Socialism in the desert

June 8, 2024June 8, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Hot times in the old town, as the fella says. Yesterday’s high of 100° set a record for June 7. Normal is 89°.

But what’s normal these days?

The mule deer are slow-walking their rounds from rose bush to birdbath, lingering at feeders provided by some well-intentioned animal lovers up the road a ways. Wandering from this handout to that, the deer startle motorists in blind corners and make high-speed descents on the old two-wheeler a little more thrilling.

Seven of them were working our cul-de-sac last night, no doubt with designs on the neighbors’ new peach tree, which is enclosed in the sort of stout wire cage that should be restricting the movements of Alex Jones and Rudy the Mook, preferably in some public place so passersby can poke them with sharp sticks. Jones and the Mook, not the peach tree or deer.

Over at Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne has his own musings on heat and wildlife as he settles in for another sweaty shift dishing up his Joshua Tree jive.

The days are long and hot and hazy. Another summer to endure. … It just eats at your nerves, this kind of weather, and what’s worse is you know that the hot weather is another month or two away. What’s bearable when you’re alone under a cottonwood in the breeze is absolute torment when you’re trying to get yourself from point A to point B and see ugliness all around. Dead eyes behind the cracked windshields of erratically piloted vehicles; the never-ending trash piles; empty strip malls of crumbling stucco and blank plastic signs. Long stretches of highway with nothing but human-built desolation. The ragweed’s coming up too. Best to stay on the property in the company of the creatures who survive this aesthetic apocalypse.

Layne provides a bit of heat relief for his neighbors. Young rock squirrels have taken to hanging around the water bowl he leaves out for the birds, one of them trying and failing to surf the ice cubes he includes from time to time. A cottontail dozes on the doormat. The bobcat, coyotes, and mountain lions he leaves to fend for themselves.

He has mule deer, too, hugging whatever shade they can find, under a willow or juniper. Doesn’t mention any peach trees or rose bushes.

Should we be feeding and watering these critters? Well … what we call “our” property was theirs first, after all. Is it unreasonable to ask that we contribute a little something to the common good?

This seems to be Layne’s thinking. And ours, too. We maintain two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders, and don’t holler copper on the deer ambling through the yard. Noblesse oblige? Share and share alike? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? Here’s the Desert Oracle again:

Now these rock squirrels are desert squirrels, squirrels of the Southwest. They don’t even need water, beyond what they get from the various seeds, grasses, fruits and bugs that they eat. But these young squirrels, they are fools for cold water. They just hang around that bowl for half the day. And now I cannot replace that bowl with a proper birdbath even if I wanted to, because what will the squirrels and the bunnies do?

Kick the tires and light the fires

June 5, 2024June 5, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams finally get off the deck on Wednesday, bound for the International Space Station. | Photo: NASA Television

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams picked a fine day to get out of town. The temps at the Cape were headed for the century mark, and before the week is out I expect a few of us here in the Great American West would be happy to join them at the International Space Station, even if we’re light on luggage and have to drink our own wee-wee.

“A hunnerd-twelve in Vegas? I don’t wanna see Carrot Top that bad. They got a casino at the ISS?”

The Duck! City is under a heat advisory tomorrow — not Vegas bad, but bad enough — and though I’m still not 100 percent sinus-wise, I got out for a short snout-flushing trail ride this morning while temps were still in the 70s. We could hit 101° tomorrow, and I’d just as soon not add heatstroke to the sinus infection.

Could be worse, though. For instance, as we speak, weather-related boogeymen have kept Herself parked on the tarmac at Baltimore Washington International for two hours and counting. Southwest’s flight-status window shows her flight as “departed” — which I guess means, “taxied away from the terminal” — with touchdown in ABQ an hour later than originally intended.

Assuming her Boeing product ever gets off the ground, that is.

Jeez, we can put a man on the moon, but … well, actually, no, we can’t. Never mind.

• Late update: Charlie Pierce has some thoughts on Wilmore, Williams, and Boeing.

Summer on simmer

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The Chinese pistache would like some rain, please. And thank you.

More clouds. Fewer birds. Lower temperatures. In the morning, anyway.

And come to think of it, in the evening, too. I’m not needing a wee rinse before bedtime to resolve the late-in-the-day stickiness that goes along with life in the desert and a firm hand on the thermostat.

