August 19, 2016

August 19, 2016

I guess I did a good job working on our front yard beautification project, because I was released on good behavior for a short vacation.  We are heading north, way north, to find some much cooler weather and a break from Arizona’s unrelenting heat.  Since my furlough is limited, driving is out of the question; we are flying.  We leave tomorrow bright and early out of Phoenix, so we take advantage of an airport hotel’s Park and Fly program and drive up late this afternoon.

Since I am not one to go anywhere without a side trip, I do a quick scan of the Internet before leaving and find a curiosity that piques my interest.  Two hours later we pull into downtown Phoenix and find Wesley Bolen Memorial Plaza across from the state capitol. This little city park has a memorial to the sinking of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.  It is well done containing one of the two original anchors, the Signal Mast, and a recently added enormous gun barrel.  There is also an artsy display of all the names of sailors who perished during the attack.

Our planned 10-minute stop turned into an hour when we looked around and found dozens of other memorials, seemingly to every cause imaginable.  There are the standard ones to the wars we fought, but also some more unusual ones, like Armenian Genocide, the Navajo “code talkers” of WWII, Confederate soldiers, Pioneer women, Spanish missionary Fr. Kino, and not so surprisingly for conservative Arizona, a monument honoring the Bill of Rights.

 

July 2016

By mid-summer, Aimee and I are usually very tired of the Tucson heat and we are exploring cooler climes.  This year, the boss decided we need to spend less time travelling and more time fixing up our home.  She has cancelled my retirement and for the last month, has woken me at the crack of dawn and set me to toil away in the yard before the sun makes outdoor work untenable.  We are having a new driveway put in, so in preparation, we are trimming low hanging trees, and moving plants that are in the path of destruction.  Aimee and I are both amazed at how fast the vegetation grows around here despite the scant amount of rain we get.

Tucson yards mostly consist of decorative gravel instead of grass.  Over time, it gets worked into the soil underneath and needs to be replenished.  Since the front-yard rock is likely to be bulldozed over, Aimee puts me to work with a wheelbarrow hauling it all to the backyard.  After dozens of trips, we are pleasantly pleased how much doubling the rock layer improves the landscaping.

Usually after a couple hours of hard labor, I get released on good behavior and it is in the pool to cool off.  The rest of the morning is hibernation time inside with the A/C on high.  I can’t read all day, so we also rent movies. One day I select a Shakespearean play to pass the time. I like the idea of watching more of these famous stage productions but I am always disappointed.  I find them very hard to follow. Despite what some might say, the biggest reason is the words are not in English, or at least what I would call Modern American English.  This was made very clear when during the graveyard scene in Hamlet, a character said “willy, nilly”.  Wait a minute, the subtitles read “will he, nill he”.  I figured that couldn’t be a coincidence so I stopped the DVD and googled it.  Sure enough, that is the source of our modern use of 'willy, nilly'. Unfortunately besides the spelling the meaning also changed completely.  

Another summer diversion is watching the weather.  July and August is monsoon season. But unlike the Midwest these violent thunderstorms are very localized.  It can be sunny in the front yard with a downpour in the back.  These storms put on beautiful light shows against the mountains.  After one such storm made us beat a hasty exit from the golf course, I took the opportunity to capture a few strikes on photo.

The summer rain and heat also brings out lots of creatures that normally live underground.  Most of them thankfully come out after we are in bed. This year the variety seems to have shifted. Normally I find a scorpion drowned in the pool at least once a week.  They feed on crickets so Aimee and I have made a concerted effort removing bushes that need watering and foster cricket colonies.  This year, I have yet to find a single scorpion.  I started taking credit for their demise until seeing a uptick in tarantulas. Three times this month we have seen these big scorpion-eating predators. Tucson is nothing but a circle of life.  No sooner than I see more tarantulas, I notice tarantula wasps invading the yard, followed by insect eating bats roosting behind every clock and decoration hanging from our exterior wall.