Christmas Mountains miracle

When I left the oasis 3 days ago, I measured how far down the water in the stucco tank was from the water inlet pipe. I measured carefully twice so I wouldn't get down here today and be disappointed thinking it had lost more water than it actually had, due to not measuring carefully. Immediately wrote it down. 25½" exactly. No wind moving the water. So today, after being gone exactly 3 days, I measured carefully again. Twice. Then a third time. No wind. 25½" down. It's truly unbelievable!

I had to take lots of pictures of the oasis to remind me how good it can look this time of year. Spring is just around the corner.

I got another happy surprise today. Among the weeds that grow all over the oasis are some weeds that look like poinsettias, except they're always green, called Toothed Spurge, sometimes with tiny splotches of red in them. I never pull them up because they're related to poinsettias, which I love. Well, today my sister and I were walking around and discovered bunches of them and they were red. We'd never seen them red before. Sure feels like Christmas in the Christmas Mountains today.

So I researched it, Euphorbia dentata. I've since been told that the poinsettia relatives do turn red when the weather gets cold. 

Today I hung one of the feeder covers. Tomorrow I'll hang the other. This one is fastened to the top of the pipe so it can't interfere with the banding trap.

A couple of weeks ago I did my annual housecleaning, thinking I'd have company for Thanksgiving, but the kids from Austin had to cancel their visit. The house needed cleaning anyway, but the kids coming always motivates me. Previously, I posted photos of the bedroom area of the living room. Here's the sitting area. Now I can be on my computer and visit at the same time.

I plan to either raise the bed, or get a taller bed frame so I can fit a twin mattress under this double bed. That way when the kids visit, with their growing families, and it's too cold or too hot to sleep upstairs, we can pull out the twin mattress for extra sleeping space. I know, they could sleep at the bunkhouse where there's bunks and all, but they like to stay in the house. More together time. Plus there's no wifi at the bunkhouse.