Drying out.

The rain left yesterday afternoon and the night cleared out to the usual starry spectacular, the ground is still muddy, but the floods are gone. The High peaks are dusted with snow and it looks like a 5 star sunny weekend ahead. Here is mosca enjoying the dryer times:


She is a world champion dirt rolling cat.

I say del-uge, you say Day-luge,

So what with what I presume to be the remnants of hurricane Rita stalled over northern NM we got something like 3 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Still coming down even. Pretty fun.


The upshot is a four or so roof leaks and some creative use of stock pots to avoid internal flooding:


I have since gotten some buckets, just thought Susan would appreciate that her stockpots were getting used.



Always fun to see your electrical fixtures dripping.

Mosca seems to be a hearty water kitty as she will go out for a mere 5 minutes and come back in soaked to the bone. She does seem a bit angry when she is soaking wet, but it is all her own doing.

Pollen on the Cistern.



So beautiful and swirly, makes my eyes itch.

Thanks to my cousin Gwyneth, the horror continues:
http://beedogs.com

The irony here is outstanding as I received the cats in costume link from my friend Jerry under the title, "Why I am a dog person".

Still a dog person now Jerry?

Lots of minature carnage after a big thunderstorm blew in two nights ago.

Here is mosca inspecting the trellis:


The trellis last week, starting to fall:

The trellis post thunderstorm:

Hope trellisfixinJim calls me back.

As with almost all pics on this blog, click them to get big versions.

Ack,

no pictures today as I forgot to download some. Of course, talking about water yesterday encouraged a huge thunderstorm to roll through after dark last night which dumped a goodly amount of rain and came with enough winds to finish off the teetering trellis of grapevines and expose a new exciting (tiny) leak in the roof. So the cisterns are back at 70% full, the ground is wet and I really need to get the trellis fixing guy to actually call me back. The good news is that the storm washed away the nightly skunk spray and that can be damn near paralyzing and Mosca seems to be really chipper.
More pics tomorrow perhaps.

Water

As you may know it is real dry like here in the high desert of Northern New Mexico. The temperatures at this time of year range from high of 80's to lows in the freezing range at night. The Santa Fe, Los Alamos region is at altitudes of 6000-7500 feet. My old place in Los Alamos was at 7500, the current house is right around 6000. Septemeber is a weird month as it is still the growing season for plants and veggies in peoples gardens, however the overnight cold snaps can lay waste to a garden of flowers and veggies in no time at all. Here is perhaps the last week of the riot of mini sunflowers in the yard:



The fruit trees in the front yard are benefitting from weekly(ish) flooding from irrigation overflow from a neighboring farm. We had a major flooding on 9/17 and a minor bit of water last night. I took the hint and hit all the aspens, fruit trees and grape vines in the non flooded part of the property with a nice soak from the hose or from the cisterns. Hopefully the weather will stay cool enough that all the trees will be good for two weeks or so. Here is the ersatz engineer/hick rancher dancing in the New Mexico clear gold:

When I am working at home, Mosca often yowls loudly to get let out the front door only to walk around to the screened windows and commence to mewling desperately to get back in.




I, uh, rarely..., uh indulge her by opening the screens and letting her through the window, as that would suggest she has me trained to do her biddding.

My buddy Jerry passed on the following source for japanese schoolgirl uniforms for your cat, among other undignified horrors:

http://www.petoffice.co.jp/catprin/english/

Here is another of the Mosca sleeping in the bed last week. Woo, who would have thought I would be party to a gratuitous kitty blog!

For those who care, mosca is a stately 17 year old lap cat, as of two years ago she was still "Mosca, slayer of hummingbirds", but it appears age has caught up with her and she barely gives the tiny pugnacious flying sugarcubes a second glance.

Ok, looks like all my posts from last night never got published.

Clicking the above should get you a slightly bigger photo of myself and mosca enjoying a stunningly beautiful Northern New Mexican weekend. I tend to the garden while Mosca tends to roll in the dirt. It is a win-win situation.

Hello,
as a mindless attempt to inform far aflung people on the health and welfare of Mosca and the house she inhabits, I will start this blog. Will I fill it? who knows.