Wetlands and History

We finally made it out to the Santa Fe Botanic Garden's Leonora Curtis Wetland Preserve, just south of Santa Fe on Sunday. It was a beautiful day and we had the best excuse for going there because of an end of season potluck lunch for garden volunteers. The preserve is 32 acres and is bounded in part by a living history museum, Rancho de las Golondrinas. The preserve features a unique wetland fed by water hundreds of years old that has seeped down from the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It surfaces here forming a marshy area and a pond dug out many years ago. The pond water is used occassionally by the ranch to run its old mills I gather. In the photos the yellow tree is a cottonwood surrounded by the grey of Russian olive trees.

I also attended an interesting lecture this weekend by a curator from the American History Museum on the unsettling of the continent - comparing histories of Jamestown, VA, Quebec, and Santa Fe. These are three of the earliest capitals of England, France and Spain in North America. The talk focused on the relationship between the settlers and the Indians in the three areas and why the different motivations of the colonists led to much different relationships with the natives. The end result of the near extermination of the Native American populations in each area may have been the same, but it was much more extreme in Jamestown where settlers wanted land to farm and had little interest in trading with the Indians or in intermarrying with them (with some exceptions in all cases of course).

Moving forward in time, on Saturday night there was a showing of films made during the New Deal. If this series comes to your town, definitely make a point of going to see it. It featured 5 films made by exceptional cinematographers (most were directed or narrated by Pare Lorentz) with scores by Aaron Copeland and Virgil Thompson. The Plow that Broke the Plains is a scathing and heartbreaking film about what led to the Dustbowl. The River rather glorified the construction of dams for the TVA project, but also talked about why the floods of the 1930s were so bad. There was also a film about the National Recovery Program's initiatives for African Americans and a very funny, patriotic film about the National Recovery Act that had the audience all singing "The Road is Open Again". The films were shown in the gorgeous Lensic theatre in downtown Santa Fe. This was the first time I'd gotten to go to something there because every program they have seems to sell out way in advance!

More Kitten Photos!

The kittens have now explored pretty much the entire house. Jet likes to read the paper with Jake in the morning. They've all decided they like hanging out in Jake's office as much as their crate. They tend to explore new territories together - so the first time they got in the bathroom there were 2 in the bathtub, one on the toilet and one on the countertop!

Kittens!

Today I have brought home my first set of foster kittens! I am in charge of 4 little black kittens for a few weeks until they find good homes. I am currently sitting in my office with the doors closed while they explore their new home and play with each other and any other loose object in the room. I haven't been able to get a photo of all of them in one place yet! Felines and Friends loaned me a great play crate and all necessary supplies. My mom donated a few cat toys and I've been making some paper balls from the recycling bag - surprised they haven't been in that yet.

They were supposed to have been spayed/neutered today, but the vet decided they were still too young, so I guess I'll have them until they are old enough to go back to the vets at least. After their operations they will go to Petco during weekend days for adoption.

Their names are Mija, Jet, Onyx and Boo. Mija is the most adventurous so far having twice climbed to the top of the play crate. Jet was probably named for his very loud purr. Boo has a little more gray fur than the others and is a little smaller. Still need a personality trait for Boo and Onyx. Jet is a boy and the rest are girls. They are identifiable because each has a paper collar around their neck with their name on it!

Syracuse

On a beautifully clear Friday morning I flew from BWI up to Syracuse, NY via LaGuardia. The plane flew over the Bay just north of the Bay Bridge and I got a great view of the Delmarva. I could see the areas where Carol and Michelle's houses were, the visitor's center and nursery buildings at the Arboretum and the cove my house is on. Over Syracuse I was on the wrong side of the plane to see where my parent's currently live, but I could see our old house. The leaves up here are beautiful this year, just past peak (photo coming soon).

Calla (the dog) was very happy to see me and we have been on several long walks with my mom to Green Lakes State Park and along the Erie Canal. We went to the Syracuse Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. This is a great farmer's market, very large and inexpensive. In Santa Fe the farmer's market has a lot of vendors but I've been amazed at how expensive the food there is. Maybe they just don't produce as much in NM since there is less arable land. In Syracuse, all the farmers had harvested the last of the tender crops like lettuce, tomatoes and peppers ahead of the first hard frost so that was certainly one reason why things cost less this time. (In one photo Calla is eating an apple peel)

Sunday afternoon we went over to the University to see an exhibit on Michelangelo. They had a few drawings and sketches he had made and a copy of the Pieta. After viewing the exhibit there was a nice concert of music from his era starting with a viola trio followed by a madrigal singing group. The concert was attended by many students who apparently were required to be there, and they really could have used a lesson on concert etiquette!

