The Black Knight butterfly bush – my view as I exit from the passage of doom to the secret garden.
First Cup of Coffee – August 14, 2018
//Tag: cholla
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First Cup of Coffee – August 9, 2018
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Blooming Right Along
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The cholla are fulfilling their early promise and have burst into full bloom.
Some cholla more than others, which I never quite understand. It’s the same with our desert four o’clocks out front. Ours are big and lush, but haven’t bloomed while smaller (and larger) clumps unattended out in the desert are blooming away. There’s almost certainly a reason, but I don’t know it. In my solipsistic universe, that’s pretty much the same thing.
In a similarly random bit of selection, my photos are up on the contest site, but one didn’t make it, oddly enough. I’m to give them 48 hours, then we’ll see.
I’m confessing right now: I didn’t end up using any of the ones suggested to me, though they were all in the pot. I started out with over 30 finalists and culled down to 12. I didn’t use the cholla blossom, because there are so many other similar and better photos. I didn’t use the Isabel at the horse trough because it wasn’t signature New Mexico scenery. I doubt I’ll come close to winning anything, especially because I have no intention of asking anyone to vote. I really hate the trolling for votes thing. Soon it will cease to be the thing – can’t wait for that day. Swing, pendulum, swing!
Sterling is coming right along. I think I have a real working title now, though I might run it through a few more people. I have one no vote and several enthusiastic yeses so far. I’m reliably hitting 1.5K now. A bit of rest always helps build endurance.
Love these full-bloom days.
Over the River and Through the Woods
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Turns out cholla do more than produce burrs.
This photo might seem silly soon, because when I foraged out to get a photo of this rare blossom, I saw that the entire cholla is covered in buds. So there might be photos of cholla in full bloom soon.
But for now, this is the first, and therefore special.
I’m off to Denver today, to my mom’s house, to help clean it out for the Big Sell. She and her David have been crazy busy fixing the place up to put it on the market at the beginning of July. Stepfather David instructed me to bring the biggest car we own. Or to borrow a bigger one. He’s big on getting rid of stuff.
Most will go into storage right now, until my mom buys a “little jewel box of a condo” to house her art. That’s the most important part.
People are predicting that this will be emotional, but I think we’re ready. It helps that my David and I purged last year when we moved. The house was the first my mom bought, and therefore special, but it’s not the last.
And it’s time to let it go.
Oral Surgery
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This is actually a setting October crescent moon. Held by an unstable hand. Turned out kind of cool, actually. I took this after our first party in the new house, at which I drank a fair amount of wine. Hence the unsteady hand.
The serendipity of over-indulgence.
Yesterday was all about getting ready for the party. Which made a good break for me. No working on the book. No working on work. No blog post, even. No, yesterday was packed with buying food and booze and getting the house clean.
Which, apparently I hadn’t really cleaned since we moved in.
That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, except we’ve been here two months now. And that’s a little long to go. We needed some rebound time from having our house on the market for six months, show-ready all that time. But, that was plenty long enough.
So the mundane tasks demanded my attention and that was okay.
Except for the kitty medical emergency.
I was vaccuming away, only ten minutes behind my intended in-the-shower deadline, when David came in carrying Isabel. I thought he’d captured her before the party, so I nodded and smiled when he said something to me.
“She’s got a cholla burr in her mouth!” He said louder.
Oh. OH!
I turned off the vaccum cleanerand went over to him. Sure enough, there was a big cholla burr hanging off her lip. She was frothing and salivating and I quickly yanked it off. 
These things are nasty – big and spiky. Every one of us has stepped on one now. They hurt like hell, but they come out fairly easily. Even Zip, who’s not that bright, has learned to yank them out of his paws with his front teeth and spit them out again.
But, though, the cholla burr came off Isabel’s lip quickly enough, she jumped out of David’s arms, still licking and frothing, and raced for the sanctuary of the bedroom.
“She’s got one inside her mouth, still.” David said.
So, we dug her out from under the bed. I held Isabel on her back on my lap, as I sat on the floor, back against the bed. From my angle, I could see the burr embedded in the roof of her mouth. David held her paws and I tried to grab the thing, but couldn’t get a grip. White fur was flying everywhere.
Meanwhile the guests are arriving in 45 minutes, I haven’t finished the vaccuming and I’m filthy from house-cleaning.
While David fetches the tweezers, I’m thinking about how we could put a note on the door while we take her to the vet, which may or may not be still open this late on a Friday afternoon. Isabel is alternately hissing and pitifully meowing.
I got closer to a grip with the tweezers, but everytime I touched it, Isabel would yank away in pain. So David got a beach towel — the big one we bought in Culebra with the multi-colored giant polka-dots on it. We wrapped her up in it, so only her little white furry face poked out.
This time when I pried open her mouth, we could hold the mummy-cat steady. I yanked that burr right out.
Isabel went to the closet to recover her composure, then slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.
I finished the vaccuming — including a redo of the bedroom — managed to clean-up and cute-up before the first guest arrived.
Fortuntately, no one was right on time.