Bisbee

I landed into this funny place called Bisbee on Monday evening. I've been here before but not for about 45 or 46 years. Things were a bit different then and I was only 7 years old in January 1964. I went to the courthouse today and somehow it was a tiny bit familiar, but a lot of what I remember has been modernized.

I came to see my daughter Juda who adopted me some time ago. She(and the side kick dudefriend,R-man, and dogis) has an adorable house(all decorated with shells, rocks and shells) and works downtown at the coffee roasters. We walked up and down the hills earlier today and very ingenous and bold that humans have figured out how to stay on the sides of canyons and build all sorts of constructs to dwell in, many of which have disappeared with the wind and dust, but some whispers remain, steps that go nowhere...a wall here or an ore car that was used as a crapper there.

There are quite a few creative folks who have painted bright designs or outrageous colors on random houses...some murals and sculptures and contageous energy. I stopped by the chocolate shoppe and asked about their hours. ( I didn't buy anything there, yet...)I guess they are just opening after a bit of time off...

Anyway, it's refreshing and invigorating to visit a fun community like this and see how the kids are doing down here. Looking forward to having a great(buttered up) holiday and then blasting off to my next stop in Denton, Texas!! Word to y'all eating tomorrow...pace yourselves and keep some time for walking in your day, you may need it for more than one reason. Love to all you friends and fellow inhabitants of the planet.

The brains that study the brain

After shoveling and scraping and shivering for awhile, I drove slowly over to the Hilton Hotel to listen to those who know more about aging than I ever even thought about...(it was a conference about aging) about how the mitochondria has bits that have markers of aging parts, how older skeletal muscle recovers compared to those of the young adult...and grafts and charts after charts of data collected for many years. It's interesting to hear scientists talk of their fields, especially when you have little or no idea of what it is that obviously has them so absorbed and thrilled...it is evident that the passion is there and that they have formed their world around this little aspect of life that they have dived head first into researching. I was hoping for more stories, but there was very little of that; although some had little quirky stories of other researchers or each other...I think some of them haven't really had much of a social life with many other beings than mice. It also made me think of how mice, and maybe other species, have been giving of their bodies and minds so that these types can make their grafts and charts. (This is not to say that I am particularly fond of mice, but after I looked at many slides of their sliced and stained brains... stained with dye so that we could see that they had Alzheimer's or Parkinson's ...it made me think of their supreme sacrifice.)

Anyway, tonight might just be our coldest night yet, and I'm thinking it was not long ago I had taken pictures of sunflowers blooming in the yard. Ahh, how time marches on!!

Marble, farble, garble

Marble is supposedly compressed clay, and, indeed, when you cut it globs of clay form on the saw blade.(we did cut off one edge) It is seductively smooth and tantalizingly gorgeous in the colors and patterns it holds in it's body. I'm in love.

This piece has many flaws and a crack...did it get dropped? Don't know anything of it's history, but the beauty prevails, for sure. There are many variations of red, black, grey and even some orange and green. There are shapes of two eyes in the designs, which is difficult to capture in a picture, (and even more difficult for me to get on this post apparently, but I will keep trying as I learn more about how to do this!) It is a wild aspect to see that in the rock.
I'm also impressed by the weight of this slab we carefully rolled and walked, scootched , jacked, and finally slid into place. It is a pleasure to glide the hands over it and feel how smooth and cool it is. WOW; it's a way out experience!! The diversity of what the earth/universe provides is mind boggling and humbling to know we are made of the same stuff, actually.

It takes alot of patience!

I would like to get the siding up on the green house right away. There is much to do before that can happen. First we have to cut the flashing for the bottom of the outside of the wall, then bend it and fit it, and nail it up...then we have to put some tar paper up and staple that in place and then rip the boards on a saw so that the edges are even (it once was a fence that didn't have even edges) and then put up a nailing board, and ,and and. It's a little like sewing or baking or many other worthwhile projects. The end is not an easy destination to get to, and it may sound easy to do until you examine all the pieces to get there.
Last night we took a break and hung out with our card game friends and played a number of games, the most ridiculous and fun I think was Go Fish using different accents for the asking part. (I had totally forgotten that you ask some one if they have a 2 or something else). This was very difficult to come up with accents with Buck Owens blaring in the background...he brought out the southern twang in all of us. B. had a good Jamaican accent which I think he must have picked up in Panama. I must have come home with a good vibe because the cat sat on top of me and purred all night even after I tossed her to the foot of the bed to go potty a couple of times. Anyway, it was good to hear of every one's adventures in home buying, the thought of home buying and all the exhaustion that plays in to stay afloat in the working world.
I have started to saw some wood for burning (yes! my shoulder is working again!!)and rummaging through the piles of wood I have buried treasures in...and I found the nicest wood this morning, that is very dense and has red bark,and already cut into stove sized pieces...don't have any idea what kind of wood it is, but I like it!!
It's supposed to get windy this afternoon, and especially along the foothills...and where do we live? You guessed it.

