The weather is the news this week!

The Weather Report

Nick has always plugged into AccuWeather online because the site shows weather by the hour. Back East, that always seemed a waste of electrons to me because if it was cloudy and rainy at 9 am, it was likely to be cloudy and rainy (or some reasonable facsimile) at 4 pm. Sure, there was some variability, but not generally more than a drop or a cloud or two one way or another. And, of course, we moved to sunny southern New Mexico, where it’s sunny an average of 80% of the year. So why would we need to log onto AccuWeather? Well…

• It takes the host on the local NPR affiliate about 3 minutes to go over the weather forecast for the day for the listening radius. She has 5 weather zones to cover and those zones, especially in the winter and early spring, can equate to 4 separate weather forecasts. She starts with Las Cruces, where the station sits, and moves to mid-desert with Alamagordo, to high altitude-mountains with Cloudcroft and Ruidoso, on to Silver City, with its own pattern, and back down to the low desert at Deming and Lordsburg. She may predict every weather pattern from clouds in Deming, to rain in Silver City to light snow at the mid-levels to several inches of good snow in Ruidoso, which, by the way, is the local ski destination. The temperature prediction may vary 15 degrees from low to high altitude.
• In the space of Thursday through Friday evening last week, we had every kind of wet weather that’s possible, including: rain, sleet, hail, snow, snow-mixed-with-rain, rain-mixed-with-sleet, often back-lighted by lightening bolts. About every hour, the sky would clear, the ground would start to dry and I’d think, “gotta get the dog out for her walk…”
  and then it would start again. I sat at my computer and watched huge white mountains of clouds coming down from the north, alternating with gray layers of clouds dragging skirts of rain so high up the rain didn’t reach the ground. Depending upon who you talked to on Friday, or more specifically, what part of town they were in at any given point of the day, you got a different weather summary. “It hailed golf-balls here.” Or, “it snowed here for several minutes then turned to rain.” And then on Saturday, we woke up to find ourselves fogged in. Not a novelty for us Easterners, but for those who’ve been here awhile, they told us they’d NEVER seen fog in Silver.
  I guess the instability of the weather was making up for the 2-week-long run of 70+ degree-days we had a couple of weeks ago. Today (Monday) it’s bright, sunny and mild again – much more fitting for the spring-blooming trees we’ve been enjoying.

The Fauna Report

The ravens are nesting in a tall cottonwood at the bottom of the hill.

They built the nest there in years past but according to the neighbors on whose property the cottonwood nursery sits, great horned owls kicked the ravens out and took over the nest for their own brood. The neighbors had hoped that the owls would return this year. At the moment, though, the ravens have re-claimed their old nursery and are busily courting. I will make a case for corvids, including crows and ravens.

• They are smart; probably the smartest of the bird species.
• They are engaging; the nesting pair are dancing an air ballet and calling in many voices.
• They are entertaining: ravens play! They play on purpose and with playful intent.

I saw, again today, a male western scrub jay feeding his "intended." I hope she chooses him. If he takes care of her when she’s on the nest the way he’s bringing treats now, she’ll do well.

And an American kestrel has been sitting around on the telephone wires and the pole outside my window. Probably the same one I’d seen zooming around the area in weeks past, but with the weather (see weather report above) I guess it’s sitting still and drying off. What a beautiful ‘face.’

A week ago – I don’t think I mentioned this before – I was sitting at the computer (Jerry, I REALLY do get work done – I’m not ALWAYS looking out the window) and had another "ohmygodwhatwasthat?" experience. A roadrunner hopped up on the flat outside my window, raced across my field of vision and disappeared around the house. Now WHERE did HE
(she?) come from? This is not a habitat that would especially attract roadrunners. I’ve seen quail in the depressions along the road in the neighborhood, but roadrunners are a flat-land-desert kind of bird. Or so I thought, before one visited my neck of the woods.

And lastly on the topic of what passes my window, this afternoon (Jerry, this was AFTER work hours, I swear!) a group of deer, probably 8, came right up to the side of the house. I guess that big cat has moved on, because the deer are moving around again in the neighborhood. I got the rear view of a youngster nibbling grass outside my window, but Nick, working at his computer in the next room, looked up and saw a doe looking in at him, literally with her nose pressed on the glass. Nutmeg took a few minutes to realize they were out there, but suddenly she got a whiff or an ear-full and went off. Now, you might think this is mean, but knowing she’d never get them, I opened the door and let her out.

She dashed to the edge of the yard only to see them sproinging off down the arroyo (except for the two babies that were curious enough to stop at the bottom of the hill and look back). Almost as quickly, she froze, trying to lift 3 paws in the air at once. In that brief dash, she got prickly burrs in 3 paws. Some fierce dog – can’t go 3 feet off the patio without getting lamed in 3 feet.

On the culture scene
We’ve been attending WILL classes (Western Institute of Lifelong Learning) and have made some new acquaintances in some classes. Including a couple named Tom and Consuelo. Tom was the instructor for a class on Tony Hillerman novels that Nick took. Both of them were in the class on Mexican movies of the 40s and 50s that we both took. We didn’t like the movies, but did enjoy talking with them. When they learned we were looking for land, they put us in touch with friends of theirs who’ve built in the same area as the land on which we made an offer.

Long story short, we met Mike and Carol and subsequently put together a dinner gathering made up of the two couples and us this last Saturday night. Mike is a retired bricklayer from Phoenix who has built several houses and is a wealth of information and knowledge. Carol is a former interior designer who was kind enough NOT to say, "Oh look, Caesar’s Palace" upon walking into the entry area of our house (others have done this and then looked as though they wanted to swallow their words).

Tom retired from Dept of Justice in DC, where he was an editor – he took early retirement because he was fed up with AG Gonzalez; his wife, Consuelo, worked for IRS. But putting DC lives behind us --

Tom got to talking about the history of Silver City. He volunteers at the Silver City Museum and is a consummate history buff and reader. Not to mention, a very good story teller. He got to telling a story, sparked by Nick’s description of a Town of Silver City housing grant to Habitat for Humanity to be located on Brewer’s Hill. It seems the Hill is named for Mrs. Brewer, who was a person of color – that area of town was the "black" area of town in a segregated past; she was known as a curanderos, a Mexican word for a healer. She specialized in abortions, but was a very conservative Christian in some regards. On the main drag and just at the bottom of the Hill on which Ms. Brewer’s place was, now called Hudson St (also Rt 90) was Miss Millie’s, which happened to be the local bordello. I don’t know about Ms. Brewer, but we’ve heard from a Silver City original resident that Miss Millie’s was still in business as late as high school, which for the source of the story would have been the 50’s or thereabouts. (I don’t know about you, but this is part is starting to sound familiar to me; I must have already related this part in some story or another.)

Anyway, according to Tom, Ms. Brewer and Miss Millie reached an agreement to co-exist. And did so successfully, to the degree that the Hill is known as Brewer’s Hill and Miss Millie’s "residence" is now the assisted living home.

Consuelo contributed home-made tortillas to dinner, both flour and corn. Oh! Oh, my! And she said that if she’d had time, she would have made "sweet" tamales, which I gather is a desert tamale. You’ve got to understand…tamales are so much work to make that usually Hispanic families only make them at the holidays. I am thinking that she put more work into those tortillas than I put into the whole dinner. And by the way, dinner was thoroughly cooked, in case you remember an earlier story of an overly rare roast beef.

To close, I’ve found there’s another use for agaves in addition to scratching unwary stumblers. I found, in the hippie store in town, Blue Agave Sweetener, which tastes like very light, delicate honey, but is supposed to be better for us diabetics. I’ll let you know. ss