It's spring in Portal and we have been busy!  I'm so lazy about keeping this up to date, but I'm going to do it right now!  

Since mid-February we helped our community with our annual Soup Kitchen to raise money for Portal Rescue, our local volunteer fire and EMT organization.  For three days, local folks supply crock pots of soups, breads and deserts for lunch and all funds go to Portal Rescue.  It's a great effort by everyone and people come from as far away as Tucson, Sierra Vista, Silver City and Deming to enjoy the wind variety of soups and stews!  You have to get there early, because the good stuff runs out fast!

After talking to a lot of the locals about the need for music in the community, we started inviting our local music lovers to our house on Sunday afternoons through February and March and enjoyed making music, from old cowboy songs, folk songs, even some Beatles & John Denver songs.  Guitars, banjos, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas, spoons and washboards, as well as some folks who just come to sing along.  It's a lot of fun.  And we all know how music makes everyone happy!  There are some very talented musicians here and a few beginners that benefit from playing with others who can give them some tips and pointers.  Most of our winter residents are heading north or south in some cases now and we'll be picking up again in the fall.  

We enjoyed an Historical Society field trip to the old townsite of Hilltop in White Tail Canyon and learned of the many mining operations that once covered the area, the businesses that sprung up to support the miners and the one room school house that some kids had to walk through a tunnel in the mountain to get to!  Imagine having to do your morning chores, then walk 2-3 miles uphill, then through a tunnel and then downhill to the school. In the early 1900s there was always the threat of indian attacks too.  This was the homeland of  Geronimo and Cochise and it's no wonder they fought so hard to stay here.

 The current claim to fame in this area is birding. The Sky Island canyons are home to birds and other wildlife that don't occur anywhere else in the United States.  In April and May, we meet people from all over the world with one focus, birds.  I'll be hosting a birding group from North Carolina this weekend.  I just have to point out a few interesting spots to find birds and they'll be happy.  There's a Blue-Throated hummingbird sitting on a nest on a light fixture at our neighbors house and Elf owls are courting up and down our short dirt road each evening.  I saw our first Summer Tanager yesterday and today a Cassin's Kingbird and a flock of Cedar Waxwings.  They are beautiful!

In March The Banjo Blasters came to Portal to participate in the annual St. Patricks Day Parade and played a concert to benefit the Scholarship Fund for our local ladies organization.  We had a great time!  The Blasters stayed at the Cave Creek Ranch and we jammed into the night at our house Friday and Saturday nights.  The locals really enjoyed our music and invited us back again for next year's event.  We might even get the group to come for Octoberfest.

March was a really busy month. We had to go to Tucson 3 times to play banjo gigs.  Most in Green Valley at club dinners like the Eastern States Club and the Minnesota Club and an outdoor public concert at La Posada Shoppes always has a big crowd.  We did another fund raiser at Voyager RV Park and it was a huge success.  We always have fun when we play with the Blasters, so we are torn sometimes because we hate to leave Portal.  We prefer to only return to Tucson once or twice a month, but the band is so popular with winter visitors in Green Valley, that there were 4 gigs in Green Valley alone!  We also try to spend a day with Melody and the boys when we're in Tucson.  Wes will be starting kindergarten in August and Greg goes to nursery school for a couple hours a day, so we have to work around their schedules, but so far we've been seeing them once or twice a month.  They are fun little boys and are growing up fast.  We're looking forward to the days when they'll want to hike with us.

Our Fairbanks friend Frank Keim spent two months in the house across our road.  He's a really interesting guy and we took a few walks with him in the mountains and to Willcox Lake.  His wife Jennifer was here for the first month, then his twin brothers came for a few weeks.  Their family used to come here for winters when they were teens, so they've hiked all over these mountains.  Frank led us to North Fork Cave Creek Falls.  A short by difficult hike because of all the rock hopping and downed trees we had to navigate through, but it was worth the effort.  Frank taught school in the remote villages along the Yukon River for 20 years and has walked across Alaska beyond the Brooks Range more than once.  He speaks Upik pretty well for a white man.

