And We thought That We Moved to the Desert

2.5 inches

 of water in our rain gauge.

 Did we bring it here?

Fifty Shades of Clay

Several years ago – during a Christmas visit with our daughter-in-law and son in Santa Fe, NM – Marsha and I met B, the mother of one of their good friends, who had recently moved to Santa Fe from (as she would say) “Noo Yawk” City.

B told us her first reaction to her new southwest home was,  “Everything is so beige!”  And this is from someone who lived all of her life in the concrete canyons of America’s largest metropolis.  So how should it look to a pair of lifelong New Englanders where we, with little difficulty, intentionally surrounded ourselves with green lawns, green trees, green bushes, green golf fairways and, even greener greens.

But beige is actually the way we like it. And beige is the way Santa Fe was meant to be.  (“Santa Fe has a distinctive architectural style all its own. No other city in the country has so many low-slung, earth-colored buildings made of adobe bricks, which consist of a mixture of sun-dried earth and straw.” According to the Santa Fe Tourism website.)
 
This style was created by the Pueblo Indians living in the Rio Grande Valley, admired and emulated by the Spanish who arrived in the 16th century, and codified in the early 1900s as “The Santa Fe Style” as a means of turning the entire community into an exotic tourist destination.

Nowadays Pueblo-style houses in Santa Fe are constructed on wooden frames and covered with concrete, mortar or stucco – but still feature the requisite rounded corners, irregular parapets and thick, sloping (“battered) walls and, most importantly, the earth-tone exteriors.  Our son and daughter-in-law’s house built in the 1940s, and our newly acquired Santa Fe home built in 2000 are of the wood and stucco model.

The perpetual beige of the architecture, and the surrounding high desert, mesmerized Marsha and me on our first trip to Santa Fe in 1992 – to the extent that in subsequent years when we chose to vacation in spots other than northern New Mexico we seemed to have opted for similarly oatmeal-colored venues such as the Big Bend region of West Texas or the limestone-land, limestone building island of Malta in the Mediterranean.  Even when we spent time in more conventionally urban locales such as Barcelona, Spain we gravitated to the Sagrada Famiglia church - the possibly never-to-be-finished attempt by the architect Antonio Gaudi to transubstantiate the organic shape, and earthly color of the world into a manmade monument to his God. The texture and shape of that edifice has been described as looking similar to melting wax or sculpted sand – or to Marsha and me like the “hoodoo” stones of Tent Rocks (south of our new home town) – the towering organically offbeat shapes that somehow manage to be both unsettling in their harshly atypical structure and at the same time comforting in their soft lines and colorless color.

And of we course would always return to Santa Fe.

But beige, it turns out, isn’t all there is to be.  There is in fact, believe it or not, actual living color here in northern New Mexico.

Marsha and I sold our house in CT and moved to Santa Fe to begin our house-hunt in the first week of May.  It was, as hard as it was for us to realize, the first time we had been here during the spring season.  We rented a beige Airbnb casita in the beige, residential South Capitol section of town.

In order to combat the calories we were ingesting via Trader Joe’s Chips and Salsa and TJ’s tubs of small cookies we walked the streets and alleys of the neighborhood on a daily basis.  We started each morning with a thirty-or-so minute trip (depending upon the route) to purchase the local morning newspaper from the vendor who set himself up in the road at the area’s main commuting intersection.  (Santa Fe is, in our experience, unique in using this method of getting the news out.)

On our first day we turned the corner from our temporary home to see (of course) a beige stucco wall over-draped (to our surprise) with a blanket of small red bush roses and Russian sage – and footnoted by a phalanx of self-sown Hollyhocks of various hues along each side of the sidewalk.  And along each of the various routes the colors of these and other Santa Fe spring flora such as Spanish Broom (a tall shrub with a riot of fragrant yellow pea-like flowers that you can smell well before they can be seen), bright orange and yellow daisy-like plants, yellow columbine, and more and more Hollyhocks and purple sage.


Our own newly purchased abode came equipped with more subtly colored lavender, primrose and multiple as yet unidentified local desert flowers.
 
And many of the homes feature brightly colored doors – both the gates guarding the beige courtyards and the entrances to the beige casitas are frequently painted in aggressively vivid reds and blues – some left to weather and peel in a nod to “Santa Fe charm.”
 

It turns out that the omnipresent beige backdrop provides the perfect blank slate onto which each of us can add our own unique set of colors.  And for those of us with a less-flamboyant nature this is probably just the kind of environment that we need.


Pueblo-style housing
decrees earth-tone outer walls –
fifty shades of clay.

 

Que Transtulit Sustinet

The last gardening thing I did in Wethersfield, Connecticut at our now former house was to uproot the blooming yellow dandelions that had appeared in Marsha’s and my otherwise healthy green front lawn during the last week of April.  My first landscaping task at our new abode in Santa Fe, New Mexico was the same one ­– except out here at the end of August the unwanted plants were only slightly less desiccated than the hard, dusty dirt (I hesitate to say soil) within which they were growing.

             

Mano-a-mano eradication of the bright yellow weed with my snake-tongued weeding tool manually had become pretty much of a joyous obsession with me over the forty years that we lived in our former home – and it was a pleasure that I thought I would have to leave behind when we moved to the southwest.  So I have to admit I was actually overjoyed at the sight of the “lion’s tooth” (from the French “dent-de-lion”) mocking me as I surveyed for the first time what the house-seller was touting as a “natural desert” backyard.

             

Marsha and I spent the sixteen weeks in between the two houses at two different Airbnb rentals in two different sections of Santa Fe that we had hadn’t visited much at all in during our twenty-five years of visiting New Mexico’s capitol city.

             

Initially we spent three and one-half months in a small “casita” (“little house”) in what is called the South Capitol section of town, and the last fourteen days in a larger place at the beginning of Upper Canyon Road.

             

According to santaferealestatedowntown.com, “Rail traffic and an expanding middle class fueled the development of South Capitol, Santa Fe NM in the early twentieth century. A rich and appealing collection of single family homes, condos, and small compounds, South Capitol charms with its architectural diversity. Craftsman bungalows intermingle with Pueblos, Pueblo Deco revivals, Victorians and Territorials. Construction materials run the Santa Fe gamut: adobe, brick, Pen-tile (a term for hollow bricks formerly made at the State Penitentiary) and framed stucco. Mature trees abound thanks, in part, to the WPA. Yards range in size from postage stamp patios to 1 acre spreads.”

             

Many of the streets, which we explored on a daily basis, follow the narrow curvy contours of pre-twentieth century alleyways and paths.  And several of the alleys remain as such with tiny casitas along them.  It was these narrow thoroughfares that convinced Marsha and I that no vehicle larger than the small Jeep Renegade we purchased out here could survive in “the city different”.

             

Our rental was a small one bed, one bath casita in a compound of six similarly (or smaller) sized units on West Burger Street.  How small was it?  I am 6’ 5” tall.  In the kitchen I could spread my arms and touch both walls without extending my fingers.  The queen size bed allowed about two feet on one side and less than 12” on the other and when we did our morning Pilates sit-ups the knuckles of my outstretched arms scraped the ceiling.  Not to get ahead of ourselves here but yesterday Marsha decided that most, if not all, of that casita could fit into the living room of our new 2,100-foot house.

             

Then for the second half of August we stayed at a larger place in the Upper Canyon Road section of town, described by realtor site Neillyon.com as follows “The historic eastside neighborhood boasts some of the most photographed adobe Santa Fe homes and gardens, with some homes dating back centuries. Hosting a mix of multi-generational families and newcomers, the historic eastside homes, often hidden behind high walls and accessed by narrow dirt lanes, recall the city’s early history and lend Santa Fe a unique style. Views can be scarce here, but authenticity and atmosphere dominate. Long famous for its galleries, restaurants and specialty shops, Canyon Road has become one of Santa Fe’s most popular attractions.”

             

And that is pretty much what we saw as we walked the streets early each morning.  But interspersed among the “most photographed adobe Santa Fe homes and gardens” were a lesser number of way-smaller, older, less well maintained casitas that presumably still house one or more (but not too many more) members of the multi-generational family owners.

             

“Throughout much of its history, Canyon Road existed as a quiet farming community on the city's outskirts. Its turning point came in the 1920s when a group of painters settled on the then dirt road and began selling artwork from their homes. The presence of these nationally recognized artists, known as ‘Los Cinco Pintores,’ slowly transformed Canyon Road into a thriving art community.”

             

Our Airbnb was on Apodaca Hill immediately off Upper Canyon Road – an area referred to by locals in the 1970s as “Dogpatch”, at the time an almost-rural, popular party spot.  But wealthy home-seekers started moving in and began the piecemeal gentrification of the area. According to the Santa Fe Reporter “In the late ’90s, many locals had to put historic east-side properties up for sale that had been kept in families for generations due to exorbitant tax hikes. A resident’s tax bill could go up 50 or 100 percent back then and sometimes more, according to Santa Fe County Tax Assessor Gus Martinez….

             

“…With such expensive land up for sale, ‘your typical person,’ Martinez said, couldn’t afford property in a barrio now considered Santa Fe’s upper end. Many Hispanic families were displaced as a result. …. Now, a house could go for $300,000 in the rest of the city; one in the barrio of yore costs upwards of one million dollars.”

             

We stayed in the lower part of a recently built house on a hillside (worth probably two million or more) next to a similarly “fancy-schmancy” adobe – both of which sat between which sat between (on one side) two casitas needing renovation roughly the same size as our West Burger rental and (on the other side) by a family house with cracked stucco walls and four perpetual-work-in-progress motor vehicles in the driveway (which was basically the front yard).  Further along the street were several similar pairings of architectural style.  “Santa Fe charm”, as our city SF resident daughter-in-law describes it.

