Desert Blooms

The rains they are a coming!!  Warnings of extended thunderstorms just came across my phone this morning.  Maybe I'll be able to get some good lightning images.  It has actually been raining a little ever day ... sometimes a LOT.  Guess I won't be needing those sprinklers for awhile.

Water means everything is blooming in the desert.  These have to be my all time favorite plant.  As usual, I don't know what it is.  I even downloaded an app on my phone where I could take a picture and it would identify it for me.  Trouble is, it never works.  It always says it can't find anything like the picture.

Isn't this a magnificent view?  Right in my back yard.  

I was out cleaning up ... actually cutting and hacking away at the bushes ... making way for the lawn mower.  I even used the electric weed whacker ... boy that was a scary proposition.  I had rocks and grass flying all over the patio!!  

I did have one little oops!!  When I went to cut back the bushes even more, I discovered a piece of drip tubing with an emitter attached.  Unfortunately the tubing was no longer attached to anything.  I've no idea where it came from, but I imagine I whacked something in half.

There are even rose bushes planted here ... all very beautiful and blooming.  I hear the deer love to munch on them, as evidenced by deer tracks (deer poop) in the grass.  They are rather a pain when it comes to pruning, but I promised the previous owner I would try to keep them alive.

Even the trees outside the yard are blooming and the hummingbirds are going crazy.  All of this makes for lots of sneezing of course.

Just before I left last time, I had a yard service come out and prune this palm tree.  Not three months later and it needed a haircut again.  Unfortunately, the chainsaw on a stick is too short to reach.  Me on a ladder with a chainsaw is probably not a good idea, so I hotfooted it down to Lowes and got a hand saw on a stick.  This one extends to something like 18 feet long.  

I've never worked so hard in my life, and I'm pretty sure I sweated every single ounce of water out of my system.  Even at 6:00 in the morning it was hot.  I sawed and sawed, trying to get the blade wedged in between the fronds at the base.  

That's when it all came to a screeching halt.  The blade got stuck and it wasn't coming loose.  RATS!!  I pulled on it and the handle extended, meaning it wasn't tight enough.  Now I'll NEVER get it loose. I was never meant for this kind of manual labor.  With a ladder and shovel, I was finally able to extract it and continue the job.

When I headed over to the second little palm tree and began my investigation into how I could trim it, I found a sweet little dove sitting on a nest.  There will be no trimming of this palm tree.  Poor baby, even in all the rain, she never leaves.

WAIT ..... it just popped into my head.  That beautiful orange flower is a Mexican Bird of Paradise!! See??  Sometimes I really CAN remember things.

Now it's time to figure out why a light bulb fell from the ceiling in my bedroom this morning.  Sometimes the weirdest things happen to me.  By the way, I did not mention that I could not get the garbage disposal to work, so I was planning on a complete kitchen remodel.  Sink, disposal, dish washer .. might as well add in a stove and fridge.

When I added up the cost, I grabbed a long knife, stuck it in the hole and gave the disposal several hard raps.  Magically, when I hit the switch, it came on.  The kitchen remodel has been postponed.