We really had fun when Melody brought the boys out here for a weekend and we took them to our friends Frances & Peter Grills ranch.  They got to feed a orphaned calf from a bottle and feed treats to the camels and horses.  Yes, I said camels.  They have two camels and they are huge animals!  I never realized how big they were until I stood next to one!  Very strange to see them in this environment.  The Grills have llamas too, but the llamas weren't as friendly as the camels and wouldn't come to the fence to be petted.  The boys loved petting and feeding the horses and Wesley fell in love with the dog named Gracie and wanted to take her home.

Bud & I volunteer at the Visitors Information Center in the Portal Ranger Station at the mouth of Cave Creek Canyon a couple days a month.  The forest service can't afford to hire a ranger this year, so the Friends of Cave Creek Canyon has a group of volunteers who are taking over as hosts.   We love meeting people and telling about the great birding and hiking here.  Cave Creek Canyon is truly a natural treasure.  We share the VIC with 5 rattlesnakes, a gila monster, a hog-nosed snake and a king snake.  These are tended and owned by our local snake guy Barney.  The large Western Diamondback does give me goosebumps when he decides to rattle.

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Sorry about not updating here, but it has been a busy, very cold (until last week) winter in Portal and southeast Arizona.  
Where do I start?  January was really a cold month. We had weeks of 40 degree days and low 20s overnight.  Because our yard is ringed with large Arizona Cypress Trees, we don't get much warming from the low winter sun, so our wood stove was burning up our firewood 24/7!  Our birdbath was frozen solid for days on end and we got snow a couple of times.  We continue to see skunks and raccoons on our yard cam nearly every night and Coues Whitetail deer hop our fence to eat corn we put out for the critters.  If we leave our gate open, javelinas and free range cows find their way into the yard and help themselves to whatever they can scrounge up.
We go to Tucson about twice a month to see Mel, Matt and the boys and play with the Banjo Blasters.  February is a busy month in Portal, so we've been sticking around.  We are now volunteering at the Visitor's Information Center on Cave Creek Road once or twice a month. I'm involved with the ladies organization Sew What and we've arranged for the Banjo Blasters to come play a benefit concert to raise money for the Scholarship Fund on March 12th.  The band will be in the St. Patrick's Day parade in the morning and then perform at the Rodeo New Mexico Community Center at 3pm.  We're looking forward to a fun weekend.
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In January we went to Palomas Mexico with Skip and Nona.  I had some dental work done at the Fierro Dental Clinic and was impressed with the 24 hour dental office. The cost is substantially less than here in the United States and the translator explained my options clearly.  Afterward, Skip, Nona and Bud had lunch at the Pink Store.  I couldn't eat because my mouth was full of gauze!

​Greg turned two the end of January and we spent a day with him and Wes at their house.  We had a good time playing with the boys outside.  Wes loves to make rainbows with the hose and water the plants.  Watering Gramma is Not allowed, but he liked to test the limits by spraying close to me.  He's a devil.

The Banjo Blasters played at the Cochise Cowboy Poetry & Music Gathering in Sierra Vista and had a great time.  We're scheduled to return next year too!  It's the first weekend in February 2017!

