Rain Was Not in the Forecast

On Thursday the 10-day forecast was for little chance of rain, a sad forecast because we get three-quarters of our annual rainfall this time of year. Monsoon season.

But Mother Nature had different plans. She dumped some inch and a half of rain within an hour. Some places not that far away got over two inches. Over that one-hour period, the temperature dropped from 103° to 73°.

We had never seen so much rain falling over the edge of the roof.

One Good Wall Deserves Another

There are lots of nice things about cement blocks. They make great retaining walls that greatly slow down inevitable erosion. They are easier to collect than boulders. They have flat surfaces that can adhere to one another and take stucco. They also can replace inclines lined with rocks and free up those rocks and the occasional boulder for use elsewhere in one's landscape design. And, perhaps the greatest incentive, little critters can't tunnel through them and, if tall enough, javelina are reluctant to jump over them.

So after a few years of loose rocks slipping, critters tunneling, and javelina munching on the roots of ornamentals by my main traversing walkway, I counter-attacked. I made several trips with Agamemnon to Lowes and Home Depot to bring back cement blocks, concrete mix, stucco mix, liquid nails, pea gravel, and clay bricks. I removed my precious native Catalina rocks, dug a trench, and did a rough layout of the wall.

The work is exhilarating and satisfying, although when the lizards are scampering around mid-morning, it's time to get out of the heat. After about a week of early morning work, four or five hours at a time, the block wall was stuccoed, painted, and topped with clay bricks.

I would sit in our outdoor living room and admire not only the pleasing order which I had imposed upon the landscape, but the new areas where I had created terraces with the rocks and the occasional boulder I had freed up.

I noticed something missing.  I had constructed individual lengths of concrete block retaining walls interspersed with natural Catalina rock in our gully (Coat Hanger Valley). I had retaining walls along the slopes defining paths and three sets of stairs leading down to the bottom of the gully, but where you first cross the driveway to get to those paths was untidy. It needed some inviting refinement to entice a person to saunter inside. It needed an entrance.

That required a curve, three test roughed-in layouts, welcome advice from my better half, and a lot of additional trench modifications and cement blocks. The curve was made using three columns of landscape retaining wall wedges between columns of concrete blocks, then filled and smoothed with concrete and stucco.

In my opinion, the result is satisfying. I am almost tempted to have something written out on the curve — you know, in metal letters like universities have their names on masonry curves at the corners of their campuses. Instead of "University of Arizona," I could have "Coat Hanger Valley."

Nah.

 

Inspiration

Another morning in the Desert. It's late winter in the Finger Rock wash where I take Nazar the Wonderdog for his early morning saunters.

A hummingbird sits on topmost bare branch of an acacia. A female red cardinal makes its call. I hear javalinas grunting and wait with Nazar to catch a glimpse of the pack. A Gila woodpecker hammers away on a utility pole. A rabbit forages on greens by the side of the road. Doves and a phainopepla sit on electrical lines studying their surroundings. Cactus wrens sit on their adopted saguaros.

I often tell the story of how this city boy, at age forty-seven, moved to the forests of Whidbey Island. For the first time I saw deer, coyotes, rabbits and owls — even the occasional eagle circling in the sky. When we moved to Tucson, I thought living among such wildlife would be a thing of the past. I was mistaken.

I see more varieties of wildlife, and more of them, here in the Desert than I ever saw on our Whidbey Island ten acres. In addition to the variety I saw yesterday morning within the space of twenty minutes, we often see coyotes, wrens, flycatchers, finches, king snakes (we pranam to them), rattlesnakes (we give them wide berth), coachwhip snakes (stunning colors), Gambel's quail, brown and black haired squirrels, ground squirrels, small mice (true masters of tunneling), bobcats, bats, vultures, Harris hawks, owls, jack rabbits, lizards and butterflies of all sizes and shapes, roadrunners, the occasional flight of herons, and during monsoon, toads (unpleasant croaking), tarantulas (scary but harmless), all manner of beetles, and even a desert tortoise. Less common around our house, but frequent in the nearby canyons, are deer, mountain lion, coatamundi, Gila monsters, and bighorn sheep, to name a few.

They inspire me to write.

That same day, my sisters and I took our grand-niece and grand-nephew to the Tucson Festival of Books. The Festival dates back to 2009 and is held on the University of Arizona campus. It started with some 450 authors and presenters, 50,000 visitors, and 800 volunteers. Since then, the visitors have tripled.

