Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

But it’s a…soggy heat…

by

Whatever it is out there beyond the Air-Conditioned Bubble, it ain’t a dry heat! Indeed, one could call it, well…soggy.

Monsoon weather is drifting in, gently shoved along by the cutesily named Hurricane Bud. That means enhanced humidity, which means enhanced heat. It’s only 109 on the back porch just now — around 3 p.m. — but if you’d asked me to estimate, I’d guess about 112, maybe even 113. The creeping moisture in the air makes the ambience feel a fair amount warmer than it is.

The past couple of days have been hot and muggy. It’s the kind of weather that makes you feel out of sorts, even when you’re inside the expensively air-cooled house. Crabby, even.

Tomorrow there’s a scant chance of rain — maybe as much as 15%. But on Saturday chances jump to 79%. So with any luck we’ll get some serious rain on that day. Hope springing eternal in the desert rat’s heart, preparations have already been made. The back porch furniture, now pretty much unprotected in the absence of the fiberclass shade-structure cover, is covered in plastic bags and camo drop cloth, the latter tied to the legs of the table so it can’t fly away. The pool has been zapped with chlorine (the mustard algae is still laughing). The garbage has all been hauled, so that doesn’t have to be done through wind, flying dust, rocketing tree limbs, or ankle-deep puddles.

Our so-called “monsoons” blow in from the Sea of Cortes at this time of year. The talking weather-heads are predicting it will be the “earliest start of the monsoons” on record. Let’s hope that’s so, and not that it’s yet another fluke. Or another false alarm. The Sonoran Desert desperately needs rain: the drought has gone on for over a decade. This is probably permanent, but since we don’t believe in climate change or science or any other such nonsense, we proceed with the building of one of the largest cities in the country, as though all were well with the world. Our predecessors in this land, when faced with a similar drought, had the good sense to migrate away from it. We just keep on swarming in and laying asphalt. 😀

Oh well.

Morning — early morning — was as usual lovely, if a bit stuffy. By 7 a.m. the dogs were walked (one mi.); a stash of stolen tools discovered along the way, reconstituted in its toolbox (undoubtedly lifted out of someone’s pickup or carport), and placed by a neighbor’s driveway where it will be seen; the dogs fed; the pool cleaned; the hair washed; the plants watered; the garbage gathered and dumped; the outdoor furniture battened down; human fed; dishes washed; towels washed; computer crashed; computer recovered…

So it goes…

Rain, rain come again…

 

How’s That [fill-in-the-blank] Workin’ for Ya?

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Thankee, that [hand-wash the dishes scheme] is workin’ surprisingly well. Who’d’ve thunk it?

LOL! Have been banging around since the hounds and I rolled out of the sack at 4:30 a.m. The mile-long dawg walk is done. Pool maintenance: done. Yard maintenance: done. Three loads of laundry: done. Shitload of housework: done. Trash hauling: done. And it’s only 11:00 in the morning!

Interestingly, it turns out that washing dishes by hand is nowhere near as annoying as I remember it from my misspent youth, when my mother used to make me wash all the damn dishes. In the first place, there’s only one person dirtying up dishes here (well…not counting the pooches). In the second, I cook almost exclusively on the grill (especially in the summertime!), and so there are no pots and pans to scrub. And finally, because in diet mode I eat only twice a day, stacks of dirty dishes fail to materialize.

If I set my own and the pooches’ plates in a sink filled with soapy water, whenever I get around to sponging and rinsing them, it takes less than three minutes to wash them and drop them in the washer’s dishrack to drain. Exactly zero electric power is consumed (the water heater runs on gas). Compare that with the two-hour power- and water-consuming cycle to wash the same number of dishes & utensils!

Think of that. If I washed dishes twice a day, every day, that would be six minutes times seven, or 42 minutes a week. Less than half the time it takes to run one dishwasher load!

Normally I run the washer about once every second or third day. So that would mean in a week I would run it twice or three times: four to six hours of electric use!

Compare that with zero hours of electric consumption, and maybe three gallons of water per day, heated with gas.

My kitchen sports a huge double sink. I mean, huge. This makes it possible to fill one sink with richly Dawn-enhanced water. Then, whenever the dogs or I finish eating something, I set the dishes in the water and leave them to soak (having wiped the food into the trash first, of course). Later in the day: sponge down the collected pottery, glass, and stainless, rack it, drain and rinse the sink, and forget it.

It’s no exaggeration to say this takes about three minutes.