Christmas has come and gone in Portal Arizona, but the snow keeps coming!  We've had snow and extremely cold days and nights for the past few weeks with lows in the teens and highs in the 50s!
Before Christmas, I held a wreath making class at the library with 4 students and we had a good time building our wreaths from local greens and berries.  Once again the community members decorated downtown Portal, only this year, we didn't try to decorate the large trees, we simply adorned the Post Office and Library with garland, bows and wreaths.  Simple is better.  On Christmas Eve day, the community came together at the Post Office to sing Christmas carols.  Another Portal tradition and though we were not always together or in tune, we had a good time.
We continue to get rain and snow and El Nino is keeping our temps low.  It's good to see snow in the mountains, and it's good that the creek is running, but we are burning up our firewood a lot faster than we expected.  We have permits for another half cord, so we might go out and get more wood if we get too low, but I don't think that will happen.  We still have a half cord in the yard we haven't split yet.
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In my last entry I included photos of a beautiful Saguaro cactus that lived in our yard in Tucson.  About 10 years ago a Palo Verde tree blew over in the wind and ripped a hole in the side of this Saguaro.  The great cactus produced a huge scar and over the years put out multiple arms in an effort to survive, but the big freeze in February 2011 was too much to overcome and multiplied the stress & severity of the original injury.
In the years of it's struggle, it provided nesting for mourning & white winged doves as well as a few Gila Woodpeckers.  Now in it's death it will provide for many organisms as it decays.
In the last couple of years, we could tell the cactus was loosing ground.  The arms began to shrink in bulk as it used up it's moisture stores.  
When we were in Tucson before Thanksgiving, we noticed the telltale black ooze of a dying Saguaro and the distinct lean of the giant, so I took a few photos, knowing it would not stand much longer.  As we arrived back in Tucson a week later, the injured soldier lay crumpled on the ground.  I'm saddened by it's loss, but I'm so glad we got to enjoy it the way we did.
The first arm burst through in June 2004 and we were so excited, but within the next year the injury occurred that would bring the end to this beautiful plant.  It stood in silhouette in many sunrise and  sunset photos we took over the years.  It's been photographed with rainbows and the moon & planets.  We even used it as a backdrop to photos promoting the Arizona Banjo & Ukulele Blast in 2014.
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We spent two days in Tucson before Thanksgiving.  Visited with Mel, Matt, Wes & Greg and played two banjo gigs with the Arizona Banjo Blasters.  It's always fun to play with the band.  We played three gigs with them in December too, but won't have any more until after Christmas.

The most rewarding banjo gig I think we ever played was  in a gas station parking lot to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the A&M Shell Station owned by Arnold Mendez, a Naturalized Citizen who is living the American Dream.  He came here from Cuba in 1962, has worked at this Shell Station for over 50 years and is loved by his customers for his honesty, integrity and loyalty.  The customers got together to plan this celebration and to honor this hard working American.  They presented him with an American Flag that was flown over our nations Capitol.   Very good feeling to be a part of a good story about an immigrant!  

Wesley and Greg are becoming fun little boys with distinctly different personalities and interests.  Wes is all about imagination and creativity.  Greg loves animals, books and cars! They visited us here in Portal after Thanksgiving and we played on our tire swing and took the boys to the Chiricahua Desert Museum while they were here.  

It's now mid December and Christmas is just a week away!  Don't know where the time is going?  I remember my Mother saying that.....guess we're getting old. :)

We played an outdoor gig last weekend in Tucson and it was cold, drizzly and miserable.  We were happy when it started raining hard and we packed up and went to Beyond Bread for hot chocolate and soup.  YUMMM!  That afternoon we also played a Christmas Party at the Mobile Home park where Elaine Calloway, our Red Hot Mama lives.  Thankfully it was indoors and we got fed after Santa arrived.

So, it is November and the sun and temperatures have dropped. The nectar feeding bats have apparently continued south, as our hummingbird feeders are not empty every morning now.  There has been a light ice coating on our bird bath and water feature most mornings this past week and we've started the wood stove to keep our rock house warm.

We spent nearly a week in Tucson and accomplished a lot while there.  We helped our friend Linda have a yard sale and clear out Norms tool shed.  We were surprised how many tools he had in that tiny shed!  Linda presented us with the enlarged photo of the Goat Canyon Trestle that Norm took when we hiked the 12 mile stretch of railroad from Jacumba to Ocotillo, California back in 2005. That was my first hike with Norm and we have fond memories of that day with him. We really miss our friend since his rather sudden death in April.

We spent an afternoon with Mel, Wes & Greg at their house in Oro Valley and Mel brought the boys to our house and we went to the Desert Museum to watch Raptor Free Flight.  Greg loves all the animals and was intrigued by the garden eels in the aquarium.  Wesley doesn't have much interest in the animals, but likes to hear about the dangerous ones. 

On Veteran's Day we played with the Arizona Banjo Blasters at the Voyager RV Park in Tucson.  What a great crowd!  Everyone sang along and enjoyed a lot of toe tapping!  They especially enjoyed our Red Hot Mama's rendition of "Wrong Keyhole"!

