Serendipity-Southwest Style

"Yard Sale!" the handwritten sign on Highway 28 announced.  My husband Wayne can't resist the possibility of finding a treasure at bargain prices.  The drive from Mesilla, New Mexico back home to El Paso. Texas one leisurely Saturday had lulled me into a dreamlike state.   I opted to stay in the car while he shopped.

It didn't take Wayne long to purchase two small baskets, which he tossed in the back seat while proudly announcing, "Two dollars each!"  Oh no, more clutter for the house was my initial reaction.

After closer examination, however, I warmed up to the baskets.  They appeared to be handmade with natural materials like grapevines and rope, and they certainly were an unusual shape.  And just the right depth for a collection of small flower pots!

Every year, about mid-winter, I get the urge for springtime to arrive so that I can garden outside. Hopefully, an indoor plant project would tide me over until warmer weather arrived.

Most of the landscaping around our house consists of desert plants.  One of the joys of desert landscaping is discovering tiny volunteer versions growing nearby their giant mother plants. We transplant the babies to three to four inch clay pots, using whatever old pots we find on the potting bench. 

I gathered up all of these small pots from their winter homes inside near bright windows and spread them out on the kitchen counter.  Some were tiny versions of xeriscape materials and others were small succulents that I had bought or propagated from cuttings.

After lining the baskets with aluminum foil to retard water damage, the creative part began.  I spent a good deal of time happily trying out different placement of pots in the baskets.  I was finally able to fit eight small pots of differing sizes and shapes into the two baskets.

I could have stopped the project at this point, but I wanted a bit more polish.  A trip to Lowe's for sphagnum moss to fill in the areas between the plants and a bag of small white decorative rocks to cover up the soil in the tiny pots, and the baskets were finished.  Here are the finished products!

Finding a home for two new baskets amid all of the other indoor-for-the-winter plants took some rearranging, but now the baskets are prominently displayed in a room we call the estancia, It is an outdoor patio converted into a TV and dining area.

This bit of serendipity - Wayne finding the baskets and recognizing their possibilities for a new life- gave me the opportunity to spend a creative afternoon on a very cloudy, gloomy day.  Will springtime every arrive?

Please note:  Southwest Kaleidoscope is taking a mini-vacation.  I'll be back on February 13 to talk about Northern Arizona. 

Decorating Southwest Stylel

www.gagehotel.com

It must have been my first visit to the Gage Hotel in Marathon, Texas that was my muse for decorating Southwest Style.  I fell instantly in love with the sparse yet elegant furnishings, all with a touch of southwestern heritage.

Since that time, I have tried to decorate our home in El Paso, Texas to have the same wow factor as the Gage.  I'm still chasing that ideal, but here are some of the furnishings in our house that have special memories for me.

This table and chair are in our guest rooms that we call the "Texas Room."  They originally belonged to Libbie Calk, my mother-in-law.  The boots on the floor were hers.  The old hat box came from my side of the  family, and the hat and lamp were gifts from friends .  This is my favorite spot for reading the newspaper on cold winter mornings.  The room used to be my son's bedroom before he left for college, so it holds lots of good memories for me.

This is a photo from a room we call the estancia. (Less pretentious owners might call it a sun room.)  At any rate, it is an enclosed area that was once a back patio.  The trastero (cupboard) in the cupboard was a find of my husband's. I didn't inquire too deeply into its origins but quickly slapped several coats of  turquoise paint on it.  The object in the middle of the table is an antique bread warmer from the 1880's.

Still in the estancia, I love this flower pot decorated using a mosaic technique and given to us by friends one Christmas.  The coyote howling on the floor was made by my husband Wayne.

Moving on to the living room, this antique piece of furniture called a tinajero has been recently re-purposed to display Wayne's collection of Native American realia.

The bathrooms have been a special challenge to convert to Southwest Style.  Here is one of the earliest basins that we had changed out in the downstairs powder room.  It is showing a little wear and tear, but I have no plans to replace it any time soon.

