Wonderin' Words

I have started a new blog. You can see it at
http://wonderinwords.blogspot.com
At Wondrin' Words I will be posting some of the short stories I have been writing. Take a look and a read and send me your comments and feedback.

Full Moon

The full moon may bring out the crazy people and make normal people crazy but I still think it is beautiful and a very special time. A full moon affects the tides and animals as well as people. I notice that my animals seem to get into sort of crazy moods during a full moon. The horses act more skitish and spook at every little thing. They prefer to stay out in the field rather than come into their small pens. The cats try their darnest to get out at night and stay out refussing to be persuided to come in. And of course the dogs actually go out and howl at the moon. My German Shepherd, Codee, looks up at the moon and barks and growls at it.

Okay, even I feel the pull of the moon when it is full. I stay outside and watch the moon as it comes up over the Sandia Mountains to the east of Albuquerque. It is usually a pretty sight. The big round moon, more white than yellow, peaking up over the mountain, pushing through the small clouds that are in its way until it is shining down so it can light up the desert so I can see without the need of a light. I stare trying to see the man-in-the-moon, or the bear-in-the-moon. I sometimes feel I can actually see the craters. I don't know if I can or if it is just wishful thinking.

A shudder runs through my body and I wonder if the ghosts and goblins, are out watching the moon come up with me. Maybe a vampire is hiding in a clump of cactus. I hear coyotes howling, and watch rabbits playing in the light of the moon. Even they feel the pull.

I toss my head back, open my mouth and try to mimic the coyotes. I, too, am feeling a bit crazy.

Full Moon Crazies

Did you ever notice how a full moon brings out the crazy people? It seems as if a full moon can make the normal people act insane. Monday May 23rd will be another full moon, but already I am seeing stupid, dumb, idiot stunts by normall people. Take for instance - drivers are a lot worse about speeding, tail-gating, and driving to slow than ususal. Some parent on our street is letting their children ride their bikes in the dark on a busy intersection (Tumbleweed Crossing). I saw them and had time to stop, another women came closer to hitting one, (and she wasn't speeding), she stopped and told them they shouldn't be riding there, but it didn't do any good. Over in the arroyo a large group is having a party (I guess that is what you call it). They have their music so loud I can hear it. Now mind you they are about a quarter of a mile away from me. I sure hope they turn it down soon, and I am sure my neighbors wish the same thing. Did those people stop to think that there are people who actually live out here and don't want those from somewhere else invading our neighborhood to have their cookouts and parties? No, of course they didn't.

I think a full moon is a beautiful sight up in the sky with the stars surrounding it, but everytime we have one I hope it is over soon and that no one gets hurt.

National Friendship Week

An email friend sent this to me. I think it is very important to remember our friends, be they someone we see everyday at work or home or someone we only know throught email. Please feel free to copy this and send it to your friends. Let them know you consider them your friend.

True Friend>>> A girl asked a guy if he thought she was pretty, He said...no. She asked him if he would want to be with her forever..... and he said no. She then asked him if she were to leave would he cry, and once again he replied with a no. She had heard enough. As she walked away, tears streaming down her face the boy grabbed her arm and said....

You're not pretty you're beautiful.. I don't want to be with you forever. I NEED to be with you forever. And I wouldn't cry if you walked away...I'd die...

Remember: "A good friend will not come bail you out of jail.... But a true friend will be sitting next to you saying ... WE screwed up!

Remember: I'm proud to be your Friend!

I've learned....That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

I've learned....That we should be glad God doesn't give useverything we ask for.

I've learned....That money doesn't buy class.

I've learned....That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

I've learned...That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

I've learned....That the Lord didn't do it all in one day. What makes methink I can?

I've learned....That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.

I've learned....That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.

I've learned...That love, not time, heals all wounds.

I've learned....That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.

I've learned....That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

I've learned....That there's nothing sweeter than sleeping with your babies and feeling their breath on your cheeks.

I've learned...That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

I've learned....That life is tough, but I'm tougher.

I've learned...That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

I've learned....That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

I've learned...That I wish I could have told those I cared about that I love them one more time before they passed away.

I've learned....That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them. I've learned....That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks

I've learned....That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

I've learned....That when your newly born child holds your little finger in his little fist, that you're hooked for life.

