Mystery Plant (continued)

Best guess so far: purple salvia, aka purple rain (see: Prince), purple sage (as in, Riders Of The). And apparently this stuff has psychoactive effects, although I don't plan to test this. More along the lines of spiritual enlightenment as opposed to acid trips. If the birds and squirrels start acting strange, maybe I can post some photos of that.

Mystery Flower

Does anyone know what the purple flowering plant is in the picture here? The blue flowers are lobelia. I got these at a plant nursery the other day, and I really like the purple flowers. The flowers are kind of bell-shaped and they go up the stem. It's hard to see that from this angle. The plant didn't have any sort of identification, and no one else seemed to know either.

Pictures from the New Mexico, Texas trip

http://picasaweb.google.com/wordchemist.photos/NewMexicoAndTexas2009?feat=directlink

My pictures from the New Mexico/Texas trip are at the link above. A few of them are embedded in earlier postings on this blog. Enjoy!

Home Again

Mission accomplished, home again safe and sound. Enjoying a quiet afternoon with the Sunday paper before going back to cubicle-land tomorrow. Linda and I spent way too much time on the road, but we saw cousins and aunts that we hadn't seen in decades and we re-acquainted ourselves with the vast arid landscape that is eastern New Mexico and western Texas. That place was home for so long, but I needed a map on several occasions before the old memory kicked in.

We spent a couple of days in Lubbock, with a half-day trip to Amarillo in the middle. So much hasn't changed but some things are very different. Much of the old student ghetto east of Texas Tech has been converted into upscale apartments, but my old place on 2nd and Ave. X is still there, with not much more renovation than a good coat of paint on the outside, and my old dorm looks exactly the same.

The trip home was one of those local-bus Southwest flights that started in Dallas, then hopped over to Lubbock where Linda and I caught the plane. A couple of parabolic hops put us into Albuquerque, then Denver, where Linda and I parted ways. She headed off to Seattle, and I stayed on the plane for the last two-hour hop to Baltimore. The plane was at least half empty, something I hadn't seen in a long time. We were 20 minutes early getting into BWI (another unfamiliar experience), and the luggage hit the belt in baggage claim in record time. Probably because there were so few of us on the flight. I was home by about half past midnight, a good hour earlier than I expected.

So I'm home today, easing myself back into the everyday world. Pictures to come.

More pix

Carlsbad NM, looking across the Pecos River from a little park
just west of Landsun Homes, where Mom lives.

Prickly pear cactus.

This aqueduct was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939.
It spans the Pecos River and Westridge Road (foreground)
on the northern edge of Carlsbad.

email feeds

I'm e-mailing new blog posts to my blog followers. If you want to be taken off this list, please email me and let me know. If you want to be added, let me know too. I have "syndication" turned on for this blog, so you should be able to get RSS feeds. Let me know if you can't, and I will noodle around with the settings some more.

More notes from NM

News from southern New Mexico. Mom is doing about the same as when we saw her last year. She does seem to recognize both of us, but she mostly stares out at something that only she can see.

We took a day trip north to Roswell yesterday. Saw a long-time friend of Mom's who lives on a farm just south of town, and she gave us some news. Her neighbor just down the road and the neighbor's business partner own the horse that won the Kentucky Derby. Front page news locally!

Cinco de Mayo libations with old friends and new at Pecos Flavors, a wine and gourmet shop (in Roswell!!) owned by one of my sister's high school classmates. A touch of class in the old home town. Wrapped up the evening at Peppers restaurant, then closed the place down at 10PM. Some things never change. Had to dash for the car before they rolled up the sidewalks on us.

Weather: warm at night, blazing hot in the day (up to 100 deg. today -- that's Fahrenheit).

Pictures to come.

More pix

More Albuquerque photos: a light post stands out against a typically gorgeous NM sky, and a couple of large sculpture pieces near the Bernalillo County Courthouse.

On the Road Again

Greetings from sunny New Mexico. Linda and I flew to Albuquerque from our respective Washingtons (the state for her, the District for me), and had a great time with friends last night. We arrived on the only chilly rainy day predicted for this week, but we also got a great rainbow with the Sandia Mountains for a backdrop. This morning, it was breakfast burritos at The Frontier (well known to Tony Hillerman fans) with more friends, plus a couple of repeats from last night. A brief photo shoot downtown, stopping for just a bit to peek in at the Cinco de Mayo street festival near the convention center. Then it was on the road, south on I-25, past the bosques and vineyards. Turned left at San Antonio, NM, home of the first Hilton Hotel and the ever-popular Owl Bar. Went east through Capitan (home of Smokey Bear) and Lincoln (where Billy the Kid was shot). The central part of the state looks very parched. Made it to Carlsbad by early evening, and now we're catching up on email and just generally taking it easy.