Maryann asked for more food descriptions, so since we ate out last night and had a great dinner I'll add a mention of it! We had dinner at Lemongrass, a Thai/French restaurant downtown. We all got different curries, green curry with chicken, a sweet and sour curry with shrimp and mushrooms, and a red curry with crispy duck. The crispy duck was perfectly cooked, moist meat and crispy skin. Just Bob and I got dessert but with 3 spoons. It was fun to see the desserts because they used some techniques we had learned in pastry class! Mine was a chocolate mousse encased in a dark chocolate pyramid. A little tuile boat held vanilla ice cream topped with a chocolate tuile crescent moon. Bob's was layers of thin chocolate cake with a hazlenut filling encased in a rounded mound of dark chocolate. It had a skirt of tuile on top and tuiles shaped like dancer's legs sticking straight up - the dessert was called a Can-Can something or others (so like a can-can dancer). It was accompanied by a scoop of coffee ice cream.

Tonight I'm making green chile stew with some roasted green chiles that I mailed up before I left!

I do have to relate a sad but funny travel tale for this leg of the trip. I decided to check my suitcase at BWI since I knew the planes would be small traveling to Syracuse, and when the check in person asked for my id, I discovered I couldn't find my driver's license! She said not to worry, that she could check my credit card against my reservation and I could get through. I decided that I had probably left my driver's license in the rental car because I had gotten it out to leave the rental car garage, but I couldn't reach the local rental car desk and the security line was really long. So I took my chances and entered the security line. The first security person highlighted the boarding pass and punched some holes in it. They said to go stand behind a desk until another security person came over. That person asked about my missing id and scribbled some more on the boarding pass. Then I was sent through the "suspicious persons" line (my name for it). There was a big black guy ahead of me who caused the metal detector to go off so while he was removing a belt and checking numerous pockets I went through the metal detector, but the woman holding my boarding pass on the other side decided the black guy was giving her attitude and they got into a heated discussion. Fortunately someone else came over and after being patted down I was sent to have my luggage swabbed. The other guy managed to get through and not have his luggage searched. I have renewed sympathy for Jake's mom who once forgot to bring her id for a trip and had to presumably go through all this to get through security!
(I got through to the car rental desk before my flight left and they found my driver's license and are mailing it to NM, meanwhile Jake mailed my passport to Syracuse)

Eastern Shore Welcome

I traveled out to the Eastern Shore for 2 days to catch up with friends and colleagues. Driving down the rural roads late at night Delmarva's wildlife was out in full force - deer, fox, raccoon and rabbits lined the roads to Carol's house. Carol had waited up for me wanting to see the reunion between Tarka (the cat) and myself. Tarka did seem to recognize me, and since Carol shut her out of her room that night Tarka spent the night at the foot of my bed. Morning light brought a bucolic view out the upstairs windows over a field full of asters, sumacs and saltbush.

Some other highlights from the trip included Pat B.'s microbe cake (see photo!). We discussed "Teaming with Microbes" for book club Wednesday night and she had a made a delicious 3 layer cake filled with rasberry and chocolate mousse. The outside was elaborately decorated with all kinds of soil web creatures like worms, ants and ladybugs. Beverly brought a great pumpkin cake with cream cheese (I finished that cake off for breakfast over a couple days!). The next day was the new volunteer training class's graduation lunch. All kinds of great people and food appeared for that lunch. And of course with Halloween approaching Paul and Buck's Haunted Hayride decorations in the woods and meadows were taking on a life of their own. Thursday night I caught up with Laura and Michelle and Brian over a dinner at Hillside in Centreville.

Just another quick story about food. I had mailed a box to Carol with some things and decided to include the ingredients for making the traditional New Mexican dish, posole, to take to the graduation lunch. I decided rather than try to get to the grocery first thing in the morning, I would just send everything including a box of vegetable broth. Well, I guess the changes in air pressure weren't so good for the vegetable broth because when the box arrived at Carol's it was soaked and the bottom was falling out! So much for efficiency. Fortunately nothing else in the box was damaged although I guess Tarka's new catnip toy will forever have a slight taste of broth in addition to catnip.

