevil and a tiny, curly cucumber tail.
Okay it’s actually a wasp, but “A Wasp and Button” didn’t quite have the same ring to it. For the rest of the story on Button, the rattlesnake we rescued on July 1, she (we decided he is probably a she) ate and then Tristan and Laurie took her out to the mesa and let her go (the last two photos).
I got out my macro lens this morning and René and I started crawling around under squash leaves to get photos of a bee inside a squash blossom. The bee was pretty cute, but after several snaps it got tired of having a lens in its face and showed me a hefty pair of bee fangs. I can’t resist doing macro shots of damselflies and dragonflies. I sneak up on them until they fly, freeze in place and wait for them to come back (they often do), sneak up a little closer — they fly, I freeze, they come back — and the process continues until I either get the shots I want or they decide I’m too close and don’t come back.
Mama Manx has a cave in the cucumber patch where she lays on the cool mulch under the shade of the cucumber leaves. When one of us gets too close to the entrance of her cucumber cave, she darts out like a moray eel, chatters at us, then retreats back into her cave.
Puck is working on his memoirs, “Don’t Puck With Me”, and while he was taking a break he pestered Laurie for some attention while she was reading. Guildenstern was intently playing with clover under my chair while I sat on the deck enjoying the fine summer morning.
I finally got to irrigate after 7 weeks, so the wet soil and mulch made for a cool evening for the kitties, bumblebees and damselflies to hangout in the clover. Laurie was sketching the yard, sans power poles, and Mama Manx was using her head to help Laurie hold up her sketchpad.
We worked on the property all day yesterday, which included putting in soaker hoses on the rose beds where it’s hard to check the dippers, and to have as backups since we can only get irrigation waster every three weeks now. We finally got all the branches picked up from pruning the fruit trees — I think the branches double when you cut them, I took down the last of the chain-link fence that was now in front of our neighbor’s wood fence, and no longer needed. I pulled up several metal posts we had holding up trellis at one point, but since we are reconfiguring the beds, they needed to come out. I went ahead and set up the swamp cooler, although it might be a little early. Springtime is really difficult on our property because it still freezes almost every night and it was 82 F this afternoon. The new water hose will probably crack a few times before it stops freezing. After I got all the other stuff done, I went down and dug out 75 feet of our main irrigation ditch and built up the bank on the south of the ditch in an attempt to keep the water from running into the access between us and the neighbor. The digging was difficult because there are mostly tree roots under the ditch.
A fly was hanging around in the window caught in a spider’s web this morning. One of the reasons I like spiders.
The new tulips I planted last fall are coming up — big yellow, red/yellow and peachy-red tulips. I’ll have to wait and see if there were other colors in the mix, as I’ve forgotten what all I planted. Guildenstern was out rolling in the dirt, and wanted to be held, of course.
Blossoms, butterflies, droplets, flies and tiny, yellow-centered daffodils — pieces of April promising new life despite the dry conditions.
Macro photography in low light at a high ISO gives interesting results as in the photo of the spider on the fancy daffodil. I got a couple more street scenes in downtown. Things I see every day will suddenly catch my attention when the light is right.
Off Center & Not Even 