Despite 100 degree temperatures all week and no rain, things continue to bloom like crazy here.

Cholla

Dessert willow

(P.S. This was from last week. This week, it rained!)

We’ve been wanting to camp out on our land, but haven’t gotten our camping gear out of storage in Wilcox yet. Yesterday, we planned an evening picnic and thought it would warm enough to camp out without a tent or sleeping bags.

We went out at about 6:30 (after I finished baking bread and an onion focaccia for dinner). We went for a walk first, and the sky was beautiful. To the north, we could see some pretty big clouds that looked they had rain coming down. (We haven’t had rain here for months.)

We came back and ate dinner (onion focaccia , orange tarragon asparagus salad, and a bottle of wine), and as it started to get dark, there started to be lightning. The rest of the night was a huge lightning show in all directions around us. No rain though.

We slept in the truck bed, and much to my surprise, it was very comfortable. I can definitely see doing a big southwest road truck and camping out this way. The night got very windy, but we were snug in the truck.

In the morning, we woke up to see a half dozen deer, the first we’ve seen on our property. They were beautiful. We had also seen some nighthawks and bats the night before. All in all, a very nice night.

This reminds me of a joke about a couple of gorillas and a missing check, but I digress…

I’d like to have used an exclamation point here, but getting this permit has been so tiresome I’m not feeling all that joyful–it’s more of a sigh of relief.

I believe all the hold up has been over what really is a small (but expensive) change to the septic system. After threats of requiring a separate septic system for the main house, they agreed to increasing the size of the leach field by one third as the fix.

As soon as I see the permit, I will schedule an inspection for the existing slab. It’s been quite awhile since Karen and I dug those holes. They have served another purpose in the meantime though; anytime someone asks how hard it is to dig here, I point to the holes and say that Karen and I each dug one in a couple of hours.

Wagons ho!

We had a chance to visit two houses built from SIPS (which we’re planning to use for our first house, Tumbeweed) this week. Brad also had another visit with the panel people, and everything continues to look great on that front.

The first house we visited belonged to a prospective customer (at a district that is quite close to us….and for whom I’m now writing a couple grants), where we had dinner. Their house was gorgeous. They built a lot of it themselves. The husband used to do construction and now works in technology, like Brad. Weird, huh? They have a concrete floor, like we’re planning, which was really nice. Their house was a lot like what we want…big open spaces, high ceilings, wood beams. Really great.

The second was a guy who lives in Portal and had one of the first SIPS houses here (built about 8 or 9 years ago). The SIPS people suggested we call him. He was really a great guy. He showed us his whole house, which was unbelievably gorgeous. Again, a big open great room with high ceilings. He was minimal heating and cooling and says it is great. (This is one of the things we’re not sure about.) I wasn’t kidding when I told him that I hoped our house turned out half as nice as his.

After we saw the house, he took us through a photo album of the building process. It was highly instructive. He told us all about different people who helped him and gave us a lot of useful pointers. Like the other people we visited, he designed his house himself. Funny thing is that he said he hired a architect in Bisbee (one of the many we talked to…I think I know of every architect within 500 miles of here), but when he got the final plans, he ended up throwing them out and doing his own. (Another occasion for me to take mental satisfaction in the fact that at least we didn’t pay a ton for our plans.)

He also has a pond on his property. The state paid for part of it because he agreed to restock it with all native species. Pretty cool.

This guy was very encouraging about our building plans. He said that he knew we’d love it here and would end up with a great house. That made me feel good.