Sunset

I have much to talk about!  However, I’ve been busy.  We have gaps in our memory of what happened early on in the RV experience, and I’m going through old photos trying to determine what we were doing.  It’s exhausting doing detective work on yourself.  I want to finish the last photo album I started before the blog took over.  Fortunately, I don’t delete a lot of email, so there have been breadcrumbs to follow. 

Anyway, enjoy tonight’s sunset, it was spectacular.

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Restaurant Supply and Rain

Yesterday there was a trip to Home Depot and thence to Standard Restaurant Supply for glassware.  On the way, Irvington was closed due to a car accident.  Tucson Police are rather laissez faire about closing the street.  They put out a few cones and it’s up to the drivers to work out their route of retreat.  We detoured through the neighborhoods and witnessed yet another rear ender.  Driving skills in this area are not so great.



This is the restaurant supply store we’ve previously visited.  They don’t have much food, but they have stuff.



Melamine for the masses.



I was really tempted to get a couple of these.  Who doesn’t need an attractive food bowl?  Who already owns food bowls?  Jim could see me wavering on buying them and whispered “this is how it starts.”  So, no new food bowls.



I thought the cleaning tableau was well done.  Restaurant supply stores really bring it home how much grocery stores are over charging for stuff.  Disposable aluminum pans are 35 cents each.  Safeway is charging two or three dollars for two.



The warming trend took a side trip yesterday.  It rained all night, clouds were stuck on the hills this morning.



Later the sun returned for awhile, but then the clouds returned and it was not a great climate day.



A surviving bougainvillea blossom. 



I think this is my favorite green.  Agaves are just lovely.  They’re also sharp.



Tomorrow the landscapers are coming with nine tons of rock to spread across the yard.  Over time it gets ground in to the dirt, dries up and flies away, who knows.  Anyway, we need more rock on the dirt. 

Shoveling Mud

Today we uncovered all of the tender plants.  Nobody is dead, but there will definitely be major pruning of frost damage in the spring.  My plants want their snow bird rebate, as well.  I just love this bougainvillea – is that cheerful or what?

This was yesterday at Home Depot.  They sustained a lot of plant loss.  The hibiscus, bougainvillea, and several succulents just took it in the head.  The succulents were mush.

The cactus, on the other hand, looked pretty good.  I love these plants, and wouldn’t mind having one of everything in the yard.

However.  Does this look like a three hour ordeal to you?  It was.  The ground here is so hard you must soak it with water to soften it up.  If you’re pressed for time and you can’t let it sit overnight, you end up shoveling mud.  It’s like concrete, it’s so hard and full of rocks, it’s just miserable and heavy.  Then there is the handling of the plant.  It was in a 12 inch tall container and it, too, weighed a ton.  We couldn’t get the height right and had to keep lifting it out with a shovel, which caused the root ball to decrease with each movement, and holding that thing is fraught with peril.  We finally declared victory and quit messing with it.  I’m not happy that it isn’t centered, but in four or five years when it needs more space, we’ll move the rocks and re-level around it.

I’m telling you and myself these things so that when I start drooling over specimen cacti, I can reacquaint myself with how difficult this was, and just to walk away from the plant life.

The other thing that happened today was the new microwave was installed.  The old one was on its deathbed, the carousel motor was giving up the ghost.  Wonder of wonders, we discovered that it’s vented through the roof.  The noise from the old fan was such that we didn’t use if for fear of hearing damage.  The stove and dishwasher are next on the list, but since they’re working fine there is no rush. 

We’re now on a generally warming trend.  It’s raining more than usual, which is ok, it’s good for the plants, but at least it’s not freezing anymore. 

New Year’s Day

Today is the first day of the year.  A conversation that Jim and I sometimes have is how does this winter compare with other winters?  It’s a pointless conversation, because it is what it is, but there you go.  So I do try to mention the weather so we have a record.

Look at today’s high, and then look at last year.  I think last year is winning.



This is the current forecast.  That little symbol of precipitation would be snow.  I am going to be so annoyed if it does, because then all of the sheets, towels and flannel currently draped over the plants will be wet, and will have to be removed and dried.  The bougainvillea have sustained damage, but they’re not dead.  I’m not sure which is making them look worse, the frost or the caterpillars that are eating them.  They should all be dead by now, I hope.



