Walking the fenceline...

I thought it would be a good idea to check the upper fenceline today since the last time I tried about a month ago I wound up with a severly sprained ankle. With Mike at home I figured at least someone would know where I was in case I needed to be airlifted out!

Checking the fence used to be a lot more difficult before the horses made lovely paths all the way up the mountain. Even though it was lightly overcast most of the day it was warm and comfortable and without any wind to speak of - always something to be grateful for this time of year.

The secret reward for the effort of climbing the mountain to check the upper fence is getting to stop for a bit on top of Cuervo Point, the bluff at the upper end of our land where Mike's horse used to survey the world. The view is breathtaking and it would be difficult to not stop for a few minutes to just appreciate being here. Cuervo created the paths up here and it is clear the other horses have now made them their own.

As I circled around the upper back fence I was amazed at the interlocking paths the horses have created since the last time I came up here, probably four or more months ago. Where it used to be difficult to walk safely, it is now at least possible to move without hanging onto trees or fences to keep from slipping. If you look carefully in this photo, you will see a path winding up through the middle that was created by magnificent, barefoot mustangs.

Sweet Griton thought it might be a good idea to see what I was doing climbing around up there. This month was his one year anniversary with us and I am always touched by his affectionate, willing nature. I promised Griton that by next year he would be carrying me on his back up their wonderful paths to check that fenceline.

Dreaming of Mikey...

Mike has been home since last Friday and we have both had dreams about our little Mikey greyhound. Mike had two dreams in which Mikey was running and playing and being his goofy old self. I had one dream and it was Sunday morning just before dawn.

Our cat Nicodemus was running around and meowing to go out...have you ever wondered how it is that a relatively small cat with soft paws can sound like they are stomping? I truly believed I was awake as I slid off the bed to let Nicodemus out and there was Mikey lying on the rug next to my bed in what greyhound people call 'sphinx pose', looking up at me with those big ears and wagging his little fish hook tail 90 miles an hour.

I was aware enough to know he would only be there for a moment so I knelt down next to him as he stood up to give him a hug. I always would wrap one arm around his chest and the other around his body and hold him and tell him what a good boy he was. Mikey gave one of his shuddery sighs of pure joy and then he was gone again and I was completely awake.

I have to wonder if Mikey is checking in to let us know all is well where he is. I know he is running with his old buddies Birdy and Cody and that does indeed give me great comfort.

Just twenty-four hours later...

One of the things you have to love about New Mexico is you get the snow but it never lasts long. More northern states endure month after month of hard bitter winters, here we might have a week of cold before it warms back up to reasonable temperatures. Usually the skies here are so clear sunrise and sunset are basically just that...this morning there was enough overcast to create a spectacular sunrise through the pines off the deck.

I took this on Thursday morning after a snowstorm that brought us just over a foot of snow. The ground was already so warm I was surprised it built up at all. When I went out to feed the horses the wind had started up causing those lovely clumps of snow sitting on pine boughs to start falling. It had been so long since the horses had seen snow coming down from the trees that it became a great excuse for lots of pretend spooking, running and bucking.

As expected, by evening most of the snow was gone with just a bit left in the shaded areas and by Friday morning even that was gone. But the good news is that nice fall of snow went straight into the ground with no runoff at all meaning we might actually have a spring with grass and wild flowers. Judging by the buds forming on the fruit trees, real spring will be here soon and I just finished repotting the roses on the deck into their permanent redwood tubs. They definitely look nicer that the muck buckets we put into service last year.

Mike is home and we have been having a really nice weekend together. We've gotten caught up on some things and I was finally able to finish the two new cat jewelry designs that have been impatiently waiting. All that is left now for the new 2006 designs are a Saluki piece and one for a Danish sea goddess. Both will get done soon but those cats were yelling the loudest.

A foot of snow.

It is very, very bright out this morning. It snowed off and on for a little over twenty-four hours yesterday leaving us with a solid foot of fresh snow. The sky cleared around eleven last night and the stars were brilliant in that clear crisp air. Of course the temperatures plummeted with clouds moving out and it is intensely 'hurt your eyes' sunny this morning with the light reflecting off fresh snow. I imagine this snow will be mostly gone by the end of the day with temperatures rising and ground that has already been warmed. I caught this shot of a tiny little crescent moon from the deck this morning.

Ellie is really starting to enjoy the snow with lots of running and spinning around in it. Vannie just stands and watches her and tries to maintain her dignity. Funny because Vannie was the one who used to be the clown. Guess Ellie has relieved her of that particular role at least while they are outside. Vannie can still kick it into high gear when she walks through the door and spots a squeaky toy on the floor and is motivated to grab a little attention.

