Tomorrow, I'll show you why I didn't get to Saturday's post until after 8:30 p.m. (In fact, you'll be amazed I could even spell "Saturday".)

Meanwhile, can I dump just a bit more of my NM photo album? Turns out my obsession with eroding adobe gas stations lives on.

It's hot and I'm cranky and my house is all torn up so here are some photos of rain.

You're welcome.

It's about a million 85 degrees up here at the barn, bright sun, no breeze, just the fan shoving muggy air back and forth. The dogs have been crashed under the desk from the instant we arrived, pressed flat against the concrete. Even the hummingbirds seek relief, fly in from the feeder, hover here beside me, maybe thinking dim equals cool.




And then there's the coyote. It's a small one, kind of scraggly, a little snarly, quiet and quick. He glided by this morning and as I looked up and my brain clicked through Movement! Animal? Grey. Dog. Grey dog? No! Coyote! he was gone. Too fast for the camera and too fast, thank goodness, for Walt and Maisie to catch the scent.

It's a few hours later and he just came by again, and again all I can do was watch, afraid motion might spook him, wanting more to witness than to capture. He has a snaggle tooth. His feet are small and neat. His fur does that coyote thing, stands up thick, ripples as he walks.

I think he's here for water, for Maisie's bowl and Walt's pool, both filled fresh each day then left alone all night, an urban splurge here in these dry, dry hills.

* When I first wrote this post, I thought the photo was shot in a more populated area of Mulholland Highway, which would have meant the mountain lion had been forced from the deep wilderness that her species seeks. With drought and wildfires and ceaseless development, all of which displace wild animals, both predators and prey are being stripped of adequate territory to hunt and breed and hide.

A little while after the post went live, I heard from a ranger at the NPS that the cougar is P-23, a young female who just separated from her mother. From the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area page on Facebook:

"Of the 400+ kills our biologists have hiked in on, this is the only one they've seen right on a road, so it's quite a rare sight! She dragged the deer into the dense brush shortly after this photo was taken for a little more privacy."

The ranger says the kill took place on an isolated part of Mulholland, not near any homes. This post has been revised to reflect that fact.

See the rest of the Facebook update here.

PHOTO: Irv Nilsen

(Mulholland Highway -- 8/25/2013 at 6:50 a.m.)

Labor Day weekend in Malibu means the Kiwanis Chili Cook-off -- the 32nd annual this year -- and sure enough, there they are, the rides and rigs and campers, trickling into the site.

Good grief -- where did the summer go?

While I was in New Mexico last week, my crew suddenly had some weekdays free and spent them working on the house.

Remember this?

And how it turned into this?

Now, it's this:

And this:

Is this:



Oh! And here's the living room, where Walt and Maisie (when they're glued together like this, I think of them as 'Malt') are immune to the chaos.

Foggy this morning...

But not for long--

Meanwhile, Maisie has a shadow--

...named Walt.

The wave broke and all four feet left the ground:

He moves so fast it's hard to get a good shot.

The sign says STOP and with so few cars you think, why? Then the cliff, layers of red telling time, eons ago the start of it, ages from now the end, with that sky, in that silence you think ok, and obey.

The little guy is back home again -- yes, that's the kitchen; and oh yes, the chaos of the remodel has grown exponentially -- and thanks to all this progress, I can't find my camera so all I can offer is a lousy cell phone shot.

But he's still pretty adorable.

Also, omg the kitchen. Pix on Sunday.

Of all the vehicles on the back roads and the mountain roads and dirt roads and even highways (though with no other cars for miles and miles it's not so much a highway as a 'highway') in northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, this vintage VW van was just about my favorite:

And now it's home again, to work and Walt (and Maisie!) and the slow-motion remodel and, with any luck, clear morning skies for a sunrise.

Headed down the dirt road that leads to my friends' house in the New Mexico mountains when suddenly, company.

Coyote company.

He stopped the instant he saw us:

Craned his neck as he waited to smell us:

Then signaled to the coyotes behind him (two more wait in that dip in the road) to vanish.

They did.

To a weather-starved California girl the wet and sound and color and oh, the scent of this storm, all of it, heaven.

Clouds roll in and a breeze blows through--

And then it's raining there--

...and then it's here--

Driving, and then a humble rest stop, not so humble after all.

We're in Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, where some friends have a little house in the mountains. In between eating and strolling and soaking in the hot springs, we went for a few magnificent hikes.

It's so pretty here:

So green from all the rain here this summer:

We hiked to a ridge with a view of the river valley:

Then walked down to the river itself:

I forgot how much I love aspens:

It smelled so good:

And felt so cold.

And everything--

...everywhere--

Was so very--

...beautiful.

The state highway ends here in Tierra Amarilla in northern New Mexico...

And at a cafe right next to the sign, the bird watching begins:

Here's another view of T.A., as the locals call it, as we were pulling into town:

Oh my:

Former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan confirmed in a phone conversation this afternoon that he bought the Malibu Surfside News earlier this week. Ryan, who owns a place in Malibu, has 11 other newspapers -- all in Illinois. He says his company, 22nd Century Media, plans to get the paper running again in October. The previous owner got sick in June and had to shut it down. || Ryan's company is looking for an editor.

That's from media watcher Jim Romenesko, who confirmed the news yesterday.

Oh my.

We're leaving the house is a sec, headed north on urgent business like hot springs and green chile and pie. Not sure we'll find wifi so just a few pix of the place here last night, mountains at dusk, wind moving, pines sighing, an owl calling, flying overheard.