Damp it is not. The drought not only persists, it thrives. The Rio Grande is on the edge of running dry in The Duck! City for a second consecutive year. When I stripped the bed of its sheets in the dark this morning I got a free static-electricity light show for my troubles.

But at least my rides and runs have not been the usual rolling boil for the past week. Maybe I can resume my habit of slipping out nine-ish instead of kitting up in the dark, when I need a headlight to see, not just to be seen.

It’s not summer’s end; not yet. But it’s around the bend, just flyin’.

There’s a smaller crowd queueing up at our bird feeders, and they’re getting a later start, too.

On yesterday’s looping ride through Sandia Heights I didn’t spot a single solitary quail, not a one. Didn’t even hear any. Just last Sunday Herself and I saw them by the dozens as we spun leisurely through the Heights.

This morning I made our oatmeal on the stove, instead of mixing up a müesli version to “cook” in the fridge the night before. We added diced peaches, chopped pecans, and local honey, and washed it down with a side of hot tea.

At the stove, with the windows open, I caught a whiff of bacon frying nearby. The pig is Herself’s spirit animal and she won’t tolerate it on a plate, but apparently marrying one is OK, as long as it makes a pork-free breakfast.

Then, suddenly, at 9 on the dot with the breakfast dishes washed, the birds turn up. The hummers re-enact the Battle of Britain around their feeders, and the finches perch greedily at theirs while the doves stalk the ground hunting misplaced morsels.

Is this the summertime equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow? Do we have six more weeks of summer on tap?

I’d best kit up and get out there. Don’t forget the sunscreen. Might be another scorcher.

Heat it and eat it

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

If there’s any rain in ’em, it’s not for us.

Don’t let the clouds fool you. It ain’t even cool around here.

Yesterday we roasted another record with 102°, the old mark of 98° having stood since 1952, two years before this old dawg was whelped.

Naturally, being an eejit, I was out for a ride. Nothing strenuous — not quite 30 miles, a couple of hours in the saddle, a couple thou’ of vertical gain.

Getting big air over I-25 (with the help of a bike-ped bridge).

But I confess I felt a tad toasted by the time I got home. I’m glad I didn’t go for the extra-credit mileage I’d been contemplating. I’d be a rank smear of B.O. and bad ideas in the valley some’eres. Even the coyotes would give me a miss.

“Sheeyit, homes, smells like sunscreen and chamois cream ladled over old scars and regrets. Let’s hit the Dumpster behind Golden Pride.”

Speaking of eats, it should go without saying that I’ve been rooting through my archives for recipes that require a minimum of cookery in this heat.

For breakfast, oatmeal is out, fruit smoothies are in. Lunch is something equally light, either sandwiches or leftovers from the previous night’s dinner.

Last night’s dinner was Martha Rose Shulman’s pasta with cherry tomatoes and arugula. I don’t object to boiling water for pasta; it helps humidify the house.

Night before last we had Melissa Clark’s shrimp salad, layering the shrimp and its sauce over a bed of arugula, red cabbage, red leaf lettuce, sliced grape tomatoes in a variety of hues, and various another crunchables from the fridge and pantry. I foreswore the diced red onion (Herself hates raw onion), but snuck in a few thin slices of scallion when she wasn’t looking.

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s tacos de papa require a little stove time, but not enough to have you sweating into your skillet, especially if there are some leftover taters on hand.

We’ll be revisiting Martha’s recipe this evening, with a side salad. Today’s record high of 100°, set in 1910, might be a goner, too, because by 3 p.m. it was already 100° at the airport.

Landscraping

July 26, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

July has been a scorcher, with 12 triple-digit days and one record high (104° on the 17th).

It was 103° yesterday. Not a record, but still, damn. Today, at 3 p.m., it’s 97°.

And I’m gonna try real hard not to bitch about it because I’m not one of the landscapers trying to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is our back yard.

I didn’t even go out to sweat for fun yesterday.

But the landscapers were out there bright and early under Tōnatiuh’s broiler, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, excising scorched swaths of grass, excavating edging stones gone all wobbly like a meth-head’s dentition, and wheelbarrowing railroad ties off to … who knows? A railroad, maybe?

All the livelong day, too. As an expression of solidarity while motoring to the grocery for some grub that would not require cooking I refused to turn on the a/c in the Subaru.