Back in Portal the road through Cave Creek Canyon that was washed out by Hurricane Odile in 2014 is finally fixed.  The roadbed was repaved and the creek bank is being reinforced with large boulders in wire cages.  Culverts have been replaced and a lot of rock has been brought in to reinforce the banks.  The road up South Fork has been repaired to just beyond the two forest leased cabins and a large turn-around is there.  We don't know what the plan is for beyond that point.  It's definitely going to be foot or bicycle traffic only from that turn-around to the picnic area at the trailhead.  The creek re-channeled itself, so there is no roadbed beyond that new berm and it seems unlikely that any trail building will be done anytime soon.

We've been to the San Simon Cienega a few times and there are more cranes each time we go. There are lots of Coots, Wigeons & Ring Necked Ducks as well as Vermillion Flycatcher, Red Tailed Hawk, Northern Harrier, Swallows of some sort, and many mixed Sparrow flocks.   We bushwhacked to a treed area east of the pond and kicked up a pair of barn owls one day.  There may have been more than two, but we only saw two at a time, so it's hard to say.
The road into the Cienega is worse every time we go there.  Glad we have a 4x4.

Our Portal neighbors joined us making music a few weeks ago to and we're working on making it a monthly gathering after the holidays. Sing-alongs are so much fun we think it will be a successful community activity.  Who can resist singing along to "Ain't She Sweet" or "By the Light of the Silvery Moon"?

In my last update, I posted photos from the ceremony and lunch the community put on for the MVPA Bankhead Highway Convoy that stopped in Rodeo New Mexico on October 12th.  To commemorate the end of WWII, The Military Vehicle Preservation Association, in restored military vehicles from across the country traveled from Washington DC on their way to San Diego California along the Bankhead Highway route.  The Rodeo Portal community and the Rodeo Tavern put on a great lunch for the Convoy participants and local community members.  The locals lined the street waving flags and cheering as the convoy came through town on NM Hwy 80 with over 50 vehicles from Jeeps to ambulances to large cargo carriers.  All privately owned and restored.  We met folks from Maine to Washington state.  It was a great event and showed the small town hospitality that we love here.  Here's a bit of history of the convoy:
"The Military Vehicle Preservation Association traveled at a maximum speed of 40MPH and the 3,400-mile convoy took 29 days to cover as many of the Bankhead Highway’s original roads as they could.  When possible they traveled on the actual roads the U.S. Army took in 1920, mostly state and county roads.  In the west they had to trailer some of the vehicles and get on the interstates as a last resort because in a few places reservoirs flooded the original route or bypasses erased the original route altogether.    
Colonel John F. Franklin’s original 50-vehicle 1920 Motor Transport Corps convoy traveled the route in 116 days.  Along the way, Franklin’s convoy encountered impassable sands, axle-swallowing gumbo, and flooding. They had to build or replace bridges and reroute where the highway merely ran over rutted old wagon tracks and unimproved dirt roads.   Their practice was to go out of the towns they came across, build about a mile of good road, and then invite the townspeople to drive the new road, Franklin’s group would then encourage the townspeople to put up money to connect the sections of road to their towns" It was and inspiring event.
- See more at: 
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2015/07/17/mvpa-convoy-to-trace-bankhead-highway-from-d-c-to-san-diego/#sthash.4XDbi0Vj.dpuf

This weekend in Portal the community came together once more to celebrate Octoberfest as a fund raiser for the Sew What Women's organization that gives Scholarships to local high school graduates and supports a nursing home in Douglas Arizona.  It was a beautiful day and money was raised with a Silent Auction, a rummage sale, bake sale and a delicious lunch of Brats and Sides.  There was a great turnout and we had a few outside vendors who enjoyed the day too.  This is a great little community and this is HOME.

