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Sunday, January 1st, 2023

Trail cam pics from our front gate

Monday, October 31st, 2022

Garden news

Saturday, September 5th, 2020

It hasn’t been a great year for the garden. I suspect our soil is getting “tired,” and we also had a stretch of very hot weather with little rain that challenged everyone’s growing.

Despite that, September tends to be our peak harvest for many things. Our biggest success this year has been eggplants. These Rosa Biancas are beautiful.

We also have watermelons, cantaloupes, and tomatoes coming along. And as usual, our greens have been solid all year. We’re expecting to get an unusual cool spell next week, so we’ll be planting more then for the fall and winter.

And in other news, we’ve seen another gila monster — this time right outside our house. This was a big one that appeared to be at its peak age.

 

Happy August!

Saturday, August 1st, 2020

On this morning’s walk, we had a rare gila monster sighting. This is only the third one we’ve seen in 12 years.

This one was pretty big and seemed quite a bit older than the others we’ve seen.

We’re finally getting some rain and have been seeing a lot of turtles as well. It’s been a relatively light snake year though. Well, something had to go right this year.

Babies

Tuesday, April 7th, 2020

They seem to think I was going to feed them.

The grace of nature

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

Today, we took in a deep drink of the beauty here — the golds, fuschias, and scarlets of the wild flowers; the huge, towering rocks hoodoos; the music of mountain streams swelled from the monsoons; the company of good friends; the exhilaration of knowing that life is sometimes very good.

 

(more pics here)

With a friend visiting, we drove through the mountains to the Chiricahua National Monument. It’s a short trip we’ve made several times without ever ceasing to be amazed at the surrounding beauty. The land changes radically with the season, the amount of rainfall, the light, and even our moods and the company we have along. Always, it makes me pause and wonder why I spend so much time worrying about things that don’t really matter.

Truly, this kind of beauty, the people we share our lives with, and the stewardship we exercise over both are the things that are essential.

Oh, and today I saw my first bear in Coronado. I’ve heard many stories about how plentiful bears are here. I’ve wanted to see a bear for a long time. This morning, I decided today would be the day. And thanks to Brad’s eagle eyes, we saw a bear.

It was a magnificent bear. Seen through the trees and across a small stream, it was just the distance from which I’d like a see a bear — close enough to get a good look, far enough to make both me and him reasonably comfortable. It was a large bear, larger than I’d expected, with a full, healthy coat and a solid rump. He looked at us, loped a little further up the hill, and then turned to take another look.

image credit: cogdog (Alan Levine) – CC BY SA

 

Who goes there?

Friday, January 7th, 2011

An owl landed on our water tower this evening. For those of you who have an idea of how big our water tower is, this picture gives you an idea of how big the owl is. Bigger than the bobcat as Brad pointed out.

IMG_1510

It’s been pretty cold here this week (in the teens at night and 60+ during the day but cold when it’s windy). I’ve been working on filling cracks in the new slab this week so we can cut it, which needs to be done before framing.

Other than that, we’ve been busy with the paying job…making ebooks, doing a social media project (can you imagine? someone paying me to tweet and facebook), and building an online course (which I’ll be teaching in a couple weeks).

A mew in the night

Friday, October 8th, 2010

At 3:00am this morning, I was awoken by a kind of constant whiny mewing just outside my window. A kitten? I didn’t think so since there are no feral cats around here that I know of and the sound was too small to be a bobcat. Maybe a baby opossum, some kind of rodent, or even a baby skunk?

I listened to it for awhile becoming more insistent and clearly irritated. I woke up Brad.

We went to the window. It seemed to be almost directly against the house, but we couldn’t see anything. We turned on the outside house lights and got a flashlight. Still nothing. But the mewing continued.

Finally, Brad ventured outside (in his underwear…quite a sight, and it was cold). What he saw was a spade footed toad….being eaten by a much smaller snake.

snake-frog

The snake looks big in this zoomed up picture, but the snake was only the thickness of a fat pencil and less than a foot long. We think it might have been a juvenile nightsnake but we’re not sure.

No sign of either party this morning.

Wildlife

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

The monsoons seem to be bringing out the animals. Yesterday, Brad saw mule deer, the bobcat, and a coyote. Then this morning I saw this beautiful coyote. They are very shy and normally not to be seen, though we sure do hear them yipping at night! It’s lovely.

coyote

Wise old owl

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

The great horned owl that frequents our front oak has been there everyday this week.

owl

owl2