The more things change...

...well, the more they change! I can't think of a time when things ever stayed the same for long and that's just fine. That's interesting. Sure, also "challenging" but so what?

So the little ole Mountain Mail newspaper went down, then rose back up again. Still locally owned and operated - a rare and beautiful thing. The new owners have brought back color pages - I've missed that! New editor, new salesperson - both trying to learn the town but getting better all the time.

And the two out of state subscriptions I bought are being honored. Yay! And my husband has a job he loves. Double yay!

I just decided for sure that I am not going back to real estate and told my Broker yesterday to send my license back to the Commission. I suspect she was not too surprised. There's just no arguing with the relief I felt when I drove by a newly listed house in the area and knew I did NOT have to deal with it. Now I'm just into giving out free advice which is always worth exactly what you pay for it. (Bear that in mind.)


Although I am not done, the NMT Biology department website is shaping up nicely and I'm pretty proud of it. Do go see it here! (that's one end of my building in the photo.)

I've been very lucky in the places I've been in that, even if I wasn't thrilled about the actual job, I have have really liked and respected the people I worked with. Of course, I did seem to have a flair for working at places that were about to go bankrupt, sell out, get hostilely taken over or relocate out of state. I'm pretty sure none of those thing will happen to New Mexico Tech. Pretty sure. But I absolutely love it here and the only guarantee is that things will change.

So that's enough for the review. This week we go to Albuquerque where I finally get to visit the closest thing I have to a Local Home Brew Shop (LHBS) - Victor's Grape Arbor. Got my little list ready and we may come home with additional equipment and supplies to make our first batch of stout. I am crazy-excited!

The Sad End of Another Independent Newspaper

The last regular issue of the Mountain Mail newspaper was uploaded to the printer tonight and will be distributed tomorrow.

I always thought I would talk more about the paper in this blog but I never could do it. Too distressing. My husband has been the main reporter - sometimes the only reporter - for five years. It was a huge part of our lives even before I started helping out up front twice a week back in November of last year. Accounts Receivable. Scary.

In fact, I just now realize I still can't say much except that it's tragic that newspapers can't make it in these times. A whole lot of people relied on it for local news, legal ads (who's going to take care of Catron County now? The Journal? Not hardly!), classifieds, free obituaries and birth announcements, a different perspective from the Chieftain, a way different perspective from T.V. "news".

Dammit, it was important! It made a difference. My husband made a difference. Even I, in my small way, made a difference. Most people had no idea just how small a staff produced that paper every week. Couldn't be just a couple full-timers, a couple part-timers and a few, mostly unpaid columnists and contributors. That's because it was good.

It's going to be missed. The void will soon be filled but we all see the trend toward the shallow, impersonal and bureaucratic. The good old days ended today. Time to start being nostalgic.

Save the Wine!

The bucket of incipient home-brew blueberry wine, that is.

I'd heard blueberry was tricky primarily because of the acid content. There were better recommended yeasts and more elaborate recipes to compensate but I blew all that off. I blew off all testing and correcting too - not out of confidence but to save a few bucks. I figured I'd follow the basic recipe and if it didn't work, no big deal to pitch it out and start over.

Wrong! This is only my third batch and it turned out to be emotionally a huge deal to give up when it stopped fermenting. This meant frantic internet research and the urgent order to the home-brew supplier for a Ph meter and potassium carbonate. Unfortunately, the supplier only ships FedEx ground and our delivery person never delivers the same day things are put on her truck. (I don't know why.)

I wasn't wrong to be optimistic with the basic recipe but I was wrong to not prepare for problems. See, the thing about living in Magdalena is that everything is FAR. You can get to Albuquerque in an hour and 45 minutes but when you factor getting around in Albuquerque, the day is gone. No popping to the wine store for a fresh packet of yeast. If I don't get it before I start, I don't have it.

It's not just wine-making supplies, of course. You can get the basics of life in Magdalena - food, if you're not too picky, gas, basic hardware. You have a few more choices in nearby Socorro (but clothing is limited to a couple specialty stores and Wal-Mart). If you want anything the least bit "exotic", your choices are mail order or spend a day in Albuquerque.

I'm just saying. I'm not complaining because I love it here and I can't see living anywhere else. I'm not especially material but I always seem to desire odd things and on-line shopping and home delivery (even a day late) make it possible to live way out here and still have my "stuff". I'm just kicking myself for forgetting the reality of life here and worried about my bucket of wine.

Since I took the lid off the primary fermentor yesterday, it has started very slowly fizzing. Occasionally it makes more encouraging sounds like "glorp" and "splocket". Maybe it'll recover or at least survive till my order gets here but I won't be caught like this again. Better get working on the next order.

Update 8/14/09 Never say never. The Fedex order of the pH meter arrived on time. The pH turned out to be within the acceptable range. Good - but now what? So I tested the specific gravity which was really low. That means a whole lotta sugar has converted to alcohol. I would say all those glorps mattered and the wine has recovered. Yay!