I've learned....That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness, and growth happen while you're climbing it.

I've learned....That the less time I have to work, the more things I get done.

To all of you ... It's National Friendship Week. Show your friends how much you care. Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND If it comes back to you, then you'll know you have a circle of friends. HAPPY FRIENDSHIP WEEK TO YOU!!!!!! YOU ARE MY FRIEND AND I AM HONORED SO NOW I WILL SAY---- I like you because of who you are to me.... MY FRIEND

Vacation

I took a weeks vacation and went to see my son in Cloudcroft, NM. I had never been there before so it was with excited antipication that I went. I had always heard how pretty it was there and it was. It is way up in the mountains and clouds, at an elivation of 9000 feet. I will be writing alot more about my trip in some up coming articles. Keep an eye out for them.

Sandy Rain

We are having typical New Mexico rain. It is made up of a mix of a dozen gallons of blowing sand mixed with three tiny little rain drops, and 35 mile per hour winds. I think that makes for a wonderful mix. It gets the soil moved around. It adds a bit of mosture and humidity to the air, it drys out the skin and hair while evaporating the water in the plants, horse and dog water buckets.

Fan Fiction

Did the title of this article get your attention? Do you know what fan fiction is? Most people don't. So I will try to explain. Fan fiction is fiction stories writen by you and I or anyone else about TV showes and movies. Another wards you really, really are a fan of a certain show - I'll use Gunsmoke as an example - and you think that maybe you could write stories as good or a lot better than the ones you are watching on TV. Okay so you sit down and write your story. Only what do you do with it now? You can try to get your family and friends to read it. (You find out that they really don't like the show and don't want to read your story. Or if they do read it, they don't like it and you can't figure out why) You can shove it in a desk drawer and forget it. Or - you can send it to a fan fiction publisher and see if you will publish it with the next batch of fan fiction stories.

When I first got into fan fiction most of it was published by small time publishers that did it in as cheep as possible, in a cheep magazine or newpaper form, (usually on an old printer) and then sold it to the people writing the stories for an outragious price. ($10 and up was not unusual for a copy of anywhere form 10 to 50 pages of stories. The more pages the higher the price.) Most of them were sold at flee markets, garage sales, rummage sales, school craft sales, Star Trek conventions, etc. Another words there wasn't much market for them. And no one, the publisher included, made any money.

Then came computer published. That really helped the fan fiction writer. Don't think your going to make any money writing fan fiction. You can't get paid for writing about a set and characters that someone else has already made up.

But it is fun. It is a great way to find out if you really have what it takes to write. And sometimes it is more fun to read what others have read.

So - give it a try.

One of my favorite fan fiction sites is www.womenwritersblock.com

Most of the stories are about all the western TV show that have been around longer that most of us have been alive. Women writers block is easy to get around on, find the new and old stories, by either the name of the show or the writers. You can find some of my fan fiction stories there under my fan fiction name of Stardust.

Let me know what you think of them.

