The Monsoons

As if this saga of me and m’house hasn’t been rife with twists and turns already, and I’m only casually referring to the linearity of the walls of the house, here, the biggest turn of events came yesterday at about 6 p.m.

The building process has been going swimmingly along. I can’t keep up with it in detail in the blog, but y’all are getting a pretty good snapshot of it, especially since it hasn’t been real riveting descriptions given the phase of work we’re in. I have tons more photos than I have patience to download, transfer and cut and paste into place on the blog page. (Ya get the best of the best in that category.)


The windows are going in/up is the big news. The ‘guest wing’ (that just cracks me up! It’s not like this is some estate with a mansion that has ‘wings’ to it, it’s a 3 bedroom, single story Santa Fe style layout. It’s just a wicked cool design with faboo design elements to it. And curved walls—oooooo!) is enclosed, save the 5 glass blocks that are going in the bathroom wall, so I guess that really means that only the two spare rooms are windowed. (So much for sounding so high-falutin’.) The big windows in the living room/’round room’ went in yesterday. Blocking of the trusses and running stringers and nailers for the sheet rock installation next week was also being done in parallel by Steve and Brett.

I was getting more in the way than not, so I opted to go to Albuquerque to do a little shopping. I have the opportunity to give some private art lessons and went to get supplies for that venture and, since I was in the area, to pop in at Borders to see what new offerings there were in the world of literature and trashy novels.

No sooner had I left Borders and it starts raining. No problem, it wasn’t much, and I hadn’t parked that far away. It rained about halfway home, then another rain cell hit me in Belen, still NP. But, as I glance towards the Manzano Mountains, the foot at which the house sits, there was one mutha’ of a low, dark, already dumping rain cloud mass.

“Woohoo! Another round of monsoons!” sez I, to no one but BB The Jeep, and the 2 bags of books from Borders (and one from Michael’s, of course.) But there’s something about this one that suggests that not is all well in the Land of Manana/The Manzano range. And then the hailstones start flying like softballs at a 4th of July tournament. They weren’t as big as softballs—I don’t embellish THAT grandly—but there were a lot of them. I bound down the road, turn onto the ranch road that serves as my private drive, and fortuitously find that the crew has cleared a space for BB in the garage. Perfect! I jump out and the full fury of when a cold, wet air meets hot air waves and the meeting is more of a collision, on the scale of a plane vs. tall building, hits me. I stood and watched Mother Nature have it out with herself.

To quote my texting students who can’t separate from their phones and the traditions of the written word: OMG! (Oh My God, for you septagenarians &/or non-texting purists.) The hailstones had mutated into lima bean size (I figure that’s not a size most of you are familiar with, at least not with that reference. Too bad. Go get some lima beans from the frozen food section and try ‘em; they’re good for you. AND, the size will be evident) and came out of the canales (Spanish for drainspout) in sheets of white. The associated torrents of rain were unrelenting for about 40 mins. First they came from the east. The winds shifted and the rain pounded from the south. And, yes, it shifted two more times and the ‘liquid sunshine’ flung itself from the other two cardinal points. It was all I could do to keep track of its movement.


Then the flooding started. The ground outside was a solid sheet of water in no time. There’s a couple of ‘ponds’ that the rancher had dug and while one did its job and held the water and drained into the arroyo, the other drained into a self-made river which, of course (Murphy’s Law) found its way to Rex’s half-assed backhoe work and raged under the portal and into the house. Eight inches is the watermark on that east side of the house! And a couple of windows got broken from the wind/hail/whatever. They hadn’t been installed yet. There’s an $800 expense I could do without re-spending. Oh well. C’est la guerre.

It was a doozy, Y’all!









The best part was that both of my arroyos, and their tributaries were all ‘running’. That was a beautiful sight!

When the rain had subsided to a steady, fairly gentle downfall I traipsed around the property taking pictures, taking note of drainage runoffs to the arroyos, and generally just filling my lungs with the scents of the wet desert and trilling with the sensation of rain rat-a-tat-tatting on my rain gear and exposed body parts (I was wearing shorts and sandals, Y’all—don’t be thinking Lady Godiva here). Another stunning experience.






A forty-plus minute deluge, with everything but flying cows and monkeys, and an hour later the earth had reclaimed the waters to begin the filtration and recycling process. As the state inspector for the wastewater department said when they came to inspect the septic system: “You’ve got excellent percolation up here.” As I should. It’s nothing but rocks and fine clay—excellent clay, as C ‘n N have deemed. It’s not the sticky-ruins-everything-it-gloms-onto kind of clay, but one does sink quickly and deeply into it when there’s A FLOOD.



























There it is: The good and the bad. The costs and the rewards. I wouldn’t change any of it for any price. I’m home.
PS: What IS it about nature up here at Chee chees del aigre Ranchita? Here's two damselflies (I think) "doin' it" on BB's antenna. I'm tellin' ya...this trailer park o'mine is one BAD idea! ;) Mananas, mijas y mijos!