Maybe SDXB wasn’t as crazy as I thought.

He hates dishwashers and refuses to use them. When he lived with me, he tried to force me to abjure the use of my Kitchenaid. It was one of several constant sources of conflict.

On the other hand, SDXB did love to cook. And what a mess that man could make! The result would always be piles of sticky, greasy pans, mountains of bowls and platters and plates, knives and spoons and forks and peelers and mixers and…ugh!!! Washing all that stuff by hand was, in fact, one bitch of a chore.

That’s not how I prepare food these days. Almost everything that I cook goes on the grill. Most veggies can be grilled on one of those barbecue pan things with the little holes in it. Meat, of course, goes right over the fire. Even pasta (for example) doesn’t get a cooking pot very dirty. So with few pots and pans — and almost never a frying or sauté pan — the dishes you eat off of are pretty easy to soak clean.

On other fronts: Did I fix the link in yesterday’s Complete Writer post? No. My patience is still too short to address that issue. Gimme a break, Lord!

Am I going to make it to the end of my personal “fiscal” year in September, when the annual required minimum drawdown from the IRA is slated? No. I have $4,000 in the checking account. Talked the Mayo into reducing its bill by $305, the amount Medicare and Medigap refused to cover for the stupid “annual checkup” that I should have turned down, but that was a drop in the bucket. Yesterday in the mail came a bill for something over $2,000 for next year’s Medigap coverage. That is a huge increase. Obviously, since it costs about $2,000/month to run this house and feed me and the dogs and operate the car and fill the various hands reaching into my pocketbook — exclusive of tax and insurance bills — I am not going to make it to September on what remains in the bank.

I’m told long-term care coverage is also going way up.

Obviously, I can’t continue to live on the RMD plus Social Security at this rate. Possibly I’ll have to consider canceling the long-term care coverage. That is a HUGE risk. If I don’t die quickly but instead land in some nursing home, the cost will drain savings fast, impoverishing me and eliminating any chance of leaving enough to my son to matter.

My plan is to exit stage left if it looks like any such thing is coming down the pike. If one were to succeed in that strategy, it would render the long-term care insurance massively redundant. On the other hand, there’s always the chance that — say you had a stroke or you fell and hurt yourself bad enough that you couldn’t move around — one might not be able to reach the tools set aside for the purpose.

I’d rather not have to pay that accursed insurance bill. But on the other hand, I sure don’t want everything I hope to leave to my son taken away…for what? To keep me pointlessly alive?

And finally, remember the Vicks VapoRub Quack Cure for supposed toenail fungus? How did that work? Mixed. After the initial six-week experiment, I continued to use it for a several months. But it must be said that the stuff does stink. One does tire of going to bed smelling like a chemical factory. So eventually I gave it up.

And, as expected, eventually the dry hide/possible fungus was back to business as usual.

My friend VickyC reported that tea tree oil had worked for her. Look it up, and you find that it does work, sometimes: in 10% to 14% of cases. The other option is a very expensive topical fungicide whose results are similarly weak, or anti-fungicidal pills that can make you good and sick. Thanks: I’ll take the toenails as they are.

So the other day I picked up a tea tree oil concoction (woo-wooooo!) at Whole Foods and tried it.

Damned if it doesn’t make a difference!

However: I suspect that’s because this is probably not a fungal infection. At first glance, Derma-Doc pronounced the thick skin and raggedy nail ends on the right foot (not on the left one) to be “dry skin.” He recommended massaging a whole lotta Eucerin into the toes. And the rest of the foot. And the other foot.

Side note: for years a neuroma caused so much pain in the ball of that foot that I would curl my toes under when walking, to relieve the pressure on the spot that hurt. That caused extensive callusing on the ends of the toes…which, we might add, coincide with the tips of one’s toenails. Thus Derma-Doc’s off-the-cuff diagnosis had some credibility.

Later, also on the fly, he remarked that it was a fungus. So: WTF. Who knows?

This time, though, unlike past episodes of fretting, one of the nails had developed a  brown spot.

Side note: however, awhile back I whacked my foot good and bruised the toes. The dark spot could have been a little blood seeping under the nail, which would not be the first time that’s happened.

So, following the quack instructions, I went to file the surface of the nail a bit, and lo! that lifted the discolored area right off. Clearly, whatever it is does not dwell under the nail, as we’re told is the case with a nail infection.

Tea tree oil has its own annoying New-Agey perfume, but it dissipates quickly. Put it on an hour or two before bed-time, and it does not accompany you between the sheets. Nor does it fill the air around you with a nose-crinkling stink.

