Hello, everybody!
As usual, it's been a while. I've been reading everyone's posts, but by the time I get to them I usually don't have too much to add. But, I'm thinking of all of you.
Given my last post was after visiting Tombstone, I suppose it's fitting that I just got back from a trip to Lincoln, NM and the surroundings. Maybe you haven't heard of the Lincoln County Wars, or Dolan and Tunstall, but you've probably heard of Billy the Kid. This is where it all (mostly) went down. Ex-wife and I went to Ft. Sumner early after moving here, site of Billy the Kid's grave and a decent museum, so I'm glad I finally made it to Lincoln. Most of the buildings are from 1850-1880; a couple that moved there in the 1960s(?) started the preservation efforts. There are still a few private residences in the town too. The Tunstall Store was bought by the state in 1957, and they kept everything on the shelves as they were at that time. Lincoln is a farm and ranch community so the items in the store looked more like early 1900s than what you'd expect for the late 1950s. I also visited Ft. Stanton, which started as an Army outpost in Mescalero Apache territory, but is probably better know as a tuberculosis hospital in the early 1900s. And the Smokey Bear museum in Capitan. Smokey Bear as a character was created in 1944, but the first live Smokey was a bear cub rescued from a forest fire in this area in 1950. His grave is on the museum grounds.
It was hotter than I had hoped for, so even though I was staying in a little resort town (Ruidoso), I wound up just eating dinner and then crashing at the hotel both nights. The town was full of Texans, too. (Texans hate New Mexico, but that doesn't stop them from coming here in the summer to cool off. I thought they mostly went up north, I wasn't expecting them down there.)
Work has been alright. Our program is gaining increased interest, but my role is not terribly exciting, so I don't get many responses to my emails. Everybody wants to design new stuff, and few people want to support testing. I'm also the chief challenge coin designer (if you're familiar with those), and the one I came up with for this program is a huge hit. Unfortunately, as the self-appointed morale officer, I don't think people take me seriously. But, we'll see how it goes.
Although I'm hoping to take more road trips (when it cools off again), I've been doing a lot of work around the house. Consequently, as soon as something heals I manage to injure something else. I mashed my finger under a log when taking a tree down, caught the tip of my thumb in a mini table saw, and most recently got bursitis in one of my elbows. I'm surprised it happened now considering I've been doing the same kind of work for the past year, but I guess that's a joy of getting older. Too much hoeing, I suppose. (Not the fun kind, just the moving dirt kind.) In addition to the half-dead Mimosa tree that I had to remove for my shed, I had two Siberian Elms in my yard. These grow really well in this area, but are non-native and considered noxious in NM. (Apparently they were brought in by a mayor in the 1950s for street medians.) I mashed my finger taking the big (30-40') one down at the back of the yard, which I replaced with an Austrian black pine. I trimmed back the smaller one closer to the house to make it easier to take down later, and planted about six fruit trees. I'll keep trimming the elm back each year until the fruit trees are more established, and then take down the elm for good.
My back yard collects a lot of water in heavy rains; I put drains in on both sides of the house, and carved one swale to divert water to a low spot in the back (which already turns into a mini pond in heavy rains), but also realized that I can carve shallow depressions into the dirt to hold water near the plants as well. We're supposed to get rain this week, so I'll be able to see how the first one is going and dig it out further, and then I'll put gravel on top.
I'm sure there's more but tomorrow is a work day... I hope you're all taking care of yourselves!
JB
Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. They're ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable and we have to face them. That's what being human is all about. -Jet Black, Cowboy Bebop
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J to the B part 3