Coffee heat rising

Gardening

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…”

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“…Leave us all enjoy it!”

{chortle!} That was the slogan of a long, long-ago governor of Arizona, a classic specimen of the state’s political fauna. The guy had been a radio announcer before he rose to the state’s highest office. He was a bit of an ignoramus, a good ole’ boy who may or may not have feigned that style. As it developed, he was far from the most stupid of the critters we have elected to public office. Evan Mecham took that cake. Ev was the Donald Trump of the Southwest.

What a character.

Ev was so flamboyantly bizarre — and so excessively stupid — that nobody wanted to miss a minute of the sideshow. We all — every citizen of the state — went out and bought these tiny portable TVs (this was long before the day of cell phones and Google News), which we toted into the office with us. It took a year and four months to shovel him out of office. He was impeached in April 1988, when he enjoyed a criminal trial for his efforts as, uhm, governor.

It was hilarious while it lasted. But then…to have a fool for a governor is a bit different from having one as President of the United States, hm?

In less laughable climes: Just found two (!!) emergent holes of paloverde beetles under one of the beloved Arizona sweet orange trees. The monsters love citrus as much as they love paloverde trees.

That tree was peakèd this spring, so I suspected something was up. (Or…down under.) Citrus trees will go “off” once every few years, look sickly, and produce rather sad fruit. Then they revive the following year. It’s as if they need to “rest” every now and again. But I’m afraid the present anemia resulted from its roots being eaten by these goddamned bugs’ grubs, which live most of their lives underground — about 8 years. When they emerge to breed, they’re at the end of their lives — they only last a few days above ground.

Control is extremely iffy. We might say “feeble.” Virtually nothing kills them. Some years ago I found a supposed organic treatment — you apply these microbes that allegedly attack the grubs, infect them, and do them in. But after a couple of years of applying according to instructions, they didn’t do a thing.

Then a guy at Home Depot — a retired arborist come back to earn a few pennies to finance his loafing — steered me to an insecticide that he claimed, contrary to accepted wisdom, would do the grubs in if applied at the right time of year and well soaked into the ground. That stuff does work moderately well. It certainly cut the number of emergent holes, which at one point were upwards of a dozen around the paloverde tree. Since at any given time an infestation can deliver hundreds or thousands of grubs, you know that for every mature, flying beetle dozens and dozens of babes are chewing away at your trees.

The problem with said insecticide is you can’t apply it to food plants. So if I put this stuff on the oranges, I won’t be able to eat next year’s crop of oranges. And that will not be a good thing. Those oranges are like candy. I gorge on them all spring, starting in February. I can easily eat five or six for breakfast, and then pull off some more during the day.

So I’m loathe to apply it. Not only do I not want to do without next year’s crop, neither do I know whether the following year’s fruit will be safe to eat. And of course, given that this stuff certainly isn’t going to kill all of the thousands of grubs underground (there were still some emergent holes the summer after I dumped it around the paloverde tree), getting rid of them may entail having to apply it several years in a row. Or…now and evermore.

It’s very early for paloverde beetles to emerge. Forgodsake, this is only May! They normally come out at the beginning of monsoon season, which starts mid- to late July. Apparently the combination of heat, humidity, and long daylight hours calls them forth. For two of them to climb out of the ground at this time of year is pretty surprising.

A flock of a dozen whitewing doves are scarfing up the seed I put out this morning. An interested thrasher is also lurking around. Thrashers will eat paloverde beetles. I’ve seen one do battle with one of those armored bugs…and it’s quite a show! So it’s in the trees’ interest to attract some fierce and muscular flying dinosaurs…as well as their cousins, the mockingbirds.

Here’s a thing that looks sort of like a house finch, but he’s probably not getting the type of food he most needs. His head and breast are distinctly orange, not red, which (so we’re told) indicates he’s not finding food with enough pigment to make him red. When you’re a lady house finch, you tend to favor a gent with the reddest possible coloring.

And the requisite pair of Abert’s towhees are back. These fine little birds will clear out an anthole in a few days. They do a funny little dance in leaf litter that involves hopping back and forth to stir things up until they flush a sowbug or some other hapless ground-crawling critter. It is, we might say, a well fed bird in these parts.

