This horned lizard was snoozing beside a rock in the upper bird-feeding yard.
A beautiful example of cryptic coloring.
Can you find him?
He is in the lower right next in the photos, next to a pale rock.
Juvenile ravens at West Coast Tank
About 30 miles south of us is a large manmade charco (Spanish for cattle pond), which fills seasonally - usually in summer when the heavy rains flood the normally dry washes. West Coast Tank is several acres, with a small island in the middle that is sometimes a peninsula, depending on the volume of water. We were delighted to discover this amazing oasis in July and are making regular "safaris" there to enjoy the birds and other wildlife.
One of the highlights of a visit on Saturday was sneaking up on two juvenile ravens sitting deep in a mesquite tree - sound asleep! They were small, about 2/3 size, and the closest one to us (about six feet away) was clearly asleep, slightly wavering back and forth, very comfy in the cool canopy. When they finally heard us, they started shuffling around a little and then started calling - high-pitched for ravens, not yet fully developed. Soon their parents swooped in to scold us and protect them. We left soon thereafter. But the feeling of standing so close to them, while they snoozed, was really quite wonderful - a real nature connection.
Vin de noix ~ Green walnut wine
Walnuts (Juglans major) in the southwestern states are beginning to ripen . . . time to try something I've had in my nature notes for some time: vin noix (green walnut wine), made from noix de Saint-Jean (Saint John's walnut). One of the best tutorials on the origin and making of this European aperitif is on William Rubel's website (williamrubel.com). Traditionally in France the walnuts (from J. regia) are harvested around June 24, which is Saint Jean's Day, the feast of Saint John. Our southwestern species don't begin to grow until later in July. I don't know if our wild walnuts will yield a quality flavored product (it's actually one of several flavorings in what's known as a fortified wine, since it's made by infusing alcohol and wine with botanicals and spices). The recipes refer to the astringent quality of the walnuts, and ours certainly have that characteristic. I gathered these in New Mexico's Mimbres Valley, northeast of Silver City.
Vin de Noix (from William Rubel)
40 young walnuts that can be pierced with a needle, rinsed and quartered
1 liter alcohol such as brandy, marc, eau de vie, or vodka
5 liters red wine
1 kg sugar (2 pounds)
One or more of the following are often added, but are optional
12 walnut leaves
Zest of 1 orange
4 to 8 cloves
1 vanilla bean
[I reduced the recipe to 15 wild walnuts; 1.25 L red Italian table wine; .25 L vodka; 225 g sugar; 4 walnut leaves; half a vanilla bean; zest of 1/4 orange; 4 cloves.]
1. Pick the walnuts in late June when the walnuts are well formed, but can still be pierced with a needle. Place all of the ingredients in an 8 quart (8 liter) non-reactive container with a lid. I use a large glass jar. Store in a cool dark place for 6 to 8 weeks, shaking occasionally.
2. Strain through cheesecloth into a bowl. Taste, and adjust the sugar if you want the drink to be sweeter. Bottle and store in a cool dark place until the cold weather.
Check back in eight weeks for a taste test. I'll also look for ripe walnuts in the fall; these make excellent pigment.Prickly pear fruit ripening . . .
And the desert dwellers, including us, enjoy their tart-sweet goodness, complete with fuschia lips.
I will be extracting prickly pear juice this week. Meanwhile a local desert tortoise shows evidence of snacking.
iPhone as a journal tool
I caved in to the urge and got an iPhone 3G . . . and have been amazed. It's not 'just' a phone, it's a tiny computer and a GPS. It instantly replaced five 'gadgets' I usually have with me: phone, iPod, computer, camera, and GPS. An unexpected bonus is that I have found it a perfect journaling tool.
What bird was that? The other day we drove down to a pond south of us, and were astonished to find hundreds of birds enjoying the bounty of water in the desert. I didn't have my full field guide set with me, but I was able to confirm Common Ground Dove calling with National Geographic's Handheld Birds app - most every entry includes sound as well as images and data.
I have a real ineptitude for remembering astronomy. My all-time-favorite app thus far is StarWalk. Like having a mini planetarium and personal starguide in your pocket. It's difficult to describe just how cool this app is - you can zoom in and out, scroll 360 degrees around the dome of the sky, including what's below the horizon . . . click on a planet or star or cluster and get full data on it . . . and search for the name of a celestial object and it will show you where it is - all in exact relation to your current location. So when I note in my journal the arresting moonscape-and-planet I saw at 4 am, I can look up exactly which planet.
