New Year

As we go into this New Year, please, remember that Nature is our greatest resource. May your year be filled with peace and beauty.

New Year

No Fireworks or shooting of guns on New Year's. It's not safe. And this beautiful sunset looks so much better. This is from my yard looking over the horse pens. What ever you do on New Year's Eve, please, be safe.

Facebook

Christmas was a down day. Just the two of us here with the critters. And Cold. Not much to do so while I was on the computer I went to Facebook and signed up. Found that most of the people I email already has a facebook page. So I will try it now and them.

Merry Christmas

All of us here at the Tumbleweed Crossing want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Huge Owl

Maybe the dreaded mice and rat problem will be solved by the huge owl I saw last night sitting on the top of the power pole that connects my neighbor and I to the electric company. He was making a weird kind of screek then the normal hoo-hoo-hoo of a horned owl so I think it may have been one. If not a horned owl probably a barn owl. I have seen both in this area along with a lot of the smaller owls. I really like owls as they eat lots of rodents, grasshoppers and the over populated sparrows. I hope he comes back but it seemed very upset at the activity going on under the power pole. A lot more than normal. Our neighbor had company and someone had left the car running to warm up, and we were feeding horses, and my dog and theirs were out. It flew off after I sighted it. I have heard an owl a few times over the past few months. Don't know if it was the same one or not. I hope there are several.

Mouses, Mouses

Drats, we have mice in the hay shed, and storage shed. Again.

Shooting Stars

We heard on the weather channel that the next couple of days would be a good time to see meteorite displays at night. So we drove out onto the desert away from the lights of Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Corrales. We weren't disappointed. We saw about 24 of the 'shooting stars' that we would see well enough to say we actually saw them. There were lots of times we thought we might have seen one but it was gone so fast we wondered if our eyes were playing tricks on us after looking up at the sky so long.
We have always liked to go out and look at the stars. Growing up with Star Trek may have contributed to this interest. We got to see Halley's Comet back in the 80's and even better the Hail-Bop Comet in the 90's. Halley's was a disappointment as it couldn't be seen that well here. But Hail-Bop was better as we could see it and it was so new and unexpected.
Guess we have been really lucky to see both of them in our lifetime.

Burrrrrr!!

It's cold. It seems like it is a lot colder than normal at this time of the year. It was 20 degrees at it's coldest the night before and last night it was 20 degrees when we went out to do the late feed at 9pm. At 4am we got up to rebuild the fire and it was 13 degrees. And then when we went out at 8am to feed the horses it was 10 degrees. That can be usual for late January through March but this is only December. So what will those months be like when they come.
Lee has been telling me that our newest member of the family that high energy kitten, Wiley had been waking him up when the fire in our woodstove that we use for heating starts to go out and it gets cooler in the house. Wiley gets in the bed with Lee and starts pushing right against his face. When Lee wakes up enough to try to get the little black cat to leave him along he will realize that it is cool enough he should get up and load the stove with wood again. None of our other cats or dogs has ever done this. Murphy our 8 year old black cat will lay right in front of the woodstove as long as it is really warm and when it starts getting cooler he will move to a chair but he doesn't try to wake any one up. Jade our 13 year old black cat sleeps huddled up again me. Since we have a water bed with a good heater to keep it warm a lot of the time we don't realize that the fire is going out. Of course we have the propane furance set to come on if it should get down to 55 degrees in the house. Usually we wake before then but it is nice to have a cat that tells us when we need to put wood in the store before it goes completly out.