Gardening Update (Monday, September 18th, 2017)

It has been 7 days since I planted my self watering pot.  There is water in the bottom of it, but other than that I haven't watered it at all.  It is just wicking the water from the bottom of the pot up into the soil.

According to my moisture meter, the moisture in the soil is perfect about 2 inches down.  The further I put the moisture meter in the soil, the more moist it gets. I'm so excited to see that this is working!  I'll watch it a little longer before I make more self watering pots, but it is certainly looking promising.  

I planted a few Thai basil seeds in this same pot on Saturday, so we'll see if they come up.  We watered it again today through the watering hole.  It took 3/4 of a gallon to refill the reservoir.

Steve Has Ants in His Pants (Saturday, September 16th, 2017)

On Wednesday we helped with a sodding project at the golf course.

All of my work was close to the ground which was fine with me, but I didn't realize there was a hidden threat.  As I cleaned my third bunker, I started getting some stinging around my right wrist.  I thought it was just irritation from sand in the cuff of my glove, but as I rolled my cuff down to brush it out, I realized that my cuff was full of tiny ants that were biting me.  The ants were no more than a millimeter long.  They were tiny. 

The maintenance crew that we were working with said that they were fire ants and that they are pretty common in Arizona. I swept them all away and really didn't think any more of it.  

When we got home, Steve realized he had an ant in his pants. He whipped his pants off quickly and got the little pest out of there. It stung him about 5 times up and down his leg.

My wrist was still stinging and starting to itch, so I took a look at it and realized that my arm was starting to swell. So we got online and did some research on fire ants.  Our research said that if you are allergic to them, you could have a severe reaction fairly quickly, or you might get a large local reaction, which isn't as serious, but can be pretty uncomfortable.  So I took their advice and started taking Benedryl and icing my arm once an hour for 20 minutes.  It also said to keep antibiotic cream on the actual bites to keep them from getting infected.  

I had about a dozen bites around my wrist. We can't show you Steve's bites. 😉



I kind of liked that all my veins disappeared, but it wasn't very comfortable.



The swelling kept working its way up my arm and down toward my fingers.

Even with the benedryl and icing, my arm continued to swell.

 We finally switched to ice baths for my arm instead of just ice packs.  It took a couple of days, but the swelling is finally going back down.  The Benedryl made me really out of it, so I was extremely happy when I could stop taking it. Another couple of days and I should be back to normal.

We now know what fire ants are, and we'll do our  best to keep our distance.

Sodding the Golf Course (Wednesday, September 13th, 2017)

The golf course has been re-sodding most of the tee boxes and around the bunkers this summer, so they put out a request for volunteers for the projects.  Steve and I enjoy that kind of work and thought it would be a good opportunity to meet some new people. So on Wednesday we showed up at the golf course at 5:00 a.m. as requested.  Our job was to lay sod around three bunkers on the 18th hole of the west course.  The men did all of the heavy lifting, carrying the sod from the pallets to where they needed it to be laid. I cleaned the edges of the bunkers where the sod would fit in, and helped place the sod once it was carried over.  

Once we got the detailed work done about 6 feet around the bunkers, they would bring in the big sod rolls to finish the job.

They are using a different type of sod around the bunkers , so it should give the golf course a very dramatic effect when it is all done.

We really enjoyed our sodding experience, but stay tuned, it didn't end there....

A Gardening Project (Monday, September 11th, 2017)

I have always enjoyed gardening in Colorado, and I really missed it this summer, so I've started researching how to garden in the desert. I think the biggest difference is that you don't garden in the summer here, you plant in the fall and garden through the winter.  Also, the ground is incredibly rocky and hard in Arizona, making it virtually impossible to dig, so most gardens are in raised beds or pots.

Since we like to travel, I was afraid to plant my vegetables in pots because they require constant water in this dry climate, but pots seemed like a much better option to me than putting a lot of work into a raised bed, only to have my gardening undertaking fail.  So I started researching self watering gardens.

There are so many videos on the internet about self watering gardens and they all use a slightly different technique.  So we took a little bit of advice from each of them and constructed our own self watering pot.  I wanted something pretty, but still functional.

