Christmas was good. Early, Robert and I exchanged gifts. Robert gave me a pair of beautiful earrings by Everett and Mary Teller and a pile of books on hiking and ceramic glazes. I gave Robert a Birdweather PUC, a device you might have seen on your social media feeds. In addition to providing basic information about current weather conditions, it listens to and analyzes birdsong. Online, one can access a report of what birds it has detected throught the day. Our PUC is #20311 in case you’d like to see what’s near our back deck today.

The back of our property ends at a little arroyo. If I walk along that little dry creek bed, I’ll quickly come to a larger arroyo. I can follow its sandy trails for miles only occasionally coming up to the road to cross into the next section. It’s not bad to walk along the gravel roads, but the arroyo’s park-like atmosphere is better. The main downside is all the sand that ends up in my shoes.

And then there’s the sky.

One kind of perfect day starts with good friends in-town for a visit and a walk to breakfast a couple miles down winding gravel roads. Along the way to the cafe, we see flocks of small birds settle for just a moment in the piñon while mountains rise in the distance on every direction, Sandia, Jemez, and Sangre de Christo.

Thanksgiving week we drove to Texas to spend time with family and to pick up some astronomy equipment my Uncle Joe no longer had a use for. Among our newly acquired treasures is a pair of 25X magnification binoculars. In addition to being beautiful, they are heavy and difficult to hold steady enough to look through. So, they come with a tripod and a balancing arm with counter weight. 

Prior to retiring to Santa Fe I was a professor of sociology at the University of Texas. Even though I don’t follow the latest research or worry about publishing my own any more, the connections I made through graduate school and my career are still dear to me. Grad school friends, colleagues, and former students remain as important to me as ever.

It’s now two months since our designer issued the plans for preliminary bids. We’ve shared these plans with a handful of contractors and had serious engagement with three. After two months and many meetings, we have received one ballpark bid with absolutely no detail, just a single number, a number larger than the top end of our budget. These circumstances are not assuring…

When we were looking for a house to buy, we weren’t dreaming of 800 square feet of workshop space complete with built-in work tables and shelves. Also, our renovation project is off to a very slow start and might not come to be.

While still waiting for a bid for our renovation plan, we look for excuses to visit Chula Vista. Because I didn’t want to wait any longer to finally have a grill again, we bought a Big Green Egg. And because we didn’t want to move it from the rental, it was delivered to Chula Vista. The BGE offers amazing control over cooking temperature while imparting a delightful smokey flavor. Soon, now that I have a handle on direct cooking, I want to try to make a pizza sometime. Today, pork tenderloins. 

Beyond cooling temperatures and vibrant orange-yellow leaves, signs of the changing season appear everywhere. Mornings are darker and days shorter. Folks are less likely to leave the house without a light jacket. Our yard at Chula Vista no longer has so many purple flowers, in their place fluffy seed pods. We’re helping the bees to prepare for winter and stacking our own supplies too.

We are in the process of getting bids from potential contractors. There may be some alternations to the project once we get cost estimates. Some of our plans, however, are pretty firm. To start, we’d like a more sheltered place to park our car(s). Currently there are pillars blocking the garage and a breezeway. So, we’ll replace the two blocking pillars with one between the two. The gate will move to the backside of the breezeway. 

The place we are renting has a gorgeous yard, like a slow fireworks show. The early spring had catmint, lavender, and a flowering fruit tree. Through the whole summer we had pink coneflowers and assorted daisies. Now in early fall the grasses, pampas, Karl Foerster, and switchgrass shine. Purple aster enthusiastically colors the wilder parts of the yard. I’m inspired.

Taking in the whole starry sky is wondrous. And it inspires deeper exploration. Almost immediately after moving to Santa Fe we purchased a 10 inch Dobsonian telescope. On clear nights we haul it out onto our deck and search the sky for interesting targets.

Bees give me hope and a measure of determination. One summer in grad school I watched wasps build a hive on the other side of my office window. Their diligent persistence demonstrated that with a little bit of work each hour they could do something noticeable in a few days. Encouraged, I wrote a next sentence. 

We’ve bought a house in northern Santa Fe.