Thanksgiving Dinner
Pork chops, sweet potato tots, stuffing, corn, and homemade whole wheat challah bites. With a 2018 Frog’s Tooth Rose A on the side. Yum!
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Morning Chilies
Spotted the morning sun shining on our ristra this morning, and decided it was worth taking a picture of. Some editing to punch the colors, and intentionally shallow DOF to blur the background.
I’m pretty pleased with this one. Might have to print and frame it.
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Snowy Morning
When I woke up this morning, the wind was howling. After just a few minutes, it let up. When it got light enough out that I could see, there was snow coming down.
It wasn’t much snow. Maybe a shade over a quarter inch, but it meant I didn’t have to water our trees this morning, and everything looked beautiful for my morning walk.
The forecast is for the wind to pick back up later this morning, and no more moisture until the weekend. I’m sure glad I got out to enjoy it this morning.
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Hot Buns
Today was another windy day out. The temperature was warmer than yesterday, but the wind is still blowing around 20mph, which is just too windy to do anything outside, so I baked a batch of bread.
They’re. 2:1:1 mix of Graham flour, bread flour, and corn flour, and we’re going to have lunch in a few minutes. I bet we have sandwiches!
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Arroyo Hondo Open Space
Went for a hike today with my sweetie. We went to the Arroyo Hondo Open Space. The trail there is a 2.8 mile loop, with some pretty good ups and downs. My phone said it was over 5000 steps, and 5 flights of stairs.
It was another beautiful afternoon. Around 70, with just a little breeze, and full sun. We enjoyed the walk, but there were a few steep sections where we needed to stop and catch our breath. Ran into a few people, almost all of them with off-leash dogs, but they were all well-behaved.
The views were pretty good, and it was interesting seeing the hills that we see on our morning walks from a different angle.
We also looked across I-25 to Harry’s Roadhouse, which was where dinner tonight came from. Tasty stuff, as always.
Glad we got out for one more hike before the weather turns colder this weekend. Don’t know if we’ll be up for hiking on snowy trails.
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Northern Flicker
This morning, just before I headed to the mailbox to pick up yesterday’s mail, I noticed our Northern Flicker hopping around just outside.
He’s a pretty bird, and as long as we don’t hear him pecking at the wood on the house, we feel a little more secure about not having insect problems. Not sure if he’ll stick around or not, but it’s been a couple months now that we’ve enjoyed his company.
I also got to say hello to our neighbor “Sally who names plants” (we don’t know her last name, but everyone knows who we mean when we call her that) this morning. Not even 9am, and it’s already been a good day!
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Bishop’s Peak
We went for another hike today. This time up to Bishop’s Peak, which is pretty close to home. It’s about 450’ of altitude gain from the parking lot, over a 2.2 mile loop, and we made it up and around. Had to take a few breaks for air on the way up, but we’re still getting used to living at the altitude here, even after a year.
It was a nice hike, though. And when we got to the top, we could see across the freeway to Café Fina, and the Sangre de Cristos, and we could see our house in the other direction. We’re one of the few houses that has a white roof, so that made it easier to find our place.
Beautiful fall weather today, too. About 65 degrees, with a light wind, and a few clouds to give us a break from the sunshine every now and again.
We also got to see a lot more Emory Oak today. I didn’t know oak trees grew this close to home, but there they are. They’re not exactly monsters, but they’re oaks. They’ve mostly dropped their leaves already, due to the dry year this year, though.
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Galisteo Basin Preserve
My sweetie and I headed out to the Galisteo Basin Preserve for some hiking today.
We only did a couple miles, but there was a good bit of elevation change in there and some pretty spectacular views.
And as an added bonus, we got sandwiches from Upper Crust Pizza, and they were some of the tastiest sandwiches we’ve ever had. Apparently we worked up good appetites.
Edited to add: Also remembered that we got to see the Amtrak train headed west from one of the overlooks. That was neat.
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Birds on the Ravenna Grass
We had a few birds eating the seeds from the stalk of ravenna grass just outside our window today.
They were kinda cute.
And they were busy enough that even though they noticed us moving on the other side of the window, they kept eating and putting on a show.
I’m not great at identifying birds, but according to Merlin, they’re probably dark-eyed juncoes and clay-colored sparrows.
I just know they were cute #birbs and we had fun watching them.
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Snow Day
We had what looks like 3-4 inches of snow overnight last night. Enough to come up to my ankles, but never over my boot-tops on the walk to the mailbox and around the block this morning. It was a little chilly when the wind was blowing, but that wasn’t much of the time, so I worked up a pretty good sweat in my big sheepskin jacket.
The scenery around here looks so different with a coating of snow. The only real color remaining is the yellow of the few aspen trees that haven’t dropped their leaves yet. Otherwise it’s a white to dark green palette. Pretty!
Welcome to #winter, #NewMexico!
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