Early May, Largo Canyon
Things change fast here in the canyon!
Last week all the hostel rooms were full. Tonight there
are only four of us here, Pat, Toni, Supha and I. Clay
& Shileoh are off collecting their horses in Texas and
Montana; Pat's mother Audrey, has gone back to Tucson;
and John & Phil are on their way to Albuquerque. I
will miss Audrey, I really enjoyed our mornings in the
greenhouse and our afternoon coffee breaks. The
greenhouse is totally organized and all the vegetables
are flourishing because of her.
Last week it was raining, cold and windy; today it was
hot and sunny with cloudless skies. Overnight the
cottonwood trees have burst into bloom (the male ones
anyway, apparently the females have smaller, less
significant blooms), all the cows have left the canyon,
and birds are everywhere. We have one hawk that circles
the canyon screeching, then sits atop the mesa on a
rock looking down on us. Tiny black & green
hummingbirds visit the feeders which are outside the
dining room windows and woodpeckers have moved into the
trees in the donkey corral. A pair of ducks
(?Canadian mallards) are nesting in the rushes at the
pond and now have ducklings. Yesterday a yellow bird
with black wings and an orange face and cap arrived. He
seems to be quite at home in the kitchen garden and
stays around the building. Although he resembles a
Western Tanager, he is much too brightly colored to be
one.
Last week my afternoons were filled with cleaning the
oil and grunge from sucker rods - by sanding the length
of the rod with an electric hand grinder. I lost count
of the number of rods that I sanded but I found myself
dreaming of them at night. But we now have a new extra
large corral made from pipe and sucker rods welded
together by Pat.
This week, I’m on door detail with Pat's brother, Phil.
We are building external doors for the torreon and
internal doors for the workshop & classroom out of
juniper, a beautiful red cedar with an amazing grain.
It's very satisfying to put a rough piece of lumber
through the planer and watch the grain appear. I like
working with Phil, he doesn't mind explaining things
step-by-step and he doesn't act like all my questions
are totally stupid. I've only helped out with smaller
projects, like the boxes I made a couple of years ago
so this is an exciting learning experience for me!
More later, it's getting late.
Donna
10:23:52 PM 
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