Desert Life.

Make Way.

I was out for my morning walk when I came across a neighborhood visitor. They were out enjoying the heat of the asphalt. I didn’t get close enough to get a rattle from our visitor; I kept my distance and walked the other way around the loop. By the time I got back to this spot, they had moved on to their next adventure.

Decoration.

We spruced up some of the ambiance in the great room. The previous owner of the house had a large tapestry hanging on the wall and was kind enough to leave the rod and hangers behind when we bought the house.

Earl and I spotted this blanket when we were visiting the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago and thought it work well in that spot. Earl found some karate belts that matched the color of the blanket and Chris was able to cut and affix them to the top to serve as hangers. They look like the belong there.

We all like the way the blanket looks and find it works well in the room. We’ve been slowly making improvements to the house since moving in just over a year ago. We’re still wrangling with the home insurance company over the damage from last year’s monsoon. You can see a piece of the missing ceiling in the vestibule on the right. Hopefully all of that will be cleared up soon as well.

Spring.

Mother Nature is regaling us with cooler temperatures and a sprinkle or two for the introduction of spring to 2022. Seasons are seemingly a little irrelevant here in the desert, if our first year in Tucson is any indication, we basically have “very hot” and “not as hot”, with a few thunderstorms sprinkled in during the Monsoon to keep things interesting.

I’m loving every moment.

The storms have been moving around us today. My lightning detection apps have been indicating lightning nearby, but we haven’t seen or heard anything here at the Desert Compound.

I’m always impressed by weather, no matter what it is and no matter where it is. Even though today is not one of the sunny days we’re known for, it’s a beautiful day.

Looking out of our backyard toward Mount Lemmon.
Looking to the west toward Davis-Monthan AFB.
To the northwest toward the Tucson metropolitan area.
Toward Mt. Lemmon near the entrance gate to our development.

Color.

During our weekend adventures we stopped in Tempe for a quick bite to eat. These flowers near the freeway caught my attention because I found their color quite enjoyable.

We are going to be sprucing up the landscaping around the front of the house later this spring. I need to convince the rest of the family that plants like this need to be included in front of my office window.

I love this whole flowers in the winter thing we have going on here.

Improvements.

We have two areas of the house where we can walk out on the roof. These areas were advertised as balconies but they’re really not balconies. The roof would need some work to make them real balconies.

Each side of the house has this area and in each of these areas there’s a storage closet and a utility closet, but only accessible from the roof area. The previous owner put inside doors of low quality on these closets and the did not survive last year’s Monsoon.

We had a couple of estimates from local contractors to replace the doors and it was surprisingly expensive. Chris and Mike decided they could build high quality doors for half the price, including buying the tools necessary that we’d have forever. So, they built the doors and they look great.

The doors above are on the East End of the house before replacement. The doors on the West End were in worse shape. The doors below are the replacements built by Chris and Mike.

We are very grateful to have such talent in our home here in the desert. The new doors look great and the guys saved us a bunch of money.

Have A Javelinas.

We have a family of Javelinas that enjoy our neighborhood. They move from one part of the neighborhood to another on a regular basis. Occasionally they stop by the rub their bodies on a cactus on our property or they check out the patio.

I usually just give them their space and let them do what they want to do. They’re not hurting anything and frankly they were here first.

We should live in harmony with our environment and neighbors.

Summer Breeze.

Folks back east ask why we moved to the Desert Southwest. There are many reasons for our move. We are quite happy with living in Tucson and desert living is all that we thought it would be.

Being able to drive on Interstate 10 with the windows down, Yacht Rock Radio cranked, after sunset while it’s 85ºF in late October is one of the reasons we live here.

I worry I’m going to find 70ºF chilly this winter.

Fruits.

The pomegranate tree in our front lawn is coming along nicely. Apparently the more culinary inclined in the family know what to do with the pomegranates once they’re ready for picking. I don’t know what to do with them but I do know I will enjoy them.

It’s kind of neat having a tree like this on the property. As a Northeast boy that moved to the desert southwest by way of the midwest, I’m really appreciating the differences in flora and fauna in these parts.

I even avoided running over a tarantula in the road when driving home the other night. I’m sure it was thankful.

Dismantled.

Our home is being slightly dismantled as water leak remediation is taking place. The company is doing a phenomenal job at keeping the messes contained and the water damage is not as bad as we feared. It’ll take a little while to get everything fixed but when it’s done it should be done for decades.

Unless Global Climate Change boosts up the monsoon season to even further unprecedented levels.

While the crew was working, they took out what we call the “$30,000 closet” the previous owner had installed to sell the house; she wanted to call our solarium a bedroom and put up some sheetrock and cheap shelves across the entryway to the room so it would be considered a bedroom. Then she bumped the selling price of the house up $30K. We didn’t pay it, and the closet looked fairly bad. We’ll take the cheap shop light out later this week.