Wire, Glass & Cans

Mostly bits of wire, possibly from a fence, but also broken
glass, chicken wire, aluminum something or another, and
an old style pull-tab can.

One of the nice things about the rain is how it uncovers buried things. Like bits of trash and construction debris.

Coat Hanger Valley yields lot of interesting stuff. A brief stroll on its west side, staring at the ground, and within ten or fifteen minutes, I have a bucketful of wire, broken glass, and other non-indigenous items.

I don't like non-indigenous items. I collect trash, sometimes even concrete debris, and put it in the garbage can.

Except that so far I have saved three coat hangers from oblivion. The three are hanging on palo verde branches.

Coat Hanger Valley is getting a strolling-friendly makeover. I'm beginning to think of it as Shangri-La Valley. Maybe when I've done more work to complete path that traverses the west side, I'll start calling it Shangri-La. That's when I will remove the three coat hangers. Maybe.

Monsoon Stories from Monday

The heavy monsoon rains in the Southwest this last Monday made national news and prompted family and friends to inquire whether we were alright. Yes, we are, but not without some stories. Probably everyone in the Southwest has stories.

Our major story is four days suffering internet withdrawal due to the loss of our telephone connection. More on that in the It-Takes-a-CenturyLink post below, postscript 4.

The broken pieces might make a nice feature in Coat Hanger Valley.

Major damage at our portion of the San Simeon ranch was limited to one of our three large Oaxacan clay pots, blown over by the wind.

Actually, this had happened several years before. When we brought it home, I just stood it up and stuck an old century plant agave shoot in it. I figured I could stabilize it with earth and rocks inside later, as I had the other two identical pots we had set up in the backyard.

One should not underestimate the power of wind in the Sonoran Desert. The thin skeleton of the agave shoot was enough to catch the wind one night and knock the pot over. When we found it in the morning, we were devastated. Shari had painstakingly collected the pieces, glued and caulked them together, and we set it up again. I loaded dirt and rocks inside, then planted the old agave stalk inside.

It held up that way a long time, but I noticed the gaps in the repaired breaks were getting disturbingly wider and wider. Until Monday's monsoon when the repairs failed and the pot resumed its former, fragmented configuration.

Caught in the act at the
Stratosphere, Sin City.

The origin of our third story from San Simeon and Monday's monsoon lies with the idiots who laid out our backyard. It's a large area paved with concrete and brick that slopes towards the house. When it rains heavily, it floods inside through two back doors.

One should not underestimate the power of rain in the Sonoran Desert. For some reason, they too often build houses here with little regard for monsoon rain. My theory is that the long periods of sunny weather addles their critical thinking.

I had caulked strips of wood to the concrete outside the two vulnerable doors to serve as dams. Even so, when it rains heavily, I enjoy taking our shop-broom and sweeping water in the rain. The heavy rains usually last maybe ten or twenty minutes. I also had installed a two inch drain pipe that can handle the rest.

Shari, with her bad back, swept water for three hours on Monday.

Moi?  With psychic premonition, I skipped town on Sunday for Las Vegas and enjoyed the much more gentle Mojave Desert monsoon rain on Monday, leaving Shari at home to deal with flooding and the phone outage. I should add that she was happy to see me on Wednesday.

Ploughs in Tucson

The corn shucker. If you look inside, there are some really nasty
metal teeth. Maybe it makes corn flakes or corn meal.

The Binghamton area, by the Rillito River just below where we live, used to be farmed by Mormon settlers until the 1930's when the water table had dropped and Tucson was growing. The area where we live, on San Simeon Drive, used to be a cattle ranch named, oddly enough, San Simeon.

So it is apropos to have some reminders of those earlier, pioneer days. At least something more attractive than the ubiquitous broken bottles and other trash -- some of it possibly quite historic -- that one can find lying around.

That's also a part of Arizona tradition: chucking empty whiskey bottles from stage coaches. The local cowboys weren't very ecologically minded either. Their genes live on in the people who chuck trash by the side of the road. But I digress.

We lucked out. Our neighbors decided to move to Scottsdale and were willing to let go of some of the old, rusty, and really keen farm implements they had on display by their driveway.

Some sort of cultivator.

Shari thought we'd buy one and display it in the otherwise somewhat barren center of the roundabout at the dead-end of San Simeon Drive. I shouldn't describe it as barren. The ocotillo there is stunning. But since we neighbors got together and cleared it of chollas and trimmed the blue agave leaves, there's not much to catch the eye.

We got eight old relics: one corn shucker, three wheels, and three ploughs/cultivators and a potato harvester.

One of the big wheels is earmarked for the dead-end circle. The other seven are way too cute for me to leave them out-of-sight from the front door.

I started putting them by the driveway away from the house. But I liked them too much. I wanted to be able to see them sitting in front of the house. I moved them way closer.

Somehow, simply seeing some old farm implements on the property brings back a bit of the old settler culture. Or so I'd like to flatter myself. At minimum, they remind me of outside work, so they invite me to step outside and do some gardening.

I wonder where we can find more of these rusty rural relics.

Say, are we going native? Not if I have to keep a horse or a donkey to pull these things. Guns and horses are big in Arizona, but I'm not going there.

