Baby Steps

We're coming back to life very incrementally.  For instance, I just changed the Weather Underground weather widget (near the top of the right hand column) to display our actual conditions right here at the Homestead.  Barring the occasional 2 second power outages we suffer at the hands of Columbus Electric Cooperative, the widget will always display real time current conditions. Excited?  You bet you are.

Hiatus

Like the French, I'm taking the Summer off.  When the temps cool, posting will return. Apologies for the lack of advance notice.

Life at the Hare-Brained Homestead

So, enough with the semi-hopeful signs of life with the trees.  Here are some things in the yard that are positively thriving.  The drought-hardy, Chihuahuan Desert native flora..

Ocotillo

Prickly Pear Cactus

Cholla Cactus

Survival Mode

The drought continues.  According to the weather services, the humidity late yesterday afternoon was 1%.  The dew point?  A ridiculous -20°F.  That’s right.  Twenty freaking degrees below zero!  And since the ambient temperature was 110° higher than that, it wasn’t likely that we would squeeze any moisture out of the air.

Somehow, despite the lack of any measurable precipitation since the end of last year, (and that was a single snow fall, so really, the dry spell goes all the way back to Summer), things are turning green.  It’s most noticeable when driving  home from town.  Huge green swaths of creosote bush surround the base of the Florida Mountains.  In the yard, the mesquite brush seems to be the most drought-hardy of all the plants.  Dammit.  Of all the flora I wish dead, the mesquite is at the top of the list!

I’ve been watering (and no, so far there’s no shortage of water in our aquifer, knock wood) the peach tree and the pecan tree, and the fruit is looking good.

The pines, at least from a distance, look as dead as the pronouncement from a friend who knows things about trees and plants.  But if you look closely, the trees have a secret.  When stressed, as they are in extreme drought conditions, they seem to go into a kind of survival mode.  First, they dropped almost two-thirds of their needles.  New needle clusters normally would be sprouting from the ends of the branches , but even with the constant, 24/7 drip I’ve got going to our two pines, the tree’s not sending water to the extremities.   But it is using the water!   A few weeks ago, I noticed these little green needle clusters start showing up on the branches closer to the ground.  As time passed more have begun to sprout, and on higher branches, too.

What seems to be happening, and I couldn’t find quite what I was looking for on Google, is the tree has gone dormant at the top, and the extremities, but it is keeping itself alive by pushing out enough green to keep transpiration happening. 

This is even more evident on one of the trees in the back yard.  Up until a couple weeks ago, I was certain it was dead.  While other trees in the yard were full of broad, green leaves, nothing was happening with this tree (which we’ve never identified, but we know the hummingbirds like to roost in it because it’s the closest tree to the feeder).  The ends of the branches were brittle dry.  No sign of life.
Then a strange thing happened.  Leaves began to sprout from the trunk; and from the thick areas of the branches closest to the trunk.  It looks odd, but this is another tree that’s killed off part of itself, to save itself.  Kind of like that kid in 127 Hours.

One of the climate models looking 6 months to a year out, shows a powerful el Niño is a possibility.  That , if it happens, will most certainly break the drought.  Will the trees then “wake up”, and go back to the way they were before the drought and the powerful February freeze?  Don’t know.  We’ll just have to wait and see, but I’m happy they seemed to have figured out a way to hang in there and wait with us.

Every Day Occurrence ..

..dozens every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. (Unless it rains, which like....)

This was taken on our most recent 250 mile Sunday Joy Ride, west on NM Rt9, (more on our Sunday adventures in a future post), but we can usually see lots of them in the valley by just walking out onto the front porch.

Some Good News After All.

Peach Blossoms

As reported previously, the palms are DOA, as is the fig, and much of the cacti, and presumably the oleander. Noticed yesterday that even the large Mexican Elder is brittle, and may be dead as well. All victims of either/or the brutal February cold snap and drought. But I've been watering the pines (now that all of our piping's been repaired) and I'm happy to report they're no longer golden in color, but are now more of a rusty red with a lot of pale green starting to show through! Best of all, as illustrated by the photo above, the peach tree has survived, and is blossoming. Some of the readers of this blog may have tasted the peaches from this tree last Summer, so you know this is very, very good news. I'm betting the little pecan is probably all right as well.

Yup. This is Depressing.

A mere 6 weeks separate these two images.  The palms all over town, and in Las Cruces look the same.  This makes me sad.

