In 16mo I'll be an octegenarian!

Hard to believe. As you'll see from the picture below, there's a lot more wrinkles! But no gray hair.

The property gets older as I do. Tuffy, at 12, is still going strong, total focus the ball as befits a pure Border Collie.  I took on a rescue last year.  I thought it would be good for Tuffy to have company.  The ball is the focus and she doesn't pay the other 12 yr old mix any mind.  There is now a once feral orange cat I named Warrior. He's young, only about 3 according to the vet.  Before he became tame and I had him neutered, he was always sporting some wound somewhere.  He still has a torn ear from some earlier fight.  Neutering has helped a lot. He co-exists with the two dogs just fine.  They don't bother him and he rarely bothers them.

WOW! It's been a long time since posting.

My goodness, how time flies! 

We are NOT in a drought this year.  Finally!  We've had quite a bit of rain this last spring and now the summer monsoons are here.

The grass is a bit high out front and everywhere else this year also.  Do you see the dog on the path poking her nose through the grass waiting for me to throw her ball? Much of this grass comes up to my shoulders.  I need a goat.  heh

I am also down to two dogs now.  Snowy and Tuffy.  Snowy is feeling her age.  Her brother Merlin passed away last year.  She still misses him.

Tuffy is the ever energetic border collie who shows no signs of slowing down.  :)  Here she is anxiously awaiting me to throw the ball.  What an amazing focus she has.

AND:

The Mora River is really running. This is unusual for July, especially.  This time of year this is usually a dry river bed with just a little water flowing in the underground stream.  This is about a foot high. It's wonderful to see.  The valley is green everywhere!!!

The cold has arrived a bit early this year.

After the hail storms this past summer, the gardens were slow to recover.  I'm just now seeing small squash on the vines and green tomatoes on the stem.  The second storm just traumatized the vegetables and there isn't enough time to fully mature.  Most squash plants didn't even bear fruit.  The potatoes were small but at least there were some.

Tonight we have 34 Deg. predicted, so the tomatoes have to be covered and what's in the gardens will just have to cope with the cold.  It's tough to say if they can or not. They aren't typical September plants, that is for sure.

Early Fall cold temperatures means the wood stoves will be started sooner than  normal.

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Snake in the compound July 7, 2013

On July 7th this year, in between the hail storms we had another serpentine visitor.  Over by the wood piles a timber rattler had come to visit.  Now, a dog is smart enough to stay back when a rattler is rattling away.  Not so a cat.  One of the young outside cats was curious about the snake and the snake was not happy. He was all coiled up with his rattles making noise and he was ready to strike.  My friend threw something at the cat to scare it off, and I shot the snake.  11 rattles means it was around 5.5 years old.

Haven't seen rattlers around here for the past 4 years.  But this year this area of the mountains is in a real drought and the wildlife comes off the mountain to see what we have.

Hail in June and in August, 2013

It's hard to believe in the middle of summer, but we got two severe hail storms.  And they decimated the gardens where the vegetables were coming along nicely.  The first storm totally destroyed some young plants and shredded leaves everywhere.  It looked like a disaster had blown through.  Well, after 6 weeks some of the plants had recovered and were on their way again to producing vegetables when we had another more virulent hail storm.  WOW.  What weather we have had this summer.  Now, the plants are trying again but it will be time for the first frost in another 5-8 weeks and I don't think they are going to have time to mature.  Haven't had any summer squash since they got destroyed the first time. It's been a tough summer for gardening here.

An Overnight Snow Storm

We've been experiencing some really warm days lately, temps were in the high 50's and high 60's even.  Everyone was thinking of Spring and gardens when in came a brief snowstorm overnight.  We do need the moisture so it's nice to see some 8 inches of snow.

The dogs have fun in it and hopefully the dry ground will soak it up. We have had a very dry winter here. Just another case of anomalous weather patterns.

Regardless of the conditions, Tuffy the Border Collie insists on me throwing her some balls. So I did thinking she wouldn't be able to find them.  She did.  :)

She is holding a tennis ball in this first picture.  She really had to dig for it, too. 

They tell us to expect another inch or two today then tomorrow it should be up to 56 degrees again.

Believe me, you don't want to be underneath those trees when the snow start falling off.  It's quite a wet surprise.

Not so easy to find those balls out there.  heh

Magnificent Sunrises

This is such an amazing area of our country to be in - high in the northern New Mexico mountains.  At just over 7500 feet elevation, the deep blue of the daytime sky, the millions of stars at night.  Due to our altitude and to the clean, clear atmosphere we see a lot more than those in the coastal cities and foothills.  I used to go to the mountains west of San Diego to the San Diego Astronomy Association observing site.  It was beautiful there and at 4000 feet it was clear.  At least I thought so until moving to Mora, NM!  Wow, the clarity and clearness and beauty of the skies here far surpasses anything I noticed when living in SoCal.

