I thought the sunrises in my hometown of San Pedro aka Los Angeles harbor, were spectacular -- but the ones here beat those. And part of their attraction is -- there are no buildings or other evidence of man; 100% natural. The evening before I prepared the ground around the water feature to pick up animal tracks as I was curious what large animals were attracted to it. I'd seen Javelina, Coues (white-tailed) Deer, and Gray Fox -- but as I showed in yesterday's post a "critter cam" at someone's house up the canyon had picked up a passing mountain lion, so I wanted to know if it had made its way down here. So I raked the ground, smoothing it out and making it level by moving the stones and rocks -- and Mother Nature made the ground muddy with the hard rain of the evening before. So in the morning I went out to the water feature, and saw this --
The small tracks on the right are probably deer, but the one on the top -- well, see those claws? It's probably that of a black bear, the only type of bear here in the Chiricahuas. I was expecting mountain lion, so this was a surprising find. A bear -- or bears -- have been seen here, in fact a friend said he surprised one in his back yard that was holding a hummingbird feeder in his paws and chugging down the nectar. The bear was more scared than he was, and "rushed" off into the brush. So it's kinda thrilling to know one has visited Casa Faranuf's back yard...Later in the morning I did a major weed-whacking job on the driveway. As I've mentioned before, I'm the only house on "S Faranuf Trail" -- and the "street" is actually my long driveway. It does tend to get grassy, particularly in strip in the middle and along the edges, and eventually can lead to a "trail" with a tight fit. It's a long driveway as it winds around and comes out on the north side of the house, when it would be more practical -- and shorter and more direct -- to come out in the area of the garage on the south side, but it's too late to change it as there's lots of growth -- mesquite and such -- in the way of carving out another driveway. So there's a lot of grass on the edges to cut down. I donned my weed whacking gear -- hat, goggles, cloth respirator, long-sleeved shirt, long pants, snake guards, and boots -- and started whacking away. I'd also bought a new harness for carrying the string trimmer; it goes on both shoulders, as opposed to the one that came with the trimmer that goes on only one, so both shoulders take the weight of the trimmer and your shoulders don't ache as much. I could REALLY tell the difference, and the trimmer didn't seem as unbalanced, as if it would swing around. So I weed-whacked for over an hour, getting about 2/3rds of the driveway done, then raked up the cuttings and put them in big trash bags -- THAT was actually the hardest, and longest, part of the job. No snakes to report during all that time, which is a good thing though I know they're out there...In the afternoon I cut down those big feeder hangers that looked like human stick figures with their arms sticking out. Remember them?
The one on the right is hidden by the porch post. I got a hand saw and sawed them down to just above the metallic "thingie" about 2/3rds of the way down. They were in the way of the view -- and they just looked, well, weird. So now they're history...In the evening it clouded-up as it had done the night before, but this time it didn't rain. So instead we had a quietly spectacular sunset --
Other people in Cochise County, where I live, reported and took photos of wildly colorful clouds -- and rainstorms that we on the east side of the Chiricahuas never got. The weather can be "eccentric" here -- rain on one side of the street, and clear, dry skies on the other. But it's all part of the allure of living here..
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