Consequences of a Changing Climate

Just a few weeks ago, these California Fan Palms in our backyard were snow covered, and still green.  Then the deep freeze hit.  More than 90 straight hours below freezing, with overnight lows around 0°F, and wind chills 15 - 20° below that.  Daytime highs struggled to make the 20’s.  A few days after the cold broke, I noticed that all the fronds had turned brittle and brown.  Then we had a day with brutal winds, and the crown of the tree just went over in a right angle to the trunk.  We don’t know if these palms are dead.  The experts say don’t trim or chop till Spring.. see if the plant can replenish itself from the roots.

We live in an area where the average January and February high temperatures are in the 40’s and 50’s, and overnight we might hit 20° on a bad night.  The plants aren’t used to what we have and neither are the houses.  We lost our water for 48 hours, and have some not-quite-essential pipes to replace under the house.. (the pipe supplying the outside faucets, and also the refrigerator ice maker-  the horror! No cracked ice for Margaritas!).  There’s also a tiny leak in the well house, although I’m not sure it’s related to the cold.  It took me several days to realize the consistently crowded parking lot at the hardware store wasn’t because they were having a giant clearance sale.  They were selling PVC pipe. Thousands and thousands of feet of PVC pipe.

Besides our palms, our prickly pear cactus are drooping, and even the acacia, and Mexican elder look sickly.  The Ocotillo always looks dead in the winter, so we’ll just have to wait and see on that one.  The only thing that looks unscathed is the all the goddamn cholla!

Most disturbing of all, is the plight of the Ponderosa pines.  At Christmas, they were green and thriving, lit up with our holiday lights.  Now they are sad and brown.  I can’t believe that the cold did this.  They’re mountain trees fer chrissakes!  I think they’ve fallen victim to the lack of moisture.  We haven’t had any appreciable precipitation since Summer.  We had a blizzard at the end of January, but because it was so cold and dry, the snow seemed more to evaporate than melt.  There was no mud. 
I’ve been watering the pines and the fig tree, (which also looks in a bad way), but so far they remain golden brown, and stand out on our hill like a beacon. 

Rain is in the forecast for Sunday.  It may, and it may not, depending on the wildly varied forecasts from the different online weather services.  These plants have been in the yard since the house was placed here in 1997.  I’d hate to have to start over.

This Is A Big Fuc.. .. Deal!

Doves, seeking shelter during the worst.
I feared for their lives.

For the last two days, we've had temperatures well below normal. For example, the normal high for this time of year is 62°F. We struggled to come close to 20°F. Probably 40% of the state is without water, us included. Many are without natural gas, and with power companies effecting rolling blackouts, some have been without power. The winds from the North on Wednesday and Thursday were strong enough to turn a trace of snow into a blinding
blizzard!

In our area, particularly, the homes are not suited to cold this extreme. We've been without water since Wednesday night, probably because the water line from the well building to the house is not buried deep enough. Fortunately, our well building is well insulated, so there was running water from the tap there.. we were able to fill some 5 gallon buckets to at least be able to flush the toilets. We've been spoiled here, and had forgotten the rules about opening the taps to prevent freezing.. besides, who could have imagined that we would break the record for low temps by a whopping 20 degrees?!

The dishwasher is full. The kitchen counters are full of more dirty dishes. Our bodies are.. well, enough said about that. We could use showers.

I awoke at 6:15 this morning to the sound very much like a dog getting ready to empty its stomach. I was afraid the drains were about to back up. In reality, it was the faucet in the bathtub, trying mightily to produce water! It would produce only a trickle, but a trickle was more than we've had for more than 50 hours. To compound the good news, the same was happening in the second bathtub. Not a drop from any of the sink faucets yet, but now that appears only a matter of time.

The forecast for the next 10 days is for highs in the 60's. That sounds a whole lot like normal to me, and the last two days will be but an ugly memory. Next Winter we'll know better, and I want a wood burner in the house!

The Hummers of the Summer of 2010

On an eye-bleedingly, bone-chillingly cold day in the middle of Winter, where the last two days set record low temperatures, and tonight promises to do likewise, I was inspired to finally put together a film from last Summer. I was probably complaining about the flies and the heat then.



I may have mentioned - more than once - that we had an unusually large numbers of hummingbirds around the yard last season. May this make you feel warm. (Not doing much for me so far...)

