What it looks like to me: July 2006

A semi-ghost town

We'd been wondering what semi-ghost town meant, and then we found one.

San Lorenzo

As with most ghost towns that have survived into the 21st century, the original town location and the semi-ghost town location are in 2 different places, making reading the map very difficult as the map only locates the new town.

Usually the two towns are close together but there are no signs or directions so you drive around looking for old buildings, which isn't a bad pursuit.

I was FASCINATED by this little town. It's basically a series of houses up and down a road right off the highway with a multitude of old buildings interspersed by newer ones. They never demolished the old buildings, they just built new ones alongside them. So you see 19th, 20th and 21st century structures all in one location.

Or in this case, all in one building.

Here they attached new adobe to the old adobe, decided to paint the new adobe, but not the old adobe, and what you can't see in the picture is a satellite dish right off their driveway.

Viva New Mexico!

A ghost, a museum and a tragic story

So here we are in NM chasing down ghost towns with somewhat mixed success.

Steins was our first stop, a ghost town right over the NM border.

It's actually been restored so it's more of a Living History Museum, complete with the cutest little old lady who runs the place. According to her the town has been occupied almost continously since it began in the late 1800s.

It ceased to be a town in the 1920's when the mine closed but people still lived there until the 1950's when it was bought for a young guy whose parents wanted him out of the house. She says it was probably cheap because it was considered "old junk instead of valuable antiques." The young guy moved in to one of the existing buildings with no money so he just unearthed old pots, pans, beds, shelves etc. that had been left by former inhabitants and set up housekeeping.

In 1988, the little old lady was living in Phoenix and her husband called and said "Honey, sell the house! I bought a ghost town!" (she thought he might have lost his mind but she eventually came around) They renovated the interior of one of the houses and moved in and have lived there ever since. They give a guided tour of some of the more intact buildings (we didn't take it) and have a small store in the Steins Mercantile building. She was adorable and I love to see someone taking care of historical buildings so they'll be around for the rest of us. This is the Blacksmith shop.

Unfortunately, our next stop was the complete opposite kind of experience. We were looking for a town called Tyrone, built in the early 1900s with rococco style "palatial mansions." The ghost town website said that there's nothing else like it in the Southwest . It was sort of a vanity project for a rich widow who spent over 1 million dollars on it.

We arrive in modern day Tyrone and look around for these old mansions, we hike around and drive around and find nothing. So we ask a local mom who was out with her kids, she has no idea what we're talking about ("there's a ghost town around here?") so she calls her mom who tells her what happened.

Apparently a miner named "Petey" bought the land the old mansions were on and wanted to build a mine so he bulldozed all the old buildings.

They're completely gone. How tragic is that? New Mexico history just bulldozed into the ground. This is the part about NM not preserving their historical sites...

We had been looking forward to this town and were really upset by the fact that it's gone for good. I'd almost rather not know that and just think that I couldn't find it. We eventually rallied, though that story cast a pall that lasted for several miles, and drove up past Silver City where we almost accidentally found the very last remains of a little town called Andrews. This is all that remains.

But there was a great little window

So we stomped around in the mud and enjoyed this lonely litle valley and the remains of this homestead. It was a small town even in the beginning, only 100 people at it's peak, and I doubt it will last another decade. But we got to see it before it vanishes for good.

Of course the sunset was lovely, though sort of mild for New Mexico

And it's been a great day all around, lots of rain, clouds, cool weather (probably 60 tonight) and the people in NM are amongst the friendliest I've ever met while traveling.

Tomorrow we've got more ghost towns in store and then some 4 wheeling and camping in the Gila Nat'l Forest. We drove through parts of it today and it's gorgeous, tall pines and huge rock formations,so I'm looking forward to more of that.

Catch you on the flip side...

Vacation!

T and I are taking our annual road trip, this time to New Mexico. on the Geronimo Trail.

One of the many things I love about New Mexico is this statement on the Geronimo Trail website that says "Note that parts of this Zone run through open range cattle country, and that cattle have the legal right-of-way." I'm not sure who represents the cattle should they feel their legal rights are being infringed upon. Any ideas?

This is a map of the trail with some of the highlights.

Kingston, Winston and Chloride are ghost towns and Hillsboro is an artist colony amidst the old ruined buildings of a former settlement, known as a semi-ghost town. We found a website online that lists all the known ghost towns in states around the nation (ghosttowns.com), and they list over 560 ghost towns in New Mexico.