New Dragonflies!

The dragonfly nymphs in the lotus pond have started to emerge. I'd read that some stay nymphs for years so I didn't know when to expect this but yesterday, on my morning tour of the gardens, this is what I found:

Brand-spankin new, still transparent and gorgeous! Well, in a scary sort of way. Of course, my attention drew the attention of the cats. I turned to check on some plants and when I turned back - dragonfly was gone and Stella, the orange cat was playing with something in the grass. Fortunately, I was able to rescue her (I think it's female) in time and relocate her to a safe spot. She was still changing colors, becoming tan with green bands, when I left for work and gone when I came home.


And another this morning! Look at those shining wings! They look healthy - probably all those spadefoot tadpoles they ate.

Stella is not allowed to play with this one.

Oh, hail!

The summer monsoons are here! Normally, that generates a "YAY!" but there is sure a notable exception. Hail.

It was bad enough last year when I just had my 8 foot stocktank water garden to worry about. Hail and lily pads do not mix! I recall shrieking for John to come help me fling a tarp over the tank. It was painful but we got the tank mostly covered and the damage wasn't too bad.

Earlier this spring, the very day after planting my new tomato plants, hail struck when I wasn't home shredding the poor tomatoes and puncturing all the lily pads. They've all pretty much recovered now.

Yesterday, I'm at the computer listening to the thunder get closer and wondering if I should shut down when I begin to hear hailstones plink off the attached greenhouse. A very distinct sound. I don't even wait for John. I'm shrieking "Hail!" as I run out the door to grab my tarps. One was flung over the stocktank. The second one - well, I found myself wandering around the garden in the driving hail with this blue, plastic tarp over my head. I'm panicked out of useful action because I can't decide where to put this thing. It was like choosing which child I was going to keep!

Should it be the lotus pond that also has the dwarf waterlily doing better than ever? What about my pretty little rock garden? And - oh no! The vineyard! 17 expensive vines just starting to climb onto the new trellis!

Finally, I realize the only thing this 12 foot square tarp has a chance of covering is the little rectangular bed of tomato plants. I drag the tarp over the horse-fence cages as fast as I can and dart back into the house to watch and wring my hands. (And take a picture.)

Almost immediately, the hail begins to slow and it's just a hard rain which also soon slows. The sun comes out, then another storm (no hail, this time), then one of the most gorgeous sunsets I've seen in a while. Oh, those monsoon sunsets can really make you forget the hail!

The vineyard and the lotus and the fame-flowers in the rock garden all survived pretty well. This time. Supposed to be storms again today. I'm going to need more tarps.

Bucket of Tadpoles

There are some things that, if you allow yourself to outgrow them - well, it's damn shame. Raising tadpoles is one of them.

So I have this sherbet tub on the back porch with 20 or 30 tadpoles in it.

My neighbor stopped me in the street to congratulate me for attracting frogs to my pond. I had no idea because they didn't start singing till about 10 pm and I couldn't hear them from the living room. I checked the lotus pond after work and there were thousands of eggs covering the leaf stalks. The next day they were starting to hatch. Two days later - not a tadpole to be found.

What I did find was A) baby minnows. What the...? I was keeping fish out of that pond! B) Lots of dragonfly nymphs. As I watched, I saw the nymphs lunging for the baby minnows. They missed then but dragonflies are serious predators. I don't think the tadpoles had a chance.

A couple days later the frogs laid eggs again. The next day the already wiggling eggs were being grazed on by my too many pond snails. Poor froggies! They weren't not going to be able to reproduce. I ran for the sherbet tub and good thing. No tadpoles in the pond again but I have them on the porch!

These are the Couch's Spadefoot frogs, I'm pretty sure. They bury themselves in the ground most of the year and come out to frantically breed only when the summer monsoons come. When it rained all night and into the morning, we were able to spot 3 adults in the pond still singing away with their pale throats bulging. Too cute!

The babies are clearly algae eaters and I've never been so glad for the wide assortment of algae in the ponds. I can't wait till they get legs but I'll be sad when they leave home. Nothing like a bucket of tadpoles!

My new website

I'd built what I think is a really nice real estate informational site, I wanted to put on all the gizmos that I wanted on the main Old Westland Realty website but I had no control over it. Well, I guess it's mostly about control. I like it!

Still, it was limited because it was a free site through the local ISP and through the business account. If something happened to either of those things, I could lose all my hard work. Oh no! So I bit the bullet and bought my own domain - can you believe LifeinMagdalena.com was available?

I just uploaded my website straight over but here's the plan:
My lovely and potentially profitable Real Estate site remains and gets better but I add a separate section for my artwork and perhaps another for the gardens and the adventures in winemaking. All of them linked but kind of separate. There's something about sub-domains I get to learn. Hoo-boy! I love to learn new stuff! Keeps you young, ya know.

Well, I'm excited. I haven't got a picture for this post so let's do some font colors!