Darwin Award Candidates, Deming NM & Points (Far) East.

Yeah. Looks like a good place to hike when inclement weather is approaching, and you're wearing shorts and T-Shirts. Maybe you'd go up on "Lover's Leap", huh?. Then use your cell phone when you're completely out of your element and experience. Duh.

The Burrito That Botched A Hunt.

The plan was simple. High winds were forecast, with an official advisory-- 35mph or better with gusts up to 55. But they weren't supposed to get up to that level until 11am. So I'd planned to get up early, have a little breakfast, throw the dogs in the car and beat the wind. I should have a couple of hours of running before the wind picked up to dangerous speeds. That was the plan.

It would have worked, too, if I hadn't found the last two eggs in the fridge and decided I wanted to make a breakfast burrito. With Cabot sharp chedder, Biad's Reserve green chile's, diced potatoes and onions, it was delicious. But hardly classified as a "little breakfast".

It added almost an hour to my prep time, but when I got the gang in the car it was still just breezy*. I had a good 45 minutes to drive, though, so anything could happen.

I was feeling pretty good with only about 5 miles to go, when I looked to the west and saw huge clouds of dust. At first, I thought there might be a vehicle out there, because things were still pretty calm where I was. But in the desert, things change in a hurry, and the car was suddenly slammed by heavy gusts, and the cattle ahead in the road were scurrying for heavier cover.

Rather than turn around, I decided to press on and make a loop through the coursing field, just to see if maybe one of the lower areas were out of the wind. How foolish of me. Not only was the wind howling and the dust flying, but I now had 3 pissed off dogs cramped in the back of the little Mitsubishi who realized we weren't stopping, and they weren't getting out.

It's windy again today, so tomorrow will be the next best time to get out and run some more Summer fat off these guys.

Still.. I don't regret the burrito. It was soooo good.

(it was a great day to be a tumbleweed, though.. if you were a tumbleweed that needed to get somewhere)

*In New Mexico, "breezy" is anything around 20mph.

Maybe the Best Course I Ever Never Saw!

Dutch couldn't make it out with us yesterday, but that was OK.  Our guys have been running well lately, and with a fair amount of success.  It was time to see if they could duplicate that success without the help from Dutch's dogs.. particularly Angie and Phyllis.  It was time to do a Pack Hunt "pre test" on Sandia and Ashley.

So Mrs. Shotonsite and I rounded up the two, and threw in Willow for the exercise, and headed out to a field we've left alone for several weeks in the hopes it would produce some jackrabbits.

As is our usual habit when not meeting Dutch, we were running quite late; by a few hours.  It was almost Noon.  Fortunately, there was a decent breeze from the North, so it was not as warm- at least initially- as it was forecast to be.  

We headed south, following a draw that's been known to hide rabbits in the past, but not this time.  We had Sandia and Ashley offlead, free coursing.  Sandia is very, very good at finding the hares.  But they were running around like maniacs, which isn't their normal style.  You'd have thought they hadn't been in the field in weeks, when it was only two days.  

Somewhere around 3/4 mile, we began to lose our breeze, and it started to get warm.  I decided if one of them was on a slip, the other would slow down and stay close.  I grabbed Ashley, got her slipped up, and as soon as we started walking again, wouldn't you know it, Sandia jumped a jack!

Away they went,  heading south. The rabbit got on the road with Sandia within inches of it, and Ashley catching up quickly.  Willow was bringing up the rear and getting good exercise!  Soon, Sandia wrenched the rabbit to the left, over a berm, and down from the high ground we were standing on.

In a field known for giving hunters unobstructed views of entire courses, no matter how long they run, we were standing in absolutely the worst place we could be.  Once they dropped out of sight , we didn't see them again.  We walked toward the edge, looking out on the flat, but they weren't there.  We couldn't see them anywhere.

About the time we were approaching the edge, Willow came back.  I don't think she ran very far, and being a black dog with a fairly heavy coat, I didn't mind.  She seemed fine, and we continued to look for the other two dogs.  I was blowing the Fox 40 continuously.  This was very unlike them, especially Sandia, who hustles back very quickly at the end of each course.  We even looked behind us in case they returned via the great circle route.  Not there.

