Olives

We’ve had a relatively cool spring, and our summer isn’t warming up very quickly either. This week the predictions are for high temperatures to be under 37c (100f) all week. Last year we were up over 43c (110f) every day. I still love the hot weather, but it really is nice to sit out in the morning, have my coffee and listen to the birds without having to sweat.

We have been getting out on weekends and visiting different spots around town. Last Sunday we drove up to Mt. Charleston, before it was Red Rock. Perhaps another road trip south might be next. Last time B flew back from Portland she took this photo of Red Rock from the plane


Makes it look pretty, but stark. I would still rather do trees, but then it wouldn’t be the Vegas desert, would it?
Out in our front yard the olive trees are full of fruit. We don’t do anything with it except let the birds feast, but even then there are quite a lot of olives left over. Right now they are bright green and starting to weigh down the tree branches, eventually they will turn deep purple and start falling off. That’s when are yard will be filled with pigeons pecking the olives apart. They seem to be the only birds that do that, all the other birds just use the olive trees for nesting rather than eating. The pigeon population is still limited, and more olives just lay untouched. The ones from last year are now all dried and hard, but we’re too lazy to gather them up.


An older couple does come around in early fall and asks if they can pick the olives, evidently it is a time consuming process to make them edible, I find it much easier to just open a jar.

Is it Spring yet?

We have been hearing all the news about snow back East, and I’ve been remembering what it was like to go out and sit in my cold car in the morning and not feel the heater doing anything even after I got to the work parking lot. It is much different here. We are about into Spring, and I am enjoying it.

What did I do the day of the big snowfall in Washington? I had to go outside and put out the pool pump, to pump all the rainwater off of the pool cover.


See it there, down in the pool, pulling off all that water from the heavy rains we had? And then that evening we went off to our local big home supply store and just had to comment on the display out front. Was it snow shovels and snow blowers? No, not quite . . .


Yesterday B spent some time getting our raised beds ready for veggies


Over under the trees some volunteer paperwhites had sprung up


But the rest of the yard still looks like winter


The only green grass is the different shade type that survives under the peach tree in our hot summers. The ground is still wet, we ended up with about 2.6 inches of rain total over three weeks, a lot more than we usually get, around half of our ‘average’ rainfall, and more than the 1.5 inches totall all of last year. This brings the worms up, so the birds keep coming back


Overhead the crisp air made my favorite sky patterns, lots of stripes.


And the temperatures? Low of 45 last night, it did hit 69 in our back yard yesterday. Supposed to warm up as the week goes on. You guys can keep your snow, and I love our summer 115 as well, so there.

(Sorry guys - that's a high yesterday of 20c with a low of 7c, in the summer it has gotten up to 47c since we've been here)

Spring

It’s getting on into springtime here, but the weather isn’t cooperating too much. Yesterday was cold, only got up to 69 (our normal high should be 76) and tomorrow even colder with rain predicted! Come on, time for the sun and heat around here. The Clark County Fair is this weekend, just four days ending on Easter Sunday. Not sure if we’ll go this year, we did last year; I still have the photos to post for that one. It was fun, but I don’t know if I can take it again.

The big resort hotel casino next door put up some springtime decorations. The front lobby of the new tower sprouted umbrellas and raindrops -


The long vertical strips are sequentially lighted moving downward, imitating the appearance of rain (in some designer’s imagination). These were also placed in the waterfall courtyard as well.


After I took these photos they decorated the big fountains, with trees and bushes, I’ll have to walk back and get some updated shots. With the sunshine we’ve been walking outside, even though it’s been a bit breezy it is nice to see all of the tourists out there taking photos and enjoying themselves. Spring break week, and the food court has been full of kids, it should slack off a little bit for a few months and then we will be into our summer crowds. The trees are still full of pollen, and when the wind blows it brings stuff from all over down to the valley, producing lots of nose problems for those with allergies. Going out to my car the other day I found some in evidence


The car was clean - all the stuff on the hood is yellow pollen from the pine trees nearby. You can see them just behind over my roof. Interesting how it comes down in strings like that instead of an even powder coating.


Most people are not affected by the pollen from pine trees - the allergy doctor I went to said the pollen is too big for people’s receptors, right now it’s the mulberry trees that are bothering most people, along with just about everything else that is blooming across the desert. I still would much rather put up with this than the rain and snow though.

