It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day, It's a New Dam
The Conservancy staff tore out the beaver dam I photographed last week, and here "it's a new dawn, it's a new day" and the beavers have already built a new dam. Unless the Conservancy staff trap and relocate the beaver, I believe the destruction of the beaver dams and their subsequent rebuilding will be a Battle of Evermore. And while I'm on a roll of relating songs to beaver dams:
Beavers don’t need no extra harassing
We don't need no dam control
No dark diggers in the ditch now
Workers leave those dams alone
Hey! workers! leave those dams alone!
All in all they're just another stick in the falls.
All in all they're just another stick in the falls.
But then again, all this destroy and rebuild could be a Works Project partnership between the Conservancy District and the beavers to create jobs for both man and beast.
A lone crane flying across an explosion of clouds and sunshine.
The new day beaver dam from under the bridge.
A Copper's Hawk flying along the Rio Grande
A triad of Sandhill Cranes with the sun setting behind clouds.
Cooper's Hawk treading air
Super-wide view of the clearwater ditch and the new day beaver dam
And the Wall Comes Tumbling Down
Just over 2 years after the two buildings on the end of our block burned, https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/burning-down-the-block/, and over a year and a half after demolition of the burned buildings, https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont/, that left the east facing wall of Patrician Design exposed, all the messy issues with the fire and property lines have been resolved to the point that Patrician Design can finally get the exposed and damaged exterior wall replaced. Construction has begun, and the wall comes tumbling down.
Castor canadensis
Looking at the beaver dam from under the bridge.
The Bestiary, or Book of Beasts, written between 1220 and 1250, describes the beaver as fallows:
“There is an animal called the beaver, which is quite tame, whose testicles are excellent as medicine. The naturalists say of it that when it realizes that hunters are pursuing it, it bites off its testicles and throws them down in front of the hunters, and thus takes flight and escapes. If it so happens that another hunter follows it, it stands up on its hind legs and shows its sexual organs. When the second hunter sees that it has no testicles, he goes away. …The beaver (castor) is so called because it castrates itself.”†
The Castor canadensi in our clear water ditch seem to have given up castrating themselves, as they have the balls to keep building dams after Conservancy staff tear the beavers’ dams out. So far the beavers have built their third dam in the same place after the first two were torn out over the past couple months.
†Excerpt from Bestiary MS Bodley 764. Pages 43 and 44. “Bestiary being an English version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764 with all the original miniatures reproduced in Facsimile. Translated and introduced by Richard Barber. The Boydell Press. Woodrifge. 1999”
Beaver dam from under the bridge on the bank of the clearwater ditch, The debris from the previous dams the Conservancy tore out is piled up on the other side of the ditch.
A little elm tree the beavers have been gnawing on.
Piles of debris from previous dams with the latest dam rebuilt in the same place as the other dams.
CompuSpunk
Spunk waiting for me to sit down at the computer so he can get on lap. You can see an animated gif of CompuSpunk on my WordPress blog at https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/compuspunk/
Sasha and Najar napping on a throw rug in the bathroom sink.
Najar looking pretty on the rug in the sink.
Hoodie on a Heater Vent
Laurie's warm-up hoodie on the heater vent waiting for the heater to come on and warm it up.
Christmas nails and berries.
The furnace comes on the the hoodie comes to life.
Spunk helping break down the container the blueberries came in for recycling.
Najar taking advantage of the hoodie heating up to get warm.
A Fence for Julie
A fence for Julie.
Julie, who has Frog Pond Farm in New Zealand, loves wood fences. While I was out photographing the cranes and Sandias yesterday, I walked by this fence and thought to myself "Now that's a fence Julie would love."
Sasha
Sunflower with a Mohawk
While we were out on the river bank waiting for the Sandias to turn pink, which didn't happen, I noticed a sunflower with a mohawk and an attitude — sunflower to punkflower proudly showing off its do.
Earlier in the day I was out test driving Laurie's car after I finished some maintenance and repairs on it. As I was driving back into Corrales from Rio Rancho, I noticed the Sandias were looking really gnarly in the strong winter sunshine. I stopped on the bank of the drainage canal along River's Edge above Corrales Road, and got this shot of the rugged Sandias behind the "Road Closed" sign.
Laurie standing on the edge of the Rio Grande in subfreezing temperatures waiting for the Pink.
A Year of Climbing Dangerously
Stick caricatures of Jay, me and Bruce with our various records, and daily tic-marks recording each day's climb.
A year ago today, Friday, January 16, 2015, I got the bright idea to climb the stairs in the New Mexico Bank and Trust Building in the next block west of our office. Bruce and I walked over and climbed the 36 flights of stairs to the roof access on the 16th floor. We suffered for our effort, hacking and coughing for 30 minutes or more afterward. The next week Jay joined us and we three have climbed the steps almost every week day since, racking up around 250 ascents. There were a few times we climbed twice in a day, but that was rare. After a few months of climbing we started timing ourselves and constantly tried to better our previous records. That's where it got dangerous, and we realized after a couple of months of record setting, it was pretty easy to strain muscles and injure ourselves pushing really hard up 36 flights stairs. Of late we climb at a pretty good clip that makes me breath hard, but not hard enough to strain muscles.
My best time on the left, Jay's best time on the right.
The End's in Sight — A Year After A Ground Breaking Experience
The corner of 3rd Street and Silver.
A year ago today I stood among the small crowd who had gathered to witness a ground breaking experience on the eve of construction of the Imperial Building in Downtown Albuquerque. After the local politicians spoke, they donned hard hats, stuck their silver shovels into the soil and broke ground. A year later the color coat is almost complete and within another 3 months the Imperial Building should be finished. I photographed the progress of the construction almost every week until the building got to the point where there was less visible changes on the exterior each week. You can see an animated gif of the building going up at over the past year at https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/the-ends-in-sight-a-year-after-a-ground-breaking-experience/.
The east side of the building on 2nd Street. The building is distorted from my super-wide-ange lens.
The front of the building on Silver distorted by my super-wide-angle lens.
The west side of the building on 3rd Street with a little less distortion.
The west and north side of the building from 3rd Street. The workers applying the color coat.
Below are links to the progress I posted of the past year:
The Eve Of Construction: A Groundbreaking Experience
