Summertime

It's officially summer with the days getting shorter, although you'd be hard put to notice.  ABQ is hot, dry, sunny... day after day.  The humidity is slowly coming up and we've had little showers to tease us about the coming monsoon.  Here's the proverbial Eight-inch Rain, the drops 8 inches apart.

I've been busy at the BioPark, as a docent and a phenology program volunteer and as a temporary employee.  For the past 6 months I've been a "Plant Identification Specialist."  I've mastered the label engraving machine and placed over 360 labels in the garden.  This week I'm over at the Zoo placing labels in some areas that have been upgraded courtesy of a PNM grant for Zoo landscaping.

In other matters, Jeff White zipped through town on his way back to Chandler from Los Alamos.  Kent and I tagged along and we used Jeff's truck to get high into the Mount Taylor backwoods.  It's an area I've long overlooked.  Very similar to the Jemez (after all, it is an extinct volcano), the hike was very pleasant through ponderosa and aspen.  There wasn't much in the way of views, partially due to the smoke and haze from the North Fire down by Socorro.  By the time we got our bearings sorted out and up to the ridgeline, a thunderstorm was on top of us.  We wisely retreated to Grants for pizza.

La Mosca Lookout from the saddle between it and Mount Taylor