Already Gone To Texas In My Mind

Well, spring comes and goes at this time of year, doesn't it?  We've had some delightful days in the low sixties with sun and blue skies that tricked me into thinking winter was really over; but now we are having off and on storms blowing in from the Pacific, dumping feet of snow on the mountains, bringing cold winds, hail, and, blessedly, rain, to us here in the valley. Night before last we had a rain in the night that filled up my rain barrels, watered beds and planters.  When I went out to do some weeding yesterday, however, I found dry earth only inches down - so I am hoping for more precipitation before these storms blow off into Texas.

 As I myself will soon be blowing into Texas, this coming weekend in fact.  My spring break is next week, and my nieces in Dallas both have the same break, so I'm heading across El Llano Estacado to visit them and their parents for several days. A dear friend also lives in Dallas, and she too has that week off, so she will be driving back with me for a long weekend visit with us here in New Mexico.  I badly need this time, and a road trip, to blow the cobwebs of winter out of my soul. Gotta go to the library and find the perfect long audio book to last me at least to Amarillo.  From that point on there should be some wildflowers already blooming, at least according to the Sightings page at Wild About Texas Wildflowers.  I wish I had enough time to detour down to Austin and visit the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but that trip will have to wait a while.

What I will be doing, however, while in Dallas is visiting The Dallas Arboretum for Dallas Blooms.  This floral festival began last weekend, and lasts until April 11.  It seems early to me, at least for the way things are here right now, but according to the websight, there are many things that should be blooming in mid-March.  Crazy teenage girls, forsythia, tulips, irises, flowering quince, maybe even azaleas? Hopefully sunshine and balmy weather? I'm there, baby.  Just have to get through this week's classes and blustery storms, and I'll be there in a more than virtual way.

Another Version of What To Do When It's Below Freezing

Or, Ghosts of Christmasses Past

Once the huge Thanksgiving project was over, I felt a serious sense of anticlimax. We weren't going to have much of a winter holiday bustle; we shop for family gifts all year long, stockpile them in the office closet, so there wasn't much shopping to do, no trips to plan, and we wouldn't know if we were having any visitors until we saw the whites of their eyes. I had a few final classes between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester, so even that wasn't much of an occupation. Thus, a quandry: what to do with the long cold hours I can no longer spend outside gardening?

Fortunately I came across a pile of photo CDs when I was cleaning out a box of office stuff moved here from Delaware - and a new obsession was born. I spent many hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas transferring photos from the CDs onto my computer (they had been on an older computer, the laptop that was stolen soon after we moved to New Mexico) and then onto my photo storage/sharing site on Flickr. I think I finally have all of them on Flickr now, though I may find a few hanging around and take care of them later. It has been a wonderful trip through past happy times with friends and family, causing feelings of both joy and sorrow. I've put a link to my Flickr photos in the sidebar here, and would love to have visitors share them.

At the same time I was doing this, we were also working with paper photos from other unpacked boxes moved here three-and-a-half years ago, sorting them, copying some of them, then framing them to hang on walls, stand on shelves, in general have our faraway (in so many ways) family members close to us. It was quite strange living here for these years without photos in our living space, and what we have done to remedy this feels very very good.

What To Do While It's Below Freezing

Hard to believe I haven't posted here for two weeks now, because it means two weeks have flown by while I've been in first a coma of cooking and company, then a trance of going through old photo CDs and uploading pictures to first the computer, then to my Flickr photostream. All those photos were on the computer that was stolen soon after we moved here, and the thought of going through the work to retrieve them has overwhelmed me ever since. But I'm in the middle of it now, and it's proving to be more fun than work. At the same time we've been going through photo albums and boxes of photos, some not unpacked for as many as two or three moves, in order to get family faces up on our walls. This realworld, as opposed to virtual world, project, has been ongoing since October and has more or less consumed us. We were able to get enough things framed and up before Thanksgiving so that we didn't look like amnesiac orphans to our guests. Plenty of grandchildren pix everywhere, I'm happy to say.

Once the Thanksgiving Extravaganza of planning, shopping and cooking was over, I had a few days of feeling very anticlimactic - but this virtual photo project has given me another outlet for the compulsive need for a Big Project. During the spring, summer and fall, gardening fills that need, overfills it, in fact, but the ridiculously cold weather we're having makes it difficult for me to even get outside and do some necessary yard cleanup. I've moved the planters full of chard, lettuce and spinach into the garage for the time being, and even there have covered them with frost cloth. Yesterday I also started a worm composting bin, which I'm keeping in the utility room with the furnace and hot water heater, until the garage is above freezing. My friend Julia, of the wonderful South Austin Backyard Naturalist blog, has a very graphic post about her own worm composting. She's coming to visit next month, so I hope she will be able to give me pointers on how to do this right. (Photo cribbed from Julia's worm post.)