driving through los ranchos, looking for everything and nothing

driving down my street, looking for roadrunners, cottontails, new mexico whiptails, and any other moving desert creature;

driving down dietz road, searching for quail families that don't cross rio grande boulevard;

driving down rio grande, announcing to the car "llamas!" (miniature llamas or alpacas and miniature donkeys, and some breed of goat);

driving down griegos, past the sheep farm with the supernatural trumpet vine that always blooms like crazy;

driving down matthew, watching out for errant chickens and guinea hens;

driving down chavez, looking for the grey gander that marches up and down her field and terrorizes the horses;

driving down dietz place, espying the emus;

driving down rio grande, looking for the pheasant family near the S turn, not far from the old treehouse and where the coyotes walk along the road;

driving down rio grande, seeking canadian geese, sandhill cranes and any other migratory birds;

driving down rio grande, admiring los poblanos farm and all the farmers farming;

driving down rio grande, watching fat cows eat long grass;

driving down rio grande, looking for horses, horses and more horses;

driving down rio grande, searching desperately for that enormous porcupine i know i saw one night about a year ago;

driving down rio grande, smelling but never actually seeing skunks;

driving down every street in the village, seeing fat labs and goldens laze in the sun behind invisible and not-so-invisible fences;

driving down every ditch in the village, watching new mexico brown dogs trot here and there and everywhere with their tongues hanging out and a happy step in their trot.



gigantic beloved ancient cottonwoods, reviled salt cedars, volunteer elms that need to be removed, pyrocantha/firethorn, desert willows, bird of paradise trees, two tons of purple plum, russian sage too numerous to count, chamisa, scrubby piñons, scrubby junipers, scrubby odd evergreens that i don't know the name of, cacti, lavender grosso and a little lavender provence, fields of sunflowers, goatheads that will pop your tires and stab the hell out of your fingers, silverleaf nightshade, bindweed that looks pretty in a field when it isn't choking a garden, the occasional tumbleweed, rectangular bales of freshly mowed blue grama grass, naturally-occurring green (in the desert!), hollyhocks, lilacs, crusher fine and pecan shelled yards, and acequias feeding flooded fields with ducks swimming in the newly-made lakes.

i hope it never changes.