Taos, NM Life During Covid-19

Never would I have imagined life coming to a complete standstill as we have witnessed over the last 5 weeks. I invariably look at my watch every morning to remind myself of the date and day. It is so frustrating for us, as of course it is with everyone else, to contend with the global pandemic.

Much like the rest of the country, grocery stores limit the number of customers in the store at one time. There are limitations on how much you can buy of certain items. The meat section is always bare and you’re lucky if toilet paper is in stock. Essential shops are open such as grocery, hardware and drug stores. Liquor stores are considered non-essential and are closed. And the post office seems more like a surgery operating room with all the plastic curtains and countertops constantly wiped with antiseptic by the postal employees. And so it goes…

But nature has taken little notice of the calamity. I’m hopeful we had our last deep freeze (24º F) last week. Everything began to bloom all at once this week. Here are our peach, cherry, pear and apple trees blooming.

We are lucky enough to live in an area of Taos that provides weekly water for irrigation. A complex matrix of canals provides water for farmers and landowners in the region. The water originates from melted snowfall off the mountains and is carried throughout the area through acequias, the Spanish word for irrigation ditches. Our first flow of the season was last Friday which started around 7AM and lasted till around 5PM. It is fascinating to watch.

I can sit and watch the water flow for hours….

In addition to our fruit trees, spring flowers are blooming throughout the yard. We have a multitude of different colored tulips as well as flowers that we have yet to identify.

We have two ponds in the yard. Initially, we had fish in both ponds but have decided to consolidate everything into one pond. It’s easier to manage all the aquatic life in a central location as we have had predators wipe out a large number of fish in the shallow pool. In one night last year we lost 7 fish to raccoons. Here’s the pool where we’re relocating the remainder of the fish.

I drained the pond below last Sunday and the remainder of this week will be spent cleaning and painting. There’s a lot of tile work that I’ll do this summer, but for now it’s just cleaning and painting on the agenda. I’ve ordered aquatic plants which I expect will arrive next week and we’ll still have an active pond. It just won’t have fish.

So that’s the status of things as we live through the agony of Covid-19. Rhonda and I are going stir crazy staying at home and not getting out. We’ll get together with some of our families, out of town friends and local compadres via Zoom this week, but of course it’s not the same.

I look so forward to the day when face masks are not part of our daily attire…