Jade Hummingbird Dancers

A couple of weekends ago, we took my parents and niece & nephew to see some Aztec dancers perform at the Petroglyph National Monument. The tradional clothing was beautiful and the dances were really interesting.


The head dresses were really incredible. A couple of them were around four feet high!


You can't tell from the picture, but this guy in black had crazy-looking skulls all over his clothing.

This guy put each foot into the fire, then each inner thigh?? (as above) then his chest. I'm sure there was a very good reason for it, but I didn't get why...

Q, L and cousin M with one of the dancers.

Budding Life

In our history of home ownership (we are currently on house number four), R and I have probably planted six or seven dozen plants and around twenty trees. We've had a few loses; bushes that whither and brown almost immediately or maybe last a season, then just never show much promise afterward. We've also had some very gratifying opportunities to take a suffering plant and make is happy again. We once transferred a tree growing too close to the fence. It seemed to die pretty quickly, but just as we had resigned ourselves to failure it starting budding green! That was sweet.

During our backyard redo, we took five rose bushes and transferred them to a new spot. One in particular looked doomed. We gave it some serious water and crossed our fingers. Sure enough, we started to see some lovely green soon and (perhaps as a way to say, "Thanks for not letting me die.") now there are beautiful roses blooming! That's sweet.

(This is a lovely pink oleander bush that we planted, too. I LOVE it!)

Backyard - Before and After

Everybody loves a good 'before and after' right? Well, here's our latest and greatest home improvement; R was inspired by the potential within our backyard, so he took his vision and made it real. After many, many, many hours of smashing concrete with a sledgehammer, carrying big and bigger rocks from one spot to the next, planting trees and bushes, laying down drippers for the plants and hauling countless numbers of wheelbarrows full of rock up the steps... oh, and assembling patio furniture - we're done!! We are now soooo ready to sit and relax.

A Really Great Thing About New Mexico...

is that there are often rainbows that stretch across the sky!