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Vining

Saturday, August 30th, 2025

A couple years ago, a red morning glory came up as a volunteer in one of my garden beds. I saved the seeds, but perhaps needn’t have, as it has come up every year since in the same place, as well in surrounding areas (but not annoyingly so).

This year, I replanted several volunteers of this in places it could climb. I have been enjoying gently encouraging it to vine up the hedgerow fence, on some dry yucca branches, and over the walls of my little screened garden house. It’s been a bit what I imagine raising bonsai is like.

Year of the haboob

Friday, August 15th, 2025

This summer we have had three haboobs here. In the previous 15+ years, we have never had one here. (They are more common between Tucson and Phoenix.)

A haboob is an intense dust storm that occurs on the edge of a severe storm and can result in blackout conditions. 

The drought here over the last year has been bad, and presumably that’s part of the reason this is happening now. Fortunately, we’ve had some rain this monsoon, 1.05″ in June, 3.22″ in July, and 1.35″ so far in August.

Below are some videos of the haboob approaching. It was pretty scary. After it arrived, it was near dark and eerie with strong winds. Afterward, everything was covered in dirt. It felt like the Dust Bowl.

Shrub

Monday, August 4th, 2025

Recently, while traveling, I tried a beverage called a “shrub” (also known as drinking vinegar). It’s basically a concentration of  various fruits, sugar, herbs, and vinegars, that can then be mixed with soda water for a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage.

After looking for shrub concentrates for sale and not finding much*, I decided to make my own. So far the results have been very satisfactory. My fav so far has been a mandarin orange, cardamom, lemongrass mix. 

* We are making more and more of what we need here. Not only does this allow us to use local or sometimes homegrown ingredients and avoid preservatives, but it helps to avoid overpackaging.

Books read in 2024

Saturday, January 4th, 2025

Here’s this year’s reading list for me, with my favorites in bold.

1. Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
3. The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson
4. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community by Wendell Berry
5. Dawn to Dusk by Will Troyer
6. Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad
7. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
8. Into Brown Bear Country by Will Troyer
9. Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream
10. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
11. Out of the Woods by Lynn Darling
12. Almost Anywhere by Krista Schlyer
13. Walking the Americas by Levison Wood
14. Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
15. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
16. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
17. Pescadero by Hollis Brady
18. Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
19. Kindred by Octavia Butler
20. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
21. All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
22. River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Givhan
23. Fledgling by Octavia Butler
24. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
25. The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
26. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
27. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
28. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
29. The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
30. Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
31. The Truth About Immigration by Zeke Hernandez
32. The Leavers by Lisa Ko
33. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
34. The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl
35. Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
36. The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow
37. Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors
38. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
39. Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
40. Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
41. News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez
42. The Deluge by Stephen Markley
43. Long Distance by Bill McKibben
44. Reamde by Neal Stephenson
45. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
46. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
47. The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly
48. The Witch Elm by Tana French
49. Trespassing Across America by Ken Ilgunas
50. Outlandish by Morgan Sjogren
51. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
52. Table for Two by Amor Towles
53. Playground by Richard Powers
54. Memoirs of a Military Wife by Zola Stoltz

Garden check-in

Monday, August 5th, 2024

The main garden:

This is an experiment of densely planted mixed circles, including greens (chard, kale), cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and more. So far it’s all doing well.

    

Cucumbers, shishito peppers, and green beans

Cukes are coming along

Watermelons — lettuce beds are under there somewhere and getting hard to harvest

Cantaloupes

Cover crop bed with pumpkins mixed in

Beautiful sorghum

And the screened secret garden:

Price spring

Monday, April 15th, 2024

Last weekend, we went on a hike in Price Canyon (which is south of Horseshoe and north of Rucker, about 20 minutes from here) and were delighted to find Price spring running. It was beautiful and a hike we’ll do again. It’s amazing that there are such different kinds of ecosystems so close to us.

With good early spring rains, the poppies are blooming here, and we’re looking forward to warmer temperatures. We had enough rain that my garden greens are thriving even though I’ve neglected them. I’m hoping to have more time in the garden soon!

Drone cowpokes

Tuesday, November 14th, 2023

Every once in a while, we’ve had cows get on our property even though it’s fenced. Sometimes a delivery driver leaves the gate open or something else random lets the cows enter.

Last week I looked up from my bed to see a large black momma cow and her baby grazing on our otherwise unmunched grass and felt dread at having to chase them off. (Cows here are very skittish, and chasing them without benefit or horses or dogs is challenging.)

But last year, Brad came up with a new solution to the challenge that works great — a drone!

This solved the problem in minutes, rather than the hours it used to take. Much safer too.

drone’s eye view

A new phase

Friday, July 21st, 2023

We are now finally free of all of our landline phones. When we moved to Arizona, we had three. And for a variety of reasons, both business and personal related, it took a while to get rid of all these, but now it is done.

When I drop email, you’ll know my metamorphosis is complete! :)

Home

Sunday, January 1st, 2023

Recap

Sunday, September 4th, 2022

** 10/16/22 update – The rain has continued, and we got about .25 ” this weekend. (Other areas nearby had more, some over 2″.) This is by far the longest the monsoons have gone on in or time here. Recording this for future reference.

10/24/22 update – first freeze this week


Well, it’s been an odd year here for a variety of reasons. As I’m looking at the blog, I realize that several interesting things have happened that haven’t been written about so I’m doing a catch up post with some highlights.

  • After years of waiting, in January, we finally got Starlink internet. It has surpassed our expectations and really changed life here increasing our up and download speeds by about 20-40 times. As a result, we have also cancelled one of our landlines. And we are now in a position to have both electrical power and phone service when the usual service here is down. 
  • Our rain water catchment system is up and operating. We have a 1550 gallon tank behind the house. It feeds a 550 gallon tank that is next to the garden. With the incredible monsoon this year, both tanks are now full.
  • The monsoon has been one of the best since we’ve been here. They started early (June?) and are still going into September. We’ve had over eight inches of rain in that time.
    Everything is green, green, green, and the canyon behind us has a healthy stream flowing.
  • The intensive garden bed we planted did well. We are eating greens, beans, peppers, and tomatoes. There are a few big watermelon and pumpkins yet to be harvested. The zucchini never fruited but have many blooms which I am eating. In the beds we didn’t plant out, Brad put in a bunch of cowpeas which are thriving and will make the soil more fertile. 
  • We put in a motion cam at our front gate which has yielded some fun photos of wildlife.

This year we are thinking more than usual about how much we value the life we have built here. It is a beautiful life in an amazing place.