I’ve been brushing this stuff on each night and then covering the feet with peds… After just a few days, the rhino-hide effect has much improved. The brown spot remains gone. And I suspect that if a person continued this “regimen” (heh) over a period of weeks or months, eventually the road-worn toes would assume a normal appearance.

We shall see. This is so easy, there’s no reason not to try it.

A Balmy Day in Arizona

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A chilly 107 degrees here today. When will we be able to put away the sweaters?

🙂

Actually, that’s about normal for lovely uptown Phoenix: a little warmer than it used to be at this time of year, but pretty much on target here where we’ve paved paradise and put up a whole lot of parking lots. Speaking of balmy.

Had a fairly balmy episode this morning — balmy as in wacksh!t. On the way out of the house to walk the dogs, a little after dawn, what should I see on the sidewalk outside the side gate to the courtyard but this, chalked on the sidewalk:

Hmmm…

X6 S0Φ9

???

Calculus?

Alien message to incoming fellow invaders?

Well, just a few days ago we were (again) told by some of the most flamboyant “journalists” on the planet — makers of Britain’s favorite tabloids — that burglars like to mark houses that they’ve targeted with hobo-style symbols, for the benefit of their accomplices. Don’t ask why any halfway bright burglar ring would do this when they all have cell phones. But whatEVER.

Anything’s believable when you’re being dragged up the street by two dwarf sheepdogs at five in the morning.

Suspicions were confirmed a bit later, when we ran into two BoB’s: burglars on bikes. This pair rides around on a couple of hot-looking bicycles — we use the word “hot” advisedly — conspicuously casing the locals’ homes. The two are so bold they don’t even try to be subtle about it. Undoubtedly they’ve placed the Funny Farm on their list.

😀

In the suspicions confirmed department: it is indeed impossible to get out of Costco for less than $200. That, after all, is a conservative estimate.

It was time for the monthly Costco Junket with my friends, ever a great adventure. The cupboards were about bare…the only shelves still furnished held toilet paper and paper towels. Steak, fish, chicken; veggies frozen, veggies fresh; fruit and berries fresh; nuts, bagged; maple syrup, packed in plastic fake jug; and…of course…one set of sheets.

Hey! How can you turn down a set of battleship-gray 100% cotton Kirkland sheets? Battleship gray, the height of style. Right up there with eye-searing white.

$300, all told.

😮

Meanwhile, speaking of phenomenal amounts of cash, the dishwasher has started making a weird noise when its water valve comes on. Dropped by B&B Appliances and learned that, yea verily, there are effectively no dishwashers being made anymore that actually get your dishes clean. With, that is, the possible exception of Bosch. Replacing the one I have will cost around $1,000. Not counting tax. Not counting installation.

When I bought the thing 14 years ago, I had a job and could afford these indulgences. Not so much, these days.

So it’s beginning to look like the future holds another Great Step Backward into our grandparents’ lifestyle: the dishwasher is about to become the most expensive dish draining rack in North America.

Oh well.

:-/

Various friends’ efforts to come up with schemes to get me reinstated in Facebook have proven fruitless. That comes under the heading of “no great loss.”

Absent Facebook, a great deal more productive work gets done. For a person who didn’t want to sign up for the thing to start with, I certainly got sucked in to diddling away a phenomenal amount of time.

Two of the three books I’ve been posting at Plain & Simple Press were already complete at the time the idea took form. But the third, Ella’s Story, was (and is) very much a work in progress.

By the time of the Great Exit, I’d posted most of the copy and was barely keeping up with the weekly “publication” scheme. But now I’m already two chapters ahead. And even managed, finally, to get Ella into the sack with her…friend.

At this rate I may actually finish the thing.

Well. If I ever figure out where it’s going.

Memorial Day, Memories, and Amazing Work

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Yesterday being Memorial Day, the berserk hordes who now inhabit Our Great City headed out of town, leaving the city streets prett’ much empty. And good riddance to them: it gets less and less pleasant to live in a city that keeps growing like some unholy fungus from outer space…without regard to whether there’s enough water to support millions of people from now into perpetuity…or even until the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile, though, some of us do not quit working just because it’s a holiday: Luis the Arborist showed up at 6 a.m. sharp (uhm… more or less) to cut back the overgrown paloverde, palo brea, and olive.

