Yard Art

Good morning, my friends. The weather is still chilly here in Pahrump, but things are looking up. Each day grows warmer in the coming week. We were treated to a pretty sunset yesterday evening. Of course, the sun sets in the west, but to the east, it lights up the hills behind us.

To the south, it turned those snow-covered peaks a pretty shade of coral.

The kitties are still optimistic they'll get the morning sunshine on their window hammocks one of these days. They spent their morning like this:

We'll try to face the right direction when we get to Death Valley next week.

It's still cold here. Yesterday there was a cold wind blowing. Still, I was determined to get out for a walk, and so I bundled up and headed out. Once I found the shelter of the surrounding neighborhood homes, the wind was less troublesome. So here's what I saw.

This first home was in the process of adding old rusty things to its landscape decor. I love this stuff. First, I saw this wagon with a barrel/keg on the back. Hard to tell what this might have been used for at one time.

As I've mentioned, these hubs and spoked wheels always capture my photographer's eye. I'm not sure why. 

They also had this old woodstove.

There was a door on the other side for loading wood. Sorry about cutting off the bottom. It was hard to see my camera screen in the bright sunshine.

I like these lanterns too. There were several of these hanging in various places. This one had Christmas lights strung out to it, and I expect they light this place up at night.

This was at the next house over. I thought it was a sort of a mill, but it's hard to tell in this picture.

There were bird houses attached to this mailbox post.

This one was around the other side.

And then, there were these two.

Of course, I took pictures of every blooming and fruiting thing. This prickly pear was loaded with pears. (They serve prickly pear margaritas at a restaurant in Death Valley. I'm already looking forward to those.)

This is a blooming cholla.

I almost walked past this next one, but then noticed the little bloom at the top.

This is a pencil cholla. It looks like the cholla above, but the "branches" are no wider than the width of a #1 pencil.

I couldn't tell if these were flowers or just new growth, but I liked the color change from the darker green to the nearly chartreuse at the ends.

Here is a nearly-spent rose. That looks like Queen Anne's Lace beside it. The yards in this neighborhood were mostly done in rock, but there were plenty of weeds growing too. 

Here's a potted geranium.

And another rose. I was standing way back and zooming way in for some of these shots. If I lived in this neighborhood, I wouldn't be happy about some stranger walking around taking pictures, and so I try not to make myself obvious.

I might think this is lithodora like what we have back home, but the greenery is different. My phone tells me it's rosemary. I could be, I suppose.

In the fake flower category, these sunflowers. They don't require water.

There were plenty of fake animals too. Here's a song dog, aka coyote.

This turtle...you can see he has a friend in the lower left corner of the image below.

There were plenty of deer. 

Do deer live here in the desert? If they do, I haven't seen any.

A frog in a bird bath.

These were parked on the top of a brick wall. You can see the painted rocks there too.

Behind the wall was this next blowing object. You'll have to look carefully. It's the head of a peacock in the lower left corner, and then the tail "feathers" were blowing in the wind.

Beside the peacock was this donkey.

Here's a white rabbit. No word on whether this is the white rabbit.

A swan. I was trying to figure out what this is made of, but I didn't come any closer than this picture.

More deer and rabbits.

I like the pattern on the trunk of this palm tree. This happens as the lower fronds are cut off.

There was also this take a book, leave a book little library. I have always loved this idea.

We've seen this house as we drive by. We think they've coiled some black hoses on their roof for a sort of jerry-rigged solar water heating system. Kinda clever, actually.

And that was the end of my walk. Back at the RV, I finished off the 5th stitchery for the Snowmen & Reindeer project. That button is supposed to be a little bluebird. It took me a while to figure out which button belonged here.

And I'm happy to say there's still this much floss on my first spool of Perle cotton. I doubt there's enough to finish the next block, but these have a way of lasting a lot longer than I thought they would.

Here are the five blocks I have so far.

And now I've traced the next one. This one is called "Snowman with Mittens."

And now, that's hooped up and ready to go.

Probably I won't have time for stitching today, although Mike has gone back to bed, so maybe I will. Anyway...the plan for the day is to drive the half-hour or so over to Shoshone, which is across the state line in California. There's a historic mining town called Dublin Gulch we can see there. You can read more about it at that link I've given you. There's also an associated 3-mile trail, and we'll probably do that too.

So that will keep us busy for most of the day. I'm happy to see some better weather. These days cooped up in the RV have been disappointing, and so it'll be nice to get outside more. I'm hopeful y'all are seeing some warmer weather too.