Special Effects: From a Letter to Two Childhood Friends

P, I'm so sorry to hear about your fall. Were you alone when it happened? How did you get help?

They always joke about aging not being for sissies but boy are they ever right. Today I was thinking that I should look around the internet because surely someone has written a funny song about all the thrills (and spills) of getting old. 

There would have to be a stanza about what happens when you laugh too hard (cross those legs, ladies, it's leaky time!), and one about the joys of a high fiber diet (eat fiber because the colonoscopy doctor told you to do it, add up the insufficient fiber grams, sigh and eat more fiber, sit around feeling bloated while processing the fiber, run to the bathroom, quick! quick! quick! before it's too late, then repeat the whole cycle). 

Today I am sporting several bandages, having been half nibbled to death by the dermatologist. Oh, good, just another ten days in hot weather when I can't get those bandages wet while I wait to hear if I have some terrible skin disease, tra-la!

C, I never get into the shower without thinking about your terrible shower fall. I will be thinking about you again in ten days, when I'm finally allowed to shower again. 

Guess what? I just got a tricycle! There really is some message about the circle of life there. A couple of years ago Bill bought me a very pretty two-wheeled cruiser bike for Christmas, but I fall off of it. The last time it threw me, I was just standing still while holding it and chatting with a neighbor. It flung me right into the roadside gravel. Getting up is no picnic, as you may or may not know, and I didn't even have to do the usual quick look around to see if anyone noticed my embarrassing fall. Nope, the neighbor was still right there, looking appalled and probably wondering, how on earth did she do that?

So now I have a nice stable tricycle. Bit of a wide load (ha ha) with those two back wheels, and the seat is built just like one on a tractor. Nice, fat, broad, comfy seat. I was interested to find that it just exactly fit me! It's not easy to steer a trike, I've found, so although I don't have to worry about falling over I still have a way to go before I can steer a steady course. But how nice to be able to get out and get some exercise without damaging myself too severely. 

Which makes me think of my adventures at the gym. Last time there I was diligently wiping down the control panel of the treadmill I'd just used. Unfortunately I also wiped the "on" button, so as I turned to step off I got a little power boost, sending me off the back end a little faster than I usually move. Lucky for me, my fellow jocks were busy huffing and puffing so they didn't notice my unintended burst of speed. 

So, have I covered our aging issues? Diet, exercise, medical tests, doctor's orders... Wait, there's one more. 

Today I picked up a prescription written for me by that nibbling skin doctor. After reading the possible side effects, I see that I'm apparently looking at symptoms that may or may not include more bloating, gas, and nausea (just like the special effects of the high fiber diet), possible loss of sense of smell and taste (lasting for up to a year), and accidental weight loss (can't wait for that one). 

On the other hand, if I decide to forgo the medication because of the dire warnings about potential liver damage, I face a future in which whatever is going on with my toenail (sorry I didn't attach a photo, lol) will spread to my artificial knees and will actually implode me, saving my family all the trouble of spreading my [future] ashes. 

I send you both much love; that's another good thing about being older--you just go ahead and tell people that you love them.

The Quiet Water Arrives

In the night, the dogs wake us. Just outside our bedroom window there are men in the pecan orchard with flashlights. The quietly flowing irrigation water is here; water moving silently without the noisy groundwater well pumps we have gotten used to in these drought years.

This year's irrigation allocation started its journey a week and a half ago when released from the Elephant Butte Dam upstream. It has made its way down the state through the dry bed of the Rio Grande, branching off into canals and ditches to the gates that let it into fields and orchards.

The water comes to the farmers when the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (known around here as EBID--the initials; or spoken as a word--Ebid) schedules it, thus the voices at three in the morning. They are checking to see that the water has gotten to the farthest reaches of this orchard before moving to the next.

The soft Spanish voices call out to each other that the orchard is full. They carefully step across the slick flooded clay and drive off quietly in their pickup truck to close one orchard's gate and open another.

 The thirsty spadefoot toads begin their joyous songs.

 

At dawn, the toads are quiet; if you turn up your volume you can mostly hear doves and roosters waking with the day.

The Colors of My Morning

My morning is filled with color and joy...

Yet another family member is coming to live nearby

where he will know the serenity and the shelter of thick adobe walls

and the enchantment of this beautiful valley. 

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.