Desert Life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Move to the desert where it’s dry, they said. A severe thunderstorm just blew through, taking its sweet time moving north to south at 10 MPH. According to the National Weather Service, winds associated with the storm were over 60 MPH.

Our patio furniture has been retrieved from the land out back. There are electronic devices beeping all over the neighborhood, but we have power. A transformer exploded near the homes on the other side of the wash. The wash has about three feet of water rushing through it (great for tubing). And the Eucalyptus tree in front of the house is now in front of the garage. During it’s relocation it missed the house by about 18 inches.

But it’s a dry heat.

It rained for much of the weekend. Folks that have lived here longer than us have told us this amount of rain is not normal. The ground is saturated and several of our saguaros (cacti) behind the house have become water logged and lost an “arm” or two. We have a few leaks that need to be tended to; a call to the roofing company again tomorrow is in order.

Monsoon season!

The blue dot/cross hairs shows our location. We had a very impressive thunderstorm come through last night. The lightning show was wild, the rain was driving, and the wind was rattling all sorts of things. Surprisingly, we never lost power.

However, the house did display its vulnerabilities in this type of storm.

Today we have the roofing company out. They did work for the previous owners of the house and assured us the roof is still under warranty. We had a couple of leaks in the hallway, a leak in Chris’ office, and a leak behind the piano on the upstairs landing. The roofers went through and patched things up and hopefully this will help with the leak situation.

We still love the house very much and we knew it needed some work. So no surprises there. When the roofers were here they pointed out a few things they had recommended to the previous owners, but the owners declined the expense. We’ll probably have these things done soon. While everyone has their own reasons for the decisions they make in life, I’m wired to do what needs to be done to make the investment of a home last a long, long time.

I feel like we’re ready for the next round of storms coming in this weekend.

I am very tired. Here’s a photo of the roses growing in our greenhouse/pool room. Chris has the greenest thumb of the family.

A very impressive storm came through the area yesterday evening. It’s rather fun getting to know what Monsoon Season is like here in southeast Arizona.

Some reports showed wind gusts around 75 MPH. We had a couple of cactus skeletons behind the house come down, as well as one of the trees. None of this did any damage and this morning we cleaned up the mess, as well as swept debris off the porch and gazebo.

This was our first test to see how water tight the house really is. The leading window into the storm leaked a bit but that’s already been recaulked. Otherwise the house held up very well.

The National Weather Service is predicting thunderstorms all week for our area; perhaps we’ll continue to be treated to Mother Nature’s show.