I hate to do that to these beautiful trees. But the paloverde had sent two limbs up over the roof. One of these sprang from a trunk (it has four trunks) that had started to sag ominously under the weight…suggesting that the first good, hard monsoon that blows in this summer would drop a half-ton of tree limb onto my roof or the neighbor’s. The palo brea poses no threat to any structures, but it does crave to claw out the eyes of passers-by. Given the opportunity, it drapes its monstrously thorny boughs over the sidewalk, where they wave in the breeze right at head-height for a human. So that thing has to be trimmed back every year.

And yes, I do hate cutting them back, especially the paloverde. This morning there are NO birds in the side yard. As I’ve said recently, normally the place is alive with them. So presumably they were either nesting or taking shelter in the overgrown paloverde.

Before Luis came over, I inspected it to see if I could spot nests, but couldn’t see any. So thought it safe enough to let him have at it. But this morning’s absence of the flocks of sparrows, towhees, dove, and house finches suggests that was wrong.

However…the risk of a 500-pound tree limb falling on the roof kinda outweighed the risk of, alas, scaring off the birds.

Meanwhile, a Memorial Day shopping expedition was planned with friends VickyC and KJG. I had to arrive at VickyC’s house at 10 a.m., meaning the key errands I needed to do — grab some dog food and fill up the gas tank — had to be done early. Wrangling the tree guy around the dogs threw a monkey wrench in the plans to do those tasks.

Flew up to Walmart, which is close to the house and usually has the fancy dog food — overpriced though the stuff is for their customer base. But no…they had no chicken, only beef. Ruby the Corgi Pup is allergic to beef. So had to traipse all the way down to AJ’s. The Costco was on the way from the Walmart to the AJ’s, and by then it was past opening time.

Arrive at the Costco gas station to find it empty. Closed. Padlocks on the gas pumps. F!!!ck.

Moving on to AJ’s, they were mercifully open (not so merciful for their employees, but I have no idea what I would’ve done about the dogs had the store been closed…not many places carry this particular brand of overpriced dog food, and it takes two or three hours to cook a new batch of their regular chow).

This junket, as it developed, was a Drive Down Memory Lane.

Holy mackerel…do you have any idea how long it’s been since driving around our fair city was a pleasant endeavor?

The streets were essentially empty. Every yahoo and homicidal driver had freaking left town, Memorial Day traditionally being the first really hot day of the summer. Everyone who’s anyone and a great number who are no one heads out of the city, northward bound on often motionless freeways.

And I was reminded that — can you believe this? — once I liked to drive around Phoenix. Once upon a time it was actually fun to get in your car and just cruise the streets, day or night. As bored 20-year-olds, we had a game in which we would get in the car, the driver poised to take orders from the person in the shotgun seat. Said sidekick would flip a coin: heads we go left; tails right. And we would just drive around, exploring the city at random, usually ending up on the side of Camelback Mountain. If driver and sidekick were members of the opposite sex, this accidental destination presented some even more entertaining possibilities. 😉

So it was strangely pleasant. Despite the frustrations encountered at the Walmart and the Costco, I arrived home in an almost unheard-of good mood, instead of mad as a cat and grinding my teeth. Surprising! On any normal day, driving here leaves you wanting to bite someone.

Leads me to think I should think about living in a smaller city. Like, say, Prescott. Or the beloved Yarnell. Ah, Yarnell. Ah, 40 acres a few miles out of town. Yes. Please.

KJG and her husband, Mr. Fireman, just sold their house up against the White Tanks. They’ve bought a place in Payson, where they’re now in the process of moving. It’s on four acres of forested land and is really going to be a lovely place to live.

Our plan was to have lunch at a favorite place in lovely downtown Tempe, then make a run on our favorite European shoe store, which was having a 10% off sale. But just before we left, we discovered the restaurant was closed. So were all the restaurants in the vicinity of VickyC’s house.

So we came on up to the Funny Farm, where I happened to have a nice package of organic free-range chicken thighs snabbed from the local Sprouts. We cooked those up with some veggies and a side of fresh tomatoes, and enjoyed sitting around yakking for quite some time.

KJG remarked that she’s headed up to Payson this week to establish residence and clean cupboards, cabinets, closets, and everything else preparatory to the arrival of their worldly goods. Mr. F is staying here for the nonce, so that he can continue to pack stuff into their pick-up and trailer and to keep the crazy neighbors’ horde of cats out of the yard…the new buyers being innocent of the fact that KJG and Mr. F are moving because of the filthy cats’ defiling the house’s yard, walls, patios, and gardens.