We got there before the scheduled opening time. The campus was already crowded. The quad on the campus, several acres of lawn, was covered with hundreds of booths. Our young niece was interested in getting an autograph from one of her favorite children's books authors. We found the classroom in the Education Building and listened to a panel discussion among five authors and illustrators. Nice people. Promoting their books.

They were all nice people. Publishers, hundreds of authors, the volunteers who helped people find their way, and the crowd. It's not easy to become an author accepted by a publisher. You need not only a good book, it has to be in a popular subject matter, you have to find your way through the maze of submittals and agents, and even if you are published, it's still pretty much up to you to promote your book and yourself. Which is why I self publish.

It was a bit daunting to see so much promotion. My morning walks are more inspiring.

Homage to Blue Elves

The funny thing about the blue elf aloe is that it is neither blue (or even a little bit depressed) nor an elf. However, it is an aloe.

The blue elf is a cultivar of the aloe genus which originated in the Old World, Africa and the Near East in particular. Aloes have been grown in the New World for centuries, long enough for one of the five hundred or so aloe species to be named "Mexican" and for the Mexicans to cook the leaves.

No one seems to know who developed the blue elf or how the cultivar got named. They are not blue. If happy (a little shade is always welcome) they are quite green. If over exposed to sunlight or cold, they turn dark, not blue.

They are early bloomers, starting to grow their long stalks and coral colored blooms in winter, even before the aloe vera (the "true aloe") take off. When the regular aloe bloom, it's all at once as if they all had a meeting and unanimously decided upon the opening day. The blue elves tend to be more independent, different plants blooming over weeks and months.

We inherited a couple of clumps of blue elves when we bought the house. I thinned the clumps and planted a few around the gully. I noticed hummingbirds feeding off of the trumpet shaped blue elf flowers. I thinned and planted more clumps.

This winter has been a bumper crop of flowers and the hummingbirds are happy. See for yourself.

Walls, Roofs & Flower Beds

A parapet is a wall that extends above the roof line.
Our living room has six walls. All six extend to parapets,
as do all exterior bedroom walls.
That's a scupper in the middle.

Of the three — walls, roofs and flower beds — the most damaging was the flower bed. The culprit is water, which by itself is pretty odd given that we live in a desert, albeit one of the earth's wetter deserts.

Walls and roofs are supposed to keep water outside of a house. Well, apparently rainfall in the Sonoran Desert is sufficiently unusual that architects and builders need not bother themselves too much about it. Take our concrete paved backyard and swimming pool apron, for example. They slope towards the house. Come heavy monsoon rains — an annual affair most monsoon seasons — water flooded under the two back doors into the house.

Flat roofs are common here: flatter than your sewer pipe which by code has to slope at least a quarter inch to the foot.

The living room wall where the insulation and framing
were littered with ancient rodent droppings. After
demolition and chlorine, nice and clean.

Our roof is typical. It is so flat that water puddles with dew even on a clear morning. But hey, coat the flat roof with that white elastomeric polymer stuff. It's very good stuff, actually. But if you read the teeny tiny print on the container, in both English and Spanish, it's not recommended for flat roofs that puddle.

From my observation, my explanation is because it ever so slowly but surely dissolves and erodes the coating. You need a new coat every couple of years, if not more often.

Stucco walls are common here. Stucco covers the stick built frame. Stucco is also good stuff but, like the roof, it needs maintenance to remain water tight. Like many houses here, ours has parapets: walls that extend above the roof. The tops of those walls are stuccoed and they are boundaries between what roofers roof and what painters paint. They are directly exposed to sunshine and weather.

Parapets also have scuppers in them, metal channels to drain rainwater. Stucco (basically, cement and sand), metal (the scuppers themselves) and polymer elastomeric all expand and contract differently. Plus, having reached in myself with a brush generously dipped in elastomeric it's almost impossible to get a good coat inside the six-by-four opening that is twelve inches deep. So you get cracks and gaps.

Parapets, scuppers, and stucco are architecturally pretty. They also can be maintenance nightmares. 

The north wall which was covered with
cat claw vine. Yours truly broke up the
solid line of masonry that held the
flower bed planter against the stucco
wall. It was this area where Vinny replaced
wall board in the bedroom on the inside.