Spring flowers and Buster's eye

It’s warming up here, due to be in the mid 80’s the rest of the week (28c), but predictions have a storm front moving in over the weekend with temps dropping to 70 (21c) and rain on Sunday. The normal high for this time of year is supposed to be 69, so it is nice to have a little warmer time. I am ready for summer, I love the heat, and would much rather have it over 100 than under freezing. Trees that bloom are starting to flower around town, there is one with red leaves and pink flowers that is used a lot in new developments that really looks pretty. There are several areas on my drive home that have rows of these, and at the right angle of the sun they really shimmer a gorgeous pink. We hit the nursery last weekend and found the fruit trees starting to put out blooms


It looks like our big peach tree will not be blooming too much this year, the bloom cycle seems to vary and even though we had a few pink blossoms earlier the tree has now started putting out leaves and turning green. It’s the first tree in our yard to go green, providing some shade already. Out back some daffodils that B and E planted have come up


Also at our place one of our dogs is having problems. Buster - you remember Buster don’t you? He’s the brown guy


He weights about nine pounds and is fairly friendly. We got both Buster and Max from the animal shelter down in San Diego about fifteen years ago, and figure that he’s about 18 or 19 years old. He has been walking slower these days, his hearing is starting to go as well as his vision. At a recent teeth cleaning they pulled nine of his teeth, including all the front ones. It looks like he has a cataract in his right eye, instead of the nice deep brown it used to be it’s kind of milky now, and his night vision is way down. Well, a few weeks ago he scratched his eye somehow (he will not tell us how) and it became infected. Several trips to the vet, pills and liquid and shots did not clear it up. On Thursday the vet tried to clean it out, but it became worse and on Friday they had to take his eye out. (that sounds bad) Unfortunately it was his better eye that was removed, so now we have an almost deaf almost blind dog wandering the house. When not sleeping he’s wandering around in a narcotic haze, we have to be careful not to step on him because he follows the shadowy movement and sneaks up behind us. He has a cone around his head to keep him from scratching at the stitches, which means he can’t make it out the doggy door, so if we don’t see him headed that way it’s more to clean up. We can hear him wandering as the plastic cone scrapes against the walls or bangs into chair legs, at least it protects him from hitting that eye against anything for a while. Fortunately the nice weather has let us keep the doors open, and since we’ve been here almost six years he knows his way around and can make it outside. But at night he can’t see anything in the yard so he does not wander far (we have a big yard).


Yup, doesn’t look too good, does he? With that eye shaved and sewn shut and no teeth up front and a milky eye. When E was told about his operation she said ‘oh, he’s a Cyclops now’, remembering Mike from Monsters Inc.


So it doesn’t bother her too much, and when she gets back down he should be healed up and look a lot better, except his eye won’t be in the middle of his head.

Spring flowers

It’s getting to be Spring here. So in response to Udge posting some photos of flowers around Germany in his early warm weather I thought I might catch up here. Oh, this is also for Flip Flop Mama and all the rest of you living in Wisconsin or Colorado and other places where it is rather cold and still white.

Last week it got rather warm towards the weekend. This was Friday out in front of the big hotel next to where I work.


They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Notice – no coats or snow boots in that shot. Saturday it got up to 79f, and I figured I would take some photos of the flowers. Put in pansies just for a few spots of color back before Christmas. They haven’t spread very far.


But the paperwhites come up on their own in assorted areas around the yard. We didn’t put these in, some past owner probably planted an Easter pot.


The feathery acacia is just starting to open its yellow buds. In a few weeks it should be a solid yellow ball.


This bush is about four feet high and wide. We have a few of these around, mixed in with the sage. The sage isn’t a Spring bloomer, they turn purple based on the humidity and will probably flower in June and again in September.

Around the rest of the yard our fruit trees are starting to flower. Two years ago we put in a weeping plum, which seems to be growing slowly but doing well with its white flowers.


A small almond tree was in the back when we moved in, not doing too well. I put a drip line around it and it has perked up. Flowers on this one are a little pink.


But the most impressive tree in our back yard is a peach. It’s probably thirty feet tall, and was in full bloom when we first looked at the house and decided to buy it. That was five years ago, and it hasn’t really had as nice a bloom in the years since. Usually the leaves start coming out before the flowers, so they get lost in the green. But this year there is no green yet.


These blooms are a nice bright pink. Very pretty close up, but stepping back a bit.


It is nice. And moving across the yard, it gets even nicer.


It should be in full bloom in a few days, and so full of blossoms you can hardly see inside to the branches. Then we can look forward to the pink snow underneath.

A lot better than the white lawns you guys talk about.

E-less Monday

OMG (sorry about that, I don’t really have a G but it is a good sounding phrase anyway). I was just reading Lisa’s blog and realized that I have turned into my kids. Oh, not a very pleasant thought.

