It's Hollyhock Time Again

Cerrillos, New Mexico
1997

Some years ago on our first trip to New Mexico, we saw these hollyhocks blooming in the little town of Cerrillos along the Turquoise Trail that runs between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I never forgot the sight and hoped to have some hollyhocks of my own someday.

I feel so lucky that my wish came true. We not only have our hollyhocks, but we also have some warm adobe walls to give us shelter and to act as a background for our flowers. 

All of these hollyhocks and the ones out in the back of the house are descendants from a little handful of seeds given to me by my knitting friend, Diane. That was maybe four years ago. Many of you who are reading this have received seeds in the mail from me; relatives of these hollyhocks are growing all around New Mexico and in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia.

The original plants from the first year have spread and spread. Little seedlings spring up in unusual places. Sometimes I move them to a better spot, and sometimes I just let nature take its course. 

The new hollyhocks fill in empty spots where I haven't been able to grow other plants. They don't seem to care if I forget to water them, although they do appreciate every drop they get. 

The original plants from 2011 are still going strong although they are not as tall as their daughters

The flowers catch the early morning light in a way that makes my heart glad. 

It is very hard to capture that with my little cell phone camera. 

It feels to me that this colorful garden is a culmination of a lifetime of hard work and planning--not planning for flowers, but for retirement and a place to live in the sun. 

The flowers just make this part of our lives even more lovely. 

Are You Ready For Some Cactus?

Springtime is just as exciting in the high desert as it is anywhere else. It's just--well, different. 

The pale pastels I was used to in New England--daffodil yellows, crocus pinks, soft lilac lavenders--are replaced by the pastels of the landscape itself. Apparently this new Spring style has been growing on me over the years and I've just realized that I would miss the sun-washed (washed out, truth be told) colors of springtime here--the pale blue shades of the sky; the soft greens of the budding trees in the river valley; and, yes, the pale adobe brown of the little houses and of the wind-driven dust storms. 

Springtime means growth in the garden, of course. Here are some of the stars of our blazing hot southern-facing front yard. The roses that I blithely planted, all nestled up against the adobe walls (knowing that they always appreciated a warm wall in New Hampshire) have long since dried up and given up the ghost; but the cacti are thriving. Lesson learned, Yankee transplant!

So, get ready. The pale colors of Spring in the Mesilla Valley are about to be punctuated by some hot pops of flamboyant cactus flower colors. But first come the leaves or pads or thorns...

The-cholla-we-never-should-have-planted

Lots and lots of new cactus pads coming--those are the rounded things--and lots of flower buds, too (the pointy buds)

This one has some wonderful lavender tones in the pads that you can't really see in the photo
My constant gardening companion, Pete, sends his greetings (upper left)

Detail, new pad coming out.
As much as I love the colors of this cactus, it is the very WORST one
for getting its little almost-invisible needles stuck in you.
Those little things are called glochids and here is an article (for my future reference,
and yours, too) telling how to remove them from your skin.

The center of this plant matured and died away a couple of years ago and now its descendants are coming to life. That's a hollyhock leaf trying to shade the little cactus--more about hollyhocks in a later post. 

Here is the same bud, opened up later the
same day. POP!

From Messy Storeroom to New Bedroom on a Budget

We would love to have a master bedroom suite opening into a private courtyard, and Bill figured out a way to make it happen without moving to another house: We would take our messy back room, which had turned into a jumble of junk when we refinished the floors in the front of the house, clear it out and fix it up, then have a wall built around the patio just outside its door. Why not?

We have been hard at work on the first phases of the project, clearing out (Bill) and painting the room and making curtains (me). First, take a look at the mess we had made by just ignoring this potentially nice room. As we had worked on other house projects, we kept shoving stuff in and just closing the door, resulting in this embarrassing jumble which we wouldn't normally show to anyone:

Doors leading to the patio.

Doors leading to the living room.

A little alcove stuffed full and some miscellaneous bookcases, ditto.

Note the white built-in bookcase to the left, if you can find it.
It will appear again in the "after" pictures below.

What's hiding behind this pile of stuff?

Why, it's a potentially nice little kiva fireplace!

 The following photo is not from our house!

Here is a photo I found on Pinterest.
I was inspired by the wall color and the long airy white curtains.
Using this photo as a reference, we picked out our paint* and found some white twin
bed sheets on sale at K-Mart.**

 We cleared and cleaned and painted and sewed.
We made a new music room/den for Bill in our old bedroom at the front of the house.
And then... we had a new bedroom!



Ready to see the results of all our hard work?

The kiva corner is a lot more welcoming! This is a wood-burning fireplace, very cozy.
I rehabbed an old lamp, painting the base and replacing the shade;
then painted the table and the picture frame.

The print is Guadalupe de la Frontera by Candace Mayer.
We bought it from Ms. Mayer at an art fair;
I love that you can always meet the artists here in Las Cruces.

This was the lamp, table, and picture frame "before"--coming from other parts of the house,
they were all the wrong shades of blue until repainted. 

The new duvet cover (also sewn from K-Mart sale sheets) is reversible to white,
but Petey doesn't suggest using that side.
New curtains cover the view to the road and the little alcove closet.
I still need to paint the white trim around the room, but I have to take some time off to rest!