Twisted seasons.

I know it's not just us. The weather around the whole country seems to have been turned upside down. We had five inches of snow all winter and here we are on the third day of spring and five inches have fallen since about nine last night. This storm is supposed to move through by eleven and I am glad for the snowfall...it's just odd.

Knowing this won't last long I walked around a bit and took the time to appreciate the snow since true spring is just around the corner. It's almost always very quiet and still when it snows here. We seldom have wind or blizzard conditions like other parts of the country and for that I am grateful. Our real estate agent told us emphatically the wind never blows here when it's snowing. Once when we were watching it snow sideways I wanted to call and ask her about that.

Whenever I see the horses intently watching a portion of the woods I always watch myself. Often it gives me a chance to see a fox or coyote, sometimes wild turkey. They are usually just interested and I've only seen them go on high alert a few times and more often than not that has been due to people hiking in the woods. Several times when the wind was high I was unable to determine what they were reacting to and have wondered if the scent of a bear or mountain lion had been carried to them. Mountain lion predation is a significant cause of death in wild horses, mostly affecting young foals, so I am sure even strong adults are impacted by their scent.

Greyhounds usually have difficulty sitting because their hips are so tight. Hip dysplasia hardly exists in racing greyhounds because they have never been bred as show dogs, just high performance athletes. None of our greyhounds have ever been able to do more than crouch uncomfortably. I was surprised the first time I saw Ellie sitting all on her own. I was especially surprised to see her sitting in the snow this morning... wonder what she was looking at.

Earth bones.

Millions of years ago fire breathing dragons lived here ... before humans were even a thought or consideration ... before anyone existed to call this place New Mexico. They raged and spewed fire and filled the air with smoke and ash. These dragons fought and grew and filled the land with their great bodies.

Other giant beasts walked here as well. They lived and died and left their remains to be found millions of years later by tiny Homo Sapiens who wondered in awe at their great bones and called them dinosaurs.

Time passed and the fire breathers grew old and died. Warm inland seas filled land that was once a bed of fire and slowly the bodies of dragons were buried in sedimentation, lost except for the softened outline of old shoulders, backs and ribs. Sea creatures swam above the bodies of dead dragons and left their own shells and bones to mark their passing.

Seas evaporated and the land became arid and dry. The slow wash of infrequent rain and the constant wind has been wearing away the soft coverings of monsters dead for countless millennium. I see their great spines and crests emerging from forests and ridges as we drive familiar roads. They mark the land with their ancient history and we feel small in comparison.

There is a splendid quietness here that touches your soul if you are one who is prepared to listen. There are those that come from green wet places who become uneasy in this great expanse of openness filled with browns, golds and rusts. Some people come from cities and go back quickly to nights filled with artificial light and stores and highways that take you directly to where you want to go. Then there are those like Georgia O'Keeffe who came here and stayed and whose artist's soul was forever changed.

Artist's Hands.

When I was younger I had pretty hands. They were slender and elegant with long tapered fingers and I used them with conscious grace. I kept my nails manicured and the skin was always soft and smooth. I was proud of my hands and people often said they were artist's hands.

The first thing that took a toll on my hands was years of working with horses. My hands had bones broken, knuckles twisted and jammed. They were scarred from cuts and rope burns and I stopped wearing rings because they were inevitably smashed on my fingers.

For the last ten years I have been making jewelry and my hands show every day of it. The skin is rough and cracked with black polishing rouge embedded in it. I sometimes laughingly say it takes three days on the road before the polishing rouge is completely gone from the skin on my fingers and from under my nails. My fingernails are kept short to minimize the look of a perpetual gardener in spite of wearing gloves whenever possible. My joints are enlarged from strain and some have become swollen with arthritis.

There are times I miss the pretty hands I once had. I look at them now and I see the years and the roads of my life. These hands with all of their scars and lumps and worked in grime show my journey better than any other part of me. These hands have worked hard, they are skilled at creating what my mind sees. I trust them to soothe a horse, stroke a dog, or create beauty out of a thought. These hands are not pretty anymore; but they have finally become an artist's hands.

Measurable rainfall.

