Although it's quite normal that Lajitas doesn't get too many people in the heat of summer (100 +!),  it's really, really slow around here at the moment. 
As you can see for yourselves. That's us, way in the back, just beneath the white house (which is for sale, so ... empty too). 
We're it. Talking about slow!

And now vacations are over, schools have started, and the snow-birds are not coming down for another month or t
Hopefully we'll get some people again if the temperatures go down when Fall comes around.
Fall, yeah! My favorite season. I can't wait. Bring it on!

In the meantime, we did some shopping in Alpine. This time we were absolutely full to the gills on our way back, don't y'a think?

(weird pic of James but he was talking to some people passing by)

                     
In addition to our monthly groceries we had to pick up a whole pallet of mulch for the golf maintenance crew, and also two huge cylinders of chloro-something for the water plant!

I hope you have the stomach for the next picture which shows what not to do with a vice:

Vice -1 versus James - 0

No, he didn't put his finger in the vice but he hit it while trying to move something else that was in it. Yikes!!!

                                        


OK, I'd say that calls for something sweet. A nice big piece of lemon bundt cake did the trick!

So, since James couldn't golf for a while and couldn't really work on anything else (like the honey-do-list) while his mangled finger was healing, I had to find him something else to do. 
He gets very antsy otherwise ....
We used to work on a jigsaw puzzle on occasion, before we went on the road, but had not figured out yet how, and where, to lay one out in the close quarters of an RV without it being majorly in the way at any time.

But surfing the RV forums I came across this ingenious solution!



A piece of Plexiglas cut to the size of the table that covers the puzzle while we're not working on it! 
This way we can still use the (only) table, don't have to move the puzzle and best of all ..... it's cat proof!!

Can you see both cats in this 'puzzle'?

Since nothing much else happened with us this week I'll go strait to what interesting wildlife I came across this time!
Like when I was sitting outside spinning some delicious Blue Face Leicester (a sheep) wool on my precious dutch Louet spinning wheel, and my eye caught some woolly fluffiness walking by. 
Just some stray wool, blowing in the wind, I'm thinking ... but wait ... wool doesn't 'walk by', does it?

                                           

  

What the ....??

                                                

It's a Thistledown Velvet Ant, which are not ants at all but solitary wasps. I didn't see any wings, which means (my guide tells me) this is a female. Which also means, she is armed with a powerful stinger!

I guess not everything fuzzy is cute.

Most of the 'big birds' I see around here are Turkey Vultures, just soaring overhead on the rising hot air, barely flapping their wings and pretty much noiseless.
But every now and than some piercing screams announce a Red-tailed Hawk in the blue skies above the resort:
                                                                             


It always reminds me of Lake Arrowhead, the small town in the San Bernardino Mountains where we used to live in California, and where they were very common.

And last but not least, when we were out on the golf course a while back, I noticed something unusual in the mesquite bushes.
It almost seemed to shimmer in the early morning sunshine and I was delighted to discover it was a Vermilion Flycatcher!


                                                           

It proved to be almost impossible to get a good picture of it since it just reflected the light like a jewel!



All puffed up, this definitely was a male!

Hello, my precious ....

Almost the same colors as those of one of our latest sunsets: