These Eyes

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This jumping spider has plenty of eyes to cry for it’s lost love. Rosencrantz looks nice in stripes, and now that our butterfly bushes are blooming they are attracting all kinds of insects, like the scarab in the last photo.

 

Rosenstripes

 

Scarab

 

Rio Guadalupe Canyon

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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.

 

HummingbirdMoth

 

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On Highway 485

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Between Jemez Pueblo and Jemez Springs is the junction of NM 4 and NM 485. New Mexico 485 heads west and then north through Gilman and Port and reconnects with NM 4 north of La Cueva. The old adobe in Gilman has a red mud plaster from the red soils found in the Jemez. The red cliffs and prickly pear cactus are at the mouth of the Rio Guadalupe Canyon.

 

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Macro Magic

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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.

 

Swirly

 

TheEvilBollWeevil

 

The Blog Before The Storm

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I took this photo just after midnight on Friday morning. It was so windy and so much rain on Friday night, that the lightning was never clear, just bright flashes and loud crashes. Since the clouds are building up again, I thought I better get the blog posted before the storm hits and we lose power again. We got home at 4:30 pm yesterday and by the clocks that keep a memory of the time they went off, the power had been restored just an hour before we got home, which, if correct, means we were without power for 21 hours. The June bugs and roses are happy after the heavy rains, and Rosencrantz was enjoying a patch of catnip in the late afternoon light that was falling between the thunderheads building up in the western skies.

 

JuneBug

 

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JuneBugTakeoff

 

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Windows on Zuni

Window

 

I took a short walk along Zuni this afternoon and got photos interesting windows along the way. We stopped by Tristan’s on the way home for the art show to check on the cats and water the plants and ended up in the middle of a major thunderstorm. Lighting knocked out the power, and buckets of water falling from the clouds flooded the streets. All the traffic lights north of Montaño were out on Coors Road, and visibility was almost zero at times making the six-way stop with the turns lanes at Paseo Del Norte and Coors tricky to negotiate with the traffic lights out.  As we drove into Corrales the rain let up and we noticed the power was on at the Frontier Mart. By the time we got home, not a drop of rain had fallen, but at least we had power. The rain finally passed over our house, but it was mild compared to what we drove through from Tristan’s to Corrales in.

 

WindowBlue

 

WindowShop

Chasing Hotspots

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I had another biopsy, the second this year, and this one was a real pain in the neck, since the “hot” lymph nodes they biopsied are in my neck. I suspect the hot lymph nodes are more reactive from allergies and congestion than they are cancerous; however, we can’t ignore hotspots and need to chase them down and see what they are made of. I think they may have been skimping on the lidocaine to save money, because the area they biopsied was never very numb and I could feel everything they did.  On top of that, I have very good peripheral vision, so even though I had my head turned to the side and was looking at the wall, I could see as the doctor lowered the needle and then I could see the top of the syringe as the doctor moved it up and down and around to get the tissue samples. Needles to say, my neck is very sore.

The heavy rain we had was welcome, but not the hail as it pretty much ruined our vegetable garden, and stripped off a lot of leaves from other plants. The hail cut an oriental lily in half, leaving a cross section of the flower, and the last photo shows what’s left of our corn, beans and melons.

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