Sense of Adventure

But you probably couldn’t tell it from the dearth of posts here, huh?

Mea culpa. I was way busy for a spell, writing like a mad thing. This was Good. Then this week I’ve been inexplicably under the weather - draggy, mentally unfocused, sleep habits more messed up than usual - without showing any overt symptoms (pain, bleeding from the eyes.) This was Not So Good.

Doing a bit better now. The tennis elbow on my left arm’s mostly cleared, which’ll help me exercise more and get some stuff done.

Anyway - yeah, got a lot written, and am building up momentum again. Went to a great Fourth of July party - there’s not much left to celebrate, but celebrating with friends is an end in itself, and probably an act of defiance.

Emma’s not been so pleased: she who fears loud bangs. These have at last subsided, at least the man-made ones. But now the season of thunder may be upon us. Tyke can’t catch a break, sometimes.

It’s easily been the coolest summer I can remember here. Fortunately it hasn’t gotten real humid, although over the last few weeks we’ve had skies cloud up and tease us with hopes of rain without delivering, at least down here in the Valley. Not to say it hasn’t rained really hard here a few times, but it’s more like once a week, every ten days - high precipitation for these parts, granted, but not the usual concentrated monsoon we tend to get sometime over the summer.

That’s until recently. Yesterday when I woke up (and not terribly early, I assure you) the humidity was higher than the temperature, Dang! That hardly happens even in midwinter when the temperatures are low. But at about 10:40 AM the WeatherScan channel showed the temperature at 66°, humidity 67%.

The walk Emma and I took along the ditch east of RGNC was interesting. Partly cloudy, a bit breezy, pretty cool, really. And so humid it felt like walking through a bowl of pudding.

This morning it rained hard and for a fairly long time. If the monsoon truly is at last upon us, I might trot off up Fourth Street to Plants of the Southwest and snag me some grass seed. And whaddaya know? Just whipped over to their site to grab the URL and lookit what I found: “Here in New Mexico the summer rains have finally started to dot the state… This is a perfect time to sow warm season native grass seed.” They proceed to flog their Blue Grama and Buffalograss mix, which I intend to use out front, and their Dryland Blend of eight native grasses, which is what I want to plant in part of my capacious backyard. So I may be on the right track, here.

They’re good people at PotSW, very knowledgeable. If you’re interested in xeriscaping or “sustainable” gardening, you might check them out. I also need to check with them because they advise covering grass seed with mulch, which some garden-savvy friends say is odd because mulch is usually meant to prevent things sprouting, such as weeds. (And let’s face it: what are xeric plants but weeds?) I want to make sure I understand the how-to sheet I got from them a few years back on planting native grasses, and ask them how much mulch I need to use and what kind they recommend. With luck they can also give me a hint on how to purchase the requisite amount of mulch without going broke.

Anyway. I’m chugging along, trying to get back to speed. Then keep accelerating.

Hope things go well with all of you.

And, oh - my birthday’s coming right up here before too long. August 3rd. Just so you know.

Tags: Emma!, Landscaping, xeriscaping

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.