Today's weather: perfect. With all the rain, we have blooming yuccas. Profusely blooming yuccas. By the hundreds. The desert is different every year, and this is the closest to jungle we have ever gotten. Well, a desert jungle, anyway.Birds are also profuse this year. A curved-bill thrasher is watching me as I write, a scaled quail is lekking nearby, and a cactus wren keeps scavenging the dog and cat hair we brushed from Rosie, Annie, and Nom earlier. I wonder about cactus wrens and using pet hair in their homes. Does this make their young less likely to understand that pets are predators? Not a big problem at my home, but could be in more suburban settings. Rattlers are already out (BIG one dead on Soledad Canyon road last week). Eagles are back, as are vultures. Cactus wren just stopped by for a dust bath. Wish I could photograph it, but it is just too far away.
Quincy, Stu and Jake have just a couple of weeks of classes left before they are off for the summer. Jake will spend the summer in Washington State, Q in Las Cruces. Summer projects are already lining up for Stu. Maybe some tiling and painting this summer.
Q has end-of-the-year rituals to complete over the next month: finals, banquets, AP exams, graduation, graduation party, etc. Quincy will celebrate with Emily. They met in kindergarten and have been friends since. Thanks, Katie, for your inexhaustible hospitality in letting us share the graduation celebration.
Limited biking next week. I will be in Albuquerque Monday and Tuesday for a meeting, and it is a little too far to ride. (but some really big hills between here and there!) The weather has still been cold in NM, but with luck our warm weather will come to stay this week.
I will be back in Delaware from May 15-20. My mother's lung cancer is back, and she is recovering from a repair of a compression fracture in her back. Besides, May is always a nice month in Delaware.
Book recommendation: Currently listening to Citizens of London, by Lynne Olson. About Edward R. Murrow, Gil Winant, and Avery Harriman and the role they had in bringing the US into WWII. Very interesting. I finally completed Atlas Shrugged, and although I thought the book was melodramatic and overwrought, I find that I miss the characters. But not really a book I would recommend to anybody.