It was wonderful to catch up with so many of the friends and Arboretum staff in just 2 days. I look forward to spending more time with everyone again after May!

Bright Lights

We drove up to Taos on Sunday with the goal of buying leather lamp shades for the lamps Jake and his dad built (see photo!). We were going to have breakfast at Michael's up there, but there was an hour and a half wait so we got breakfast burritos at a little Mexican restaurant instead. We found the lamp shades we wanted at a store we had visited on our last trip to Taos, then wandered around town for awhile admiring the art and other goods on offer.

On our way home we decided to drop by the new Buffalo Thunder Casino and Resort on the Pojoaque reservation. There has been a lot of hype about this place with dramatic ads featuring black clouds and lightning bolts. Their grand opening featured the Flying Elvises which I was very sorry to have missed. From the outside it looks like a gigantic adobe structure with clay pots and luminarios on the rooftops. We went into the casino first - a dark room lit up by the glow of hundreds of slot machines. Neither of us has been in a casino for years, and we had a hard time figuring out how the games worked! We asked a casino hostess, and she wasn't sure either - she had never set foot in a casino before getting a job at this one. But we did manage to feed a dollar bill into one machine that was around a penny a game and press buttons until we lost all but 25 cents. The machine then gave us a ticket voucher for the quarter which we fed into the machine next to it. On that one we only got to push one button before losing our quarter!

After that we went upstairs to the restaurant/hotel area. They do have a lot of nice Indian art up there, but it still feels like a hotel. It's operated by Hilton. Anyway, now we've been there and won't be wondering if it lives up to the hype!

More fall color

This morning we drove back up to Aspen Vista to hike along the forest service road that winds up into the mountains. An entire grade of students (maybe 9th or 10th grade) were making their way up to the top as well with various degrees of enthusiasm. Quite a few other hikers were out and many dogs. Lots of photographers and a few painters too shared the trail.

The colors were even more intense than last week and some snow lingers on the north faces of the mountains.

Balloons

Driving through Albuquerque on Tuesday morning to drop Jake's dad off at the airport, we enjoyed the spectacle of the balloon fiesta! This annual event goes for a week and features mass ascensions of balloons every morning. The biggest ascensions are during the weekends, but there were plenty to watch! Amazing there aren't more car accidents on the interstate during this week. These photos were all taken by me from the backseat car window. Balloons were everywhere floating low over buildings and very high, ascending, descending, landing in open lots.

Fall Color

This weekend we went leaf peeping, along with hundreds of other people. Jake's dad is visiting for a few days so we drove up to Aspen Vista near the ski area to admire the view. Even though there aren't many different kinds of trees besides aspens that change color, they were spectacular ranging from bright yellow to deep gold to blush red.

Arriving home, we spotted three deer in the arroyo! And, bless them, they were munching on the Chinese elm.

Garden Renovations

Jake and I have been busy this summer renovating the garden which was dominated by a few large junipers. I added rock borders to the beds and we rescued a fountain whose reservoir was under a large granite rock. The raven came from the Tesuque flea market.

The new plants in the garden are primarily native, although not entirely. I succumbed to a beautiful "Wealthy" apple tree, but also planted native mountain mahogany, Apache plume and New Mexico privets. Herbaceous plants include pineleaf penstemon, fringed sage, poppy mallow, a Mexican salvia, daylilys, giant sunflower, 'Moonshine' yarrow, Shasta daisy and catmint. The garden by the dining room window has sage, another kind of penstemon, Mexican hat, veronica and blackfoot daisy. There's even a little cactus nursery growing chollas, hedgehog cactus and prickly pears. These will be planted around when we replace the lawn with gravel and plants.

If you're wondering about the labels - Jake actually wanted those so that future tenants would know what not to dig up! I did put the common name and latin name for educational purposes ;)

Fall Flowers

The days are noticeably cooler although still in the high 70s and the chamisa and asters fill the arroyo with purple and gold. The chamisa seems to attract a certain kind of butterfly, hundreds of them! The flowers have a strong perfume that reminds me of old honey, but the latin species name is "nauseous", so some people obviously hold a much lower opinion of it! The hummingbirds left last week for the south and this morning a Cooper's hawk showed up in the yard, scaring off the robins and finches that had been all around just before its arrival.