             

After twenty-five years of visiting New Mexico’s capitol city Marsha and I knew that neither of our two rental areas would be where we would settle down.  And our realtor D quickly reaffirmed that “you will not find the house you want for the money you want” in those parts of town.  But it was kind of fun to imagine the possibility – even after one of the very diminutive casitas in our Burger Street compound sold for $250,000 while we were there.

             

Our plan was to rent for May, June and July giving us, we thought, more than enough time to find our “dream home” (or at least some place where we could sleep pleasantly).  It wasn’t – necessitating our move for the second half of August to Apodaca Hill because our Burger Street Airbnb was rented to someone attending Santa Fe’s annual Indian Market (a really big bucks, big show which draws ardent shoppers and collectors from all around the world.)  And during those three-plus months, between open houses (our Sunday ritual), and what realtor D showed us, we saw probably thirty candidates. 

             

We began our search in the same Casa Solana part of town that our son and daughter-in-law have their home ­ – not out of any “Everybody Loves Raymond” fantasy, but because we really like their house, the fact that it is in a “mixed” neighborhood, and its proximity to town (although not within walking distance like either of our rentals).  But (a) there were not many houses on the market there, and (b) those that were smaller than we wanted, or had issues that could have turned into a bigger project than we were interested in taking on at this point in our lives.

             

Our Sunday open house trips took us about thirty minutes from the city center and into what in the Hartford Connecticut area (from where we were moving) would be “the burbs” – an unincorporated part of Santa Fe County with a (probably less prestigious) Santa Fe zip code and situated among the dry-land high desert rolling hills with low-scrub-shrubs and stucco adobe style HOA communities distinguishable from the earlier Tiwa and Tewa Pueblo Indian villages that the early Spanish colonists saw by, among other things, the rooftop satellite dishes.  (BTW - HOA is a Home Owners Association, not the name of another southwestern pueblo tribe.)

             

We seriously considered two houses – made an offer on one that was accepted –and then backed out after the inspection.  It is never a good thing when you walk in on the home inspector and before introducing himself he says, ”You’ve just got to see this.”  We were able to get a copy of a previous prospective buyer’s inspection of the second and chose not to go any further.

             

So, as I am sure frequently happens, we upped our price range and on a late July Sunday afternoon wandered into an extremely well-maintained house on Brilliant Sky Drive (who wouldn’t love that name), and within days were under contract.  It passed inspection with flying colors.  We closed on August 16.  Our furniture and other stuff from Connecticut came on the 25th.  The beds that we had made for us out here were installed six days later, so we could have officially moved in then.  But we wanted to see the final episode of the telenovela “Queen of the South” and there was no TV connectivity at Brilliant Sky.  Therefore we spent that night at Apodaca Hill and officially took occupancy of the next chapter in our lives on the first day of our fifty-first year of marriage (9/1).  (Not part of our original plan – but much, much cooler.)

             

The property overview from realtor.com describes our new abode as, “Located in the Rancho Viejo Village, this lovely, light-filled home bespeaks the ease of living here. Oversized windows pour sunshine into the living spaces and kitchen from the secluded courtyard garden, landscaped to perfection. The curved wall of the dining room gives charm and a view to the garden as well. A wonderful space for entertaining family and guests. Minutes from the Community College where classes and fitness facilities are available. And 10 minutes to Target! The original Rancho Viejo village features a manicured park, space to share with neighbors, as well as a small market. Don't forget the great trails and open space available to the entire community. The Luminaria model was popular from the beginning and now welcomes new homeowners again.”  

             

The house was “move-in ready”, Santa Fe adobe style, in a really mixed neighborhood – and pretty much love at first sight.  It is landscaped with a variety of local flora, most of which we don’t know and some of which we do (lavender, daisy, a small struggling rose) – plus the aforementioned archenemy dandelion.

             

And there was one more former friend, now an instant enemy, pushing up through the moistureless sod in our “outback” – the small walled-in, west-facing, area from which we (and our future guests from their guestroom window) can watch a largely unimpeded view of the sun setting behind the thirty-miles distant Jimez Mountains. 

             

Our new nemesis is grass – something that as New England homeowners we could not get enough of, but now as a born-again southwest xeriscape cult members it is a plant whose tinge of greenness assaults our eyes with the same sting as the bright yellow of the dandelion once did.

             

So the other morning, while inside the house Marsha watched the cable/internet guy reconnect us to the 21^st century, I knelt on my rubber gardening pad in the bone-dry outback and, by hand, pulled out every tuft of turf that dared to impinge on our otherwise one-hundred percent “natural desert” backyard.

             

And you know, it felt just as natural as my last gardening act in Connecticut did.

             

Looks like we’ve found a home.