Category: SA Times

September 26

We are up to a whopping .48″ of moisture for a months where average rainfall over the last 12 years is 1.79″. But we fear not for rain is forecast for next weekend. Can’t complain about the weather other than lack of precipitation. Mornings have been chilly if not downright cool. Some days didn’t get above 80 and mid-80’s is as bad as it got. As we always say this time of year, we can stand a lot of this kind of weather, but of course Mother N often sends something along to shock us back to reality. Last year it was a heavy snow at the end of October. That took Joyce and me about six trips to the brush site to clean up limbs and twigs brought by that heavy, wet snow. I’m already well behind in weeding and clean up so it won’t matter that much, I guess.

August 31

I mentioned previously that our A/C decided to fail one Friday afternoon. I paid a premium to have a repairman check out the problem on Saturday. As I suspected, the compressor was no longer compressing. The repairman suggested I consider replacing the whole heat &A/C rather than just the compressor given its age. It was new when we remodeled the house but that was 18 years ago. So I had one of their salespeople come and give me a quote for a new unit. It was expensive but I figured it would be better to replace it all and so I did. The new system is much quieter and more efficient so I feel my decision was a good one in spite of the gapping hole in my bank account.

July 31

Sad day. My sidekick Abigail goes back to Lubbock today. It will be hard to get used to going through the workweek without her, and a little daunting. We accomplished a lot this summer and I am grateful for her help.

We got a little rain last night to close out the month. It had begun to get pretty dry and we wound up nearly half an inch below our July average but it seemed like the rain was timely when it did come and was spread out enough so that, except about the middle of June, we haven’t gotten brown-grass dry. There is rain in the forecast for the next day or two so here’s hoping.

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.