I think that the built-in bookcase looks much happier now.
I have dragged around that Madonna print all my life since buying it
in Sausalito in the 1960s for $5.00

The little nicho holds a carved Saint Francis that we bought in Taos; 

he is surrounded by Red Rose Tea animals that I collected 

from boxes of tea when living in British Columbia. 

That big wooden rooster just barged in from somewhere. 

Bill calls this "Frankie and his pets."

The door to the patio has new curtains. The next part of the project (after washing the windows) will be getting an estimate on having a wall built around the patio to make an enclosed courtyard,
giving us more privacy and shutting out the sounds from the road.
There will be windows cut into the wall so we can still see our beloved mountains.

*****

I don't know about you, but I am always interested in the cost of projects. Not counting our new headboard ($200), we have spent about $145 on this project so far. 

*Paint: Behr's Premium Plus Ultra Eggshell Enamel in Gentle Sky and Semi-Gloss Enamel in Bleached Linen, @$30.00 per gallon (approximately) from Home Depot. I also used a little bit of Olympic Semi-Gloss in Planetarium (for the table and picture frame) that was left over from another project.

**The curtains were made from seven Cannon twin bed sheets from K-Mart @$5.99; the duvet cover was made from two Cannon queen size sheets @$7.99. This was the best budget-wise alternative I could find to buying more expensive sheets or fabric by the yard; the material in the sheets was quite nice with a slight sheen to it. 

The new lamp shade was $25.00.

So we went from this...

... to this...

... and from this...

... to this...

... with some elbow grease and a tiny budget, just the way I like to do things!

We Take a Walk

We live just outside of the city limits of Las Cruces and are surrounded by the 496,000 acres of the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, our nation's newest protected area. We like to drive up to the Dripping Springs Visitor Center, located just a short drive from our house, to take walks and have picnics with friends. 

Last week we decided to walk the trail to the springs that give the area its name, since we have always just walked the shorter trail to La Cueva.

At the beginning of the trail

Looking back at the city and the Mesilla Valley

It's always sobering to see that "people have died while climbing in these mountains"

We had to stop and take a photo of the scary warning sign telling us to carry water, hike with a companion, and not to attempt to do things beyond our ability.

A shady stop along the way...

... and the view from the stone bench

Coming attractions

Although this was a winter walk, the sun heats up at 5800 feet, so that shade up ahead was looking very attractive

The first ruins we came to were of the chicken coop, livery and mercantile buildings that were part of Van Patten's Mountain Camp, the original Dripping Springs resort which was built in the 1870s.

I had hoped that this photo of the sign would be easier to read. For a really nice description of the camp and surrounding area, go to the Mountain Resort and Sanatorium post on Abigail Austin's blog, 1000 Miles on My Own Two Feet.

It was fun to imagine early travelers making the trip by stage coach.

Livery building and corrals; Mesilla Valley in the distance

Another view of the livery building and a drinking trough for the tired and thirsty horses

The mercantile

Further up the trail we came to a little snow

Bill at Dripping Springs

We heard the dripping of the springs before we saw them. In this part of the country any amount of water is exciting; in the old days the spring dripped into the cistern and the staff at the resort filled ollas (large unglazed ceramic pots) and carried the water to the guests' rooms. 

Boyd Sanatorium

The resort was sold to Dr. Nathan Boyd in 1917. Mrs. Boyd had contracted tuberculosis, so her husband converted the resort to a sanatorium--the treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis in those pre-antibiotic days called for a healthful diet, strict bed rest, and lots of fresh air.

More ruins

We loved our time up on the mountain (read Bill's account here), especially because the environment was so different from the high desert valley where we live. I'm going back up in a couple of days, this time to do some hiking in the snow.

Chicken Story

The last photo of our happy flock, taken just hours before they died

Back in October, a terrible thing happened at our house. While we were away for just a couple of hours, a stray dog got into our yard, tore down the chicken yard fence, and killed all but one of our beautiful flock of chickens. The lone survivor, Gina, never really recovered from the massacre and died yesterday. 

Although I was overwhelmed, Bill just went to work to rebuild and reinforce the chicken yard fence. He permanently locked up the big perimeter gates for a second line of defense and set about gathering a new flock. He found some young hens, just coming into their first season of laying; then he found ten Rhode Island Red chicks from a farmer down the road; and someone at the feed store handed him a free box of straight-run (unsexed) mixed-breed farm-hatched baby chicks. The feed store guy said that we could bring back any that turned out to be roosters and he would find them a home.

Within days, we had an even larger flock of chickens than we had started with. The big hens were able to go straight into the coop and chicken yard where they happily settled in, but the two batches of young chicks were housed inside in the newly-refurbished guest room (sigh) under heat lamps until they were old enough to live outdoors in the cooling fall weather. 

In addition to those mystery breed chicks from the free box, we have a Sex Link, the Rhode Island Reds, and some Turkens--also known as Transylvanian Naked Necks. I've never been interested in having such peculiar-looking birds until I met ours. They are friendly, chatty, calm, and sweet. We just love them and they are happy living here. One even laid an egg in the car on her way home to us!
 

The turkens (l to r: Barbidoux, Gloria, and Ruby) with the Sex-Link, Sadie,
 in the middle and an unidentified Rhode Island Red on the left

Meet Gloria, who always greets us with happy conversation.
After you get used to the naked neck, it seems quite elegant--almost as though she is
wearing a fancy off-the-shoulder ball gown

The teenaged Rhode Island Red chicks roosting in the Big House