Author: rakeeter

The groundskeepers finished their hatchet job on bushes growing on the eastside of 2005 this week. The job was started last week as a trim but said bushes had gotten so overgrown horizontally and vertically over the years that it was necessary to take a chain saw to them and put them in their place. Here’s hoping they come back. I think they will but only time will tell. There was a considerable amount of dry leaves underneath which we ran through the shredder and used to mulch the bushes. There is a large area of bare ground now in front of the bushes where the former overgrowth had shaded out the grass. We also spread the mulch over this after seeding it with buffalo grass. Perhaps in a couple of years the bushes will have filled in again (and properly trimmed) and there will be grass covering the formerly bare area. That’s the hope, anyway. This trimming was the first step in cleaning up the border bed on the south side of 2005 generally. The rest of the job should be easy by comparison; a little trimming and raking here and there, not much more.

May 9

On May 1 there was a Western Kingbird, the first of the season, sitting on our front fence. The next day we saw the first Mississippi kite. The desert willows (and the mesquite out at the Bluff) have leafed out. These are harbingers of summer though it is still spring. Another sign of the season, we have been visiting nurseries and planting the flowers we purchased. We have gotten a couple of showers of about a third of an inch each, one earlier in the week and one Friday evening. Showers were predicted Friday evening but it sure didn’t look promising in the late afternoon. We attended another symphony at six o’clock and by then dark clouds had formed. It was even just beginning to sprinkle as we walked from the parking lot to the symphony hall. The shower came while we were listening to the performance and it had stopped by the time the performance was over. Again this week we had a mix of warm and cool weather. We are glad to get the cool weather, knowing that there won’t be much more for a while.

April 4…

There were many turkey buzzards perched in the trees behind the house one morning this week. Maybe that’s an ill omen or maybe they just needed a place to roost for the night in their journey from somewhere to somewhere else. Seems they migrate from as far south as South America and as far north as Canada.

March 14…

We got some rain to go with our wind this past week. Today we just have the wind, though it is nice to see the sun. Jill and the girls made the trek here from Sachse, arriving in the wee hours Thursday morning. The weather had already turned from pleasant to not pleasant and they have pretty much been house-bound since they got here.

Our water heater finally gave up the ghost after over 17 years of service. That may be putting it too strongly since it was still keeping the water hot but had only become incontinent. We decided not to push our luck, though, and opted for a replacement. A nice and seemingly competent young man handled the job without delay and we are on to the next problem. Our internet service went kaput the week before and we managed to get that problem remedied without too much jump and jive. It was interesting that the plumber had to jump through some hoops unrelated to the water heater. He had to install anti-siphon gizmos on all the outdoor faucets, for one thing. Then he had to install a couple of carbon monoxide detectors in the hall outside the bedrooms. He even had to peek at our toilet tanks to make sure that, well, I’m not sure what he was making sure that. Checking for leaks, maybe. You may be thinking, “Well, he was just running up the tab on us.” Could be, but he seemed like a sincere young man and he explained that these things all were required by the code enforcement Nazis, my word, not his. When he had finished the job, he had to do a virtual inspection with his phone and a code inspector on the other end of the line. He had to crawl up in the attic and let the CI see that, yes, there was sufficient clearance around the vent; that the anti-siphon gizmos were installed; that the detectors, fire and carbon monoxide, were installed. He even had to test them in the virtual presence of the CI. With the way things are going in our country, I think it might be prudent to closely examine the detectors to make sure there are no cameras and/or listening devices. Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.