Fun with 4-wheeling

Well now I should actually start the photo blogging that I started this up for.

I think we start back in April with the trip up and over the Magdalena mountains that my man and a few friends went on. I do not have any editing software besides basic cropping and color adjustments, so these are all cropped/straight out of the camera.

This is a view from the valley we started in.

And one overlooking another valley.

And finally up and over the other side of the valley.

Yes I have tons of other photos... but I am just getting into the swing of things, so we will start slow. It was a great trip and I was happy to get out and take the Jeep out and toss it into low gear for a while. I didn't manage to get the Jeep stuck enough to need anything more than a few moved rocks to get unstuck... sad really.

Next up on the blog will be photo fun in Atlanta from when I went this past May for a conference and took a stop at the Aquarium and Coka-Cola museum.

How to move a garden pt. 1

I went out to my garden today to water it after my absence. Daily watering is blessedly done by the other woman of the house, but the garden needs some deeper watering love to truly thrive. So while I was sitting outside scratching dog ears and making plants happy I stopped to take stock of the work that will be involved in transporting this garden across town and transplanting it in a new (and as of yet non-existent) garden.

The tomatoes are laden with the first crop of succulent juicy fruit--both the romas and the regular slicing varieties. Those will need a pot each--which I luckily have laying around from past years' annual plantings. The corn and smaller plants like the radishes and bunching onions will all fit nicely into a long windowsill planter, and the beans... well... they will manage there once I remove them from their wire supports. The lettuce and squash/melons will take some more ingenuity and patience since they tend to be picky about movement, but I should still be able to pot them and be fine.

The biggest problem by far is the lack of new garden at the new property to actually transplant the babies. I would love to just pluck them from the ground and immediately plant them the same day to prevent undue stress on the poor guys, but that just doesn't look like it is going to happen. On the other hand, if I get crackin' early and start building the new bed NOW... well tomorrow really... I will have time to still set up the new beds and only have to worry about transporting the plants instead of interim storage in pots. I have grand plans of making a much bigger bed--or beds--for the plants at the new place, but that involves much more dirt, compost, and building materials than I have on hand. To be exact, I have NO dirt and very little compost. Here in the high desert, there is no soil, only sand and rock. And caliche which might as well be concrete ( Caliche is made up of calcium and other mineral deposits that set up into an all-natural shovel-proof inpermeable layer). All the dirt has to come either expensively pre-bagged from the store, or in a more economical large truckload from 70 miles away. The same goes for manure and compost, but I may be able to use some of my own compost as well.

I love gardening, don't get me wrong, but actually building the plot for the plants is the easy part--buying and mixing the filling for the beds is the hard part here. I am expecting to lose some of my plants to the move, but I am avoiding the heartbreak of simply abandoning a garden when it is mid summer and flourishing. Thinning the seedlings is hearbreaking enough for me, I don't think that I could manage losing an entire crop. I am hopeless like that...or eternally hopeful perhaps is a better way of looking at it--hopeful for the healthiest and best mature garden that I can manage (really I hope for the happiest garden around since happy gardens make a happy me!).

On that note, it is time for me to go off and dream of building the new garden... or of whatever randomness that my brain manages to pop up for the night's entertainment.

Fun with Dad

This weekend was full of travel. First there was the trip from home to the city to go to church and then up to my parents' house. There my man dropped me off and left me to the devices of my family. It had been a long time since my dad and I had spent some relaxed time together so we decided to take a short fishing trip around the state. We tried several lakes (which is imprssive considering that we are in the middle of New Mexico--a state full of deserts) all with little success of the fishing variety, but lots of relaxing time. And driving.

Unfortunately I have found that the weather is out to spite me. Normally New Mexico has its rainy season (wishfully called the monsoon season) in mid August. This year it appears to have jumped to late May/early June--also known as the time that everyone had outdoor adventures planned. Every time my father and I would set up at a fishing spot it would: A--start to blow right into us (not good for fishing), B--drip/pour rain on our heads, or C--not have a single fish bite due to A and B mixed with high temperatures.

Even with all the weather spiting us, we managed to have a nice trip. We fished at 5 lakes all told (and saw 3 additional ones too) and drove over 600 miles round trip. What started as a simple jaunt up to a familiar lake turned into a road trip. It is a good thing that I like road trips! Unfortunately our trip was cut short due to work needs at my dad's office so we had to come back to town early, but it still was fun.

After that was the adventure with the family truck so that I could use it to help move Casita Gatita to its new house. This truck is... well loved... yes, that's it, well loved. It has well over 200 thousand miles on it, has had new transmission, engine, cooling system, shocks, various panels, and--thanks to today's adventure--new tires. I grew up driving this beast of a pickup, and hope that it lives a nice long life, but when I left the house this morning I filled up a tire because it was a little low. About 40 miles later when I stopped to get new windshield wipers for it, I noticed that once again it was low, but this time it was down by more than a little. Wipers cost $10. Tires... not so cheap, so I called my dad and asked him what he wanted to do. He tried to tell me earlier that the tires were perfectly fine, just a little worn that was all. Suuuuuure.

After taking it in to my friendly tire shop (which I trust) they sadly told me that there was nothing wrong with the tire... other than that the rubber was just disintegrating and not holding air in. I asked the question of whether it would get me home (60 more miles) or not. The lady there flat said that she did not think it would make it there with any air left in it, and thought that the other tires were not far behind. I checked all the tires again for air pressure... sure enough they had dropped between 2 and 5lbs in 4 hours and 40 miles. Damn.

I called dad back and explained, then put him on the line with the sales rep and had them explain exactly the same thing that I had told my dad, except with dollar signs attached to the solution. $600 later, the truck has new tires, I had a safe drive home at a reasonable speed instead of a turtle, and I have peace of mind that I would not get stranded due to tire failure any time soon. I love my dad, but when it comes to other people's vehicles he just loses his senses (he takes excellent care and maintenance of his own truck). That is okay, this is why I know to hand the phone to the "experts" and let them explain why the part is necessary rather than his eternal "little girl." Daddies are sweet, but sometimes need a little push in the right direction to listen to sense!

All told the trip was nice, the truck is fixed, I have a way to move that does not involve cars or SUV's, and I am well rested from a road trip and an excuse to have a fishing pole in my hands and enjoy the outdoors. And I managed to get sunburnt where I missed part of my back... oops. I have sunscreen for a reason, since I have a tendancy of burning to a crisp, but I missed two perfect stripes on my shoulder blades where a halter top doesn't cover anything... and where nice soft un-sunned skin had a chance to get crispified by the high desert sun.