I always note the times of sun and moon rising and setting, as well as the moon phase. This great app, called Sun and Moon, always keeps it at my fingertips.
With the GPS and two very useful apps, I am always able to follow our route on topographical maps in the U.S., or using Google maps elsewhere. Topo Maps has a full set of USGS maps for download, and GPS MotionX turns the iPhone GPS into a fully functional track and waypoint tool and then some. I no longer need my Garmin, and furthermore it's much easier to use, download maps, and export and share data.
Finally, I am always using the built-in iPhone camera to take snapshots of things I want to sketch, like beetles or a nice sunset. And I can use All-in Notes to take quick voice memos or combined photo / note / memos and email them to my main computer.
All the apps are available at the App store; just use the Search function to find.
A touch of tropics
Lovely rain is turning our desert tropical.
Fruit ripening on the prickly pear cactuses.
A mini Zen-rock-garden, pebbles from Baja that turn cactus-green in the rain.
New jewelry soon in online store
I will have new bracelets and earrings on sale this weekend at my new online store. Focusing on new metals for me ~ brass and steel with hammered, oxidized and colored finishes, and combining them with pearls and delicate strips of tulle ribbon.
Making pigments from local materials (2): oak galls
On Friday we drove the southwestern flanks of the Santa Rita Mountains to the hamlet of Patagonia ~ we stayed roughly above 4,000 feet elevation, and I had plenty of opportunity to look for oak galls to try the recipe for oak gall pigment in Gwen Diehn's Decorated Journal. Oak galls are the leftover baby wasp 'housings'; worldwide there are thousands of tiny wasp species (some no bigger than the nib on a pen), which are obligate to one species of oak. On this oak they inject a hormone that triggers the oak to form this structure . . . in which the wasp lays its eggs, which then develop, nicely protected, in the gall. Some are tiny, some are large. All are produced entirely by the plant, and are tannin-rich (and thus can produce nice inks and pigments; galls in Europe have been used for centuries as inks; tannins also are used for curing leather ~ the origin of "tanning"). The holes in the galls indicate where the young wasps emerge.
I finally found some nice big ones, on a Mexican gray oak (Quercus grisea), and collected five.
Add drops of a mild acid (vinegar or lemon juice) until the liquid turns from rich brown to deep black.
Back home, I followed the Medieval recipe:
Grind the galls to powder ~
Boil them in rainwater for as long as it takes to recite the Pater Noster three times ~
Add drops of a mild acid (vinegar or lemon juice) until the liquid turns from rich brown to deep black.Results are inconclusive as well as enticing. While the majority of the liquid never turned beyond a rich, reddish brown (see the leaves in the drawing above, of the oak galls ~ these are painted with the gall pigment; the oaks there were very stressed, with dried leaves; did this contribute to tannin-poor galls?), I laid down a silver-plated spoon, on which were bits of the ground gall and liquid, on the counter; half an hour later, a tiny puddle under the spoon was a rich, dark black. I tried many other experiments - boiling further (to reduce), adding more lemon, adding vinegar, but was never able to reproduce that one teeny black smudge.
So, my experiments will continue . . .
I {heart} . . . vintage kitchenware
Pink: Summer color in the Sonoran Desert
Arizona pincushion cactus ~
a bee friend
a field of pink . . .
how many pincushions do you see in the image?
The perils of a curious (and absent-minded) spouse
For weeks now I've been plagued in my studio / office by the {highly} unpleasant aroma of something decaying . . . I had assumed it was a mouse that snuck in the open door one morning when I was airing it out, or perhaps had gotten in through some unknown hole in the roof (unlikely). We looked high and low, under and over, around and around - and we could not find the source, which seemed to come from higher up, and waft around in a frustratingly fickle manner. For at least five days it was impossible to even work there . . . I was not amused.
This morning I decided to air out the three motorcycle jackets hanging near my workbench - mine and two of Jonathan's. They seemed musty - and I didn't like that smell either - so I took them outside, and Jonthan helped. He seemed preoccupied with one of them, his Barbour International. But he's always preoccupied with jackets.
Just as we were concluding lunch, Jonathan said: "Um, I hope you enjoyed lunch with me today."
"Of course! But why do you ask?"
"Um . . . it might be our last for a while."
"?"
"Um . . . about three weeks ago I was riding home on the Royal Enfield and I found a just-roadkilled lizard . . . I thought it was a long-nosed leopard-lizard but wasn't sure . . . so I, um, sort of put it in the pocket of my Barbour, so I could ID it when I got home . . . and, well, I forgot about it.