We had our first gathering of area musicians to our house for music making and it was hopefully the beginning of an ongoing thing!  Burt & Susan Mittelstadt, Peter Waser & Elaine Moison joined us for a fun time playing music we all love.  Our next gathering will be on Sunday, November 1st at 3pm at our house.  If we get enough people interested we may have to find another meeting place, but for now our house serves well.  Anyone who plays is invited.  You don't have to be an expert, we aren't trying to compete with each other, just share in the joy of making music.  We welcome anyone who loves music, even if you just want to sing along!

We visited Tucson to play a gig with the Banjo Blasters at the Cascades and visited with Melody, Matt and the grandsons while there.  The boys are excited about Halloween and we played at mixing up a witches brew and feet painting.  Wes is going to be the Wolverine for Halloween and Greg is going to be the Cookie Monster!  Such adorable boys, if I say so myself......no bias here!

The Portal Irish Festival was held and the community got to be entertained twice by the talented instructors.  First at the Sew What Forum and then at the Free public concert.  Next years Festival is already scheduled, so it should be another fun event.

Last week we went up the mountain to scout for firewood and saw several large groups of wild turkeys and lots of deer.  We got our firewood gathering permits Monday and went up to cut wood yesterday.  It was an interesting weather day of clouds, sun, rain, sun, hail, sun, snow flurries, sun & thunder.......just about everything you might expect at different times of the year not necessarily in that order. :) Each event lasting just a few minutes at the most.  Very unusual.  Then last night a thunderstorm came through with lightning and more rain.

Bud's knee continues to improve and we're walking again, but no strenuous hikes in the near future.  We're learning to accept that there are limitations to our stamina and capabilities now that we aren't youngsters any more.  

We've been visiting the San Simon Cienega about once a week and the Sandhill Cranes are returning along with Ruddy Ducks, Coots, Sandpipers, Mallards and Grebes.  Not a lot of water at Willow Pond, but we always manage to see a few birds there, so we're encouraged about it's revitalization.  We watched a Black Phoebe catching bugs and quite a few mixed species of sparrows as well as a young Swanson's Hawk.  This morning we were awakened at 6am by dueting Great Horned Owls here in our yard.  Seems a little early for courtship, but these owls are residents and know the routine, so I guess they know what they are doing.

So life is good here in Portal.  This weekend is Octoberfest and we're looking forward to participating with bake sale contributions, as well as helping with the rummage sale and silent auction.  Whoever told us we'd get bored living here has never spent much time here or they'd know that it's impossible to get bored in Portal.

The end of summer brings out the butterflies and nectar feeding bats as well as the migrating hummingbirds and raptors.  The cactus wrens pictured below were wrestling under our kitchen window one day.  They were squawking and rolling around holding onto each others beak with their feet.  I'm not sure if that was a territorial dispute or a parent trying to run off an offspring that refused to leave.  After several minutes of non-lethal confrontation, both birds flew off, so I'm not sure what the outcome was.

We finished up hummingbird banding the end of September and have had a few stragglers migrating through, but for the most part, our yard is down to the resident Blue Throat and Magnificent that winter here.  A couple of Broad Billed and Broad Tailed hummers are still feeding now and then and a female Lucifer was here for a couple of days!  The last day of Hummer Banding a couple of the birds decided to linger on my finger rather than fly away immediately.  It was quite a change from having a large hawk perch on my gloved hand, but the interaction with any bird is exhilarating for me.

Bud's knee is feeling good again, so we're going to resume hiking very soon.  It's a good time of year for hiking and we'll be getting a permit to cut some firewood in the mountains too.  We scouted the area around Rustler Park last week for firewood and there is a lot of downed stuff that can be harvested.  Among the wildlife in the mountains we saw 4 large groups of wild turkeys, many Coues Whitetail deer, but no bears.  Luckily this wet monsoon has provided a lot of acorns and juniper berries for the bears, so they have not been a problem in the valley like they were last year.

This year we harvested peaches, apples, pears, pomegranites, plums & persimmons from trees in our yard without competition from the bears.  