Speaking of the paloverde tree, one of its major branches has become so heavy it has dropped down to the level of the back wall and threatens to rest on the roof. Luis the arborist said he would come by this afternoon (that would mean “some time this week, maybe”) to take a look at it.

Luis is a very fine tree guy, hampered only by the fact that he no habla a helluva lot of inglès. Old-country men have much to recommend them, specifically a kind of grace and courtliness that tempers their machismo. Not only does he have this much-to-be-desired characteristic, he also really knows how to maintain trees. Never once have I seen him hack away at a tree with a chainsaw. He trims and shapes each tree by hand, with his brain fully engaged. He knows what he’s doing, and he does it well.

My plan is to ask him if we can brace that big stem up, because (especially at this time of year!) I don’t want to lose its shade. But I can just imagine what he’ll say about that.

I may have to take out a bank loan to pay him — there wasn’t enough in the checking account to cover Chuck’s bill for the damn Venza’s new battery and also stave off bankruptcy. In addition to the paloverde tree in back, the shrubs I installed in front to block the view of the former Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum ran amok this spring. It’s surprising the neighbors haven’t complained to the city about them. So there are at least three very large plants out there that need to be cut back.

devil-pod-treePlus Gerardo would like to say good-bye to the devil-pod tree on the west side. I’d like to see it go, too. But…

a) I do not wish to say good-bye to its shade, despite the unholy mess it makes; and
b) Neither do I wish to say good-bye to one of Gerardo’s cousins, who you may be sure will be sent into the treetop (which touches the stratosphere now) to hack it down; and
c) Nor do I wish to have one of those characters drop a branch on my neighbor Terri’s roof, since I very much doubt my homeowner’s insurance will cover any such antics.

I think it will require a crane to take it down safely, that’s how high the tree is now. And I’m going to afford that…how?

Sumer is y-cumen…again!

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First week of April in Arizona? Summertime!

People who came here from other parts of the country think it’s already awrful hot. It’s not: yesterday the high only reached 91.

To my mind that’s fairly balmy. But I guess if you grew up in more temperate climes, it feels extreme. Oh well. Just wait till they see what it’s like on July 4. 😀

The plants are beside themselves, once again, with plant joy. The citrus has been blossoming for several weeks — tiny baby oranges, limes, and lemons have started to appear.

Just a few days ago, I planted some new chard seeds in a) a pot and b) a perennially sunbaked flowerbed. Speaking of perennial, the existing chard plants have occupied their pot for upwards of three years. Unlike other kinds of leafy vegetables, the stuff doesn’t bolt to seed in the summer (when it does sprout a seed wand, that doesn’t kill the plant), and it can live through a fairly bracing frost.

This winter some kind of tiny bug literally shaved its leaves off to their center spines. I thought the plants were done for. But lo! This spring, they sprouted new leaves.

The bugs went after them again, so I squirted a solution of Dawn all over the plants. Apparently said solution was a little too strong, though: it burned the chard’s leaves. Again, I thought it was done for, so went out and bought a package of chard seeds, figuring to have to start anew..

Nay, verily: the things have put out more new leaves. Meanwhile, the seeds — which I planted about three days ago — are already sprouting.

Would’ve thunk it?

Planted some little chrysanthemum-like things in the pot, having heard that they repel bugs. Right. We shall see about that.

In any event, they’re kind of pretty little plants, and I think they survive in the heat here.

The Mexican primrose — in reality a kind of weed, a plant that Gerardo looks at aghast — is in full, ecstatic bloom. They make a beautiful pink flower on an upright plant. And because they are quite weedish, they spread like crazy and you cannot kill them.

Lookit these orange things that sprouted from an ancient bulb. Don’t remember what they were called — if I ever knew. But aren’t they pretty?

The lantana, which began to struggle last fall and appeared to be about to wither and die, made it through the winter (to my surprise). It probably needs to be transplanted into a larger pot — lantana is a vigorous spreading critter, and I imagine it must have some space demands. Some varieties of the stuff will actually grow into a hedge in these parts.

Welp, I’d better get off my duff pretty quick. I signed up to go to a writer’s workshop here in town this afternoon. They meet on Sunday afternoons, which normally would be highly inconvenient for me (if not altogether unworkable), because most Sundays choir doesn’t unwind until after noon. Getting downtown through the wacksh!t traffic and fighting to find a parking place by 2 p.m.: not so good. But today we get a little “spring break” after the hectic doings of Holy Week: no church.

