Just regular folks.

A few months ago, I got a landscape designer to draw up plans for the backyard and the front yard. It’s a challenging ecosystem because we have shade, bad soil and lots of deer. And I wanted, as much as possible, native plants. The designer was a lot of fun to work with as she spent an afternoon at our house and then drew this design on graph paper which I really love! (I want to frame these someday). Of course, I don’t know any plants she listed so I would have never been able to plan this myself, but she thought of all the different seasons and how they’ll give different colors in spring, summer and fall and how tall they would be and how to block more traffic noise (we live really close to the freeway).

Right now, our backyard is a Japanese stiltgrass wasteland that grows knee high for years and I’ve done nothing about it. I see the invasive tree of heaven encroaching from the sides which I’m going to try to kill with herbicides this summer. Jeremy really wanted to return the back half to trees, so that’s what we are doing. I did get a landscaper to quote me to put it all the plantings in, but man it was a lot, I totally didn’t want to pay for that, so I’m going to try to do it myself. Bit by little bit. I’m a little afraid that the deer will eat all of it in the nanosecond I’m on vacation, so I don’t want to spend out a ton of money to have it be a buffet for deer. Even if the deer didn’t eat it, I also didn’t want it all to go in at once and then I’d be overwhelmed taking care of it because I don’t want to hire out the garden work (at least not right now).

Yesterday, I went out in the middle of the day – so cold and snow covered yard, and marked out the grid and then placed flags for the center six trees. I’m dreaming of spring.

I’ve been watching the deer eat our neighbors’ bushes. It’s very cold outside and I’m curious about what the deer will eat and/or not eat. They eat a lot of things.

Jeremy went to his first dog training class. Elka didn’t get to go, only one dog was allowed to go and someone volunteered their dog before he could. This adorable six month old golden retriever.

Snow days! I picked up Edda from school early on Friday because the storm was moving in and 2/3rds of Edda’s teachers were like, OK! We really want snow days, so…let’s wear our pajamas inside out, sleep with spoons under pillows and flush ice cubes down the toilet. I was going to implement these tactics, but alas, I didn’t have a chance to because they cancelled school early on Sunday afternoon. And then we rejoiced (or at least all the teachers rejoiced). Haha, Dave, my friend in Minnesota, says everyone in Minnesota is jealous because in MN, the ground is BROWN. It’s not supposed to be brown ground in MN. lol.

Edda is bored, we are hunkered down. It’s a cozy feeling. Jeremy did all the shoveling – I send him hearts. We had a long argument on Sunday morning about hanging maps on walls, but now we are A-OK.

I’m so happy I got fencing around my test tree before the snow fell because I can see where the deer go through the yard. And they did go through a lot, but totally ignored the tree. (They will eat the tender baby branches even without leaves in the winter, for sure.) They messed with the compost pile, but that is a feature not a bug. OK, I’m confident I can keep deer away from baby trees. I ordered six baby trees for the spring: white oak, witch hazel, serviceberry and redbud. I bought the smallest, cheapest ones I could find and fingers crossed that they will not all die in my care. I’ll spend more on the wire cages and the metal stakes. I’m going to try to channel both my mother and my mother-in-law, both great gardeners with completely different styles.

My guitar teacher moved to the studio to new space near the Home Depot and my friend Howard and I had fun trying out the new electric guitar set up. In this new location, he’s next to a quilting store and a bridal store, so in the band room, he’s putting everything through headphones which is so cool. Everyone will have headphones and you can decide to hear more of the singer, or only the bass or just yourself, I guess. So much fun. I’m not in a band yet, I’m patiently waiting for the day when Billy tells me I’m ready. Which may be never.

During lesson time, programs after school were cancelled, and then after care for Edda was cancelled, but not right away – so this involved a lot of texting during class – back and forth with 1. school, 2. after care, 3. ginny – first with confirming that aftercare was open and then…whoops, no, it’s closing! I told Ginny not to come because of the snow and I feel bad because I’m basically cutting her hours, but then it snowed a bunch and then I felt righteous not endangering her life. Elka both likes the snow, and hates the salt. It hurts her paws.

My hand-me-down orchid is blooming! I guess it thinks it’s Hawaii enough in the house because it’s certainly not Hawaii-like outside the house.

Megan is putting on a series of art classes at Main Street, so I volunteered to help her out.

Fun! Notice I have a permanent name tag that I wear a lot. I wear it whenever I’m in a group of people in which I don’t know everyone’s name – which is a lot of times.

Happy new year! It was a nice 2024 – I traveled a lot which was both nice and tiring, Vince graduated from college – a big deal, I was very itchy with two cases of poison ivy. I really excused myself from social media and scrolling the news as a hobby as well, that feel really good to not know instantaneously what is happening in the world. I try to check in once a day, usually a 10 min audio catch up from NPR or NYT – ten minutes is enough. I had to replace all that scrolling with something, so I read more books and I’ve really hit my stride with practicing guitar (I think I’ve reached the advanced beginner level – woo hoo! working on hammer ons, pull offs, slides – it’s a lot of fun, very challenging, but doable). I’m going to start watching more movies.

