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Beate, Tim and Andy took a nice walk in the Valle yesterday morning.

Andy did a lot better than I would have crossing that stream.

There are a lot more pictures in this Flickr album.

June 18, 2024

Beate took these pictures of the New Mexico locusts as she was trying to rid her property of them.

They are impressive plants with beautiful flowers, but they are miserable to walk through. One of Kaitlin’s and my first memories of the land was walking up to look at it before we bought it. We joked that no matter which way we went we had to walk through those dratted pricker bushes.

When Andy drove down to the orchard yesterday he had to stop to clear some of them off the road.

They were even blocking the gate.

As I’ve said, they do love it up there.

June 17, 2024

Robinia neomexicana/ New Mexico locust. New Mexico Magazine, Photograph by George Miller

Picture taken on Sandia Crest above Albuquerque.

So why do some plants look so green in yesterday’s post? A lot of them are New Mexico locusts, and they like the climate up there. They also were some of the first plants to come up after the 2022 fire. They pretty much took over.

Why did the plum tree die? Probably because we bought it too early and it didn’t survive a cold spell. We tried to buy another one from our usual sources for fruit trees but they were all sold out. (That’s why we bought it early.) Anyway, I kept searching on the web, and Etsy, of all places, had some.

Instead of a bare root tree a few feet tall, it came in this 9-10-inch-long box, bent in two with soil around the roots.

Andy planted it, and so far so good. He took this picture yesterday.

Here it is zoomed so you can see the new leaves.

Fingers crossed.

June 16, 2024

Do you remember when Andy planted the new plum tree:

And that when he fell backwards these bushes broke his fall?

Well this is what those bushes looked like on May 29:

They are clearly thriving. In fact, most of the plants up there are thriving too.

The one exception was the plum tree. It died.

I’ll write tomorrow about what we did next.

June 15, 2024

How should you measure your days? It’s easy to measure your days in dollars earned or tasks completed, but there are other units of measurement to consider:

What would you do today if you wanted to maximize laughter?
What would you do today if you wanted to maximize time outside?
What would you do today if you wanted to maximize peace of mind?

What unit of measurement serves you best right now?
—James Clear

Hmm. I read the above yesterday morning, and it seemed worth pondering. The term “maximize” sounds too intense and energetic. This time of year I mainly focus on keeping my spirits up in spite of the heat. The high was 93° yesterday and it was still about 80° at 10 last night. I managed to take it easy, keep engaged, and find something to laugh about.

gocomics.com/wizardofid

It was a good day. What about you?

June 14, 2024

an archery class I once took.

gocomics.com/wizardofid

Let’s just say I’m grateful that my life never had to depend on my athletic skills.

June 13, 2024

Tom told me about this artist.

Fallen leaves become the material for intricate carvings in the art of Lito. The self-taught Japanese artist picked up this art form in 2020 as a way to help manage his ADHD. He found that the act of transforming delicate fallen leaves into unexpected designs helped hone his concentration.
—Tom the BackroadsTraveler

lito_leafart

lito_leafart

lito_leafart

lito_leafart

lito_leafart

How awesome is that?

June 12, 2024

This is a cute picture,

Bored Panda

but apparently raccoons can be a nuisance, and even dangerous. I still remember my uncle telling about the time one was eating all his persimmons. My uncle tried to chase the raccoon out of the tree, but the raccoon chased him back into the house. No persimmons that year.

June 11, 2024

We had some rain in the afternoon!

Andy wasn’t as excited about it as I was. I had been inside looking out. He had been driving through a rain and hail storm.

But he made it home safely.

June 10, 2024

I’ve read that when the Zen master Dogen was asked how he achieved enlightenment he said it was easy,

It was just one mistake after another.

Yes! And that’s why I love Duolingo (paid version). There are no tests or penalties for mistakes, all one needs is persistence. If you make a lot of mistakes in one session it simply congratulates you for powering through. The teacher of The Great Courses Plus program on Spanish says there are two ways of learning another language: (1) memorizing vocabulary and rules, or (2) the “that sounds about right” method. Duolingo lets me do it the second way. It gradually exposes us to new vocabulary and grammar with very little explanation. Then it has interactive exercises for us to do. If we don’t know the answer we can even write it down when they tell us and repeat it back when they ask the question again later. Sooner or later a lot of it sinks in. It’s the way we learned our first language as a kid, and there’s absolutely no pressure, except to keep our daily streak going.

It turns out pushing through to the end of Section 8 was a good thing for me to do. I can now go back to any of the previous lessons and repeat them… before we could only repeat the ones in our current section. I’m weak on verb tenses so now I can find the relevant lessons and review them as much as I like until they become natural. Just one mistake after another until it sinks in.

June 9, 2024