Because they meet in a fancy coffee house, you pretty much have to buy something — and we’re told a cup of plain iced coffee (hold the cream, hold the sugar, hold the fake flavoring) will put you back four bucks. Going there once a week is, shall we say, aversive to the frugalist. So…they’ll have to be pretty damn good for me to want to do this often.

The Bum Express goes right in front of the place, which would be grand if I had a friend up here who wanted to attend their meetings. But you couldn’t get me to stand around waiting for a train at the corner of Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s Way alone. Not on a bet. I wouldn’t like it even with another person along. But there’s no way I’d ride that thing by myself: not through our garden corner of the city.

This plan to find a writer’s group in town was occasioned by yesterday’s fiasco. The bunch I happen to favor meets in Avondale — it really is great group, the people in it very nice and smart and interesting and fun to know. But Avondale is halfway to Yuma from here.

It is an hour’s drive, door-to-door, from my house to the Avondale Civic Center, where they meet.

Yesterday the drive was enhanced by my realization, just as I turned out of the ‘Hood onto Gangbanger’s Way, that godDAMNit, I’d forgotten my credit cards & ID.

Soooo…had to turn back into the neighborhood, whereupon forthwith I got behind some poor soul who did not know where she was going and apparently had no GPS. She puttered along, blocking the road while peering back and forth and looking pretty puzzled. At one point she stopped at a tiny intersection and stood there, while she cogitated which way to turn.

All the while making me later and later and later….

Flew out of the ‘Hood, having discovered that Gangbanger’s Way is blocked up for pending goddamn lightrail construction, and headed across town on Main Drag South. This moved fairly smoothly, thank God, and I pulled up to the Avondale Library at exactly noon.

This, you understand, is actually “late,” because the guy who runs this group always starts precisely on the minute, and he expects everyone to be ready to go.

Fly to the door and find it…CLOSED.

The air conditioning has gone out and the flatland touristers who live in those far-flung HOA-ridden suburbs think 91 degrees is too hot to hold a library open.

God help us.

We’re told the meeting is moved to some branch library on the far, far southwest side.

I look at that and think…nope. Not going exploring out here. An hour of driving to get here is quite enough. Besides. I’m hungry.

So I headed home, disgusted because I did want to hear my friend’s presentation.

If you want to live in lovely Phoenix, you need to develop an appreciation for long, frustrating drives. 😀

Spring (re-)Sprung

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What a gorgeous morning! A beautiful spring day: October being Arizona’s answer to spring.

While I was at Home Depot buying the possibly dysfunctional hose yesterday, I also picked up packets of seeds — beets, various lettuce-like creatures — which I’ve planted in large pots strategically placed in the front courtyard’s sprinklers.

Surprisingly, the Depot’s selection of seeds was piss-poor. Actually had a hard time finding lettuce seeds. Which is crazy: winter is the time to grow lettuce here. It doesn’t freeze (nor is it likely to be at risk thereof, given the steady climate warming we’ve had: we haven’t had a hard frost in years), and it loves the mild winter temperatures of the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun.

The chard I planted last fall survived the summer and is still going strong. In fact, I plan to have some of it with lunch.

Other things fried over the summer, though. A new rosemary plant joined the nascent lettuce in front — I do hope it will like it there. Bought another thyme plant, which I also may put in front, where it will get plenty of sun and water. Although…thyme would probably rather have more sun and less water. And grabbed a spearmint critter, which probably will take up residence happily on the shaded west side.

And of course I couldn’t resist a six-pack of snapdragons. How could anyone?

The rose vines here on the west side, the ones that help create the Shady Bower, are looking pretty peakèd. Though they’re putting out some new growth, a few weeks ago you couldn’t have convinced me that they survived the summer’s ungodly heat. They may come back this year, but I’m pretty sure that next fall I’ll have to take them out and replace them with babes.

IF, that is, I can find anyone that still sells rose vines. May have to order them online. Not what I like to do: one prefers to see what one is getting, when it comes to plants.