I’ve cut back on running and added strength training to the mix. My body takes longer to recover and bounce back, but that’s ok and often I wake up tight and sore. I’ve cut way back on eating carbs in the house, though I try to not limit out of the house.

New year’s day, I took down Christmas in the house. Our tree keeps losing needles, how many more years can it keep going?

I’d like to add gardening to the things I do next year, the most important to me is to start small trees in the backyard – I’m looking at you white oak and red bud. And in order to do that, I need to protect the little trees from the deer. This dogwood is like 10 years old and every year, it gets demolished by the deer and each year, we try to protect it. Granted, the first 7 years I was busy with other things – it had a flimsy little fence around it and then for the last 2 years, I first covered it with netting (deer ate through it), next I covered it with finer, heavier duty netting (deer ate through it, though not as much) and yesterday, I did what I should have done in the beginning, I cattle wire fence, four heavy landscaping poles and eight landscaping staples into the ground. Fingers crossed this will work and if it survives the hungry deer foraging in the winter, I know I can protect a bunch of new trees. Fingers crossed.

Happy new year! While we were gone, my parents graciously took care of Elka. Elka’s birthday was the 28th and we were not going to be around for that, but my parents picked up the slack by not only buying a steak, but also a sheet cake with “Happy Birthday Elka” on it.

Look at these two, both loving steak and sheet cake. (My father’s birthday was on the 25th, I’m hoping he got some meat and cake as well on that day!) Happy birthday to you both! Thank you for taking care of each other.

Home. We got home late last night (Sunday the 29th) and it was a very nice holiday. There were lots of nice meals with the Martins and lots of down time and very nice weather. We saw old friends and met new folks too! And now we are back home. Jeremy (and Edda) have a few more days off. I’m working a bit. And we roll towards the new year!

Yesterday (Boxing Day), many people came into town. Vince and Dani arrived by sleeper Amtrak train from Los Angeles. The two of them celebrated on Christmas Day with Dani’s family and got on the train at about 10 pm Christmas night and arrived at Lordsburg, NM at lunch time. This is a very small train station.

Jeremy picked them up and went to Silver City to replenish food and head back home.

And here we are at dinner: This is the largest meal, we had Scott/Sheila, Andy/Rita and Vince/Dani who were the newcomers at Renouf Ranch. It’s been a very nice Christmas holiday.

Christmas Day started off with some slight issues. First, Edda was inadvertently locked in her bedroom. Luckily there was a screwdriver in a kitchen drawer and we were able to remove the doorknob at 6 am.

Jeremy, who debated endlessly about whether to bring his bike or not on this Christmas trip and finally decided – yes! I’ll bring the bike, discovered about 12 hours before our flight that the bike bag which I’ll call “The Big Bag” was about 10 inches too big to be compliant with Southwest’s baggage policy. After swearing many times about how we should have never booked on Southwest, I offered that he himself purchase another flight on another airline which would take “The Big Bag” and he said – I already checked and it would be $900. To which I was like (in my head) no, but (outwardly), oh, that’s a lot, but if it’s that important to you… And then he grumbled and said – I’m not going to bring the bike. And then he couldn’t sleep and at one am he got up and moved the bike from “The Big Bag” to “The Smaller, Less Sturdy and More Prone to Bike Damage by Tired and Hardworking Luggage Handlers, yet still Large Bag and Now Compliant with Southwest’s Inane Luggage Policy Bag “. Which was just as well because – remember we sold our minivan? – we had to hail an Uber XL to get to the airport with all our crap which includes not only the three of us, but a bike, a bed, a wheelchair and the Uber XL would absolutely have not fit “The Big Bag” and barely fit “The Smaller…Bag”. Anyways, this is a very boring story as are most life stories – it turns out during the bike bag transfer drama, he forgot to pack his front axle. And then Jeremy was a little bit bereft (literally like a kid who didn’t get the Cabbage Patch Kid or PS5 or whatever) on Christmas Eve with his 95% bike which was completely unrideable. But it was not all lost, he did manage to find a bike shop in Albuquerque (after many, many phone calls) that had the part – five hours away – but his brother was in town ready to drive his family towards us and procured the exact front axle that let Jeremy have a very nice Christmas morning bike ride.

He got back in time to have breakfast at the Renouf Ranch with the family.

There was Secret Santa gift openings:

People walked, I swept leaves, Edda slept.

We enjoyed the outdoors and then had a lovely Christmas dinner!

On Tuesday, Christmas eve, I did a long run. The sun here is piercing, but it’s still quite cold in the morning and unusually warm in mid-day. Emy and Seth are here too and we were waiting for the Swedes to come in the evening around dinner time.

We ate lunch at Renouf Ranch and then took a little walk and then headed back to our airbnb.