But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Desert life’ Category

Lost in the Opposite of Paradise

It’s summer in the desert; it hasn’t rained in months; it’s hot.

In other news, water is wet.

As the blog name suggests, “But it’s a dry heat.” By comparison to the deep South, this is true. Except we’re edging up on our so-called monsoon season, which is New Mexico for “if we’re lucky, three inches of rain will fall in about a month.” The season announces itself with blithering heat and slight bit of humidity. The problem is that many of us still rely on evaporative cooling, i.e., the swamp cooler. Basically, a metal box that pushes wet air into the house. Works great in bone dry climes; add even a touch of humidity, and it’s not even an improvement over a fan.

It’s too damn hot to do anything but work on my current WIP, a romantic space opera. But I am writing, and as proof, I give you, an excerpt. Along with an appallingly bad sketch. This, kiddies, is what happens when artists who can’t draw people draw people without using a reference photo. Setup: Kelly, mild-mannered bookstore owner attends the gallery opening of Eric, an artist and escaped convict from another universe. Although, Kelly isn’t aware of the latter. (Unedited, in the raw.)

****Lost in Paradise, WIP, excerpt****

The first painting looked like a photo from (more…)

The Curious Case of the Dead Lagomorph

Rewind, several years ago, on another hot summer day….

I get home from work and trudge out to the barn to visit the Wonder Horse. Heat is pouring down like scalding rain and splashing off the pavement and sand. A roadrunner sits on a fence pole, beak open, panting like a dog. Nothing else is moving, even the little gray lizards have gone to ground in the midday sun.

The Wonder Horse, tough Arabian horse of the desert, is under his shady porch. I hear the clomp of hooves on rubber stall mats as he stamps at flies. Seeing me, he whickers, leaves the shade and comes to the gate to greet me.

It’s too hot to do anything that expends more than a thimble-full of calories, so I grab the halter and a brush. Lovely, occasionally (more…)

Bosque Fire

“It’s a dry heat” is another way of saying, “It’s combustible.”

I started a funny little post about the Wonder Horse’s murderous tendencies, but lost heart when I saw this. Just a mile or two up the road, our Bosque is on fire. At any given time in New Mexico, something is on fire, but until now, our bosque has escaped the summer conflagrations.

Sigh. Not this year, I guess. News helicopters are rattling overhead, but the footage they’re showing is utter worthless. Dear Channel 7 KOAT, you suck, donkey balls. Typical.

Anyway, horsey post to come in a day or so. Provide the fire doesn’t get worse.

Plants for the Desert Southwest

This Sunday, June 10, is the Corrales (New Mexico) Garden Tour, which runs from 9 am to 4 pm. Come on out to the historic village for a great opportunity to see what can be grown in our dry desert landscape.

With that in mind, I thought I’d show you a few of the star performers in my little slice of hot, dry hell. Here in the Albuquerque metro area we get less than eight inches of rain a year (much less, lately), the summer temperatures rise into the 90s, with the occasional span of 100s; the winter lows can dip into the single digits (recently going as low as -10), with very little snow. Operative word is “dry.” The added complication in my yard is the soil, which is better described as beach sand.

In my garden, most of the plants below do so well that they are downright invasive, reseeding themselves everywhere. Probably not good plants for fussy gardeners who want crisply maintained beds and well-behaved plants, but great in a more rustic, relaxed setting.

Phlox or sand penstemon (Penstemon ambiguus) is a workhorse in sand. In fact, I’m not (more…)

Some Home Time Religion

Do it yourself (DIY) projects are for people who don’t want weekends. The kind of twisted mofos who might also enjoy a nice evening of waterboarding.

Uh, okay. Hyperbole. But the dining room project is the last big DIY project that’s happening in the history of ever after at Casa de Kirby. Because..gah…never again. The interior work was completed (mostly) a few months ago; but it wasn’t officially done until this weekend.

Once upon a time, on a desert planet far, far away, the dining room was a garage. A small garage; so teeny, you couldn’t park a clown car in it without grease and a shoehorn. For a time, it functioned as an artist’s studio, where (more…)

My Little Pony Goes Crazy

The sign says it all.

Horses are big dangerous and destructive animals. Why girls go horse crazy is beyond me. (Ahem. There’s a joke in there about men…moving on….)

This is the Wonder Horse’s second liability sign. The first, made of plastic, was destroyed in a few weeks, reduced to a collection of white shards in the sand. The best he can manage with this metal version is to bend it. Metal, you see, makes the most delightful racket when struck with hooves. Especially, at two in the morning. Oy.

Friday morning: I’m fumbling with the faucet in the shower. Outside, a horse neighs, the sound coming through the skylight in the bathroom. The Wonder Horse has heard activity in Chez Kirby. “The two legs are up. Time to feed the horse.” He neighs again.

“You’re not the boss of me,” I mutter and get in the shower.

Forty minutes later, I’m out the door and headed for the paddock. A thick pall of dusty tan hangs in the air, sand kicked up by hooves. The Wonder Horse has worked himself up into a right lather. He sproinging around the paddock in that big bouncy deer-like trot that’s beauty in motion but is absolutely impossible to ride.