The backyard is a bit of a wreck. Gerardo hasn’t been here for a month and a half — hence the $285 bill to hire a real irrigation guy to replace the watering system’s control panel, a job Gerardo would cheerfully do for twenty bucks and the cost of the panel. I don’t know whether he’s sick, harassed by Trump’s troops, or what…but if he doesn’t show up pretty quick, I’m going to have to find another lawn dude.

My neighbor Terri has a guy who does an adequate job on her yard. She shows signs of being no less tight than me, so I imagine he can be hired for a reasonable figure. Next time I see him, I’ll try to waylay him.

On the subject of said collapsible garden hose, so roundly hated by Amazon reviewers… Well. I installed it on the backyard spigot, which is equipped with an Orbit dial-type mechanical timer, renowned for its annoying habit of leaking. And here’s what happened:

  1. Fifty feet is exactly the desired length: as long as two pieces of the regular hose I had cobbled together.
  2. Unlike said regular hose, the thing is lightweight and easy to haul to the far side of the pool or to weasel in behind the thick shrubbery to the east of the pool.
  3. It does not require you to bust your buns to put it away (or, as is my habit, to just leave the damn thing laying on the pavement, hideously). With no water in it, all you have to do is pick it up, loop it around and around to coil it, and drop it in the hose pot. It’s lightweight and absurdly easy to handle.
  4. A-A-N-N-N-D….Here’s the kicker: When the thing is attached to the connection on the Orbit, IT DOES NOT LEAK.

By “it,” we mean the Orbit timer, all specimens of which leak front and back when attached to a regular garden hose. The Orbit will leak at the hose connection, and fie on your damn washers! And it also will leak up near the male connection where you attach it to the spigot. To keep from saturating the foundation of the house, I have to set a large pot under the spigot to collect the leaked water, which then gets dumped on the potted plants.

With the new allegedly flimsy hose, there’s no leaking at all!

WTF? The timer didn’t even leak after it shut the water off…which is normally when it turns into Niagara Falls.

The thing is quite lightweight, and yes, I can imagine that any manhandling whatsoever could cause it to spring a leak. It appears to be made of cloth over some sort of light plastic interior hose. If you jerked it around or ran it over the edge of a brick patio, it no doubt would easily tear or split. But…if we think of it as a girlie hose, I suspect it could be OK, at least for a season, given careful enough handling.

Back at Amazon, I found something in the same genre, although it’s not identical. This one looks like it’s made of the stuff used for pool hoses, though it apparently coils up more compactly. Some reviewers say it leaks, but most rave about its glories. As we noted in comments yesterday, too many of the reviews at Amazon are not-so-secretly paid reviews. But probably not all of 174 reviews are fake. I hope.

Decided to try it, just to see. Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a chance on another of these Goodyear hoses from the Depot, since the Amazon hose looks like it would be better suited for the front courtyard and I need another 50-foot number for the west side. In fact, I may drive back up there this very afternoon.

The new BBQ cover arrived from Amazon by overnight delivery. And interestingly, you’ve heard Amazon says it’s testing its abandonment of FedEx in California? Well, it’s doing the same here. This is the third package of late that’s been delivered by some guy obviously driving his own car. So…there’s another side gig for those of us rendered unemployable by Republican recessions and automation… 😮

The cover doesn’t fit as well as the Weber brand cover — not tailored to fit (as it were) and it has no Velcro straps to secure it. But I never used the straps anyway. And this thing does the job: it does cover the grill and will protect it from rain. I may glue on some Velcro strips or patches to keep it from blowing off in a high wind…but whatever. The price is definitely SO much righter than the one with the Weber brand slapped on it.

Fall Is Springing in Arizona

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Lhudly sing huzzah! It’s 8:30 in the morning and around 80 degrees out here on the deck. The worst of the summer is gone, thank God.

But…of course there’s no rest for the wicked.

The watering system crapped out a few days ago. That means everything on almost a quarter-acre has to be watered by hand. That is a whole lotta watering, since most of my posies live in pots. By 5 p.m., it’s still a hundred degrees out here. Potted plants will die in one day — flat — when temps reach 100.

Gerardo knows how to fix the thing — I think the control panel needs to be replaced. He does understand irrigation systems. But he’s busy. And I doubt if he realizes that if somethig is in a pot, it has to be watered every day.

On the other hand…how much, really, does it harm me to get off my duff every few minutes for an hour or two to move hoses around? It’s actually probably good for me.