Email Address Names

Humans have a tendency to collect things. It seems to be something that is genetically breed into us. No other animal or critter on earth collects things to the extent that the human animal does. Each and everyone out there collects something. I don’t think we intentionally start out to collect things, but we do it anyway. We find something we like and start collecting them. Many people collect art objects, or antiques, or books, or plants, or pets, (as I do, along with everything else I have listed here). Others may collect children, or husbands, or rocks, or stuffed toys, or Disneyland stuff, or shoes, or videos, or CD’s, or records, or photos, or – well I could go on and on. Anyway you get the picture. Anything that has ever been invented, found, made, or dreamed up is collected somewhere by someone.
But did you ever realize that there seems to be a trend toward collecting email address. When email first became part of our modern culture, and way of life, most people were thrilled to have just one email. Now I talk to people and it seems everyone has several email address, maybe even a dozen or so. It seems that most of my family has on average at least five email address’. I have four at this time. And I remember having at least five others that are now dead.
So I got to thinking about what makes people want to have so many email addresses. First we get our first one. It’s thrilling. It makes us feel special. It makes us feel one of the crowd. It makes us feel as if we are fitting into the now generation of computer nerds. Okay. But I have noticed a different trend toward getting emails in odd and very strange names. If you have to have an email at work it is usually something related to your true name. The one you received from your parents when you were born. Those that get an email address for their own private use, usually for there home PC, invariably chose something weird, or something that pertains to a hobby they have, or their children, or the name they wish their parents had named them. That last idea seems to be one of the most popular ideas for email address, especially if the user of the email doesn’t intend to let anyone know about his/her secret email, with his/her secret name. Think about a few of my old ones, - nicdee, codee, ponyeetails, ponee333, starrdust, and some others I have known, - maxtus, laddybugg, cooldude, mickymanic, frilling, cattmom, sagegray, shadyjade. These don’t even sound like names at all to me.
So you ask if it’s so secret how do I know people do this? Well, it doesn’t seem to take much to get people to admit that they have a secret email, which uses their secret name. Do you know anyone that really likes his or her birth name? Neither do I. Be it Mary, or Charles, or George, or Jane we all wish it was something else. Like –(and I’m still talking first names here) Mairya, or Rainbow, or Jade, or Chance, or Paisley, or Colby, or Blue, or Trent, or Chase, or Lilia, or Tally. Or maybe your name is Rainbow and you wish it was just plain Jane. Or Chase wants to be a common name like Henry.
Getting that email in your fantasy name is a great way to express yourself for who you really are. And if getting an email fantasy name is great, getting your own website in your own special name is even better. Used to be we had to pay to get that special domain name. Now there are homepages and even better are blog sites. On blog sites we can do more than have that secret name, we can write about and actually (sort of) publish our dreams, longing, thoughts, opinions, and long withheld personal stories.
To top that off it seem as if any name that you dream up has already been dreamed up by one or even a dozen other people. Take my two blog names. I thought they were really unique and different when I chose them and, wonder of wonder; I was the first to choose them for the bog sites I applied for. Only when I put the names into some of the search engines to see if they came up – like in Google, MSN search, Yahoo search, and others. Well you know what happened. There they were, already used by lots and lots of people for lots and lots of different reasons.
So here I am trying to come up with a new and different email address and blog site name that no one and I mean no one else will have ever used.
Yeah, I hear you; you’re saying GOOD LUCK, and NO SUCH THING.

Mother's Violets

My favorite flower is the wood violet. Violets always remind me of my mother. She always had lots, and lots of them in her yard. Of course any flower could remind me of Mother. She had a very special way of being able to grow just about anything. But violets always jog my memories of her. I remember how she would pick one of the tiny, little, purple blossoms, smell it, then hand it to me and say, “Smell it. It will make you feel better.” And it would. When they were blooming in the early spring she would always keep a tiny vase filled with them and sitting on a shelf over the kitchen sink where she could see and smell them. I hope that where ever Mother is now she has time to ‘Stop and smell the violets’ as well as all the other flowers she used to grow.
With that in mind let me give you a few hints about raising violets. First of all they may not be very big but they certainly send out a lot of very fragrant, heady perfume. Violets are usually one of the earliest flowers to bloom each year. They start blooming in late winter here in the southwest, and in early spring in other parts of the United States. In fact I found my first one this winter on New Year’s Day. One doesn’t expect to find flowers, let alone such a wonderful perfume, from such a small usually unnoticed plant.
There are lots of different kinds of violets, or violas, which are kin to the pansy. Mine seems to have the sweetest order of any I have smelled. I got my start from my mom and she got hers from her mom, and that’s going back more than fifty years so I couldn’t say for sure which verity it actually is. They grow rapidly from seed and division by clumps and become a pest if not kept under control. Mine are larger than the wild violets but not near as big as a pansy. And are a deep purple in color.
I have found that a pot of violets makes a great gift at any time especially for the beginning gardener, or for that special mom on Mother’s Day. I have seen and even eaten some violets that were candied and used for decorations on cakes and cookies. My Mother used to do it, but I haven’t tried it yet.
Next time you want to try something a bit different in your flowerbeds, give violets a try. I have let them invade a small flowerbed right by my front door. I know that this wonderful little flower will great me, and any visitors I have, with a lovely sight and a profusion of smell for about 6 weeks each spring. Give them a try, and maybe they will remind you of someone special.

