New Life / Alpine trip / Coffee / Deer

About the only thing I can tell that the recent 3/4 inch of rain has done so far is to bring life back to the ocotillo around here. A few days ago this still looked like the skeleton of its self, but now its covered with leaves. The most it has done this year is put out two puny blooms and that was while there was no other growth on it. Those were probably because I have dumper ice melt around it a few times. Those blossoms lingered for a long time and finally disappeared. Unfortunately they probably won't bloom again and also unfortunately they seem to be the only plants that benefited from the rain at all. I'm hoping the Yuccas, other cactus and desert grass will follow. Its probably too late for the Yucca to bloom and put on fruit this year though because they did that near Alpine months ago. Looks like no Strawberry cactus fruit and for that matter no Prickly Pear fruit either.

I took Frann and Jicky to Alpine with me yesterday and talk about a couple of shopaholics!  They shopped until I dropped. They made me go in each place and buy stuff I didn't even want. ;) well I guess I wanted what I bought or I probably wouldn't have bought it. Anyway one of the stops was the Family Outreach thrift store there and we usually go there when we're up that way. I'd seen the below part to a coffee pot there each time I went in there and yesterday I actually picked it up and looked at it.

I'm sure its the pot part of an old high end coffee maker, but that was all that was there. After taking the lid off I noticed that it was actually a thermos so for $2 I jumped on it. (Stainless steel bladder inside) It will hold about twice as much coffee as I'll drink in a morning so I'll make enough coffee to fill it and have coffee for two mornings by just heating it the second morning. That's how I usually do it, but the damn moths keep drowning in it and I've had to throw out several pots because of that. Now I won't have to worry about that anymore because of the lid.

The way I make coffee here is to use an old Mr Coffee type coffee maker, but I don't plug it in. I put the filter and coffee in the basket and then slowly pour heated water from a pan off the stove through the filter/coffee. It works well, but without the heat element working on the maker the coffee cools off real fast with the low humidity and cool mornings. By the time I finish a cup I either have to pour the coffee back in the pan and warm it up or pour it in the pan and keep the burner going real low to keep the coffee hot. This morning I used my new prize and poured the coffee in it and didn't have to reheat the coffee at all. I checked about an hour ago and it was still warm enough to drink, but in the mornings now I won't have to keep heating it I can drink the whole pot without bothering.

 Well maybe the rain has done more. I was sitting out by the trailer in the shade about 30 minutes ago and saw something moving across the road from here. Maybe 100 yards. It was a mule deer doe foraging. I was as quiet and slow as I could be to go inside and get the camera. When I got back out side it had dropped off the hill so I started walking down the road and startled it when it came back in to view. It was cutting a high speed trail by the time I could snap this photo. This is by far the closest I've seen a deer to here so far. I have seen their droppings around here before though.