Monthly Archives: September 2014

Life

Signs of Autumn

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As I was putting Miss P’s next veterinarian appointment on the calendar, I noticed that it is the officially the first day of autumn.    The signs are there, but I was pretending that it wouldn’t come for a while.  Here are a few of the things that prove me wrong.

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The mountain is shrouded in clouds and mystery, when the clouds clear, will the mountain have snow?

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The chiles are a lovely red.   Lots of places have chile roasters set up for green chiles (rotating metal cages, with a propane flame shooting up) and there is the wonderful smell in the air from this.   Red chiles are dried instead of roasted to keep for the winter.

The pinon jays and squirrels have been busy burying the corn from the bird feeder, the hill is full of corn at this point.    The hummingbirds took off in the night, I heard them buzzing around yesterday but now they have started the migration south.

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Here’s a late blooming volunteer adding a splash of color on the steps.  Soon it will be gone.

Art

Art Workshop

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I had a chance this week to take a class with fabulous quilter Jane Sassaman.  I’ve admired her work for a long time, she has a strong graphic sensibility, and she likes bold color.  I decided to do this at the last minute because I wasn’t sure how she would be as a teacher.  I needn’t have worried, she was wonderful.

http://janesassaman.com/

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This wasn’t a sewing class with a pattern provided, it was a design class.  So we brought in images that we liked on the first day and had a discussion of selecting shapes to abstract into our images.  The next day we worked on developing the shapes into a quilt.   I wasn’t quite ready to commit to an idea, so I brought in some quilts that I’ve made over the years and we looked at the images that connect them.   She was complimentary about my most recent piece about words and said I should continue on with this series.

The trouble with doing something in a workshop is that you never have the right stuff, especially if you change your mind.   I started with a giant box of solid color fabrics, and decided that this was not the way I wanted to go.    I had used the image of sky birds in a two older pieces, so I went back to this idea.    It’s just another ufo (un-finished object) at this point, but I’m excited about continuing to work on this.

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Maybe it will look something like this, maybe not.

Life, Miss Dog

Updates

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I just wanted everyone to know that my dentist is still recovering from his accident.  I went by to see him on Sunday, and he is now able to use a walker (zimmer frame in British?)to get around.   He still has some stiffness and pain in the broken arm, but he can use it.  He expects to be in the rehab hospital for another month, then he plans to spend a month at home, then he is thinking about returning to work.   Way to go!

Miss P had a setback when she was in the kennel and she broke open a bit of her incision.   This is all healed up now, and I think she has started to like wearing little shirts.   She struts around whenever we go for a walk.pen15

 

My hand is finally healed as well, I forgot I was injured and as soon as the stitches were out I cracked it open using it.   Oops!

And the mountain today.

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Mountains

Just south

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I live in an area that is a mix of rural and urban.   I live in a house with natural landscaping (I only have a tiny lawn, the rest just grows naturally).  There is an open space (area with no houses) nearby, and it connects along the creek to the mountains so the deer can wander through the neighborhood.   The most prominent feature of this open space is called Pulpit Rock.

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I took this picture one day when I was out walking Miss Dog.

It’s a rather large rock outcropping, you can see it from the freeway when you’re driving from the north, and it is clearly visible from the south part of town as well.

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(Hint:  It’s that white blob in the middle of the picture).

It’s also quite near the local university, and it it popular for students to climb up, which they do often as an alternative to studying.   It’s part of my landscape and I navigate by it.

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The neighbors swear that a mountain lion has a den back in this valley, but I have never seen it. (And I hope I don’t.)

Doings, Life

August: Mora County

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Right before I left for my trip I saw the move “August: Osage County.   It was well reviewed, had plenty of movies stars in it, and, most importantly, there was nothing else on.  This is one of those obviously written plays about a dysfunctional family (is there any other kind?).   I say that it is written dialogue, because drunks and drug addled people seldom come up with anything coherent and cogent to say.   It is hard to come up with a reply to an insane comment,  I tend to think of replies, but I don’t use my out loud voice to say them.

The movie is about two harsh sisters, the wimpy husbands, and the adult children.   Women hold families together, it was impossible to believe that these harridans could do that, these families would have disintegrated years before, so the movie is completely unrealistic.   Then I went to visit my late husband’s relatives.

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This is not to imply that they are anything like these characters, but I did look at the family interactions in a new light.   In any small town, there are those who stay and those who leave, and there is a certain tension over the choices that are made, and subtle (or not so subtle) criticisms.

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This past weekend was the 104th annual town festival.   The town is about 700 people, it at least doubles with visitors, some people are from there and coming back, some are relatives and a few are actual tourists.   The relative’s house is usually packed with distant cousins and others.   Last year was the first time I had ever been there without M.  This year some of the cousins was absent due to poor health: when we started coming to this we were the young people, now we’re not. 😉

There was an open family snit going on, I heard from all sides about the perfidy of one person who was not there.  There was also a new, father-less great-grandchild and a certain amount of sibling rivalry between the grandchildren that I had never noticed before.

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I have always looked forward to going to this place, maybe even more than my husband.  You cross into New Mexico from Colorado over Raton Pass (elevation +7800 feet).   When you come over the pass, you see the beautiful high plains of New Mexico,  which I just love.

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As I was driving along I was thinking about the fact that this might be the last time I ever go there.  We remember the first time we do some things quite vividly, the anxiety of the first day of school, the thrill of the first kiss, the adventure of the first big trip.   The last time we ever do a thing is largely unknown to us.   I had a conversation with my late mother about this, she had realized after coming home from visiting my brother that she would probably never be able to travel again, but it was only probable at that point, not final.   So perhaps it wasn’t the last time I will go there.

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