. . . to all my readers in 2014.
I’m also happy to welcome some new visitors thanks to Fine Gardening’s blog, Garden Photo of the Day, which has featured our Kigali garden for December 30 and 31 (and New Year’s Day).
We’re down to our last week in Rwanda; next stop: Germany — where it’s been snowing for the last four days.
Happy New Year to you all!
More properly called by their genus name, Pelargonium.
An enclosed front porch in Chamisal, New Mexico, July 1940, by Russell Lee, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Lee and his wife, Jean, spent two weeks in Chamisal and Peñasco documenting the lives of the towns’ Hispanic small farmers and ranchers. Both communities are located along the High Road to Taos, which begins in Santa Fe and crosses the high desert and forest of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The area was the setting for the 1974 book The Milagro Beanfield War — as well as the filming location for the 1988 movie of the same name. Milagro was the first of a trilogy of novels by John Nichols about north central New Mexico. The second and third books were set in the fictional town of Chamisaville.
“Children beside a Christmas tree,” ca. 1910s, via Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office Commons on flickr.
I think this snapshot may have been taken by a child — the focus is as much on the toy horse and the cat as on the other children and the tree.
Woman and baby in a flower garden in front of an adobe oven, July 1940, Chamisal, New Mexico, (along the High Road to Taos) by Russell Lee, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Chamisal was settled by Spanish colonialists in the 18th century. The name may come from the “chamois” shrub (Chrysothamnus or rabbitbrush).
Lee and his wife, Jean, spent two weeks in Chamisal and Peñasco documenting the lives of the towns’ Hispanic small farmers and ranchers.
The winding High Road to Taos begins in Santa Fe and crosses the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The landscape includes high desert, forest, farms, and historic Spanish Land Grant and Pueblo Indian villages.
“Alan Brebner with a cat,” ca. 1900, Spruce Grove, Alberta, by Robert McKay Brebner, via the Provincial Archives of Alberta Commons on flickr.
Wild on woodland ways your sires
Flashed like fires:
Fair as flame and fierce and fleet
As with wings on wingless feet. . .— Algernon Charles Swinburne, from “To a Cat“
enclos*ure 