Finally, I spotted two specs approaching from the south.  They had run a very, very great distance.  When they had been out of sight for such a long time, I shut off my stopwatch.  It registered 2:51.  I'm thinking now I may have been premature.  They probably ran close to 3:30, and maybe even more.  When they finally got back to us they were really beat.  Both were in a froth, and more exhausted than I've seen them this season, and they are in very good shape, sometimes running as many as 5 hares in a day.

Then I took a good look at Sandia..

,,,and his beard showed me everything I needed to know.  Blood.  They'd run that sucker down.  Ashley had blood on her, too.  It looks like they tried to carry it back, but it was too far, and they were too bushed.  

We decided they were done for this day, and headed back to the van, our little experiment successfully completed

Blue Moon

For the benefit of that one reader of this blog who's not on Facebook, here's a shot of last night's final "blue moon" of the decade.  (Unless you believe the decade doesn't end until the end of this year- but that's a whole 'nother article).

Bonus: who can tell me the difference between this moon rising over the North Florida Mountains, and a similar shot from last Spring?

Incongruous.

Considering the fact that only rain was forecast for our area, this was a bit of a fun surprise this morning.  Always seems just a bit odd to see snow on a palm :)

Subcontracting.

Here's a scene from the first course of the first TCC hunt on Saturday. I didn't feel like toting around the camera and my heavy binoculars, so I subcontracted out the duties, and passed my camera off to our friend, Frank Vigneri, who captured the release perfectly. That's me and Sandia on the right, running with a longdog, whose name I didn't get, in pink, and Sandia's brother, Zuni, in yellow. The jack can be seen upper left, and despite the handicap of being on the wrong end of the line at the start, Sandia won this course.

Because the temperature climbed over 70 in the early afternoon, the hunt was called after the preliminary round, so Sandia ended up 4th overall, out of 15 entered. It was a pretty good day.

As a Rule...

...I'm generally a bit slower than lightning. But with patience, and the ability with digital photography to delete a couple hundred images that have no lightning.. you can get something like this. I'm adding a few more to the "Around the yard" slide show as well. This little thunder-boomer worked it's way through Deming this afternoon and, as you can see, laid down a lot of water... down there. Once again, it barely sprinkled here at the Homestead.

Insane Rainbow

Before I get to a rather long rant on bugs- well, flies mostly- I have to share this with you. Most intense meteorological phenomenon I've seen in a very, very long time. Maybe ever. Driving back home from Silver City.

More Yard Nature.

It doesn't end. Even in the weeks' long temps in the upper 90's. Today, or this evening to be more precise, the blooms on one of our two New Mexico Agave decided to open. At least, a couple of them have now, which means food is available for the local critters. I was worried about the hummingbirds. I saw one inspecting a red clothespin the other day. There hasn't been a lot of blooming going on lately.

But the feeders around the agave this evening (and you can see their shapes in the photo above) are often mistaken for hummingbirds. In fact, they are Pink Spotted Hawk Moth, and they seem to think the nectar in this century plant, (which will die, now that it's bloomed) is pretty darned tasty. The hawk moth, along with the hummingbird, and some species of bats, are the only animals to have perfected hovering flight. (I learned that on Wikipedia!).

One amazing thing about this plant, is that center "stalk"... when we left on our 7 week road trip, it wasn't there! It shot up to its current height, which I'd estimate at 18-20 feet in just 50 days. And when it dies, it will do so suddenly, just falling over. Unfortunately the two agaves sit next to where the motor home is parked. Timber-r-r-r!

Heavy Weather

For the past several weeks, with the exception of an occasional overnight passing shower, we've missed out on the so-called "monsoon" rains. We've been able to see it. See it often, in fact. Usually as in the form above, as heavy downpours just a tantalizing couple of miles away on the Deming Plain.

Well folks, just moments after this picture was taken, this storm, complete with lots of sky to ground lightning, thunder, and flash flood alerts, washed over the Hare-Brained Homestead. We could see how the arroyos could fill up in a hurry, and even though I could see the UPS van, just a half mile away, making a delivery at Rock Hound State Park, he wasn't going to deliver that last package to our little abode up here on the hill, because there was no way he'd be guaranteed that the wash at the bottom of the hill wouldn't be rushing with water. So at 8:44PM, my UPS tracking status changed from "out for delivery", to "emergency conditions beyond UPS' control". And that was that. I won't get my new tripod until Monday, and I'll have to make do with the old one to shoot the Deming fireworks tomorrow... (which we should have a fantastic view of, and which you'll see pictures of here.) Hang in there.