Repo Man is a great road movie in the apocalyptic genre that starts in Los Alamos, NM and includes some amazing lines. “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are” has been a constant point of reference for me over the last 6 years while commuting 60 mile each way to my job in Albuquerque. The commitment to a daily fall down La Bajada ( a 2,000 foot drop in elevation South of Santa Fe) was a decision I made weighing commuting times for different urban areas against the quality of life they offered. Compared to many commutes back East, Santa Fe to Albuquerque seemed like a breeze.

All that drippy sounding stuff I said in April about spring being here? Forget I ever mentioned it. It proceeded to snow again amidst the usual punishing wind of a New Mexico spring. The only good side to that is that I can make soup without feeling like I’m clinging to the wonders of winter cooking. I really can move forward when situations change, really I can. But soup is so wonderful, what can I say.

I love gardening, but to paraphrase the old saying - it's not all a bed of roses. Case in point, the apple, almond and plum trees are in bloom and the apricot trees are just past bloom. The problem: the weather last night - snow and a low of 29.5°F and the forecast for tonight is below freezing again.

The birds are singing, La! The fruit trees are blossoming, La! All this April is busting out all over, but the bummer of taxes due remains. And what a bummer it was. We wrote checks, we crammed forms into envelopes, we raised our voices in thanks for TurboTax, and then off to the post office and the bloody things were off. We have made our contribution to civilization.

I sometimes envy landscape architects – they have some pretty clear problems to solve, and everyone likes plants. But one of the benefits of working at a large multidisciplinary design firm is that I can wander around the office and see what my colleagues are up to. Since we all speak the language of design we can usually talk pretty coherently across disciplines. I get to live the life of a landscape architect vicariously, but still escape at a moment’s notice when the going gets rough.

Gardening last year was pretty frustrating. Weeks of hot and dry weather stunted growth in most gardens in the area. A scorching summer was followed by ravenous grasshoppers that ravaged our fall greens. But, Spring is all about renewal and promise. The very same garden bed that was mowed flat by grasshoppers in the fall is now coated with surprise greens.