I am impressed that I didn't have to call the daughter in to get the pictures on the blog! Cool. I also have now rearranged the order of the pics and relocated this post! Wow. This is not typical...to say the least.
As you can see the greenhouse is a work in progress, but Oh!! what a process it has been. Today I sealed around the door with some foamy stuff that should keep the breeze out, and we lugged a piece of marble in that someone gave us and actually managed to get it up on the far west barrel to use as a table. I was day dreaming about how we would get that piece of marble up that high and it occured to me to use the jack we have (that is actually a post puller), and it worked real slick; nobody got hurt! At some point I'll have to take a picture of the marble. It is real purdy. I am one of the happiest girls on the planet. Indeed!

It's already fall !!

We have been rather consumed by the greenhouse construction and it is almost getting to a place where we can slow down. Today we put on the middle 2nd layer of glass, which means that if we get the other two(2nd layer) panels of glass it will be warmer in there overnight. I painted two big 55 gallon drums black and filled them with water, which has been getting warmer with these last few hot days. I feel for the plants, they have been exposed to 32 degrees and all the way up to 100. I'm kinda surprised anything is alive when I think about the extremes that have been in there lately. Most of the plants seem to be in a holding pattern, although the geraniums are slowly blossoming. It is fun to already have some plants in there, even though I don't know that they will really produce, but it feels like an experiment on many levels.
I have learned several construction techniques,(like putting ice and water shield on the roof, screwing on the insulation, and cutting Sollex, which is a plastic card boardish stuff we made the west wall out of) I think mainly because B. is on the verge of burnout..and wants me to do as much as possible. With the nice weather he wants to go play instead of work on the greenhouse. I have a job (or two) so my time is sporadic and inconsistent. I wish I had more time to devote to the project, but I am not knowledgeable to do a lot of what needs doing, and my shoulder has been giving me troubles, so I am not able to lift the kind of weight I want to lift, and that is aggravating.
The up side is that the little house is more beautiful than I would have ever dreamed of, and it will keep plants growing for a long time to come. It is very peaceful and smells like a greenhouse already, and it fills my lungs with the best moist and oxygen experience!! The bees(and other insects) are very attracted to coming inside, but don't seem to remember where the door is. I could spend a lot of time just trapping insects to let out again.
Anyway, I want to blab and blab about how cool it is to have this new creation in our lives, but I think you probably get that it is a long time dream to have such a thing in my life.
On another front, The Prince (Charles) our wonky outdoor cat is slowly but surely getting a palace that I am putting together with the scraps from our other building project and from some of dumpster dives I have come across. He was neutered in August and that has made him all the sweeter, he hangs out with us and watches us work now, and is ever so much more interested in pets and encouraging words...not to mention meals as close together as possible. Sometimes when he is hungry he taps my shoe with his paw as if to hurry me along. He's just such a cool guy. Anyway, I hope to have more blog time in the near future, and maybe because the weather will change soon, we won't have ever spare minute sucked up in our construction project. Hope to get pics up soon too.

Bladder, blither, blum

The last few daze I have been having a bladder infection, which is a periodic bummer my body seems to throw at me when I least expect it...perhaps my bladder was compromised as a youth before people thought of giving their kids water to drink, and it is weak,and maybe needs a break from coffee... Anyway, I feel better today with the help of the BBM (Big Beautiful Man)in my life giving my neck and shoulders some massage relief, and some good old fashion rest. I did sleep a big sleep and that seems to have healing powers like no other thing.
When I have felt like it I have been going through the huge pile of apple branches left from the tree removal, and that is a slow meditation on sorting, stacking, and chipping. The BBM has been digging the whole hole for the foundation of the greenhouse. I wish I knew how to post the pictures of that, but someday that will come, just you wait. I still need guidance on how to download pictures to where they are wanted.
Another thing is that blogging, even though it's fun, there are so many other things to do in life besides sitting in front of a computer when there are these lovely days of late summer happening. This morning there was a crispness in the breeze that comes on fall mornings, and it is to be enjoyed at it's fullest....why am I sitting here, then? Well, I have a twinge of guilt that now I have a blog, I must feed it some time too. But that's enough for now. I have compost to turn, and branches to sort and and and. Life is good.