560!

Unfortunately, New Mexico also seems to have the worst preservation record of any state, so what we see this trip may not last long enough for us to see it again. There are a multitude of ghost towns on this Trail route, so we'll see as many as we can.

The red line on the map is the "trail" and where it ends up north in Beaverhead, the brown line that completes the circuit back down through the Gila Forest is known as Forest Development Road 150. It's apparently maintained only twice a year and described as "a rough, unpaved, and narrow mountain road with many steep sections and several hairpin turns; high-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended, and four-wheel-drive may be a neccessary feature depending on the condition of the road at any given time."

To sane people that sounds like a warning, much like the signs posted along the road

But to the 4 wheelers amongst us, doesn't that sound like fun? I promise a full report with pictures.

We'll be gone 5 days and I'll post from the road so stay tuned and have a good weekend!

Monsoon

Last night looked like it would be a great storm but it turned into a lightning show and only a little rain. I tried to get some decent pictures - and shot about 100 in the process - but my shutter clicked in between just about every lightning strike. Sigh. It was also cloudy so sometimes all I caught was light.

I ended up with a lot of pictures that looked like this

A few that were brighter like this

And only a couple that showed actual small lightning strikes

Beautiful though, and a much cooler breeze kicked up after the storm came in. We've had record breaking heat (110 last week) this July so anything in the 90's feels like fall.

We should be getting more rain and cooler weather this weekend, perfect for a road trip in a vehicle with no AC!

Patio update

Cuz I know you are all waiting with bated breath! So behold,

It's a lot of dirt. But we've now reached the point where we've removed enough dirt from the area to be able to start leveling and then comes sand and then pavers. We'll be on vacation this weekend and into next week (more on that later this week) and I start a job in the middle of August so our (or my) goal is to have the patio in by then. We can level the rest of the yard after the patio is in...

And now for something completely different

We're putting in a patio at T's house, in his back yard off the side of his shop. This is probably a long torturous process in the best of times, and of course it's difficult for us for 2 reasons.

One is the lay of the land. This shot is taken from his yard, and I don't know if you can tell from this shot, but there's a marked hilly place directly in the center of the picture.

This naturally means that we have to level this hill and ideally create a slight slope away from the house so that the water will run off the patio into the yard. And this means we had to determine how much of the hill needed to be removed. So we ran a leveling line and I attempted to get a shot that shows exactly how high the hill is, so

This line is level with the concrete pad outside the back door and we have to dig a couple inches down from that to put sand and account for the paver tiles of the patio. This equals about 12 inches - give or take - of this hill that needs to be removed.

Sigh.

This brings me to our second difficulty, which is the dirt, otherwise known as caliche. The makeup of caliche is clay, rocks and dirt and packs down to the consistency of concrete. So here's the system. T. uses a pickaxe to loosen the dirt, I shovel the dirt into a wheelbarrow, T. moves the wheelbarrow full of dirt to a different part of the yard to start the extensive leveling process of the whole yard, repeat, repeat, repeat.

So, here's me (those of you who live here will notice the absence of a landmark behind me)

And here's our progress so far

The stump at the far left and the trench in the middle of the picture mark the edges of the patio-to-be.

Ask me how much I will love this patio when it's finished.

By request...

I've mentioned to some of you that I'm making curtains for a friend of mine and you've wanted to see pictures. So here they are

This is one full panel and I'm making 4 like this. This one is hung for picture purposes only, and is obviously too long for the height of this curtain rod.

Here's a detail shot of the valance

My friend A. commissioned them and drew me a picture of what she wanted. The fabric is a beautiful olive green with gold; the color seems a bit distorted here, probably because of my flash.

What did we do with all those strawberries, you ask?

We made freezer jam

Which turned out beautifully and was quite quick and easy

And then we dried some and froze the rest

The dried strawberries are only OK, as far as I'm concerned. However, we dried some Bing cherries at the same time and they were fantastic.

And of course, I know I promised more pictures of this vacation and haven't posted them. Rather than repeating myself, I'm going to refer those who are interested to my sister's blog where she posted several pictures and you can get a good idea of the trip. It was fun and busy, as usual! We played around with dyeing and batiking, which is quite difficult technically, but fun to do and had the usual 4th of July festivities. You can find B. at familia-johnson.blogspot.com

Now, of course, I'm even busier. I'll post some pictures of my newest projects shortly.

