When Brad and I lived in California, we had a favorite getaway spot that was a small bed and breakfast in Palm Springs. It had a Moroccan theme that influenced some of our house design, and each evening they showed movies outdoors on a small makeshift screen. Often, we were the only two moviewatchers, huddled under a blanket on lawn chairs. (We were often there in the winter.)
We always said that someday, we’d like to have outdoor movies like that.
Last night was the debut of ranch movies. We had a few neighbors over for dinner and then went outside to watch “Moneyball” on the side of the house. Despite temperatures in the 90s during the day, the evenings are quite cool, so again, blankets were in order.
It was really just lovely. Exactly how we’d imagined it.
About a year and a half ago, Brad and I went for a hike back in North Fork of Horseshoe Canyon and found a big dam that was built in the 1950s to hold water to pipe down for cattle. The reservoir behind it was bone dry.
Today, we did the same hike and look what we saw.
At our house, it has rained very little so far this year (one time, less than a quarter inch), but looking at the watershed area behind this reservoir, it probably doesn’t take much to fill it up.
Finishing a big work project and finally getting some rain here gave me a chance to finish this video I’ve been meaning to assemble for a while now. (The actual work here has been done for weeks.) Enjoy.
[I always forget to say that this isn’t the final coat. The second coat is much prettier and also much easier to do.]
We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two weeks on gardening. We dug two new beds and expanded the one in front of the greenhouse. This involves not only digging but filtering all the dirt (we estimate the soil here is about 25% rock) and enriching it with compost.
These beds have been planted with edamame, anaheim chiles, beans, and cucumbers. (This is in front of the two allumium beds.)
This bed (covered with a garden blanket) is half tat soi and half lettuce.
Brad also made these ingenious little circles for planting squash and melons. Half have been planted and half are still to be done. Drip irrigation all around.
This area is behind the batteryhouse by the solar panels. We've christened it "squashville."
In the greenhouse, I still have greens growing, which we have an overabundance of right now. We also have herbs and green onions there, and the first of the tomatoes have been transplanted from the house. I hope to have them all moved in the next two weeks.
The first baby tomatoes in the greenhouse
All in all, we now have about 375 square feet under cultivation, up from under 200 last year.
And the cactuses? Well, we’re still waiting eagerly.
We have many cactuses with large buds on them right now and are waiting for the flowers to burst forth. I thought I’d share some pictures so that you can look forward to the blooms along with us!
This is a cholla, and we have many on our property. The blooms are beautiful purple.
This is a cactus very near our house that was just a small single paddle when we moved in. Last year, it added the two bigger paddles you see here. It is also growing 3 or 4 new paddles. This will be the first year it’s bloomed, and we can’t wait to see what color the flowers will be.
We’ve had a nice visit with my Dad this month. In addition to some old favorites like Bisbee and the local canyons, we did some new things on this trip.
First, we visited the San Pedro Riparian area. This is a lovely river near Sierra Vista that is known for its beauty and wildlife (especially birds). We’ve driven by it a million times and always said we wanted to stop and see it so we finally did. It was beautiful, and we will definitely be returning to do some longer hikes.
We also visited the Pima Air and Space Museum and AMARG (aka the Boneyard) in Tucson. My dad is an aviation history aficionado, and coming from Dayton, home of Wright-Pat AFB and the world’s largest military aviation museum, we wanted to see how this compared. It was impressive. I have to say that all the military aspects of it were pretty depressing. I don’t remember that from all the hours of my childhood spent looking at military planes.
I’ve driven by AMARG, the “boneyard” for military planes, a ton of times and always wanted to see it from the inside. Unfortunately, the tour we went on didn’t let us get out of the bus, but we did see a huge number of out-of-service planes. They are used for parts and also sold off to “friendly” governments.
After that, we took a quick trip to Saguaro National Park. It was beautiful and is another place we’ll be back to for some hiking.
