I am Thankful

Another turkey day has passed, and with it, our freezer is full.  I've been eating bird with all the fixin's for 4 days straight.  Today Caro will finish the turkey-vegetable soup that she started with the carcass yesterday.  

In a change of pace, friend Debbie is coming over this afternoon with her Kitchenaid pasta attachment.  Our target is Jamie Oliver-style homemade pasta.  I've got the '00' flour, a bag of semolina, and a dozen eggs.  Photo essay to follow. 

With all that said, I am incredibly thankful.  I have my health, my beautiful wife, paid for house and cars, and a steady retirement income.  Caro and I can enjoy so many things together:  gardening, walks along the acequias, British tellie.  

I'm lucky enough to be engaged both at Sandia (still helping with legacy apps) and a the BioPark.  The latter has been particularly rewarding.  As the Plant Identification Specialist, I'm a taxonomist, the plant label guy, and able to curate a small herbarium.  I'm finishing up year 9 as a docent and have enjoyed it immensely.  The Nature's Notebook phenology group continues their weekly work and I like the 2-weeks-on/2-weeks-off schedule.  It certainly keeps one aware of the cycle of change throughout the year.  Atop all that, the BioPark keeps my brain from fossilizing.   

I am also thankful for the bonsai community.  Sadly, we lost John Egert, our exceptionally gifted sensai.  I'm guardedly optimistic that my two 'Autumn Flame' Euonymus will pull through.  They're safely in the garage or inside the cold frame.  With temps now hitting the lower 20's, it's just a patient wait until spring and regrowth.  

Also waiting for spring are the turtles.  Terrance Turtle and James Tiberius Turtle are asleep in their bunkers.  Fluffy the feral cat often takes to napping in the sun on top of the turtlearium.  She seems to like the mesh that covers the turtle pens.  Le Sommelier Stella visits whenever she can and we have to work to keep her from getting Fluffy's food.  After all, Stella gets fed at home while Fluffy is just a wandering cat, scrounging up whatever she can find in the dumpsters.  

I continue my Ingressing--I assume that the spatial aspects are somehow stimulating to my aging brain.  The Candelaria Village sign is now a portal that I can reach without driving.  That said, Ingress on my bicycle is a great excuse for some exercise.  

The boys are coming over for a Carcassone afternoon later this week.  That should be fun.  I'm thankful we're all still here.  It's always distressing to learn of the passing of a co-worker, a friend, or a celebrity of one's youth.  

Finally, I'm thankful for the wee bit of weather we got over the weekend.  The snow, however brief, was lovely and the moisture much needed.  

Why We Need More Field Botanists

I attended the NM Rare Plants Technical Council meeting today.  This was the first with the new director and was held in the Botanic Garden's Atrium.  About 60 attended, much to my surprise. 

One message that I came away with is the obvious:  Without conserving plants, there can be no animal conservation.  Habitats begin with plants and water.  

Another take-away was that by protecting rare plants, we protect entire habitats and the more common plants in them.  

Yet another obvious point is that you can't conserve what you don't know you have.  Plant and wildlife inventories, monitoring threatened species, and maintaining shared information sources are required. 

Which gets me to my conclusion, we need more field botanists.  There just aren't enough of us to do all the work that needs to be done.  The 60 of us in the room today were a huge majority of the working botanists in the state.  USFS has empty slots for many of its botanists for district forests in NM and AZ.  We need decent funding for these positions and then an educational pipeline.  Young students need to learn about botany, get energized about the plant world, and find a path towards a university or technical degree.  Outreach into rural and indigenous communities needs to broaden.  

Only then can we do the hard work that climate change will demand of us.  Only then can we repair our broken world.  

South Southwest

Towards the end of October we headed south then west to the Bear Mountain Lodge and a 4-day weekend away from the house.  The journey took us over Emory Pass with its twisty switchbacks going from Upper Chihuahuan Desert to spruce-fir forest.  The next day we drove up to the Catwalk near Glenwood for a picnic and a hike up the slot canyon with its reconstructed bridgeway.

At the lodge we enjoy excellent food despite the rather funky but comfortable cabin we stayed in.  Here's the view of the full moon from our dining table.

The next day we hiked up above the lodge on one of their many trails, returning to find the circle maze on the grounds.  Afterwards we tootled into Silver City for lunch and some touristy shopping.

On the last day, we took the scenic loop route via Reserve and Datil to get back to Albuquerque.  That took us past the Plains of San Augustine and the VLA.  A great trip! 

The Eclipse

 (Oops!  Forgot to publish this from the October annular eclipse.)