Isn’t that something? Being driven out of your dream home, custom built for you in one of the prettiest parts of the Valley, by effing nut cases who board mobs of cats and refuse to keep them off your property! These people essentially hijacked the HOA, so the specific written covenants were not enforced and are never gonna be enforced.

At any rate, she remarked that she didn’t have enough silverware to leave some for Mr. F and take enough for her — they only have one set.

Mwa ha ha! Lo and behold, I just happen to have a whole set of fairly fancy flatware, purchased at Williams Sonoma about three years ago. Bought it because I was about to host a temporary roommate, and I knew the fact that my working stainless looked almost identical to my Christofle — which I use all the time — was gonna cause trouble. The silver, while it can be washed in the dishwasher, has to be loaded separate from the stainless. Well, the existing stainless set is such a close knock-off of the Christofle pattern that sometimes even I have trouble telling them apart.

As soon as the roommate moved on — joining her husband in San Francisco, whence he had decamped three months before her contract employment ran out — I resurrected the Christofle knock-offs. Old age: anything new makes you nervous. 😉

So she was pleased to take this practically new set, and I was delighted to give it to her. A great housewarming gift, eh? May she use it in good health, now and evermore.

By the time we finished stuffing ourselves and talking ourselves blue, KJG was getting tired. She and Mr. F have been schlepping up and down to Payson (a 2½ hour drive) carrying their worldly goods, all the while packing and trying to keep the Waddell castle pristinely clean (and cat-urine stink-free…). So she excused herself.

VickyC and I drove out to Tempe, where I spent a great deal more than I could afford on a new pair of dressy(ish) black sandals. My old ones, which I wear to excess, were completely shot: holes worn on the insole under the toes! So that was a pricey trip. Not as pricey as it would have been, though, had we found a non-fast-food restaurant open.

And so it goes…

 

Running around in Circles

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Just back from a one-mile jog with the dawgs. Trying to get out at 5:00 a.m., but we usually dawdle until around 6, which means some rush-hour traffic is already beginning. And the sun is in your eyes: hafta wear a wide-brimmed hat.

So we must make quite a spectacle by the light of dawn: two dwarf shepherd dogs and an old lady in a floppy straw hat, trotting along while trying to stay in the shade. 😀

I hate running. I’ve never liked to run, not even when I was a little girl. And truth to tell, I walk faster than I can run.

Jogging is not exactly running and it certainly isn’t walking: it exercises a few different muscles and pounds your joints, which supposedly is therapeutic for your osteoporosis. Right…if you can’t break your hip one way, you can do it another way! 😀

A mile or more of jogging at least does work you up to light panting, which I imagine means it’s burning some calories. I’m frantically trying to get rid of the 8 pounds I put on during the time when the only thing I could eat was ice cream. This, before revisiting the quack, who is now all worried because my cholesterol levels are wacksh!t, presumably because of pigging out on ice cream for a good ten days. Or more.

The chemical burns in the mouth went away after about two weeks or so. So now I feel no great craving for a way to chill the inside of the maw without causing the cracked and chipped teeth to explode. That’s nice. I guess.

So I’ve lost almost 2 pounds in the past week… but… My son invited me over to his house, and I did eat.

This kid can cook.

Normally I eat my largest and last meal of the day around 1 or 2 p.m. That way, I’m not especially hungry at bed-time, or if I am hungry, it’s not unbearable. This strategy — a decent breakfast around 6  or 7 a.m. and a magnificent meal in the early to mid-afternoon — seems to promote weight loss efficiently, especially when combined with light exercise.

As of yesterday morning, I actually was down more than 2 pounds: 2.1 pounds at the crack of dawn. But by this morning I’d gained almost a pound: .8 pounds over yesterday’s measure. So in fact, the official May 23 weight-loss figure is only 1.3 pounds down from Day 1. So my cookies are frosted.

Most of the meal was within the low-carb limit: steak, salad, mixed vegetables. But the veggies came from Sprouts and had some sort of commercial sauce — presumably, like most things that come out of boxes, bags, and cans, full of sugar, starches, and substances from the chemistry bench. And worse yet, we had garlic bread.

Bread makes me blow up like a balloon.

But I dearly love garlic bread. It is impossible to resist garlic bread. Naturally, I had four pieces of the stuff. Who wouldn’t? 😉

Oh, well. Usually bread-based bloat goes away in a day or two. But it’s annoying. Especially when you have to run around in circles to make it go away.

“Another Beautiful Day in Arizona…”

by

“…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?