Looking East

It is my understanding that many Native Americans place their homes so that the opening is to the east. This is so that the morning sun will wake them, warm them, and bring good things into their lives that day. My house has two doors. One that faces west and one that faces east. The one facing west is the front door according to the builder. I can’t really say we have a back yard and a front yard as it is more or less all one yard. But I am glad that the so-called back door faces east. It is the door I always look out first thing every morning. Of course that is where I let the dogs out as soon as I get up, so of course I look out it. It opens up onto a small yard where I have a desert garden of sorts. Behind the little garden is about 2 areas of true desert, made up of mostly sagebrush and tumbleweeds. So far the owner of those 2 areas has never shown his face around here that I know of and I hope he/she never does. It would just really ruin my view if a house were ever built there. From there I can look across a few more areas of desert, across a large arroyo, more desert that has a gradual rise to it, and then far in the distance I see the Sandia Mountains that are to the east of Albuquerque. Do to that little desert ridge I get to miss seeing a big residential area to the west of Albuquerque.
Every morning I watch the sun rise over the north end of the Sandia Mountains. Many times there is a yellow, and orange sunrise just as that big ball of fire tips its way over the mountain. On summer days it shines down onto the desert foretelling the shearing dry heat of another day. Other times, after a rain, the sun lights up each drop of water that still sits on the sage and cactus, or hangs off the my wire fence as if it were a sparkling diamond. On winter days after a snow I watch as the sun first spotlights the white expanse of desert and then gradually melts the white stuff into a life-giving but muddy mess.
Every morning I do as the Native Americans do and give a simple thank you that the sun did come up and that I am still alive to appreciate it. I listen to the singing of a curved bill thrush that is building a nest in a nearby cactus. I marvel at the beauty of the new leaves on the trees that I planted last year, and laugh at the antics of my one-year-old Border Collie, Tuffee. I let the cats out and watch as Murphy, our black tomcat climbs up a fence post, and sits there looking off to the east, as if he, too, is watching the sun come up and saying thanks to it. Who knows, maybe he really is.

Windy Night

The tumbleweeds are crossing tonight. Drifing, floating, swirling here and there at the wim of the west wind. The wind came back this afternoon, and now it is midnight with the wind blowing the dry weeds, and clouds floating across the dark sky, and spits of rain coming now and then. I can hear the whine of the wind whishing in the power lines that hang from the power poles behind the house. Sometimes it worries me when I see the electic and phone lines swinging in the wind. But so far none have ever come down. I walk outside and check on the horses who seem to be sound asleep in their pens. I stop under one of the cottonwood trees I planted last spring to listen to the rattle of the new leaves that have just emerged with the warmth of spring. I give a small prayer that the wind doesn't strip them off the young tree. I like to hear the russle of tree leaves but now they are fluttering way to fast.

A pickup truck goes through our intersetion of 'I' Street and Tenth Street much faster than the speed limit, a sterio blasting it's music for the world to hear, even if they don't want to. Off in the distance I hear the howl of a coyote. It sounds as if he might be down in the arroyo. An airplane drones across the sky.

Codee my German Shepherd wonders into the range of the motion light on the hay shed and it comes on. She comes back to me, jumps up on the wooden platform I use to mount my horses, and swipes a warm tounge across my hand. "Sit still," I tell her. Moments later we see one of the baby cottontail rabbits that live under the hay shed come out to munch on a piece of hay near the shed door. I put a hand to Codee's colar so she can't go chase it. Although we are still it suddenly seems to since we are watching and darts back under the shed.

"Come, Codee, it's time to try to sleep again."

Sunday Morning Thoughts

Its cool, and cloudy and quiet. Or I thought it was quiet. Hot air balloons are up and at it again. What kind of a person can get up that early and drive all the way out to our section of the world to inflate a balloon and fly it over people, dogs, and horses that don't want to see and hear them?

Horses are fed and not fussing to much at balloons. Dogs have stopped barking at them. Hope they are all down, packed up and gone.

I was going to ride this morning but not sure now. BlackJack has a nasty scrape on side of his head near his eye and where bridle would rub it, and off his feed a bit. We are now changing this to a day of rest for him and me. Might decide to work with Star and Nita. They could use it. Or with the dogs.

