Category: 2013

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The other evening as Abigail and I were heading to ball practice via Hastings, we saw a tarantula sauntering across the road.  It was almost to the other side and we easily avoided it.  Then a few days ago Chris pointed out the one you see in the photo at the left.  It was headed for the piñon just south of the 2005 driveway.  Tarantulas are plentiful on SA but they are very shy and stay in their burrows all summer long.  Only long about this time of year do they seem to be taken with the urge to go walk-about.  I don’t know why that is.  These are females, I believe, and it is unlikely they are mate shopping.  They stand considerable risk from predators such as the tarantula hawk out in the open so what compels them to run that risk I don’t know. Continue reading “Tarantula time” →

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Rain fell this week, half an inch Tuesday and one and a half Thursday.  There was also about half an inch that fell while we were in Garland.  Things are looking up.  The rain Thursday evening was particularly gratifying.  There was a storm headed our way but Abigail and I still drove across town to her softball practice.  It was sprinkling by the time we got there  but the coach was on the diamond hitting balls to a handful of girls so Abigail joined them.  The sprinkle gradually got heavier and while not close, there was lightening accompanying the storm.  I was on the verge of summoning the Abster to the car when the coach finally called off practice.  Half way home we drove out of the rain which was coming down pretty hard but had no sooner gotten home when it started raining on SA.  It was good to see the little dry stream in the front run the length with water, probably the first time it’s done so since I put it in.  Never mind that practically the whole yard was running with water also. Continue reading “Rain” →

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Much of this week was spent in the cool Sangre de Christo mountains of New Mexico.  It started raining shortly after we arrived at the Shewberts’ cabin Tuesday and rained most of the afternoon.  No sooner had we arrived than Phyllis got a call from her sister telling her that her husband was unresponsive.  Gary and Phyllis left almost immediately and drove to Angel Fire where Phyllis’s sister and brother-in-law have their cabin.  The rest of the time we were there they travelled back and forth between their cabin in Red River and the hospital in Santa Fe where the brother-in-law had been taken.  We left Friday and the last we heard their brother-in-law’s condition was deteriorating.  Continue reading “Mountain cool” →

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Kari baked a cake, added baloons and celebration-specific paper plates and napkins to turn our Friday night get together into a retirement party.  Mixed emotions, as when your 15-year old daughter comes home at 3 a.m.  with a Gideon bible under her arm, are funny things.  It feels like I’m going on vacation, which we are since we’re headed to Red River next week, but I keep remembering that, no, living pay check to pay check is over.  Now it’s no paycheck, which is scary.  On the bright side, the days of working all day in the office only to go out into nearly the hotest part of the day for a couple hours before dinner to try and keep up with the work around SA are over, too. Continue reading “The road away” →

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This week the first shades of purple began appearing on the gayfeather. Since I haven’t mowed the north end there is quite a bit of it outside of the front yard so it should put on quite a show over the next few weeks. Other than cutting them back in winter before their seeds scatter everywhere, the gayfeather requires no other maintenance, not even water. Even in dry times like we have now it grows pretty and green, then puts on a purple show in late summer. It isn’t aggressive about seeding itself. I don’t see it in the nurseries but for my money it is hard to beat as an ornamental plant.

Continue reading “Gayfeather time” →