Shady Pines, Ma! Shady Pines!

Approaching Storm by NM artist Bruce Lowney

(at the Albuquerque Museum)

The last several days have been fairly typical for April in New Mexico: Hail, snow, wind. But what a difference a day makes: This weekend's forecast is for sunny, 80 degree days. 

Despite the crap weather, I've been busy on the patio, setting up altars and prepping for days of planting. We've decided to forgo our usual display of annual flowers and instead plant from the seed collection that we amassed last year around this time when Dave went a little nuts (with my encouragement) buying seeds. We didn't really put any effort into storing them correctly over the winter, so I imagine quite a few of them will be duds. Still, we'll plant them and (having failed to prepare for the worst) hope for the best anyway. 

When I'm not out on the patio dreaming of green things, I've been inside watching old episodes of The Golden Girls on youtube. When I was younger I thought that show was a drag, but twenty-five years later I really like it. More than liking it, I think it's hilarious. (Dave sniggered when I told him that.) Are there any shows like it on television anymore or is it all vampires and rich, bored housewives and po' white child pageant contestants? Are there witty widows and wise-cracking old ladies and I'm just missing them?

Oh, and I'm reading. I'm just barely scraping by the minimum of my weekly goals, true, but I did polish off Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader this afternoon.  Then I dove right back into Randolph Falcon Scott's antarctic journals, which are alternatively tedious and exciting--much like any travel narrative, I suppose, however extreme.