From dust to dust

Want to know what a West Texas spring is like in an under-construction neighborhood on the edge of town during a severe drought?

That’s the eastern edge of the Gobi Desert, aka our driveway. The thing that looks like a phone line laid across the concrete and under the occasional dune is, in fact, our phone line. Smooth move, AT&T. It’s a long story, but the image is the tech equivalent of a car up on blocks in one’s front yard. Anyway, I shoveled four wheelbarrows full of sand from the driveway (in order to make way for more).

That’s the lovely view from our front door, taken yesterday afternoon as the winds began to hit 30+ mph and the humidity dropped below 6%. The trees barely visible on the horizon? They’re about 2 blocks away.

That’s the result of a windstorm from a week or so ago. We got the same amount of blowing dirt, with the added bonus of copious quantities of tumbleweeds. These are stacked on our front porch. After cleaning our yard, I helped our neighbor do the same with his, and together we hauled two trailers stacked over six feet high with these nasty critters. I’m not telling where we hauled them.