Me rest! Hah! The doctor told me I have sciatica. Damage to the sciatic nerve. The nerve that runs down your spine and then down each leg. It doesn't hurt to bad when I'm standing, but when I sit down or lay down it pinches the nerve and starts cutting of the circulation, as well as causing lots of pain and muscle spasms. Who would have ever thought of that happening. Rest is not all that easy to come by anymore.

Have laundry to do and want to plant some more morning glory and sunflower seeds up by the front gate. Don't know if they will grow there or not but going to give it a try.

Weird Happenings

Other Dimensions

We seem to be in some sort of weird vortex here at the Tumbleweed Crossing. Non-living objects seem to disappear and then appear when ever they want to. Either that or there are little mice, or gremlins, or elves, (or possibly aliens) that move things around without the consent of the owners. Take for instance – I had some vegetable seeds left over at the end of the growing season last summer. I put them were I was sure I would remember and be able to find them to plant this spring. And I did find them about the first of March, but decided it was too early to plant them. So I put them – well I was sure I had put them in the plastic bag of new flower seeds, and garden gloves that I bought about the same time. Only by the time I wanted to plant them in April all I could find were the new packets of seeds. I looked and looked and looked but could not find the old seed packets that were already open. I decided that they had accidentally got thrown out in the trash, and bought some more. Only the very next day there they were in the bag of new flower seed. There is no way I could have over looked them that many times. Some how they went to the other dimension and returned or the gremlins have been playing tricks again.
And there was the day that hubby couldn’t find a part to his table saw. I knew he was in the garage doing something, but what. When I finally went out, he said he had been looking for the part for a half an hour but couldn’t find it. I took a quick look, pointed at some thing on the workbench and said, “Is that it?” Disgustly he picked it up, and said, “I know I looked there a dozen times.”
Take the time I was looking for the can of black spray paint that I was sure I had just used minutes before. It was nowhere to be found, nor could hubby find it. I gave up. I bought another can a few days later and finished my project. A couple of days later there were 2 cans of black paint setting on the shelf.
Every year at tax time, when we finally finish, I put the copies of all the papers where I am sure I can find them next year. Come the next year they are never in the box that I am sure I put them in. After tearing the house apart to find them I discover them in another box that is the last place I would have ever put them.
Do you have this problem? Do your small inanimate, non-living objects move around or just disappear from right under your nose never to be seen again, or else be moved to strange places? Do you ever think that you might have gremlins, or spirits that are playing tricks on you? Let me know by leaving your comments.

Iris

I have hundreds of purple iris blossoms. They make for a nice show around the base of my trees. But ----- what happened to the fancy colored iris I used to have? I used to have all different kinds of colors from dark brown to golden brown, and bronze, to verious shades of blue and purple, and whites, with blue and purple, and even yellow. Some of them even smelled like the color. A certain brown smelled like root beer, and a special yellow smelled like limon. Now they are all puple with a basic iris smell.
Again I ask - What happened? I know a lot about raising iris and lots of other flowers but this is something I can't find out anymore information about. Did they all revert back to the old-fashioned purple iris? That is what seems the most likely. It is my understanding that all iris came from a common purple color but years of selective breeding has produced hundreds of beautiful colors. I used to have quite a few but now none of them ever bloom.
If you have an opinion on the disappearence of my fancy iris colors please leave a comment and let me know.

***%+)#($*&%^computers

Why would we like to play, email, publish, and just plain goof-off with such obstinate, willfull, stubborn, ornery, hellish, mind-of-their-own critters as computers? and telephones?

I am really, really wondering why we ever invented these horrible machines. First I thought it was something wrong with my computer even though it is only about a year old. Then I thought it was a problem with the server, which was part of it, but not the only reason I couldn't get onto the internet and stay on the internet. I was playing a yo-yo game, or so it seemed. I logged on, server kicked my off, I logged on, server kicked me. And on, and on, and on. Finally I realized I was having problems hearing people when I made phone calls on my landline phone, and they were having problems hearing me. There was way to much static, buzzing, and un-identified noise for even way out here in the desert boondocks.