Here in the desert rain is measured in tenths of inches and anything that can actually be measured is a celebration. In wetter areas thousands of years of sedimentation have created soil that holds rain and moisture. In the desert there is nothing to hold rain and even a small amount runs down step rocky peaks picking up speed as rivulets becomes streams which join together to become rushing walls of water moving down deep rocky arroyos. Every year in Albuquerque people are washed away in the concrete arroyos created within the city to carry away floodwater - most are rescued, some aren't. These people drown from only a half inch of rain.

When we bought this land it was after a number of years of drought and the small arroyo that runs through the southern end was just a pretty rocky formation to us. A sudden rainfall in the peaks above us, maybe as much as half an inch of rain that fell hard and fast, pushed a rush of water and debris through that benign little rocky formation that took out two sections of fence we had just completed. We are in no danger of flooding or being damaged by floodwater here but it was still a good reminder.

We had soft rain on and off all day yesterday and through the night...measurable rain! There was no runoff. This little rain came slow enough that plants and trees grabbed and held this light fall of moisture. This is definitely a good thing.

The sweet smell of rain!


A little while ago I stepped out to feed the horses and was overwhelmed by the sweet, sweet smell of rain...something that hasn't been here since last October. I wanted to just stand on the deck and breathe it in, let the moisture plump up my sinuses and skin. It's been so very dry here all winter and with the assault of March winds there have already been devastating fires in New Mexico. What a blessing to sit here listening to the fall of rain on the yurt roof.

It has been an odd, dry and mild winter. This time last year the horses were plowing their way through three feet of snow. We had just gotten Griton who had been living south of Albuquerque and it was quite a shock for him to suddenly go from a warm place to deep snow and cold. Griton was born in Wyoming though and his thick coat and early experiences carried him through. Now here it is a year later and those same horses are happily eating their hay under a soft fall of beautiful, sweet rain.

As I sat here typing I heard them begin to gallop with excitement...it doesn't take much of an excuse for these horses to decide to play! I went out on the deck to try to catch them running across the lower level. All three were in high spirits as they dodged and sparred through the trees.

Of course the dampened sand was too much to resist and they each went down for a good roll to scratch their backs and remove some itchy shedding winter hair. I'm actually looking forward to working out in the shop today where I can watch the rain fall and the horses play from the large windows around the workbench. The dogs and I will be snug and warm by the woodstove, feeling blessed by rain.

Beautiful sleep.

In spite of all of the delays we managed to get Mike to Albuquerque on Sunday night. The wind was blowing like a banshee all the way down adding to the stress and the howling intensified the melancholy of the trip. We did get to have a dinner together but it was very late and we were both too brain-fried and body-weary to enjoy it much. I left Mike at his hotel at about 10:30pm and started the two and a half hour drive back home.

Since then I have been playing catchup with business work and adjusting to the changes in routine. Feeding the horses by myself isn't hard, just takes a bit longer. What I miss is the morning and evening ritual with Mike of going out to be greeted by the boys, doling out their hay, giving a few pets and talking about how they are doing. Fionna the cat claimed Mike as her human some time ago and she has been very vocal about his absence.

Around here there isn't much chance of sleeping in no matter how late you went to bed. The clear dome skylight fills the space with light early and these animal kids feel first light is the best time for starting the day. The cats are the worst - they anticipate dawn by at least an hour with loud 'Meow Now! Meow Now!' The dogs are usually right behind them but yesterday at Sam's Club in Sante Fe I found the doggie deal of the year...beautiful soft bolstered dog beds at an incredibly low price. Since the pups will soon be losing their den when the loft is completed, I got one for each of them. This morning they stayed cuddled into the soft warmth of these beds with all the commitment of a teenager on the weekend.

Mike's new company assigned him a cell phone and he has internet access so staying in touch is turning out to be surprisingly easy; but we'll see how that goes when they send him out into the field. Getting to talk everyday is keeping things fresh for both of us and it's reassuring to know we are managing to adjust. This new company is treating Mike very well and giving him the acknowledgement he so deserves. I was deeply grateful Mike was willing to go back into this industry to make our lives better and I am even more grateful the company he chose is turning out to be one where he both has excellent opportunities and is rewarded for his skills and achievements.

I spent more than twenty hours putting together the waxes necessary for our next casting which will both restock our sales from North Texas Irish Festival and cast ahead for the Greyhound Gang Gathering in Kanab, Utah the first of May. The photo above was taken Tuesday afternoon and represents a substantial amount of inventory. Pulling this many waxes takes roughly eight hours as you carefully weed out pieces with air bubbles or small flaws to the image.