Wenatchee days

A little wine on the patio

While watching the sun set view from my parent's back yard the first night we were there

The next morning my dad made biscuits from a cookbook my mother has owned since before I was born

And notice the burner marks? She and I have that in common. I've burned/destoyed many a plastic item by setting it atop a burner that was still hot...

We ate breakfast on the patio overlooking the river

P. ate a huge amount of cherries and then had a small meltdown

As someone else I know has wondered, don't you sometimes wish you could cry like this and have everyone rush to accomodate you?

The fur collar is detachable...

I will post more pictures of my vacation in Washington. However, while on the plane back from Seattle I read a David Sedaris book called Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and there was one hilarious passage that reminded me of myself.

"People who have nothing to prove offer practical baby gifts: sturdy cotton rompers made to withstand the cycle of vomit and regular washing. People who are competing for the titles of best-loved aunts and uncles - people like my sisters and me- send satin pants and delicate hand-crafted sweaters accompanied by notes reading 'P.S. the fur collar is detachable.' The baby is photographed in each new outfit and I receive pictures almost daily. In them my brother and his wife look not like parents but like backwoods kidnappers, secretly guarding the heiress to a substantial cashmere fortune."

I give you Exhibit A, the baby blanket I made when P. was born:

Wherein I not only taught myself to weave on a tiny little loom - all the 48+ squares are woven - but I also taught myself to crochet so I could connect the squares AND I coordinated the colors to P's baby room.

But wait, there's more!

Exhibit B, P's baptism dress:

Made of off-white dupioni silk with an embroidered silk bodice and matching skirt border. This picture of her in my living room is still one of my favorites. I finished this dress in November when B. and P. came out to visit and the armscyes were so tiny on this dress that I couldn't fit them under my sewing machine needle so I had to hand sew them.

And then there's...

Exhibit C, P's birthday dress:

made of silk that B. brought me from Vietnam and completed with old buttons given to me by my mom. This was an easy task in comparison to the other two except the silk was thin and stretchy and the binding had to be handstiched. (it's also machine washable, unlike the other two).

So, do I win??? Am I the best-loved auntie??? LOL!

The question is, how can I possibly up the ante for any future nieces or nephews?

Johnson Family pics

Because how can I resist?

And how can you resist this face?

The definition of "back-breaking"

Strawberry picking today. We drove out to Shumway's Berries to pick strawberries, approximately 1 week before the end of the strawberry season here. The guy who owned the place told us to walk up to the sign and the look for the yellow flags and start picking anywhere.

He also said there was a scale and a cash box and he "might be taking a nap" so just weigh the berries, pay .90/lb. and make change from the cash box if neccessary. B. and I looked at him like "anything else?" and B. pointed at the notebook on the table and said "uh, should we write down our names or something" he just laughed and said "yes, and the name of your favorite person, perhaps your favorite color..." Ok, got it. this is a laid back operation. Based on his demeanor maybe it should be called 4:20 Farms...

So we grab our 5 gallon buckets and head out to face this

As far as the eye can see. In close up detail, it looks like this.

The strawberries plants are about a foot off the ground, the strawberries are heavy and the vines are thin. Ergo, the berries are resting on the ground and buried in the mulch and covered by large strawberry leaves.

Picking looks like this, bent over from the waist.
The alternate option is to kneel on the ground and resposition every 5 minutes. Any comfortable positions? no.

However, the berries were beyond plentiful and we each picked a bucketful in 30-45 minutes, a bucket weighing about 10lbs.

Strawberry picking 2

It felt really satisfying and the sunwarmed berries were astonishingly good. However, my main thought was that fruit pickers are SO not paid enough for their work. little did we know...

B. took her bucket back to the scale/cash box area where the guy in charge was not napping and as they weighed berries and I took pictures, B. struck up a conversation. Turns out that his fruit pickers worked today from 6AM to 3PM - without a lunch break by choice - picking strawberries at .20 a pound or $2 a bucket. These pickers can pick 7 buckets an hour.

7. buckets. an. hour.

9 hours straight of bending over, raking aside strawberry leaves, pawing through mulch, assessing the ripeness of berries and filling up buckets. Every day. And of course they don't want to take lunch breaks, that's lost money. It's very impressive fortitude.

For my part I had red fingers and some great berries and a immense gratitude that my job could be accomplished sitting in a chair instead of bent over for 9 hours. We amateur pickers got 20lb of strawberries in less than an hour. Whoo hoo!