Gotta see a Man About a House

Today was "put your money where your mouth is" day.  I made an offer and we will see what happens.

The house is small...but I want to downsize.  It is a little snug but fine for me.  It has a lot of land -- 1.3 acres -- so there is plenty of room. It is practically a wildlife sanctuary because of the water feature and all of the bird feeders around the yard.  Also have chipmunks.  Watson will be excited. It is very southwestern in style.  Storage might be a problem.

I started the day at my old coffee shop but the retired engineers were not there....I'm kinda worried.  They are on the loose.

I spent a good part of the afternoon with my agent putting the offer together. Tons of paperwork.  I was getting writer's cramp.

I decided to take myself to dinner so I drove up to Bernalillo and went to The Range Cafe. If you follow this blog, we've been there before. Usually I get a burger or Reuben sandwich and watch to folks come and go.

Tonight I decided on trout. It was a butterfly (de-boned) trout baked with butter, sun-dried tomatoes, capers and artichokes served over a risotto-chive cake (think super thick rice and chives pancake) and roasted asparagus. Boy, was that good.  Only disappointment was the Marble Brewery IPA...I should have known better, it tastes like grapefruit juice. The citrus flavor was OK with the fish but not my style of beer.

After dinner I drove up to look at my vacant lot...I mean ranchette.   It is about the same...nobody has built up there yet. The trash dumping is about the same....not much more than last time.  The road was a little better.

The drought is still raging up here in the desert. Even the desert plants are looking bad and one of my old juniper trees has died. There are signs of wildlife but the plants look terrible.  The monsoon season isn't until another month or two.

Everything is dry. There is a huge fire up in the Jemez Mountains and the newspaper said it got all the way down to the floor of the Valles Caldera...a forest and nature conservation area about an hour north of here.  Valles Caldera ought to be a national park but is serving as sort of an experiment in self sufficiency.  It is the site of a huge mega volcano that exploded way back in the dim past and left a vast crater that is now a large meadow with trout streams and a forested rim (used to be forested, anyway). Access is limited by paid permit and only a few fisherman are allowed each day.  I hope the damage isn't too bad.  I have plans for that place.

There was a big thunderstorm looming in the distance and moving my direction so I took a few pictures. At one point there was a dust devil that went a thousand feet into the air an then dissipated.  There was thunder but no lightning that you could see.   I watched for quite a while but it was moving very slow. You can see so far that it might be 20 miles away.

If there is enough rain it will help with the fires but the lightning might start new fires. The big Pecos fire that I saw from the train was caused by downed power lines.

This last picture is my King's juniper. These trees grow so slowly that they were living here when Coronado came through. Some were possibly not much smaller than they are now.  So this tree was once owned by the King of Spain and is at least 400 years old. Some of the trees have crude hatchet marks where somebody chopped off a limb for some reason. This was sheep country at one time so maybe a sheep herder lopped off a branch for fire wood.  The chopping marks seem almost random.

I decided to head back to town and beat the storm.  The wind came up but no rain (yet). I stopped off at Il Vicino cantina - a microbrewery - and had a second beer....better than the first.

Tomorrow I'm planning on doing something fun.