The handyman recommended by the Home Depot lady for the job of re-installing the fiberglass cover over the shade structure wants nine hundred bucks.

Well. I don’t know if that’s reasonable or not. But you may be sure I am not paying $900 to some guy who says he’ll be here at 9 a.m. and shows up at 11.

Gerardo doesn’t want to do the job. He says he will if I can’t get anyone else, but clearly he hopes I can.

I’d called the guy who built it, Richard, a week or so ago and got no answer. He’s the one who fell off the roof and busted up his back in a dozen places. So I figured he probably had retired from the slamming-around business.

Called the handyman: no response.

So this morning I was going to post a query on NextDoor, which is like tossing bread crumbs in a duck pond. But first decided to call Richard one more time, since I know he knows how to do the job — his first effort lasted 14 years.

And lo! His wife picked up the phone…just as it went dead. She called right back. She said their office had flooded a week ago, ruining their almost-new computer and butching up all things electrical and electronic. They’re just getting back in gear.

So she’s going to have him call to make an appointment. That’s good. If I have to pay $900 to get that thing fixed, I’d rather give it to Richard than just about anybody else. He can fix the watering system, too, I suppose.

Meanwhile there are a jillion other things I need to do, now that the weather’s cooling. First on the list: repaint the outdoor chairs. The cans of spray paint have been sitting in the back room since I bought them last spring, imagining that I’d get around to doing the job before it got hot. I underestimate my own laziness…

Then I would like to plant some vegetables…probably in pots, because I’d just as soon not dig up the landscaping.

Meanwhile, today I’ve gotta finish the current elaborate business management study from China. It’s almost 10,000 editable words, which I expected to require a lot more time than it has. But in fact, yesterday, with relatively few interruptions hammering at me, I managed to get through most of it. All that remains are the discussion and the conclusion, which I should be able to power through fairly quickly.

After that, it’ll be time to finish preparing another week’s worth of dog food — the pork is already cooked and cooling, preparatory to grinding it and mixing it with veggies & starch.

And so, away…

Warm Enough for Ya?

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 Temps are supposed to hit 120° today. We’ll believe that when we see it. But it probably will get fairly warm. Just now it’s almost 9:30 and the backyard thermometer reads 100 degrees, not especially out of the ordinary for this time of year.

A light skiff of high clouds has moved in, and that will cut some of the supposed heat. Monsoon dust on the New Mexico border killed six people yesterday evening; as you can see from the video, some serious clouds were in the offing. If that moisture moves this far west, it will lower temps some, even if it doesn’t come all the way into the Valley.

The pool is spotlessly clean — the scheme to brush it down at least once a day is working. Last night I shock-treated it (part of the scheme is to do the weekly shock-treat that you’re supposed to do and that I’ve managed to avoid for the past several years…) and so this morning backwashed, a PITA that I could do without. Very many more of these weekly backwashes and the filter will have to be taken apart and cleaned again, to the tune of another $125 or $150.

Supposedly you need to clean a pool filter only about once or twice a year. I’ve found that to be hogwash (heh… backwash? back-hogwash?): every time I turn around I have to pay someone to come disassemble the thing, haul the parts into the alley, scrub it out, haul the parts back in, and reassemble it.

Pretty soon I’ll need to replace that old thing, and I’m thinking about making a retrograde move: replace the fancy DE filter with a sand filter. DE does a better job on a pool the size of the one in this yard. However, a sand filter does not need to be cleaned on a regular basis. You backwash and you only backwash. After a number of years, you have somebody come and dump the sand into the alley, then replace the sand…but it’s years, not months or weeks.

The pool water would be a little cloudy — maybe — with a sand filter. But the pool has to be replastered…very soon…and if I were to get a darker color plaster or Pebble-Tek — the height of style — it wouldn’t be noticeable. If I were very clever, I might figure out a way to backwash onto the trees without excavating the landscaping, thereby saving a little on the water bills and no longer having to drag the hose out into the alley.

Leaving the gate open while I’m fiddling with the pool gives me the heebie-jeebies, given the “neighbors” who inhabit the alleys. The dogs have to be locked up during the backwash procedure; otherwise Ruby will take off for Yuma. Wouldn’t make much difference anyway: they’re not big enough to do much more than love the meth-head to death.