So I called my phone company who told me it was a power surge from the electric company. Being very iliterate conserning phones, electic, and sure I thought that might be reasonable considering we did friquently get power surges here. In fact I had alreally been having long phone calls with the electic company about fried coffee pots, sterios, and fish tank lights which had not been very benifical. So I called the power company who said there was nothing wrong with the electic. Next I called the phone company back and was told it must be that my phones weren't working right. I bought a new phone. It didn't work either since I still had static on the line. I put up with it and tried using a different server. Didn't any work better.

No luck, except bad luck.

So back to the phone company. This time they agreed to send someone out to check. He came. Fittled with the outside box and even climbed the nearest pole and said nothing wrong, to call back if the problem pressisted. It pressisted. I called back. Another man came out. He wanted to know if the first guy checked the jacks inside the house. I said no. He said he should have. He did. Didn't really find anything wrong but changed them to new ones anyway. Still had static. He climbed the pole outside the yard. Then he went and climbed one down the street about a mile. Don't know what he did but he fixed the problem or for now the phone seems to be working. And my server has been letting me stay on line for longer than 30 seconds.

I heaved a big sigh.

?(*&)$%^#+++

Now I can't send emails on my hotmail account. It won't let me type in the compose section. I can type everywhere else, but not there. So of course I can't even send a complaint to hotmail. And of course my hotmail account is what I use for this blog.

I'm screaming and tearing my hair out now.

And my son is calling saying his truck won't run.

Hot Air

So you got me started on hot air balloons anyway, didn’t you? Ok. Did you know that Albuquerque, NM is considered the hot air balloon capital of the world? Did you know that the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta is held here every October? Well now you do. Which is why we have hot air balloons frequently flying over our home here at the Tumbleweed Crossing. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing really wrong with hot air balloons. In fact seeing one or even 300 in the air at a time can be quite an awe-inspiring site. I still like watch them and to take pictures of them. But in their own place, which does not include my home. And again don’t get me wrong there are a lot of very nice, considerate, responsible, balloon pilots who wouldn’t want to infringe on anyone else’s privacy. But then there are the pilots who don’t care. Most balloonist are intelligent enough to understand that not everyone wants a balloon flying over their home at 7:00 a.m. every morning. Most pilots are thoughtful enough to follow the rules and regulations set down by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). But others don’t. Which is why I frequently (3 or 4 times a week, if it’s not to windy. One good thing about wind is it keeps the balloons from flying.) get woke up by the dogs bouncing on my bed and barking as a hot air balloon comes flying over our house.
Balloonists say that their balloons are a ‘quiet’ sport/recreation. Not so. Not if you have good hearing and your dog has better hearing. Hot air balloons are kept aloft by heating the air in the balloon with propane gas. Every time the pilot hits the propane burner to add more hot air to the balloon it makes a very loud hissing noise – like a super-huge housecat hissing. I can hear this hissing noise when the balloons are as much as a half mile away, and my dogs seem to be able to hear it before the balloons can be seen as a tiny speck on the horizon.
Ok, you say, so the dogs bark for a while. Well it can take that hissing balloon as long as an hour to fly from where ever it is coming from, over our property, and then to disappear to where ever it is going.
And to make things worse is the matter of what horses or other livestock think of balloons. Now you have to remember that horses, ponies, and mules are animals that are food for other animals in the wild. Another words they RUN when frightened. And balloons frighten them. Wouldn’t you be frightened if a UFO descended from above near you? The horse is more scared than you would be in the same situation. I have heard of horses that became so scared they injured themselves and had to be killed, if they didn’t kill their self outright, and others who were crippled for life.
Thankfully my horses seen to ignore the balloon as long as it goes flying on across and doesn’t try to land nearby. I have had pilots that wanted to land in my field right next to the horses. How thoughtless could they be? Are they really that lacking in judgment? Yes, many of them are, especially if they don’t know anything about horses and livestock.
I have had balloonist think it was funny to see animals running in fear from their balloons. I have had balloonist make a game out of seeing how close they could come to my trees and pull the leaves from the tree. This is one very dangerous game for the balloonist and me. I have seen the chase crews (people in pickups, and other vehicles that follow the balloon to where ever it lands) brake every driving law ever invented.
All I ask is that hot air balloon pilots and their friends try to understand and respect the fact that they are flying over my home. It is were I live, and where the animals I love live. To those pilots that do understand and show consideration for me and what is mine –
I Thank You.

