Living in the High Desert at 4500 Feet

SMOKE, CANDLES AND MATCHES

Several neighbors use wood as their primary means of staying warm. The wood is not the oak or mesquite from back home in Central Texas. Here in New Mexico we mostly burn conifers because that’s what’s harvested from the mountains. Also might be cottonwood or trash elm which grows abundantly along the local acequia. When we lived in the mountains we burned pinion pine, another conifer. About every two weeks we’d burn a log that smelled astoundingly awful. I’ve found that same smell here as well. Even when it’s good wood, the smell can be a bit nauseating when smoke hovers around all day. So I burn a big candle. My favs are cranberry and apple.

I light my candles the old fashioned way.

Can you figure out the match box hint I have for you? Having been the victim of cascading matches when I opened the box upside down, I’ve taken to labeling the top so I know which way to hold it when opening.

Never, ever throw matches away until you are sure they are out, out, out. I put mine in a small glass. The next time I throw a match away I’ll soak the lot in water before tossing away.

I’m hopeful we are past all the really cold weather. Time for temperatures where I can go hiking and fishing.

COLD, JAN. 2023

We sure have had a lot of days like this this winter. The mountains will disappear under a thick cloud layer for days at a time. Then the clouds lift and maybe there’s snow.

I like snow, but come on spring.

NEIGHBOR’S VENT ISSUES CONTINUE, JAN. 2023

Pesky racoons have again peeled off the vent to the crawl space on the neighbor’s house. That’s about the tenth time in the last six years. Would have been more, but for several years the vent was not replaced.

The new owners are slowly renovating and finding out how hard it is to keep coons out once they’ve enjoyed the accommodations. I suspect they are going to laugh when they see three bricks against a board. They were strong enough to pull two inch screws out of 2x4s and bend the vent in half.

I’m glad it’s not my house.

GOTTA DEAL WITH THE LEAVES, LATE 2022

Leaf fall of 2022 was pretty impressive. A lot of leaves were hanging in there, but a wild wind storm ripped them down. Up there they weren’t an issue. On the ground they are.

Where do I put them? My compost piles are over half full. The one on the left is 2021 leaves, some garden soil, steer manure, and this year’s garden and kitchen remnants. The one on the right is last year’s leaves. If all goes well, the contents of both bins will go in the spring 2023 garden. It needs one, maybe two turnings before then. I could turn it more often but I let Mother Nature do the work.

I moved the wire circle from around the left bin and resettled it two feet away. Then shoveled all the left bin contents into it. It’s 90% crumbly and broken into tiny bits. Lookin’ good. The leaves you see are what fell onto the pile from the trees overhead.

A bit of water to keep everything moist which is hard in the desert southwest. Then almost everything from the right bin went in as well. Whatever was left will get an extra year to compost.

Found a few grubs which were tossed out in the hardpan. Too bad I don’t have chickens. In fact, if I had chickens they would be turning the piles.

I topped them with signs, “Do not add to this pile.” Otherwise I’d forget and add more stuff to it that won’t decay by spring.

I piled everything into the bin on the left and began raking new leaves into the right.

Three compost bins is a good thing.

FOUND IT IN MY HOUSE

Wind has been blowing really hard the last couple of days. But how the heck does a leaf this big get inside my house without me noticing it?

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM ON THE HOG FARM

There are people who taste what they see. It didn’t compute in my brain. The author had to explain more in the article. She tastes the asphalt road by looking at it. She doesn’t get her tongue down there and taste it. She sees then gets a taste. “Blueberry pop rocks,” she says. She sees a street light and she doesn’t lick it like the kid in the Christmas movie. Black licorice. She wrote about it here.

Some people hear colors and others taste sounds. It’s called synesthesia—experiencing one or multiple senses through another sense.

So glad I didn’t have any of those. I was raised on a hog farm. Can’t imagine the difficulty of dragging through childhood with something that made everything worse.

GOAT HEAD SOLES, JAN. 3, 2023

If you don’t have goat head stickers, AKA puncture vine, in your yard consider yourself lucky. They are gosh awful. I thought sure I’d taken a closeup photo just to show you how deadly they look and posted it on my blog, but can’t seem to find it. Here’s a site with some good photos of it. Don’t know anything else about the site.

On the left is what my cute sandal sole looks like when walking across my lawn. On the right is what it looks like when crossing a neighbor’s do-nothing yard. Those pointy hellacious things get transferred to my yard and to my carpet. Fortunately, as I stepped onto my paver walkway I heard an unusual scritch. I found the terrible travelers, slipped out of the shoes, and carried them into the house to pluck the offenders over the trashcan. Plucking by hand is never recommended. This one type of sticker is why I keep my Leatherman Wave with pliers or an even more portable multi-tool in my camping bag. The stickers are thick, sharp, and it’s almost as if they have an irritant on the tips. Hurts long after the point is removed.

Not dispersing bad things to bigger areas is something good citizens can do and it doesn’t take much time or effort.

MY DOG CAN TELL TIME

Ten minutes either side of 4 pm HappyDog comes to me and gives me “the stare” which means “Feed me Momma”. If I ignore her, she bounces on her front feet.

I don’t glance at the clock on the wall. My eating pattern isn’t smack on. How does she know? Perhaps…

Can dogs smell time? Just ask Donut the dog.

THAT STOPS THE TRIPPING, DEC. 2022

For the last two Christmas’s I’ve put a little projector lamp in the yard to throw up Christmas designs on the side of my house. For those two years the cord in the yard became a tripping hazard. Both the dog and I have tripped over it.

This year I decided to do something about it. I parted the dry grass so I could direct the cord below the surface. Then I hammered tent stakes to hold it down firmly. Can you see the stake head in the middle?

Works well.

STRONG RACCOONS, 2022

The house next door has been unoccupied for five years except for when a homeless fellow broke in and stayed for a couple of days. It’s currently being renovated on a fairly inconsistent basis.

This is an exterior photo of an air space vent cover which has been wrenched off the house — for at least the fifth time. Note the very large screws. Doesn’t stop the coons. They pull the cover off and stay under the house.

Pretty strong aren’t they.

This is one of the reasons why houses deteriorate when no one lives in them.