And finally, there are the santos that I have collected for years.  They decorate one wall of our kitchen. Unfortunately, I have lost touch with the artist who made the santos.   I used to buy them at Kermezaar in El Paso or at craft fairs in New Mexico.

Thanks for taking this tour with me.  My decorating efforts remind me of HGTV where they feature a very expensive room and then try to convince you that you can get the same look for a lot less money.  I'm afraid our home isn't the Gage Hotel, but I have a great excuse to keep trying to decorate in Southwest Style.

Soup's On!

It's a pleasant daytime highs in the 50's, lows in the 60's in the Southwest this January, but as soon as the sun sets all too soon behind the mountains, there is a definite chill in the air. As dinner time draws near, I am drawn to soups.  

I'm not talking about  the overly processed, salty soups often found in cans (although I have been known to get out my can opener in emergencies),but hearty,flavorful, homemade soups. I would like to share two recipes with you that I have made recently.

Hamburger Soup.    You'll have to forgive me for not giving exact quantities, but I had to reconstruct this soup from one our former housekeeper used to make every Wednesday.  It was always a treat to walk into the kitchen after a long work day and find soup on the stove (and a stack of warm homemade flour tortillas on the counter).  I haven't mastered tortilla making yet, but here is how to make the soup.

Brown a pound of (preferably lean) hamburger meat in a skillet with some onion and garlic. Add a package of frozen mixed vegetables, a can of tomatoes (with green chiles or other flavors), enough beef broth to make the mixture look like soup, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 30 minutes.  Add about half a cup of some kind of dried pasta.  Simmer about 10 minutes more. That's it!  This soup can also be frozen with success.

  

Gorgonzola Soup.  Another soup recipe was sent to me by a former colleague at New Mexico State University, Mark Milliorn. Mark is not only responsible for what computer skills I now have, but it looks like he is going to upgrade my cooking skills as well!  I recently made Mark's Gorgonzola Cheese Soup for my husband, who took one spoonful and declared, "Now that's gourmet-ish." 

This soup requires a trip to the market.  I bought a red onion, a small can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (you just need one chile) , a half pound of gorgonzola cheese, a six pack of ale (you just need 8 ounces), a small carton of whipping cream, and a quart of whole milk.  I already had olive oil, garlic cloves, and of course salt and pepper.  Whenever I try a recipe for the first time, I try to follow the instructions exactly before I start substituting ingredients!

The instructions said to puree one chopped red onion, three garlic cloves, and one chipotle pepper and then sauté the mixture in two tablespoons of hot olive oil. Add the crumbled cheese and heat on low-medium heat until cheese begins to melt.  Stir in beer, then milk and cream.  Whisk if necessary.  Heat to boiling point, but DON'T BOIL.  (Some patience required at this stage.)  Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.  My husband was right.  This soup is indeed very gourmet-ish.  

Soup would be great to serve to avid TV watchers of  Super Bowl football in the coming weeks.  A cry of "Soup's on!", provided at halftime of course, will be welcome, I'm sure.

In Search of a Field of Wildflowers

http://www.freenaturepictures.com/wildflowers-pictures.php

Enough of this planting of annual flowers!  You know the drill.  Buy them, stick in the ground, admire, deadhead, pull up after the first frost in fall, start over again after the final frost in spring. Pretty, but not true gardening, I decided one gray January day as I eagerly anticipated the arrival of yet another planting season.

Wildflowers!  That’s what we need around the swimming pool!  Plant the seeds, let the flowers become naturalized, neglect them, enjoy them every year thereafter.  Now that sounds like my kind of gardening.  Yet, my previous experiences with trying to start plants from seed had not been memorable.  The tiny seeds just disappeared into the ground, never to be seen or heard from again.

I decided to go native for this project, following the precepts of the El Paso Native Plant Society (http://www.npsnm.org/about/chapters/el-paso-texas/).  The lady who answered the phone at the recommended nursery said that yes, she sold native wildflower seeds, but only in small seed packages.  Why didn’t I order seeds by the pound on the Internet?  I had visions of the UPS man delivering a tow sack full of seeds to my front door within days.