100 and Counting

Ever looked at a pool thermometer? If you are in Lower Alaska, probably not.

Ever wonder why the marks go up to 120°F?  If you are in Baja Arizona, you know.

I think we have learned how to warm the water in the cement pond and, at the same time, keep evaporation to a minimum. The trick is not just covering it with a "solar blanket", it's cutting it to shape.

The pool service guys we hired for the first few years discouraged using a pool cover, as do the guys working the counters at Leslie's Pool. "It won't keep your pool clean," is the typical first response. Well, yes it can. You simply have to skim the debris around the edges when you pull it off, and sweep and wash off the cover every now and again. Granted, it's easier as a two-person job, but hey, Shari and I get along.

For years the problem we had with pool covers was the wind blowing it off. I'd put bricks on the edges, only to find the occasional brick in the pool.

Then we cut the thing to fit; nothing hanging up and over the edge. Between lying below the surface of the concrete apron and the surface tension of the water itself, we've yet to have a wind gust disturb it in the least.

By the middle of April the temperature of the water was in the eighties. Early May it was in the nineties.  Yesterday afternoon when I took the cover off it was 102°F in spots and averaged 100°F when it got stirred up. That's like bathtub temperature. It's particularly soothing at night when the the stars are out and the water is warmer than the air temperature.

La Niña, Again

Shari sent me a link to a report in Seattle. The weather folks are thinking we will have another La Niña for this winter, which means cold and wet for Puget Sound, like 2010-1 winter.

In Arizona, another season of La Niña means another dry and warm winter. We already are having a warmer-than-average autumn; highs in the nineties. We get occasional cold spells. One last winter got to 17 degrees, and a few weeks back, the night temperatures got down to the low 50's.

So we are keeping a solar blanket over the cement pond, which so far has kept the water around 86 degrees. Shari and I have a great system. In the afternoon, we peel back the cover carefully so a minimum of debris falls in the pool. We frolic in the warm water. Shari gets a lot of time swimming and aqua-dancing. Then we tuck the pool back under the blanket.

During that cold spell a few weeks back, I couldn't resist a quick night dip under the blanket. The air was cool, but the water was warm.

The Cement Pond

We lost another four last night. Where do they go? I counted eighty-two last night. This morning there are only seventy-eight. Do the desert rodents take them in the dark? Or the bats? Perhaps the bunny rabbits get up before dawn to forage. The small ones can easily slip through the openings by the five yard gates.

But no matter, sunshine and heat bring another four or five, and the water in the cement pond is again over eighty degrees. The magic of Mother Nature who provides all for all.

Blue Agave Bloom

A blooming blue agave makes up the logo for Pima County Parks. It's emblematic of the local Sonoran desert. The elegant, architectural shapes of their huge, dried stalks are scattered throughout the hillsides around Tucson. These agaves bloom only once, then they die. Hence their other name, the century plant. We have lots of blue agaves in our yard.

One morning, I looked out my office window and noticed a growth from one of the large agaves. It was the beginning of a flower stalk. That was Tuesday, and judging by the rapid growth over the next few days, it was only a day or two old. By Friday, it was already higher than I could reach. Within three weeks, it was taller than the decades old saguaro cactus next to it. It began branching at the top after about a month, and by six weeks the flower stalks were developed. Buds began to appear everywhere, then after ten weeks, the first blooms.

L to R: Day 1, Day 2, Day 4, Day 6, Day 15, Day 25

Last year's century plant stalk,
leaning over the driveway.
Left: its top section planted.

It's difficult to appreciate the amount of energy and mass that go into this sudden, huge growth. Last year we had another giant stalk that leaned dangerously over the driveway. After it finished blooming and the flowers died, I decided to cut it down before it fell over. That was an education. It must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. I had leaned an extension ladder against it to try to hold some of the weight. Nothing doing. It came crashing down, smashing a large palo verde branch on its way.

I couldn't lift it, so I cut it in half. Most of the bottom half, about eight feet, serves as stop in the side driveway. What wasn't broken at the top got planted in back, outside and towering over eight-foot high walls. Thing is, after about a year of drying out, you can lift it with two fingers.


Where does all that water come from? Especially this year when it has rained only twice. It can only be that water and energy, stored in the plant, are diverted to the flower stalk leaving once thick leaves thin and shriveled.

We have several old blue agave stalks decorating our backyard. Our most famous stalk was obtained surreptitiously one moonless evening from Finger Rock wash near our house. I had spied it many months earlier, and when my sister Irene visited in April, she helped talk the three of us into the adventure. I parked a discrete distance away and turned off the headlights. Irene wore a flashlight on her forehead and we located the stalk. A few all-too noisy strokes with the handsaw (lights didn't go on at the nearby house) and the dead but still heavy plant was severed. Like primitive hunters carrying a deer on a pole, we marched that stalk to the car and let it rest on the roof. Exhilarated by our bravery and success, we drove home slowly. Next morning the stalk was trimmed and planted in a large Oaxacan pot.

I'd like to leave this year's stalk where it is as long as we can. I have a little solar powered spotlight shining up the stalk, and we sit in front of the house in the warm evenings, looking for bats that feed on the flowers' nectar.