Coffee heat rising

House & Yard

The Music of the Morning

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Coming on to mid-morning here in the Funny Farm’s backyard. And…oh my goodness, what a lovely place, what a lovely symphony!

What we have out here in the side yard, where we take our morning dose of caffeine, is BIRDS. Hordes of wondrous birds.

Just now, the Bird Theater is dominated by a flock of beautiful doves. A slew of white-wings waddle around out here, grumbling at each other and searching for the seeds I’ve failed to put out this morning. Those critters do make for a fine start to the day.

A variety of songbirds are holding forth, as we scribble. What a symphony! Tweedle tweedle twee cheepee cheepee cheepee cheepee TWEE-uu TWEE-uu chirpita chirpita chirpita squaaaa squaaaa chirp chirp chirp chirp!!!!

Too delightful for words.

Hm. Maybe that’s why birds don’t have words???

  • I should take the dawg for a walk, before this gorgeous morning turns hot.
    • Too lazy. Who, me? set my coffee down???
  • I should drag the hoses around the yard.
    • Too lazy. What? get off my duff???
  • I should go back to bed.
    • Too lazy. That would entail getting off my duff and hiking to the bedroom…

Ohhhh well!  What can I say? Other than, maybe, Let’s go back to bed! 

Pant! Gasp!

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Four-thirty in the afternoon, and it’s 103 degrees in the shade of the back porch. Wunderground predicts temps as high as 109.

Credible. Highly credible. 😮

Yes. It IS seriously hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. Dawg and I are back in the house, after a brief circumnavigation of the neighborhood lane to the north of us.

LOL! Wunderground gives us an EXTREME HEAT WARNING extending from 10 a.m. tomorrow to 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Well. Sure. OK.  “Extreme”?  Seriously?  105 to 109 degrees at the height of the afternoon?  Well. Whatever you say, dear Wunderground.

I’d call that an ordinary Summer afternoon in (un)lovely Phoenix.

Yeah: hotter than Hell. You expected a balmy spring afternoon (un)lovely Phoenix, come the first days of summertime?  Good grief!

Gosh, though….this IS a pretty neighborhood. Hotter than Hell or not, it’s an attractive place to live. Think Ruby and I will stay….  😀

And…that’s a serious threat…uhm…thought. Matter of fact, I’d sure like to be able to leave this house to my son. It’s a handsomely designed and well-built little castle. If and when he inherits it, he could easily sell it for half a million bucks. (Yeah: that’s only $500,000, which is about par for the neighborhood these days.)

Think o’that! He could sell this house and retire on the proceeds. Or sell his own pile and move in here for the duration. Both houses are worth about the same.

Mine is a decade or three newer than his..so this place is likely to cost him less to maintain. Plus it has a pool. Yeah, a PITA of sorts…but also mighty nice at this time of year.

😀

Another Gray Day in Arizona…

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Leave us all enjoy it!

LOL! A Phoenix radio station, extant some years ago, used to have a talk-show announcer who would start the day with his trademark greeting:

It’s another beautiful day in Arizona!
Leave us all enjoy it!

This particular illiteracy was apparently some sort of Midwestern dialect.

Today is another muggy, damp day in Arizona. No clouds to speak of, but the air is just plain soggy.

Just back from trudging around the park with Ruby the Corgi. Absolutely positively NOT in the mood for a morning stroll through air as thick as Jell-O. But now we’re home (at last!). The coffee is steeping. The dog is flopped on the hallway floor; the human is flopped in its favorite easy chair.

My son wants me to compile a grocery list for him. He doesn’t get the picture — and won’t, no matter how desperately I try to explain. To wit: I don’t do grocery lists! 

Nope. I know what I need, and when I get to the store, I patrol the aisles…grabbing whatever I see that needs to be replenished. Ask me face to face what those needs are, and…I dunno. 

So that will start the day with an annoyance, both for me and for my excellent son, who proposes to haul me to said store. Pore guy!

Day-dreaming while hiking this morning: remembering the Moon Valley home of a now long-gone friend. When she and her husband moved into the house, it needed a lot of superficial fix-up work. I went over there to help them: paint, drywall repair, window caulking…

It was kinda fun, though it quickly devolved into boring work, and more work than I’d had in mind doing.

Work! It’s bad for your health!

 

Parboiled in Phoenix…

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Ruby and her human are just back from the neighborhood park. HOT, stuffy, stagnant morning over there…ugh!  Hardly a jolly frolic.

Oh, well. At least we got a little exercise. Ruby is flopped under the master bathroom toilet: in Canine Estimation, the coolest spot in the house. The Human is parked in front of a fan, swilling iced coffee.

In the Olden Days, when Whitey-Whites first lived in these environs, people would leave town for the summer. They’d go up on the “Rim,” as the high country is called, and pass the hot months there.

Yea verily: we used to own a ranch up there. We co-owners would betake ourselves to that place whenever we could.

