Concrete

I haven't had the inspiration to write much here lately. (Not to mention that it is a nightmare to upload photos lately.)

I could post infinite political articles and videos but, so tired of 1) all of it and 2) preaching to the choir and 3) to what end?

Other than the daily horror show, things on the local level are not that interesting.

We left town in our tiny camper for a week in mid September. Social distancing and staying safe precluded browsing in quaint shops or eating in restaurants except for take-out.

Road trips, hiking, lounging around the campground was the extent of our activity. We walked around Antonito, Pagosa Springs, and Durango Colorado and Chama, New Mexico.

My sweet hubby, Leon...I am indeed a lucky guy

Attitude!

Snow in them there hills

Cano's Castle Antonito, CO

Enlarge to read about the Penitentes - San Isidro Catholic Church

Remnants of the Church

Have a beer

We had friends over yesterday for dinner...(A nice salad, green peppers stuffed with ground turkey, eggplant, and other tasty ingredients, homemade Italian bread, wine, crepes with sweetened ricotta and strawberries and peaches).

Having guests and cooking something special for them...something I've missed doing during the pandemic...we have had guests infrequently, mostly visiting outdoors on the deck. All of our friends have been very diligent, very careful almost to extremes. So we have felt both safe and, I think we have an enhanced sense of camaraderie and "family".

Back at the ranch, there has been a project I've been wanting to do and have been putting off for four or five years. Patching/resurfacing the concrete driveway which is/was cracked and crumbling. Spalling concrete is the technical term, but I think ours was a bit beyond that.

Not one to pay a company several thousand of dollars to do the job professionally, I rely on my proclivity to do it myself at a fraction of the cost or "Why spend good money to have something done right when you can do a half-assed job yourself for the price of a couple of dinners at a lousy restaurant?"

So, this afternoon, Leon and I got to work on the driveway. So far we've used five 40lb bags of Quikrete vinyl concrete mix to fix one section of the driveway. We are not quite done yet...maybe we'll try to finish up tomorrow.

I seem to take to concrete the same way I take to bread or pasta dough. Maybe it's in my blood. My maternal grandpa was a stone mason, my paternal grandpa could lay a walkway, one of my cousins is a mason.

I am an amateur do-it-myself-er. Leon assists with no complaints.

Before

Before

After

After

Just a few items from the garden.

The single corn stalk must have been planted by a bird...I know I didn't plant corn!

 

The tomatoes seem to be late this summer. Lots of green ones but nothing ripening even though the weather has been HOTTT.

The ground squirrel ate all the beet greens, then the Swiss chard, then the kale and most recently the green bean foliage and the parsley. I’m hoping the beets and Swiss chard and Kale will “recover” by growing some new shoots. I’ve covered what I could with bird netting and that seems to work to discourage the little devil.

The work of hungry ground squirrel

Despite the squirrel, there was a good three pounds of green (and yellow) beans today (I froze half) and some Italian frying peppers.

 

So it seemed like a good day for what I call my version of Chicken alla Cacciatore or what Leon calls “You ruined perfectly good green beans by putting them in tomato sauce” or Chicken and Peppers and Green Beans in Tomato Sauce.

I would have added mushrooms if I had some.

It’s just after 2pm and I am hungry.

 Let's not forget the flowers.

Sunflower ... I also did not plant sunflowers

Another wild sunflower

More wild flowers

Russian Sage

Alium

Roses

4 O'clocks

Day Lily

P.S. I am having an awful time with "Blogger" and not sure why. Has been going on for quite some time. Difficult to move photos; long captions will not go to next line when I hit "return"; pasting text activates "Link" puts everything in blue type and centers it. Have to remove formatting and left justify; photos don't all load and return error message...the list goes on. I have tried the "new blogger" and it looks horrible on my "reading list" - but have not tried it for composing posts. Mitchell and others seem to have no problem...every post you guys put up looks great and you seem to do it with such ease.

Insomnia Bread: The Upside of a Sleepless Night

I’ve been having difficulty sleeping for longer than I can remember. The main reason seems to be a nagging discomfort when in a horizontal position. Every once in a while I get up and  make bread dough.  

Which is what I did Tuesday night (Wednesday morning) at 2 AM. 

I let the dough rise overnight in the fridge; took it out of the fridge around noon on Wednesday. Let it get to room temperature. Shaped it into rolls and one large loaf and let it rise again. Baked it at 425° and this is what I got.

I tell people there is no good Italian bread in New Mexico except of course at our house. 

Around the House: Stone and Ravioli

Finally got motivated to do a stone walkway project that has been churning around in my head for a year or so. I purchased the stone for a decent price last summer from a neighbor who didn't want it. It's been sitting while I tried to figure out what I could do with it.

A plan finally came together after we built a new deck and salvaging some wooden 4x4s from the tear-down of the old deck. I'm not one to waste anything that I might have to purchase. Re-use, recycle, re-purpose is a good thing. Once the new deck was a reality, I was able to start imagining a walk-way from the side of the house down to the gate leading to the arroyo.

But I kept putting off the project because it has been brutally hot here this summer...but not as hot as Arizona, California and parts of Texas - but too hot to work comfortably. With the temps plummeting down into the high nineties the last two weeks, I got my tools and went to work.

There is something about stone. I like stone. My grand father was a stone mason. My other grandfather could whip up concrete and make a sidewalk that never cracked. The only drawback to working with stone is that they tend to be heavy.

The back yard slopes downward toward the arroyo and so it seemed like the way to go was to terrace a walkway down the side and from the steps of the deck. Those 4x4s came in handy for the terracing. I drilled holes and secured them to the ground with 2-foot lengths of re-bar. Using a sledge hammer I was able to pound in the re-bar without hitting solid rock. That was a miracle because when I planted some Italian cyprus in the front yard it took 4 hours to dig two 12-inch deep holes and required the use of the sledge hammer and a chisel.

Here are some photos of the almost finished and the finished walkway. I just have to cover the rest of the landscape fabric with crushed stone, which I will have to acquire or borrow from another part of the backyard. The backyard still needs lots of work to make it the garden I want it to be. One thing at a time.

Finished the walkway today
to the gate that leads to the arroyo

The veggie/flower/herb garden -
many of the plants are "volunteers"

The new deck

Ravioli.

I took a bit of a break from landscaping to make a little hand-made ravioli. More about the recipe and prep at "Dinner's Ready" blog.

The tomato sauce

The Swiss Chard to mix into the ricotta

Trimming

Filling

The mess

The reward

The detail