I started cleaning and spruing that pile at around 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon. With only a break to feed animals and myself, I was finally finished at 12:30 in the morning so I could hand deliver them to our caster in Sante Fe on Wednesday. The sprue is the stem that allows the molten metal to flow into the jewelry design and it must be smooth and well attached to allow for a good casting. This requires a careful examination of the wax for flaws and using a hot wax pen to smooth and attach sprue wax.

So after several nights of minimal sleep and a quick trip to Sante Fe to deliver waxes, I was finally able to come home last night to an early bedtime. With the pups happily snuggled in their new beds, I had the most undisturbed night in quite a while and the morning looks bright and productive.

Counting the hours...

We will be heading down to Albuquerque this evening to leave Mike in a hotel so he can catch a 6:00AM flight without it being so stressful for either of us. To leave from here and get to the airport on time would mean getting up around two in the morning. I am trying hard not to think about it because when I do, everything inside me clinches up in sadness. It isn't that I am afraid of being alone up here - this place is the most beautiful gift Mike ever gave me. It's missing him so much I worry about. It's hard to believe we will soon have our fifth anniversary; but I guess people say that about their twenty-fifth and forty-fifth. This photo was taken of us at our wedding party, both of us high on margaritas and having found each other. I've put on some weight since then but that's what comes with enjoying food and cooking for someone else I guess. And shoot...I'll be 53 next month and my body feels every year of it lately.


So yesterday was spent catching up on things I will need to have available with Mike not around. He spent the morning finishing up with splitting and storing dry firewood for me for the wood stove. We probably have a lifetime supply of wood here. This land was clear cut sometime in the last hundred years so there is an over crowding of second and third growth trees. I know a lot of people are against cutting any trees but they don't realize over growth is the cause of catastrophic fires that kill even the bacteria in the soil. Crowded trees are also unhealthy trees that can't withstand the attacks of bark beetles and other pests. So over the years we will be thinning our trees to a healthy spacing of both old and new growth.


Our second big project yesterday was stocking in hay for the horses. We buy it locally and normally just pick it up as we need it. My old back injuries don't make that practical so we bought about three months worth and stored it around the old 1950s mobile home that came with the property. We spent our first winter here in that old mobile home and now it is fulltime shop. It wasn't the cleanest place to live in but I did the best I could making it livable. To add a bit of romance, I pretended we were out riders waiting out the winter in a range cabin.


And someday this will be jewelry...using my handy inventory spreadsheet I also began making waxes for our next casting run. It will be a big load this time replacing stock sold and stocking for our next event. I don't even want to think about how demanding it will be to finish all of this jewelry alone.

And now the fly in the ointment. Today should have been an easy day of tieing up loose ends and making the drive to Albuquerque where we can get a nice dinner together. But...we got up to discover the float for the automatic water trough filler got stuck last night and our entire water holding tank was drained. Instead of having an easy day, Mike will be ferrying water up the mountain to refill the holding tank you can just see under the right corner of the deck. Guess I will be ordering a new automatic water trough filler next week too.

Well for now I am just trying to keep busy and not think about it yet. I know the reality is hitting Mike too and we both console ourselves with the value that will eventually come of his being gone.

Still recovering.

It's always shocking to realize how exhausted we are after Irish Fest. Some of it is the intense push before we go to have enough inventory to take, the rest is just the logistics of getting there, setting up, and spending long hours standing. With both of us being introverts, there is the extra toll of putting on our public faces. Normally we would take a few days off but with Mike leaving for Midland on Monday, there is truly no rest for these two wicked people.

Mike has been out cutting and splitting firewood to be sure I have enough to heat the shop through spring. We had taken two large pine trees down last year to clear a path for the internet satellite dish and they are nicely dry and aged now. He has been over there with the chain saw and splitter getting them ready to stack.

We came back to a stack of twelve internet orders and fortunately we still had inventory to cover them. We must have calculated our inventory well this year because we didn't have a single order from running out of stock at Irish Fest. After taking care of shipping, my big job yesterday was doing an inventory count. My first year in business I really got myself in trouble by not having a way to track what I was spending on casting. Plus with a new line of jewelry I really didn't know what would sell fast and what wouldn't. Before I knew it, I had quite a debt load. Having a large stock of inventory sounds like a good idea, but not when it ties up all of your cash flow and represents debt steadily building interest that eats up profit. I got smart fast and created an Excel spreadsheet that I only need to enter current stock numbers into and it calculates what needs to be cast and gives me a close estimate of the cost. That way I can go back and adjust numbers to stay within our casting budget. Our caster in Sante Fe is always amazed I know within a hundred dollars what we are spending with him - to me it just makes sense.