The technique we decided to use creates a platform in the pot.  The soil will sit on the platform and the water will be beneath it.  We used a lid from an old rubber maid container to make our platform, then drilled holes for our wicking bottles.

You can see our platform in the pot with the wicking bottles in place.  It isn't ready yet, but it gives you an idea of how it will look under the soil.

We drilled some holes in the bottles so that the water in the bottom of the planter would fill them.

Then we cut off the tops of the bottles so we could fill them with soil.

Here it is again.  The bottles now have holes in the bottoms of them and the tops are cut off.  We then drilled a hole in the pot just below the platform.  This will allow any extra water to drain out so it can't drown the plants even with heavy rains.

We then soaked potting mix (not potting soil) and packed it into our bottles.  These bottles will wick the water from the bottom of the pot up through the packed soil, and into the soil in the pot.

We placed the bottles back under the platform and filled the top of the pot with damp potting mix and planted our basil and chives.

If everything works as planned, the soil in the bottles will continue to wick the water up from the bottom and keep the soil moist.

Big Machines (Tuesday, September 12th, 2017)

There is a lot of building going on in Lake Havasu City right now, and we've had fun watching this particular lot.  They had earth movers on this lot for the 8th time today.  It is amazing how much digging is required to build a house.  They have already dug a hole for the swimming pool in this back yard, and today they had the backhoe here again to dig the wall behind the pool.  We couldn't figure out how they were going to do it, until we watched the backhoe crawl up the side of the lot and under the power lines, and then turn around and start digging.  It was impressive!

This is definitely not a job for me.  He kept having to put the shovel down as the backhoe would start to slide in.  I'm sure he does this kind of work all the time, but it looked a little dicey to me.

Flash Floods and Hurricanes (Saturday, September 9th, 2017)

I think it's funny that I chose to write about fall yesterday, because today it is here.  It has been overcast and rainy all day, and we are just loving it! The temperature today is only in the low 80's and there is a light breeze, making it absolutely perfect!  

The funny thing about Arizona, though, is that there are no gutters or down spouts on the houses.  The rain just runs off the tile roofs and makes a splashy mess everywhere.  



This particular waterfall is right in front of our front door.  There is about a 5' x 5' covered porch that shelters our front door, but the rain falls off the roof so hard that it splashes right inside the house if the front door is open.  

The ground is so hard here that it doesn't absorb the rainfall. We just have to let it run off, or soak in very slowly. Our back yard is filling up quickly, but it will run off before it reaches the house.

While we were eating lunch, we both got an emergency alert on our phones for flash floods in the area.  Luckily, we are all snugged in at home, and we don't have to worry about it.  

Even in this big rainstorm we are still enjoying the ease of our outdoor kitchen.  

This little storm we are having here in Havasu brings our thoughts to everyone in Houston, where hurricane Harvey just went through last week, and the small Caribbean islands that have just felt the wrath of hurricane Irma. Florida is still bracing itself for Irma.  Our prayers go out to everyone in the paths of these horribly destructive storms.  

Cooler Days are Coming (Friday, September 8th, 2017)

Last Monday was Labor Day here in the good ole USA.  It is a time to celebrate our labor force, and more realistically, for our workforce to take a day to relax and recuperate.  

By labor day weekend, most schools are back in session, and in most places, it is the final summer hurrah as families prepare for their fall routines.

But here in Lake Havasu where the summer is so hot, it is the beginning of cooler temperatures and quieter weekends.  We are finally starting to see highs in the low hundreds instead of the 110's and 120's, and once the Labor Day weekend rush is over, we'll see many fewer lake visitors.  Our little town will cool down, quiet down, and once again become the paradise that we look forward to. 

Arizona Outdoor Kitchen (Wednesday, August 30th, 2017)

Back in May, I refinished an old science table that we wanted to use for an outdoor kitchen.  It wasn't hot then, but we knew it was coming.

Now that the weather is hot, we are using our outdoor kitchen table all the time.  It allows us to cook great meals without heating up the house at all.  

We eat a lot of cool refreshing meals like salads in the summer, but sometimes you just need a good hearty meal, and this little unit certainly gives us that option.

Then depending on how hot it is, we can choose to eat dinner inside or out.   This time of year it's almost always inside, but at least we don't have to bring all that heat inside with us.