Adios, Los Angeles:

Ola, Nuevo Mexico!

Oh, Walt:

Maisie agrees:

It's been a few days since we had an update about little Walter George 'Huck Finn' Clooney, the adorable puppy who moved in and made Maisie smile, and that's because young Walt is at summer camp. As Jake and Maisie did before him, Walt went to stay with my friend, Kirstin McMillan, animal whisperer extraordinaire, to learn how to be a good an even better citizen.

It's a great life at Dog Club LA, where the pack starts the morning with a hike in the hills, then spends the day learning basic obedience commands while cruising the city, going to cafes and hotels and parks and malls, sitting and staying and saying a polite hello to strangers.

Walt's halfway through his visit with Kirsten and honestly? I can hardly stand how much I miss him. The Muffinhead agrees. Thankfully, I'm off to New Mexico and Colorado in a couple of days, which will make the time go faster. Lucky Maisie goes to stay with a neighbor, Sally, one of her favorite people on earth.

So here's Walt this afternoon, hanging with his new peeps. He's doing really well, Kirstin says, a very sweet and very smart (and really goofy) optimist.

I love it -- a good report card.

For years the pleasure of a concert at the Hollywood Bowl was dimmed by the whole parking thing -- the pain in the ass of the stacked lots, the exorbitant cost of off-site lots and, if you've got the perfect secret spot, the worry of whether someone has beat you to it.

This year, I finally gave the shuttle a try and oh, how easy that was. Just five bucks and you're whisked from a roomy nearby lot right to the front steps of the Bowl. Just as fast and easy after the show, plus you get to hear your fellow passengers in some odd and interesting conversations. I'm a shuttle convert.

Meanwhile, snapshots from Saturday night, when some friends and I went to hear Lyle Lovett, who was magnificent, and Willie Nelson, who was backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Picnic dinner up in the trees:

The sun sets and the lights go up:

After his Large Band played a couple of songs and reminded the crowd just what great musicians they all are, Lyle strolled out. (And I know the photos are blurry because it was too far and too dark and no tripod and all that stuff but seriously? Snapshots.)

I love how he puts his hand in his pocket the second before he starts to sing:

Look! This one's almost in focus:

Just one question: if the band's that Large, why aren't there any girls in it?

This is one of the series of vintage photos that are on my business cards. I know I've shared some of them before, but don't know if this was one of them. Even so, it's sweet enough to see again.

First thought? Change the juxtaposition of those signs. And then my I-hate-over-development gene kicks in and I'm suddenly thinking, hmmm, maybe not such a terrible idea.

Meanwhile, LYLE LOVETT! and WILLIE NELSON! tonight at the Hollywood Bowl!

Great way to celebrate the 7-year blogoversary.

The sunset light last night made everything glow.

As more and more surveyor's stakes pop up in the 500-acre tract for sale here in the Santa Monica mountains, the photos I take go from a celebration of this untouched bit of California to a kind of elegy.

Let us mourn:

Yes, that's Jake in that last photo.

And now let's cheer up, shall we?

There. That's better.

I'm trying not to post too many pix of the puppy, honest. But the morning beach has been fogged in for months and the puppy's so sweet and goofy and HE GETS EMAIL so I figure, what the hell.

It's summer, it's August, the dog days, after all, so here's the little guy, doing what he does best. (And remember, it's mostly in mid-air, all at full speed.)

Up the stairs:

And down the stairs:

And up the stairs:

And repeat. (And repeat and repeat and, well, you get the picture.)

In between, he's racing all around the house and back, because everyone has a job to do and right now, this is his.

Yes, there's the remnant of a kinda sorta maybe road, but now it's mostly lizard tracks and coyote poop and the occasional pouf of rabbit fluff, aka dinner.

Every year I plant sunflowers up at the barn and every year, the parrot flock seems to know exactly when the seeds are ripe enough to eat.

This year, thanks to a surge in the gopher populace, I didn't plant, but it seems the parrots did. All along the road here, beneath some of the parrots' favorite perches (in one end, out the other) clumps of sunflowers grow.

Pretty. And pretty funny.

The marine layer rolled in after sunset and the night air, not just cool but chilly, filled the house. The dogs slept in. So did their humans.

Now, a true blue sky, shards amid the clouds. No heat, not yet, just birds in flight and the garden, blooming.

We could look at another snarky dog sign:

Or we could watch Walt and Maisie.

This went on forever an hour.

Also? That's Maisie making the dolphin sounds.

Cool morning, clear light, coyote tracks on the path. The drought is on, three years now, and the lake, it's shrinking.

You can read it in the reeds, that stripe, pale green, where the water level once was. There's a lush little meadow where an inlet went dry and ducks now walk where once they paddled.

We're hoping for rain, abundant and early, but the yes or no of that is months away. So meanwhile we watch, watch and learn, watch nature, coping.

Technically, it's summer until the equinox on September 22 but already -- do you feel it? -- autumn is in the air. Up in the Santa Monica mountains, where temps typically top out in the 80s and 90s this time of year, we've had a cool spell. Add in the shrinking days, the growing twilight, the ever-steepening shadows (to say nothing of sadistic back-to-school sales) and there it is, the feeling of fall.

Among the sycamores, bark bright white, leaves so green, birds hidden (singing) in the branches, it's summersummerstillsummer.

But a few feet away and a few hours later, the oaks tell a different story.