Precipitation for tonight has been forecasted for the last few days but I doubt this county will get any of it. At the 5am news I learned that Flagstaff received some rain from the Baja front, but Tucson and Cochise County remained dry. "Dry thunderstorms" may happen though, the announcers said, which means also a higher danger of lightning-induced wildfires.
We haven't had ANY rain since I've been back in Arizona. Texas has gotten flooded, though, most recently Laredo but Texas is no longer close to my heart because my heart is in Arizona. The only person in Texas I care about is my friend Mark in Lubbock.
I checked the back patio thermometer and at 6:15am it read 58F and 36% humidity, the highest I remember seeing for a while. Skies are clear and the wind is picking up, although it's not as windy as it was yesterday when gusts of close to 40mph blew through and knocked the clothes off the clothesline.
This is actually perfect weather for gardening. I carried the last of the black bags of dried yard grass to the dumpster (trash pick-up is Tuesdays and Fridays here) and want to get the last of the Russian thistle pulled, the stuff more commonly known as Tumbleweed but that is one of Arizona's noxious weeds.
I must be the only resident in our neighborhood who actually pulls the young shoots from the yard, when the shoots are still pliable and resemble mini pinetrees coming out of the dirt. My backyard will never again resemble an overgrown, abandoned lot like it did last November, when I singlehandedly pulled every weed by hand from the yard. I filled close to 20 bags from the backyard, bags full of weeds and dried grasses that had grown to bodacious proportions in the two years I was away. Never again will weeds overtake my yard!
My ultimate plan is to get the more troublesome portion of the backyard solarized, using our thick tan tarp to heat up the weeds under the plastic, and to keep it on the yard until the monsoon season. Monsoons shouldn't be here until late June (although I'd welcome them sooner any day!) and that should be enough time to kill off most of the weeds and bad nematodes in the soil. Thistles, nightshades, spurge, purslane will overtake the yard if I don't somehow control that growth.
The rest of the garden is coming along. The pole peas are now coming up, catching up to the beans that always germinate faster than peas anyway. I hope I have the same luck with the spinach, cabbage, beets and onions I plan on sowing soon, although the summer heat may postpone that until August.
The dogs haven't been walked since Sunday's hike along Bear Creek and they follow my every move around the house. When I am inside they snooze in my presence, always facing me and in a semi-alert status just in case they hear me approach the front door with keys in hand. When I put on my shoes, then put on my hiking cap, then grab the keys and leash and camera they know they are going for a walk and get excited.
The dogs are happy, lucky dogs. They are both up-to-date on all their shots, from rabies and parvo to having tested last month negatively for heartworm. But now the news is reporting a parvo virus outbreak in the Tucson animal shelters, a virus that is highly contagious to dogs and that can be spread easily from dog bowls and bedding to a human's hand. The shelters have been euthenizing one dog a day in the last 60 days; one dog was recently found dead in its cage from the parvo virus. (Oddly enough there are no articles in today's SVHerald or AZ Daily Star about the recent parvo virus outbreak; I only heard that on KVOA)
Which means I shouldn't be letting the dogs lick my hand at the local shelter when I go visit the homeless dogs. I let the friendly critters lick my outstretched hand as I gently talk to them. I could be unwittingly be spreading the deadly virus to the same animals I want to protect.
As I toil the morning away in the garden I will also wonder how voters in Indiana and North Carolina will vote today in their state primaries. I expect Indiana to vote for Sen Clinton, as the state is mostly white and people there are "traditional" and "conservative" which to me often means "behind the moon" in social thinking. I can't imagine Hoosiers outside the Chicagoland area voting for Sen Obama, our first black presidential candidate.
Hoosiers are hard-working, friendly people, both the farmers and the steelmill workers but both tend to vote on issues that are related to them. Farmers want their subsidies and the steelmill workers want their unions. Although I always enjoy going back to Indiana, this tunnel vision of the world still bothers me, but I have learned to accept my former statesmen for what they are.
Indiana for so long as been an outcast state. Northwest Indiana ever since the Industrial Age has become the dumping ground for Chicago. Now, years later, Indiana has become a tax haven for Chicagoans who now move to Indiana to save on taxes. Chicagoans have become what Californians have become to Arizonans: rude but wealthy new neighbors who want to overtake the neighborhoods.
Well, enough on that. There is so much going on worldwide that I could waste more daylight musing over all that I think about as I toil in the garden. 2008 will be one "exciting" year, with a massive recession and possibly new wars lingering over the horizon.
Update 7 May: http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/237824.php
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