Sure do wish we still had it!

😀

But oh!  The little kids in the park are so delightful, frolicking around in the dawn heat! Ruby and I loafed and watched the urchins burn off the parents’ calories. Eventually it got too warm to linger, and so we ambled back to the Funny Farm.

And here we sit, continuing the loafing chore.

Thank goodness we found Pool Dude!  Otherwise, I’d be out there in the backyard with the brush and the vacuum right now, cleaning the Hole in the Ground into Which to Pour Money. And lemme tellya: loafing, that is NOT. 

{chortle!} I do love the pool, though. Really, I ought to be out there right now paddling around in the drink. But oh, my…it really IS fricaseeing hot outside. Having come back from the park nicely parboiled, I can’t move myself to go back outdoors, even if it entails cooling off in the luxurious pool.

Phoenix, Arizona: Garden spot…

Report from the Hubs of Hades…

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EGAD, but it’s hot outside. 

Actually, it only seems so: Wunderground tells us the current temp is a balmy 95 degrees.

Brrrr!  Break out the jacket!

Actually, 95 isn’t all that hot for Arizona. I think it’s a little sticky out there, though: but…but…no!!!!  Only 4% chance of rain; Wunderground claims we have 6% humidity.

Right, guys. R-i-i-g-h-t…

Left Ruby home while I took a short hike around the ‘Hood, not wanting to fricasee the little pooch. Being only around 6 or 8 inches tall, her furry body would be one helluva lot closer to the frying pavement than my tall, thin, and unfurry one.

Came across a neighbor beating himself to exhaustion: Here in the middle of the afternoon, the guy had DUG UP HIS LAWN to pull out part of the irrigation system, which he was trying to repair. Lordie!!!  Beat me some more!!! 

All of which goes to show that some people are even crazier than I am.

Looked around the neighborhood just south of ours, wondering….would I like to move over there?

  • The houses are bigger, fancier, nicer.
  • It’s a slightly more upscale slab of the neighborhood.
  • Closer to the park: much to Ruby’s advantage.
  • Further from the ever-threatening Sunnyslope slum…

But…but…seriously?  What AM I smoking???

  • Yep: the houses are bigger, fancier…and commensurately more expensive to air-condition.
  • The lots are irrigated, meaning someone has to be paid to come around and mow the grass every week or two. (Mine is gravel: virtually maintenance-free.)
  • Close to the park means close to the traffic, close to crowds, close to noise.
  • Further from the slums means…nothing. Two or three blocks a difference in the crime rate does not make.
  • Rich people make me kuh-RAZY. No, I do not want to move into a more affluent slab of the ‘Hood.

Ahem! Okay, so much for THAT idea. 😀

Movin’ on…

Whew! Hotter than the Hubs!

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Well…no. Maybe not. It’s probably NOT hotter than the hubs of Hades out on the lovely streets of north Phoenix. No…it’s just hot and humid. Light overcast, 93 degrees, 0% chance of rain, 14% humidity….whatEVER! It surely feels hotter than the hubs, to say nothing of sticky-damp.

Not your standard Arizona springtime afternoon, that’s for sure.

Ruby and I strolled into Upper Richistan: the tony, fancy part of the ‘Hood. Ohhh, how we miss “The Ole Guy,” as SDXB used to call him. What a nice man he was!

The Ole Guy and his wife were deep into retirement, living in a handsome upscale home. Every day when SDXB and I would pass his house during our morning stroll, he would be out in front fiddling with something: whittling a piece of wood or repairing a gadget or whatever. We would say hello — sometimes chat a bit — and consider that encounter one of the high points of our daily stroll.

He’s gone now, presumably “late” or else hauled off to an old-folkery. And much missed.

The two of them lived in the more upscale section of the ‘Hood: custom or semi-custom houses, as opposed to our tract shacks. If that house were to come on the market, I’d surely want to look at it…maybe even consider buying it. But…what the hey! I surely couldn’t afford it. So on my part, that would be nothing more than an exercise in curiosity.

Meanwhile, the corner of the ‘Hood just to the south of my neighborhood is undergoing some mad gentrification. Good grief! New roofs, new plastering, new paint jobs, on and on. Dunno why a bunch of residents decided all at once to fancify the place…but if they put any of those houses on the market, you can be sure that antic will jack up our property values (and our taxes) some more.

{chortle!} I do feel exceptionally lucky to have stumbled across this corner of North Central Phoenix, guided here by a savvy Realtor. If I can hang onto this house until I croak over, my son will inherit a very nice asset, one worth more than most houses in this part of the Valley. If my son feels like moving — and likes taking on the care of a swimming pool(!) — he’ll be able to come right on in to this place. If not, though, he can either sell it for more than enough to pay off his own mortgage, or rent it for enough to let him retire!

Either way, it’ll be a nice gift to leave to him.