Who knows? Maybe that’s what meth-heads need.

Heh! The Corgi Drug Cure. Good, very good.

One-twenty in the shade or no, at this time of year I have to cover up the rose bushes. Otherwise they fry. This does not make for high aesthetics in the garden architecture department.

 

Fleurs

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The ultimate boug’

A day late and a dollah short for flower pix: spring has done sprung, and all the pretty fleurs are already frying. We’ve had heat in the mid-90s…and this is just the middle of March!

I can’t turn on the watering system, because the effing city bases your summer, fall, and winter water & sewer rates on the amount of water you use in the springtime. So if you drain and refill  your pool anytime after the end of December, you not only pay $200 extra for the water, you get a year-long extra gouge for the privilege. That means you have to ration water through the end of May. AND the bastards are planning to jack up everyone’s rates by at least 2% this year. I do not know how I’m going to afford an extra ding like that: my summertime water bills are already as high as the  power bills, which are freaking exorbitant.

So right now I’m having to water all the plants by hand, a time-consuming nuisance since I have a lot of potted plants. Once temps get over about 90 degrees, a plant in a pot will die in less than a day if you don’t water it in the morning.  But if you water by hand, you do have a lot more control over how much gets poured on which plant.

(Click on the images to see their full glory.)

The plants burst forth in great ecstasy after the winter deluge was followed by this spring’s heat wave. The citrus are covered with perfumed flowers while the winter crop of oranges, lemons, and limes still cling to the branches.

The oranges, in particular, have been incredible this winter. Each piece of fruit is like juicy candy, it’s so sweet and delicious. I was much relieved that the GERD finally settled down enough that I can eat the oranges — for a time, it looked like oranges and orange juice were to be a thing of my past. At this time of year I’ll eat five or six oranges at a sitting, They are so good, and there are so many of them, you have to pork them down as fast as you can eat them to avoid a lot of loss.

{chortle!} If it’s true that vitamin C fends off flu and cold germs, presumably I would have croaked over by now if I hadn’t been able to scarf down this year’s crop. 🙄

Cassie and Ruby like the oranges, too. They don’t eat them fresh, but snarfle around under the trees in search of dead, mummified oranges, which they carry into the house, hide in their nests, and at their leisure chew up into stinky messes for the human to clean up.

Citrus connoisseur

Thrashers also like oranges, it develops. When they find one on the ground, they poke a beak-sized hole in it and slurp out the juicy innards.

Those blue bulb things I bought at the Depot and planted last fall popped out of the ground and indeed did produce wonderful little deep blue blossoms. They indeed are holding their own against the Mexican primrose, as are the red flower thingies whose name I don’t recall but which reseeded themselves and came up, shivering with plant joy, with the rains.

It’s quite the little jungle in the poolside flowerbed, but I expect everything but the Mexican primrose, an extremely hardy weed ornamental, will fry after the weather gets much hotter.

Other bulbs also have come to life, including (briefly) these beautiful iris, which inhabit the front porch as well as one of the flowerbeds flanking the barbecue…

I have no idea what these things are — some kind of bulb, found at some nursery or on some Home Depot rack far back in the mists of time — but they are gorgeous!

Yellow is the desert’s favorite color. That’s not surprising, since the Sonoran Desert is the world’s richest bee habitat. Bees particularly relish the color yellow. Hence mounds, twigs, and sprigs of yellow flowers:

Here are some that decided to grow under the protection of a man-eating agave…

As we scribble, the Myer lemon is humming with honeybees. I can’t even imagine what kind of honey the little gals must make from those unbelievably sweet flowers. At this time of year, the air is filled with the perfume of citrus, and the little alien European bees are beside themselves with insect ecstasy.

Oh well. I must send off the completed editorial project to the client — now, not later. And call the glasses guy to find out what happened to the expensive specs I ordered before this damn cold descended on me, which was quite some time ago. And water all these plants, yes, by hand. And perform the daily pool brush-down — it’s working! not a single sign of wall moss in all this crazy heat! — and contemplate the possibility of diving into that pool, which is now almost warm enough to swim in. And read a friend’s manuscript — a freebie, but I figure you catch more flies with molasses (etc.).

And so, away!

Seen any flowers in your part of the country?