We have avoided wholesale for a long time because our retail business has been so strong. With Mike leaving I wanted to find more ways of producing income that would not require so much travel. Chamisa Ridge (www.chamisaridge.com) just picked up three of our designs for their spring catalog so I am anxious to see how it works out. I have a feeling I may get awfully sick of finishing those same three pieces over and over! If it really takes off I can hire someone to help with the production. I'm also starting an internet advertising rollout this month to help boost our webpage presence. I would love it if someday the only travel we had to do was to events like North Texas Irish Festival and the greyhound gathering in Dewey Beach, Delaware.

So in between helping Mike get us and him ready to leave on Monday, I will be sitting in front of the wax injecter again, restocking inventory and building inventory for our next event, the Greyhound Gang Gathering in Kanab, Utah the first weekend in May. It will be my first event this year without Mike and fortunately it's one where I will have a lot of friends to help with setup and the dogs.

Home safe...

Well the twenty-fourth annual North Texas Irish Festival is done for another year. I think this might have been my tenth and I know it was Mike's fifth since he and I have been together. It's a grueling event of twelve+ hour days on concrete but worth it to see friends we would never otherwise have a chance to visit with. We long to hear some of the great Celtic music venues during the weekend but are sadly trapped in the booth.

We arrived on Friday before noon and had the booth set up and ready to go by six that evening. This is only the second year the vendors have been open on Friday and we hope it will eventually be worth the extra effort and late night. We waited hopefully for hordes of people to come in but the hordes turned out to be three sales. Maybe with another couple of years of advertising the Friday night venue the sales will make the extra day worthwhile.

We were all incredibly tired after the long drive and late night so went right back to the hotel for rest. Mike and Vannie wasted no time in getting to sleep. Think I should be worried about this other woman in Mike's life? Vannie has become a seasoned traveler who takes everything in stride. She loves the attention she receives and paces herself well with long naps in the booth on the beds we keep under the display tables for the dogs.

Ellie felt life had finally come up to her standards after she claimed her bed at the Radison Hotel and elegantly waited for room service to arrive. She embraced road life and only gave us a few minutes of grief by dashing out into the hallway of the hotel for a quick game of 'catch me if you can'. With an enclosed corridor the game didn't last nearly as long as she would have liked. Greyhounds always think this is as much fun for you as it is for them and we were very much on alert afterwards to block any further escapes. Just look at that mischievous expression! This girl is going to be great fun as a traveling companion.

The shopping at NITF is fantastic and you can buy just about anything Celtic from fine art to jewelry to completely outfitting yourself in Celtic attire. There are booths where you can research your family name, buy music and even furniture with a Celtic theme. You don't see as many people in kilts at an Irish festival as you do at Highland games but there are still quite a few. It used to be ordering a custom kilt in your family tartan would cost anywhere from $500 up so we were a bit surprised to spot discount kilt sales...I can't help but wonder why these kilts were on sale. Death by tartan?

Saturday was our first day of real sales and the Irish Wolfhound folks were some of the first to arrive. We have supported the Texas Irish Wolfhound Club with donations for many years and it is always wonderful to see these great hounds and their humans. The dogs seem to have just as much fun as we do and they certainly get lots of attention.

We also got to visit with both of the greyhound rescue groups in Dallas. About five years ago we began the tradition of donating 5% of our total sales at North Texas Irish Festival to Greyhound Adoption League of Texas and Greyhounds Unlimited. We have special connections to both of these groups and look forward to seeing their members and all of the beautiful greyhounds who are looking for homes and those who have found their forever place to be.

Our friends Sue Ross and Kris Hendershot also come from Washington state to vend at NTIF. Kris hand makes beautiful lampwork beads as Seattle Lampwork Design and Sue's business, Silk Road Collars, creates fabric martingale collars for dogs of all breeds. Many of the trims used for the collars are imported and in limited quantities. Ellie and Vannie each got beautiful new collars this year to celebrate Ellie's arrival in our family.

Sue and Kris with their lampwork bead designs.

Some of the beautiful collars available at Silk Road.

As much as we love going to Irish Fest every year, it was even better to get back home yesterday. The horses did fine while we were gone and I woke up this morning to hear them galloping around the mountain...much better than hotel noises! The cats were thrilled to have us back and both dogs practically did acrobatics to finally be off leash again. We have a busy few days ahead of us as Mike is scheduled to leave for Midland on Monday the 13th and I suppose we'll both manage to get some rest once he is on a plane.