One Story's End; Another's Beginning

If the 2014 Pre-Halloween to New Year Tiling Project is a story, it should have a better ending than "Pretty Much Done."

It is done.

The bedrooms are as fully functional as they were before we ripped out the carpeting. We also replaced a queen bed with a king so we both can toss and turn in our own private worlds. We have been using the master shower and toilet for over a week without incident. It is becoming routine. Even the bathroom door has been fixed so it doesn't squeak against the door jam anymore.

The full width of the front area
can now be traversed.

But life, unlike fairy tales, novels and movies, has no ending, happy or otherwise. Life goes on, as do projects. (Let's not even mention maintenance.) Funky bathroom cabinetry is due for a refinish, scheduled for after our winter vacation. Guest bedroom and my office need to be tiled. Maybe in summer.

Meanwhile, I've invested a Saturday and Sunday immersed in my comfort and revivifying zone: the garden. Mild sunny days are invitations to the great outdoors.

A small clump of green agave suckers.
Assuming you don't mind hidden critters,
just try to reach into the middle
with even a gloved hand.

The immediate area in front of the house and north of the driveway had suffered from neglect. During more than a year spent sitting south of the driveway imagining hillside paths in the gully and keeping up with and realizing Shari's vision for the vegetable garden, I'd walk by this front area on my way to collect or replace tools or hauling yard waste, and thinking to myself that I had no idea of what the front area should be.

Side-shoots from huge blue agaves had become large and were throttling a barrel cactus and a young saguaro. The smaller, green agaves in the bottom of the depression, which I had thinned out a few years back, had again become impenetrable with their multiple side shoots growing to maturity. I could see more and more chewed leaves and tiny turds.

It is necessary to mercilessly pull the botanical suckers while they are small and before they grow into a tangled equivalent of a briar patch mess cum rodent, squirrel, chipmunk and reptile refuge.

But all that grows green deserves respect. I planted twenty or more of the suckers, pulled at the price of careful digging, unnatural pulling motions, exhaustion, and tiny spikes that pierce leather gloves.

The smaller, green agaves are worse than the mighty blue ones. The green pull more easily, but they clump together more tenaciously and the spiny edges of their leaves are like the serrated blade of a sharp steak knife — except that steak knives usually aren't coated with a toxic irritant.

Either variety survives the trauma of replanting remarkably well. The beautiful, symmetrically exploding green and blue-green shapes of the transplants now grace driveway edges, begin to frame a garden entrance, complete some bare spaces between palo verdes and acacias in the northern gully hillsides, and are beginning to dot the open, somewhat barren hillsides of the south gully.

As if to declare a weekend well done, it's raining today.