If you were paying attention you will have noticed that the top graphic is referencing today as 1/2/2019.  The bottom graphic has deleted Tuesday.  What is up with the weather websites?

This is our neighbor’s yard.  This is how to protect native plants from frost.  Styrofoam coffee cups and sheets on the mounding plants.  Bud Light boxes are also good.



Today’s discovery is that Wal Mart sells sheets separately so you don’t have to buy sets.  We got two flat sheets which are much easier to deal with than burlap.  The bougainvillea have long thorns which get stuck in the burlap due to its loose weave.  Plus, it’s leaving lint all over my jacket. 
That’s it!  More weather.

The El Nino Winter

It is so COLD.  Yes, I know, it’s probably colder where you are, but we’re cold.  Back before the house, we used to talk about owning a house, and invariably the question would arise – what would we do all day?  Hah!  Double HAH HAH HAH!  The house provides endless opportunities for entertainment.

After the rain moved out, we had a few nice warm days.  So we thought we’d get started on the staining project.  Here is Jim, scraping the wood, making a nice surface for staining.




Here am I, filling the holes left by the screws that previously held the gutters to the wood.  Note the two handed grip on the tube of wood filler.  After it reaches about half empty, it’s a pain to get it out of the tube.  It seemed like such a good form factor, but now we think maybe not so much.



We had planned to continue with the staining project, but the weather turned on us and it got cold and windy, to the point that neither of us wanted to be outside standing on the ladder.
More wind, bashing the Queen Palm.



Our favorite bougainvillea, inching towards world domination.



The night before last it went down to 32.  Last night it was colder.  Even though we covered all of the bougainvillea, two of them have a fair amount of frost damage.  We are very unhappy about this.
So, today we spent the afternoon applying additional plant protection.  The rest of the post will be extremely boring, but if I don’t write down what we did, we won’t remember next year.

This is the new lemon tree.  Next year he will probably need taller supports to keep the flannel off of his branches.  Note the glow at the bottom, that’s a string of Christmas tree lights.  The yellow flannel was used here for the sides and the top.



Here we have the Pygmy Date Palm in her warming hut, created from the peach and white flannel sewn together, topped with the grey and white flannel.  This required a lot of binder clips and clothes pins.



The Mexican Bird of Paradise is wearing a sea foam green top piece of flannel and white and peach flannel sides.  Binder clips and clothes pins were required to hold the structure together.



The bougainvillea by the downspout is covered in a long narrow piece of burlap along with an 80 inch by 80 piece of burlap.  Both burlaps are from Home Depot.



The new purple bougainvillea.  This year a two yard piece of bleached muslin was enough.  Next year, more may be required.



The bougainvillea on the way to world domination.  That covering is an ancient flowered sheet, and a sheet from Target that I cut down for the mattress in the 5th wheel.  Good thing they’re still with us.



The next door bougainvillea is covered with two 80 by 80 inch burlaps and a short piece of the 36 inch wide burlap.  This is really suboptimal.



The bougainvillea by the driveway got the worst frost damage.  Last night all we had was the fitted flowered sheet to go on top.  Clearly it was not enough.  There is now flannel, the sheet and an 80 by 80 inch burlap.  Hopefully there will be no more damage.



I used to quilt, primarily crib quilts made out of flannel.  We can see where all of my flannel has ended up, as well as my furniture covers for the summer.  Nights are supposed to by cold for the next five days, so I think we’re not going to uncover during the day.  It takes about two hours to get the fabric in place along with the binder clips and clothes pins.  We need to spend some time in thrift stores buying old sheets.  Sheets are easier to work with than burlap.

There you go, everything you ever wanted to know about frost protection in the Old Pueblo.

Boxing Day

Yesterday was windy.  We thought the weather heads had missed the forecast, predicting rain, but it finally arrived around seven pm.  It wasn’t epic rain, like the two low pressure systems we had in October, but it did demonstrate that the gutters are not leaking.

See the poor palm tree with her fronds being bent by the wind.  That was yesterday.

This is from today. It looked like it was clearing, but looking out to the west, there may be more rain. I do not like the El Nino winters!

That's all I have, wind and rain.