Here is the website I went to:

Buyer Beware!  Seductive website.! http://www.plantsofthesouthwest.com

Gorgeous color photos of native plants, all in bloom, naturally.  Should I start with a pound of wildflower seeds or two?  After checking the price list, I settled on a modest one ounce package of seeds for $8.00, plus shipping.  The seeds arrived in a few days in a very small envelope by U.S. mail.  The names of the promised plants were intriguing.  There were  Pink Wild Snapdragon, Succulent Lupine, Owls Clover, Birdcage Primrose and ten others. 

Meanwhile, I noticed that the neighborhood grocery store had set up a display of wildflower seeds to attract customers like me who were itching for springtime.  I picked up a box of seeds out of curiosity, feeling superior because I had already bought mine online.  Two ounces for $1.00!  I had just spent 16 times that amount on my web-ordered seeds!  But then I noticed that the box contained only 12% flower seed mixture.  And the names of the plants were less exotic – Coreposis tinctoria mix, Chrysanthemum Shasta Daisy, Calendula officianalis, and fourteen others.  I bought the seeds anyway.

The big decision now was whether to mix or separate the seeds?  Should I plant the over-priced native wildflower seeds in one area and the Brand X seeds in another and let them compete?  Or should I mix them up and never treat them as if some were, well, special.  

Now I'm looking forward to the arrival of Daylight Savings Time.    I can use that extra hour in the evenings to baby the new wildflowers.  My husband will devote several hours to hoeing the flower beds, preparing them for planting, and doing serious repair work on the automatic watering system.  I'll work for about ten minutes and scatter the seeds, pressing them lightly into the ground with my foot.  Now that’s my idea of gardening!

http://www.freenaturepictures.com/wildflowers-pictures.php

  

Chasing a Holiday Fantasy

Sometime around Halloween each year, I start worrying about how to create a fantasy for the upcoming holidays.  Christmas and New Year's of course can be times of spiritual renewal and deep soulful reflection, but how about that extra spark, that memorable feeling of being out of one's ordinary life, a peak experience, so to speak?

Searching for a suspension of the humdrum, I have always enjoyed "The Nutcracker Suite" ballet.  A toy nutcracker that comes to life to fight mice, a sugar plum fairy, and candies that come to life and dance. Why not?

This holiday season, my husband Wayne and I made reservations at the most atmospheric hotel we know of - The La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Let me try to recreate the experience for you.

Our first decision was to take an extra hour for the drive from El Paso to Santa Fe by choosing less traveled roads and staying off the interstate highways. Wonderfully relaxing!  Time to talk, listen to local radio stations, and daydream.

Walking into the lobby of La Fonda was like being part of a movie set. There was a gigantic Christmas tree, a large gingerbread house, and, best of all, an amazing amount of hustle and bustle.

I won't bore you with details of our hotel room with a marvelous view onto a street below with a chapel spire in the background, the authentic decor of the wall decorations and furniture, or the plush bed and comfortable seating (with reading lights!)  But let me take you outside the La Fonda. Take a right turn, walk half a block, and you reach the Basilica of St Francis- a beautiful place for quiet reflection.

Our next treat was dinner in La Plazuela, the La Fonda dining room.  What you can't see in the picture below are the individually painted glass tiles that decorate the open area.  Each tile is a different, colorful folk design.  I daydream about recreating some of those deceptively simple designs on flower pots for my garden.

But the peak experience was still to come - the Christmas Eve Walk on Canyon Road. As the sun set and the night grew chilly, we bundled up and joined revelers to walk an historic road, now home to upscale art galleries and restaurants, decked out with farolitos (candles in small paper bags) and Christmas lights.  Luminarias (small bonfires) were lit along the way in driveways where revelers could warm themselves and join in singing carols.  There were young people in noisy groups, older people making their way slowly and carefully over the uneven street, wide-eyed children riding on dads' shoulders, families trying not to get separated, and even dogs, dressed in doggy blankets more elegant than my thrown-together winter attire.  A wonderful community event.  

I had found my holiday fantasy!