I go back in the house to get the camera and he shrieks equine obscenities at me. Back outside, I stop and take a picture of my loony horse. Recognizing the black thing and its significance–“she’s going to fiddle with the fucking thing and not feed me!”–he comes unglued.

He gallops back and forth, skidding to a stop at the gate, spraying sand in all directions. When that doesn’t work, he lets out a couple more angry neighs and throws a tantrum. He’s a whirling dervish,  leaping in the air, bucking and spinning. The long black tail lashes with a snap, he kicks a hind leg, and tosses his head. All this punctuated by rumbling horsy mutters and snorts.

Finally, I relent and head for the barn. Hooves clop angrily under the little porch; the metal feeders rattle as he shoves them with his nose. “Empty! Fix! Now!” I take my time, and he lets out a long, ratting snort. He’s like that really rude customer in a restaurant who expects the food to arrive the instant it’s ordered. Well, except that once the food arrives, he’s happy. He’d never, ever send it back.

I still, however, wouldn’t expect a tip.

Click images for larger version.

But It’s a Dry Heat

What’s That White Stuff?

This morning at five-thirty, the alarm on my husband’s side of the bed went off and he groggily turned it off. I fell back asleep, only to be awakened by hubby announcing that, “There’s at least four inches of snow!”  Then, just like a school age kid, he hurried out to the living room, turned on the tv, and waited for news that his workplace was closed.

A few minutes later, elation turned to bitterness. “Safety first, my ass,” he said. “They only care if we’re safe at work so they don’t get sued. Corporate whores!” His much-hoped for snow day had turned into a pitiful two hour delay.

In the end, he gave up and took the day off

This is where anyone who lives anywhere with a real winter is sneering: “Four inches, that’s not a storm.” True, but this is the desert and deserts are defined by their lack of precipitation, including the frozen kind. Snow around here is an evanescent phenomenon, here today, gone tomorrow, and we New Mexicans know to milk that one day for all it’s worth.

Me, I slogged my way in to work and back home again, successfully negotiating the roads which had become Disney’s Idiots on Ice. There are two variants of snow drivers in New Mexico. The ones who drive so slow that they may as well get out of their cars and walk, and the ones who’s approach is, “Oh, my god, white stuff on my tires! Drive really fast so it doesn’t stick!”

Snow or not, life goes on when you have animals. The horse must be fed; his paddock cleaned. The dog must be walked. When I got home from work, I found that my favorite fleece lined jeans were still wet from the morning walk. I pitched them in the dryer and soon after found a new definition for happiness.

Happiness is putting on a pair of fresh-out-of-the-dryer-warm jeans on a cold day.

Friday Schmaltz

The sun is shining.

Yeah, I know. This is New Mexico. It does that. Except the weather geeks have been making much a hue and cry over the impending storm. Fortunately, in my little corner of the desert, the wind didn’t blow as predicted and it was a balmy 29-degrees this morning when I took the greyhound for his morning stroll. The weather geeks were going on about how frigid it was. Really? Because it was 19-degrees last week. My maths aren’t so great, but I’m certain 19 is less than 29.

Friday. My mother is visiting this weekend and the house has never been filthier. My only options are hiring a team of maids or moving.

So I said, “Screw it,” and did some sketching. This one is inspired by a quotation I saw in a catalog. (Oh, there’s another thing–we’re drowning in catalogs. Tis the season.) It’s full of errors, but I find I like my raw sketches better than my finished work. This is Regan (from The Music of Chaos) and Talis (also The Music of Chaos, with a bit part in The Canvas Thief.) Both are well over 100, but … semantics. As always, click image for a larger version.

Murder Most Foul

Today, on the very day that my Cyber Monday purchase–two gopher traps–shipped, I find my nemesis in the yard, D.E.A.D, dead. Yes, ding-dong, the wicked rodent’s dead.

Friends know that as a rule, my garden is a welcoming place to wildlife. Heck, this year I even called off hostilities against the paper wasps. (It turns out they are great allies in the war against tomato worms, which, as a rule, I also don’t kill. I just pluck ’em off the plants and chuck ’em over the fence.)

But my garden is my life, in darkest times the bright spot that keeps me going. (And my dark spots are abysmal, think Laurentian Trench.) There is no coexistence with an animal, no matter how cute, that is laying waste to my organic Prozac.

As this is war, I first dug trenches and (more…)

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

We don’t need no steenkin’ repairmen. We’re Kirbys. Together, me ‘n my man have built a barn and an art studio, remodeled the kitchen, and converted a garage to a dining room.  Like a toddler who’s tied her shoes for the first time, we did it “all by ourselves.”

Unfortunately, in the absence of repairmen, our work force is reduced to one man and one small scrawny woman, meaning there isn’t much “heavy” in “lifting.”

The Discovery of Gravity
In the desert southwest, “air conditioning” is another way of saying “swamp cooler.”  Recently, there’s been a trend toward real air conditioning, but the majority of homes are still cooled by swamp coolers. Despite a simple design, the damn things never work right. At any given time, you can expect to see a neighbor on his roof, head buried in the cooler, curses echoing off the metal sides. Often, you’re that neighbor.

A few years back, our swamp cooler (more…)