Then we have flower beds. If you put them next to the stucco walls — I mean the soil rests against the bottom foot or two of the stucco, even above the concrete foundation — you are asking for trouble. That's what the previous owners did, Auggie and Karen, and who knows how many other previous owners in the five decade history of this house. Yes, there is a tar paper lining between the soil and the stucco, but if you do a lot of watering, which Auggie and Karen did, the sprinklers throw water on the walls.

All we knew when we bought the place was there was so much damage to the north side that Auggie and Karen's broker, Vinny "Cover & Conceal" Yackanin, had his slap and dash crew tear out and replace wall board inside the north bedrooms, dig out all the house-hugging flower beds, and replace the soil with cheap one-inch crushed rock.

Vinny also had his crew put a coat of elastomeric on the roof to hide decades of neglect, leaks, and rotten plywood.

Cover & Conceal worked. Our building inspector — a curse on that profession which has never disclosed anything significant to me buying a house — never noticed a thing and pronounced the roof in good shape..

A fascinating footnote. We noticed the stucco outside the guest bedroom (where Vinny had to repair water & mold damage) and the adjacent cement block chimney had been covered with creepers. Remnants of the cat claw vine still hung to the stucco all the way to the roof like ivy on a ruined English castle. That flower bed, like the others, was irrigated by electronic sprinkler system. (When Shari set up our account at Tucson Water, she was told the property had been labeled high use.) Well, that creeper served as a freeway for the rodents to get on the roof and gnaw their way inside the living room walls.

Not a pretty sight even in a photo. The insulation and
the studs on this corner of the bedroom were covered
with black mold. Major wood rot around and under the
window. The corner on the other end of this same
wall has a corner stud three-quarters eaten out by
termites attracted by the moisture. (We had the termites
eradicated some years back.)

That was all covered up by Vinny's roof coat.

We don't know what was planted and watered by the flower bed on the east side outside the master bedroom. Cover & Conceal also had that dug out, but he never bothered to repair the damage to the window and inside the walls.

The good news is the heavy monsoon rains this year caused leaks in the living room, my office, and the master bedroom. That prompted us to work on the scuppers, parapets and roof. More importantly, we had the insides inspected by mold specialists who confirmed the problems. Even more importantly, the mold specialist was so long getting us his estimate, we hired Bear Down Builders (of tower remodel fame) to do the work.

Then we got the mold specialist's seven-page quote, complete with Biblical verse (Corinthians 12:9-10). Admittedly an upside bid, it was $12,000. Bear Downs' estimate was $2,000, although we expect we will go over. We are paying time and materials and we know and like the folks at Bear Down Builders. We want the work done.

The bedroom wall exposed. Nice and clean.

I cleaned up after the Bear Down Builders work pulling drywall nails and bits and pieces of wretched insulation. That would save them some time when the new drywall is installed and it gave Shari and me opportunity to get a close look. Shari donned lab coat, industrial face mask, and thick gloves to scrub mold and spray chlorine bleach over all exposed areas. We have had the rooms breathing and drying with fresh air.

I must say, having the walls exposed and cleaned, we are overwhelmingly grateful to have the work done.

Caesalpinia

 Or, The Effect of Monsoon Rain on Life. 

In this case, on Caesalpinia pulcherrima. In the Sonoran Desert, we call the legume plant with spectacular flowers, Mexican bird of paradise. Its common names include peacock flower and in Bermuda, where it is the national flower, the pride of Bermuda.

Anyway, our winter and spring rainfall having been almost non-existent, our Caesalpinia was sparse and struggling. Then came July, then August, and we are not done with September. Tucson's rainfall already this year has exceeded its annual average.

Nature responded. Our Caesalpinia is a flowering jungle, and the unusually plentiful butterflies and moths are feasting upon the flowers.

The River Flows

Weather is in the news all around the world. Much of it is pretty dire.

It's been a while, but so far the monsoon season this year has brought us rain pretty much every day this July, and the forecast is more of the same.

We had a trace all through June. Here in the Foothills for July, we are at around three to four inches.

The monsoon bust last year, coupled with a wildfire in the Catalinas, make us appreciate the rain. We could not be more ecstatic.

These days remind us why it's called the Rillito River. Can you hear the Colorado River toads croaking?