Other Blog

Any one thats interested can visit my other blog at

http://ponytracks.myblogsite.com

It contains more information on my horses, dogs, and cats.

I really would like to get more visitors to both of my sites.

And don't forget to visit my sponsers.

Flowers

My flowers are trying to bloom. It can be a difficult and exhusting chore for a little blossom when trying to bloom in a windy, dusty, hot desert. The daffidills and tulips have already been blown away. The iris are trying. At least they are doing better this spring than they did last year. I have lots of the old fashioned purple blossoms but none of my fancy yellows, whites, blues, or browns seem to have survived the move of 2 years ago. The peach tree I put out last fall tried to bloom and did have a few but they, too, were blown away, as were the orinaminal flowering cherry, and Bradford pear. Now the Black Tartarian Cherries seem to have faired a bit better. And leaves on all are nice and green and growing. Like the Tartarians, my Redbud trees are blooming their tiny, pale purple orchid-like blossoms and the leaves are starting to appear. Hope the cottonwoods, vitex, and althea remember to come back, too.

Of course you may wonder why I try to grow flowers in the desert. I have to admit I just can't help it. Somehow the yen to grow things was passed down to me from my parents as it had been passed down to them from their parents and so on back for who knows how many generations. When the first warm days of spring bring the songbirds out to sing, and the bee's to buzzing I can't help but find a few left over seeds from last year, and eagerly run out to plant them with hopes for a fruitful vegie garden with lots of flowers mixed in. I planted a handfull of morning glories, marigolds, four-o-clocks, and sunflowers this morning. I have hopes that they will sprout and grow.

Tornados

OK. Enough already. I have decided that Mother Nature is playing very naughty tricks on New Mexico this year. Not only did she loose spring somewhere far away from us, she has now replaced spring with a several tornados. Now for those of you who don't live in NM you might like to know that we don't have very many tornados here. And usually when we do they are small ones that don't do much damage, if any. But we had two, count them, 2 tornados over the weekend. There were at least two and may have been more, but there were only two caught on video that touched down. Did you know a funnel cloud has to touch ground to be considered a real tornado. That is according to the new channels here. There were serverl sightings of funnel clouds near the Albuquerque area but only two were seen to touch down, and thankfully didn't do any damage. Of course the funnel clouds and tornados were followed by rain, sleet, and hail. Some of the storm did do damage to a small strip mall that was being re-roofed and it didn't get finished in time. Plus a lighting strike caused a power outage in a lot of Rio Rancho for a while. All of this was on Saturday with the first tornado. I didn't see anything but the rain and hail as I was warm and cozy in my livingroom watching a bit of TV as I waited for the storm to pass. Now yesterday on Sunday the other torando was spotted by the Channel 13 news crew and photographed as it passed to the south of Albuquerque near the town of Belen. Again it didn't do any damage as it touched ground in a vacent field.
But enough is enough. Thank you very much, Mother Nature, but we have had our share of tornados and do not want any more.
I consider New Mexico to be one of the saver states to live in when it comes to natural disasters, and calamites. We have very few tornados, only minor earthquakes, (so far), and no hurricanes. We do have some bad rain and snow storms from time to time, along with sleet and hail, and lighting strikes are common, but over all it's not a bad place to live.

Helicopters

Have I mentioned that I live at Tumbleweed Crossing? And that all kinds of things have developed a habit of making this a crossing point. That includes helicopters. Now it doesn’t bother me when the big military helicopters do their training maneuvers new here over part of New Mexico’s uninhabited desert. In fact I am proud of the fact that my state has a lot of military people here. I don’t necessarily support the war in Iraq, but I do most differently support our troops that are over there. What I don’t support is the TV news helicopters that make this community a turning point when they are flying around over the big metro city of Albuquerque doing the traffic reports at rush hour. There is no reason for them to come this far out over the desert (we are at least three miles from the nearest school, or about six miles from the nearest shopping area, and it is a small one) and away from the highways, and freeways, and major streets, mall, shopping centers, and schools. Is it another way to get a few minutes of ‘off the air time’, or is just an excuse to fly over a community where they’re not wanted? I have talked to some of my neighbors and they feel the same. And don’t get me started on hot air balloons. They are even worse.