Sidetracked Charley

How the garden does grow Summer solstice just happened but I was lagging a bit behind with spring organization. So much goes on in May and June in my mountain area. Gardening gets going full bore and the lawn needs mowed. Again I notice. Time seems so used up already. But you need to take time to photograph the Chinese Cabbage, not just make sure it is watered enough. The abundance of the garden has made me look at vegetable keeping. My refrigerator with its freezer on the bottom wants to freeze foods kept in the vegetable keepers. I keep cheese and packaged meats and things there. And bought some Rubbermaid vegetable keepers to keep my salads. And they are doing quite well, but almost always full. Froze my first bag of spinach. Summers I drink frozen fruit smoothies and eat great salads of mixed greens grown in my garden. Seems the lettuce and spinach produced early. Guess I am getting the bow tunnel science down. I am still a bit away from the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower an...

Thicke in the Bucket There are days I truly envy my cat. Thicke has it made. All the food he wants. Petting when it suits him. All the boxes he could dream of. And a bucket to hide in. He is truly the Cheshire Cat of my highly imaginative childhood. I always wanted to be able to erase myself like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. At a minimum I want a bucket to hide in. Winter is my bucket. Summer just seems so exposed. I seem too much out of my comfort zone. Too many things to do and too little time to do them in. Too many events I should attend. All the summer people are in town holding court. They are all having parties or the locals are having parties for them. I would rather see them one on one. Max three for lunch. Last week was such a social whirl I just totally forgot some things I had on the calendar. My virtual bucket. "Oh, I forgot." But in truth some things I just ignored. Like the balloons. Yes, not easy to ignore 42 hot air balloons all weekend l...

The unexamined life isn't worth living, Socrates There are moments in our lives which stand out as singular. Events, seemingly insignificant cause, us to alter a belief or a course we thought we were fixed to. Studies show that intelligent and liberal people are more likely to have these satoris. Some months back I vowed to not choose a presidential candidate to back until 90 days before the election. If Canada and Australia can choose a leader in such short time certainly the USA can do without the two year two ringed circus we seem to think necessary. Especially if the SCOTUS (2000) or compromised voting machines (2004) is going to be the way a president gets into office. Note: I did not say elected .  The internet is a wonderful window into the world and what the world knows and yet a few moments spent on any social media site and you know there are people who have the blinds down and the drapes closed. I said upon graduation from the University of New Mexico that ...

I get it wrong about every 35 years it seems. The year I turned 35 I was sure I was only going to be 34. Mother told me I was wrong. I argued with her. " I am your mother. I think I know when you were born."  She was wrong about some other things so I didn't easily concede her point. I had to go to the calculator. This year I have been telling everyone I was going to be 72. Mother isn't around to correct me any more, but my kid sister is. And if I was going to be 72 then in January she was going to be 62 and she has a vested interest in that. She corrected me. So today I turn 71, but realistically what difference does a year make unless it is a milestone year like 21 and you could drink legally without your false ID. BTW I made the mistake of celebrating that birthday twice at the same bar with the same bartender. He graciously wished me, " Happy  twenty-first  Birthday  again ." Hard to believe that was 50 years ago. There are some moments in your l...

There is nothing like windshield time to allow you time to think about nothing really. And that is good because we live in a too busy world with too many talking heads telling us what to think about; what to fear. My father, who was first a pilot and then a traveling salesman, used to talk to me about the nothingness between point A and B, whether those were airports, military bases, or cities along the empty highways of the southwest. There is a lot I can tell you about the road to Raton. It is divided almost in half between canyon through the mountains and wide open high plains. I have taken the road enough times because of art deliveries or pickups, court cases (Raton is the county seat), seeking the sometimes elusive bison, or photography treks, that I know where the turns are, what the next mile marker will say, the speed limit changes, and where the bison just might be. I always allow two and half hours for the trip. This is an allowance I make for those bison which just ...