Wood. Food. More.
It was a pretty #sunset tonight. And I’m finally getting used to the sun going down earlier and actually got outside to take a photo.
Hope you’re having a great weekend, too.
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Powered up the lava lamp for the first time since moving to New Mexico this evening. My honey somehow had never seen one live in all her years.
“That’s pretty!” she said. Then she went back to swiffering up the dust from the painters patching our walls.
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We’ve got a new food truck in the neighborhood. Mami and Papi’s is here seven days a week from 8-2. They don’t seem to have a website yet, but they’ve got a reasonable selection of breakfast choices. We got here at 11:30 today and they weren’t quite ready for lunch yet, but it sounds like they have sandwiches and burgers for lunch.
It’s nice to have another choice for lunch.
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In the past couple days, we’ve had some purple flowers appearing. They’re known as a Tahoka Daisy, or the tansyleaf tansyaster. They’re kind of pretty and hardy here. Guess we’ve got another plant that I need to recognize and not kill as a weed.
I wonder if we were out of town when they bloomed last year, or if I just didn’t notice them. Hard to say for sure. Last year, I thought chamisa in bloom was kinda pretty. This year, it’s just a source of allergens.
#photography #NewMexico #plant
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After having much of the summer with no birds using the birdhouse (which was built for house finches), a few pairs of western bluebirds have been checking it out. At one point this morning, there were five birds either on or in the birdhouse. I didn’t think any birds would be nesting this time of year, but I don’t know much about the native birds yet.
In any case, I enjoy watching them in the morning, so I’m glad to see them poking around the birdhouse. I’ll probably make two or three more to put up next spring.
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I’ve been working on this image a bit today. I bought an Epson P700 a month or so ago, and have been printing some images for my own enjoyment.
The “Carbon Black” feature in the P700 seems like just the thing to use on an image like this, but one of the things I needed to remember to do was not set the darkest black in the image to 2 or 3, so that you can see the difference between it and the next-darkest black (trying to avoid the blacks blocking up). With the Carbon Black setting, you need to have full range data for it to do its magic.
I don’t have it completely figured out, but I’m getting prints I’m happy enough about to set them aside so I can maybe frame them later. I’m glad I bought the printer, and I’m glad I’m sticking to an iOS-only workflow. It’s (re-) teaching me things I’d forgotten over the years through familiarity.
Next up on the list to relearn: “selective color” so I can punch up the yellow flowers at his feet just a tiny bit.
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Last week, we were out on our morning walk and this raven was in one of our neighbors’ yards, fluffing himself up in the wind.
He didn’t seem to mind that we stopped to watch him.
He even stopped and checked us out briefly.
They’re pretty birds, but plenty hard to photograph. Especially since my camera with the big lens is at home near the hummingbird feeder.
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Today’s project was getting rocks around the culvert that runs under our driveway. It was also full of gravel and weeds and at least one nest for one of the neighborhood rodents.
Alfredo cleaned it out and built the nice rock walls to keep the dirt from washing into the culvert again, finishing off the rock projects for this year.
Feels good to have that crossed off the todo list.
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By the time we finished with the planting last night, the sun had set, so it was too dark for a progress photo. I took the photo above before we started working again this morning.
This second photo is when we’re done for the morning. We’ve got one more sand cherry to plant up next to the shop (the building in the near-middle background of these photos), but that’ll be tomorrow morning. Digging holes in the clay soil here is hard work.
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Another day, more rocks moved about. We also planted five Russian Sage plants by our front gate.
Then after getting them planted, I spent an hour chatting with our neighbor, Greg. He says he’s kind of envious of how much we’ve improved the look of the place in the year since we moved in, which is nice to hear.
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