"Until just now."
Mystery solved. The Barbour jacket was hanging behind 4 other jackets, so the smell was 'muffled' by lots of fabric and explaining why we could not locate it. Twenty-five years together, I'm not surprised, and . . . of course, I should have guessed!
{And yes, it was a long-nosed leopard lizard, quite lovely . . .}
I {heart} . . . kittens
This gaggle of four adorable, purring, playful kittens mobbed us yesterday when we visited a friend's house. The ginger one stole my heart . . .
Making pigments from local materials
In the past few weeks I have been spending more and more time on my nature journal, which I have been keeping for nearly 20 years. I made the leather cover and a simple page-attachment system (tied with a leather strip) so I can use any paper I like, cut and drilled to fit. There are loops inside for pens. It's been with me all over the world, recording what I see and experience.
I started adding sketches in the mid-1990s, working from the Clare Walker Leslie's books on nature journals and the excellent Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain. The latter is excellent for those of us who have both a strong science leaning as well as an artistic side, but the science side gets in the way of free-flowing art and sketching especially.
Now I've been adding watercolor and a few more collages to my journal, switching to archival watercolor paper and handmade art papers.
In the Decorated Page, Gwen Diehn describes making pigments from local minerals and organic matter - and I had to try it. First, I made ink with charcoal from local mesquite, and then a beautiful ochre pigment from clay collected on a nearby road. I will post tutorials soon. And I can't wait to try other minerals and materials - oak gall ink, turquoise, fluorite, and chrysocolla pigment . . .
I {heart} . . . Kit Carson jewelry
I first started collecting Kit Carson jewelry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I have four of his pins, wonderful engraved desert animals, classic western engraving with a whinsical twist.
I rediscovered his work and he's added wonderful stones and more funk.
Must have a raven piece.
Traveling in southern California
J. and I are traveling in southern California this week, a mix of business and fun.
We're going to steal some time in LA to visit the Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Meanwhile here is an archive photo of a piece I'm repeating (in progress) - I love the nearly transparent carnelian cabochon - I am still on a bracelet kick!
Journal page ~ Fire on Elkhorn Ridge
There has been a fire on a ridge in the Baboquivari Mountains west and south of us . . . we watched it grow in the night, an eerie string of fire-pearls creeping up the mountain ridge. Now it is threatening Brown Canyon and the house where we used to live . . . and Elkhorn Ranch, owned by Mary and Charlie Miller . . . the fire was started by an illegal immigrant, trying to signal for help. We are in California right now and are watching and hearing the news from afar . . .
Journal page ~ Desert castanets
The seed pods on the foothills palo verde (Cercidium microphyllum) are drying out, and the wind today is turning each tree into a little band of castanets . . . click-click-rattle-rattle-clack. The colors are washed, pale yellow, soft green . . .
Food as art . . . summertime lunch
Cold snap peas with chipotle mayonnaise; quesadilla (flour tortilla with melted jack cheese and chipotle salsa; queso is Spanish for cheese); and watermelon juice with lime. I had some lovely seedless watermelon go a bit mushy in the fridge, so I pureed it with a little lime juice . . . the perfect summer drink. The colors were so beautiful, I had to share.
Inlaid stones and bone
I love cabochons inlaid with other stones - or bones. One of my favorite lapidary artists and goldsmiths is Michael Boyd, whose creations are astonishing; he layers gemstone over gemstone set in gold and silver, to create lavish and yet somehow organic jewelry.
His work introduced me to Arizona black jade, which is a delight to cut and polish. I think everyone buys it from a quirky guy named Robert at Sweetwater Mine. I regret I haven't kept any of my earliest pieces, but several are with friends and family - and I still have some nice rough to work with. Black jade cuts easily but polishes to a lovely glassy shine quickly; the natural unpolished rind is so beautiful, I often leave it natural and just polish the sides.
When muse-friend Debra gave me a little carved bone moon face and some cubic zirconia to play with, I knew I had to make a "Moon and Stars" piece. Here is my very first Arizona black jade piece, and I hope to return to the cutting wheels again soon; you can see the nice texture of the rind and the highly polished edges above the bezel:
I also made this piece very early in my jewelrymaking, for Debra - combining flat carnelian beads with Arizona Sleeping Beauty turquoise (including a cabachon 'inlay' aided by epoxy) in "East Meets West":
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