Yesterday's and today's pre-sunrises were awesome.  The whole sky was red and other colors; the whole trailer was shaded in colors as the sunrise started to cast it's beauty in our skies.

Splitting Wood

Figured I had better post something so you wouldn't think I'd kicked the bucket... :)

As I get older [I'm 71 now]  I need more exercise.  Living in the mountains there are always opportunities for exercise. Soon it will be planting and gardening times.  Right now it's splitting wood for the wood stoves.  However, we are splitting next years wood, not this years wood.

This years wood is stacked in the background and the new piles of split wood waiting to be stacked in the foreground.

Large and knotty

 ...

Lots more to do yet.

Fires and Smoke in New Mexico

Dawn

With so many fires starting with the Wallow fire in eastern Arizona, our state has been in the path for a lot of smoke [picture above is what sunrise looks like]. Now there are some serious fires right over the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico, north of Santa Fe in Los Alamos.

The Los Alamos fire is a new one as of this weekend. It is a national emergency due to the work of the Los Alamos lab there.

The smoke gives the land a strange color and the sun turns red.

Thick smoke is quite a filter

Strange light and a red sun color the land below in eerie light

Yesterday at 3PM while out in the garden the smoke was mixing with the regular clouds [bottom picture]. Made for very strange looking cloud cover.

Spring Time in the Rockies

I've been growing some seedlings in the kitchen.  Getting ready to plant them tomorrow.  These are pumpkins and bush and vine buttercup squash. I put them out on the porch to acclimate them to the outside weather.  They have spent the past few nights out also even though the nights got down to the mid-thirties; those are the temperatures they will see out in the garden areas.

The potato crop and sugar snap peas are already in the ground and growing. Sugar snap peas don't mind cold weather. The potatoes are less hardy but haven't come up through the dirt mounds over them as yet.

Nipper

Nipper is still with me.  For those of you who remember Nipper, she is 16 years old now and this is what she does most of the time.  When she is awake and outside with the other three dogs, she is still alpha dog.  They still defer to her and she is the tiniest of them all.  Canine dynamics are fun to watch.

Finally! Snow has arrived.

We had such a long fall and early winter without any moisture we were wondering when we would get some up here. The mid west has been inundated with multiple snow storms but they never made it here.


We had two storms a couple days apart, then off and on again snow flurries.

The dogs love it out there but we also have sub zero degree temps to contend with. Neither the dogs nor I enjoy those. One night it got down to minus 20. Too much brrrr in that kind of weather. As you can see, Tuffy is up to her belly in it. In most places it's about a foot now. We're supposed to get nice weather now... so it will all change to slush.

A Glorious Morning Sky

We had another beautiful sunrise this morning. This time of year seems to bring the Lord's glory out for everyone to see and enjoy.



And a few mornings ago, the trees all looked like they were on fire from the early sunrise:



The snow has all melted. The weather is cold and windy today. Most likely there will be no snow for the Christmas weekend.



The new wood stove is doing a marvelous job. I'm warm at night now.

The Garden and The Rains

We have had lots of rain this year. It's been wonderful. Since I moved up here, the fields have been brown in August, but not this year. Green fields and flowers everywhere.



The last week or so we've had some real heavy rains. The weeds are doing well too. And August is sunflower month. There is a huge one between the corn and the potatoes.














The tomato plant on the porch survived the hail and the tomatoes have pock marks from the hail but it keeps going. Looks pretty ragged, but the first fruit off it this morning was delicious.

A Schizophrenic Day in Mora, NM

Early this am the skies were clear and blue. I took a picture of a pot with California poppies that had just bloomed this week. It sits on the front porch with some tender garden items, namely a lonely string bean bush plant just starting out and a tomato plant and raspberry ground cover plant. I keep them up there because there is protection from the wind.

About 3PM we had a hail and rain storm that blew through. Remember, this is high mountain terrain and anything can happen. Hail in the summer is not uncommon It dumped a few inches of rain and hail with lots of thunder and lightening and went off. Hope the garden survived the hail part.

Ah, another storm coming through now at 3:3-PM. Sure going to be wet for awhile. :)

March Storms

I'm always taking pictures but never seem to get them up here. We had snow last night again which fell on old patches still around from a week ago. this is good snowball snow, too. You don't want to be walking under the trees when they let go of some of that snow.

This snow should melt faster since the overall temp is higher than back in the new year so it should melt faster than before.

Three of the four dogs enjoy it and the old dog, Nipper, stays inside where it's warm and comfortable. The little border collie is waiting for me to pick up her kong to throw it for her. She's paying zero attention to the other two. That kong defines her existence. She very carefully drops it in front of me and then points her nose to it so I don't miss it.

Early this am I shoveled the walk before the dogs made it into an ice rink. At least I'll be able to get the car later on. If they pack it down by walking all over it there, it can get very slippery.