A while back (Christmas before last) when daughter had E I related how on Christmas morning we sat through a two hour video of our granddaughter, as she sat in front of the tree at their house, doing nothing but sitting as seven month old kids are wont to do. And they went ‘Ooooh’ and ‘Aaaah’ as she rolled over and just sat there. All the time the kid was on the floor in front of them, they just watched the video. Then we watched a two hour video of E sitting on the floor in front of our tree taken a scant four hours previous (time to film the two hours, then watch their two hours). Somewhere around hour .2 (that’s about eight minutes for the decimally impaired) I walked out and proceeded to do other things, only to be defamed later for not caring enough about the granddaughter to sit and watch four hours of video while the kid was SITTING RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF THEM. But I guess video shows things differently.

Anyway, back to here: I thought this was a Vegas blog, and here I am making you all suffer through seemingly endless granddaughter pictures. Sorry.

I just looked at my list of photos ready to post, and found that I have about two dozen staring with ‘E’ and only one not. Guess I better haul out the camera and wander around the city for a while.

So, here is the only non E pic I have uploaded (I’m at work, and have all the pics at home where I FTP them up and can only refer to them from here).


Yes, and exciting post of things we in the southwest get to look forward to in the Spring. The blooming of the popular Mexican Gardner Palm Tree Trimmer. Up until now I have been propping up the ladder and taking care of these myself. We only have four palms in our yard, along the pool. We used to have two really tall ones out front, but cut them down not long after moving in. Since we have a one story house, and those trees were thirty years old and about fifty feet tall, it made more of an impression of telephone poles than of attractive trees. So my neighbor helped and down those two came. Leaving us with these.

These trees probably went in around 1990. We’ve only been in the house four years, but from looking at some paperwork left behind we are guessing that there was some construction work done on the house around 90, with the pool going in at the same time. So the palms probably went in with the landscaping. They are still a reasonable size, but B is about ready to have them pulled. I think they look nice framing the side of the yard.

This MGPTT came to the front door offering his services the week prior, and we made an appointment for his return. In addition to trimming he also peeled the trunks, cleaning up the bottom eight to ten feet on each tree. B has been wanting this done, and I 1) don’t know how to do it, and 2) didn’t really want to. So this personably man negotiated to do the job.

For those of you not in warm clime, the cost to trim a palm tree is usually around $35 per tree. The cost to strip the tree is usually around $ per foot. This gentleman did the whole job, four trees, trimming and cleaning, for $200. I thought that was pretty good, seeing as how it made B very happy. Her major complaint was that the trees were really rough to work around, walking behind them to paint the wall or plant new bushes was rather painful.

If you haven’t been around palm trees like this, dead fronds are cut off close to the trunk. This leaves the part that attaches to the trunk to dry out, becoming very sharp and irritating if you brush against it. It also attracts spiders and other creatures who like the roughness, and very dirty, holding dust and stuff. I figured B wanted them stripped all the way up to the new fronds at the top, but she just wanted it beyond where she would brush against them. Now that it’s done like this I kind of do like the look.

In the left of the photo is our little pool house. It’s really just a roof, but does provide a nice shady spot on sunny days (which is about every day here in Vegas). I was sitting in the pool house shade when I took the photo of my feet and the pool over in the sidebar. I added a fan to move air around on hot days, and some lights to make it more useful on late nights. We keep the barbeque grill out there, and use it quite a lot. B wanted to make it cozier and so added the canvas side curtains. I do like the effect, sitting there with them rustling in the wind. The pointed canvas next to it is a folded table umbrella, on a table over to the side.

We do have a big pool and a large paved area around it, which provides a great expanse for large wild parties, of which we have had none since we have moved in. We are not wild party people. Most of our neighbors are retired, and have pools of their own, so they just stay at home to get wet. I think the largest group we had was about a dozen. Though, this being Vegas, I do have fantasies about filling the pool with naked show girls, or at least topless ones like they have at the Strip hotel pools. Don’t think B would go for that though, and it would probably cost too much anyway (they charge by the hour here).

So, see, you come to hear about Vegas and get stories about palm tree trimming. The E pics will return, but bad news for those of you that do come here for those. The move is official, and this coming Saturday B and E and daughter will be driving away for the wilds of Portland. Well, B will be flying back two weeks later, but I will have the house to myself (along with the two boys, Max and Buster) for two weeks. Time to line up the showgirls.

I still don’t know why Portland. We did look there when we left San Diego four years ago. It was a beautiful city, green, with lots of things to do and a real walking city. But there is a cause behind the green-ness. Weather report for Vegas today is low of 58, high of 84, and SUN. For Portland it’s high of 50 (yes, the HIGH) and low of 32 and rain. That’s why it’s so green – it’s also so wet. B and I would much rather have the 340 days of sunshine offered by Vegas. And the big airport (for when we have time and money to fly places), the restaurants, the things to do, and the Strip full of entertainment.

So, I shall bring the camera in to work tomorrow and wander over to the mall and around, resulting in some Vegas photos to post soon. The move northward will result in a diminution of E photos, as not having her around to photograph will result in less photos of E.