We do have to be diligent about watching for skunks in the yard before letting the dogs out.  The skunks are pretty habituated to humans, so they don't run when we go outside, and if Mr. Brown isn't restrained, he tends to run after them and has been on the receiving end of the skunk spray 3 times!  He hasn't learned that his actions caused the unpleasant experience.  We are glad to see that the skunks seem to have learned to stand their ground and Brown will not approach too closely if they don't run.  I wouldn't expect that to be a sure thing, but so far we've watched two encounters where Brown approached a skunk, but stayed back and came away from it when we called him. :)

The days are getting short and the nights have been a bit chilly lately, so Fall is in full swing.  Leaves are changing color slowly and beginning to fall.  Next weekend is Octoberfest here in Portal and this will be the first one we have been involved in, so we're looking forward to another fun community event.  The Forums started last week with a talk about Machu Picchu by Carol Simon & Howard Topoff.  Such a diverse community of knowledgeable people to learn from.  I've joined a writer's club too and have been inspired by some of the successful authors who live here and share their knowledge.

As the winter residents (human & animal) return to Portal, the activities never stop!  There is always something to do.  The Sandhill Cranes are returning now too, so we will be monitoring their activity for the next few months.

We are now into Autumn and I haven't updated at all through September.  We've been enjoying our beautiful wildlife filled yard here in Portal as well as seeing some interesting critters when we spent a couple days in Tucson.  A bobcat walked calmly across the yard in Tucson and drank from a water dish just off the patio.

Bud's knee is bothering him again, after thinking the surgery had fixed the problem.  He's not able to do any strenuous hiking, so we take short walks instead.  

Our first harvest of pears has been enjoyable and we shared with neighbors and friends.  The apples are apparently granny smiths, as they are firm and tart.  We've juiced a few pomegranates, but have more than we will use, so we share them too with neighbors, both human and wildlife.  There is fruit on the persimmon tree, but it appears they will be eaten by critters before they ripen.  Since it's been a very rainy year, there was plenty of food in the mountains for the bears and they haven't been a problem this year like they were last year.

Our neighborhood skunks are visiting the yard every evening and the raccoon is a common capture on our yard camera, but we don't see it otherwise.  Grey foxes come to the water feature regularly as do the coues white tail deer.  Just last night we heard a heck of a ruckus outside our kitchen window and looked out to see two skunks in an apparent disagreement.  One of them worked itself into a tizzy and released a fragrant response that the other did not appreciate. :)  We have to take Mr. Brown out on a leash most evenings, to prevent him from chasing the skunks, because they don't leave the yard when I ask them to.

We remembered the flooding from Hurricane Odile last September and were a bit apprehensive when we got 3 days of rain again from a tropical depression.  We got nearly 3 inches of rain in our gauge over two days, but the creek didn't rise above the berms except for a short stretch in Cave Creek Canyon just beyond the Information Center.  We've had some amazing lightning storms and I was able to capture some good images from video I took during one storm.

Melody brought Wes & Greg to Portal for Heritage Days and the boys enjoyed building stomp rockets and sending them soaring into the air.  We took a walk up the creek and Wesley played in the "raging whitewater" before Bud spotted a rattlesnake swimming across the creek about 50 feet downstream, so that put a crimp in the joy of playing in the water.  As we were watching the snake warm itself on the rocks after crossing the creek, four handsome  Coues Whitetail bucks came walking down the creek from upstream.  One had a massive rack and as the younger ones looked around, the obvious leader took a dump in the creek, just to show us........that's why we don't drink the water out of the creek. :)  While Mel and the boys were here, Bud taught them to split firewood much to Mel's apprehension seeing her little guys swinging a maul that weighed as much as they did!

Our banjo band, the Az. Banjo Blasters will be playing a benefit concert here on March 12th to raise money for the scholarship fund of the Sew What organization.  We're looking forward to that.  It's getting to the busy time of year here for community activities and we have to pace ourselves and not participate in every event, but sometimes the choices are difficult to make.  

I'm working part time in the Clinic two days a week too, so on top of community activities, I have a job!  This is a great place though and we love it here.   

Over Labor Day weekend we put together a Rubbermaid shed for our lawn equipment and bikes and in spite of my dislike of plastic, it looks pretty good and after over 3 inches of rain this weekend, we're happy to see that it doesn't leak.