Fawn Poop

Two mystery’s photos.  The first can happen when you leave your house for 3 months:

The second took the skills of both Bruce and Helen to create:

We have been baking along with most of the rest of the country.   Highs in the upper 90’s for the last 8 weeks, 102 degrees today. So hot that Smokey the Bear has switched to wearing a bikini bottom:

This is NOT a welcome moisture laden afternoon mountain cloud:  

It comes from a fire on the other side of the mountain.  It got a little darker later in the day:

From our house we have seen 4 fires come and go in the last few weeks.   Not as bad as Colorado, but some houses were lost in a couple of them.   

We completed our parkway/tree-strip/boulevard/parking-strip/grass-next-to-sidewalk (that thing has lots of names) replacement project.  I wimped out and hired some guys to do most of it.  Here is the grass excavation:

We planted about 6 types of 90 low water plants, along with 8 big rocks, which have even lower water requirements:

The trick to saving water here is to setup a system that drips water only to the roots of the plants along with a water permeable weed resistant fabric:

And then cover everything with a bark mulch to help keep the water in:

I’m feeling slightly water virtuous now, but am still using plenty to keep the rest of our grass green.    The deer are also helping keeping it green:  

The little guys fit through a couple of places between our fence rails:

But when a guy with a camera shows up, they freak out and loose track where the exits are, so they fly back and forth in a panic, sometimes stumbling across the pool cover, which fortunately seems strong enough for small deer:

We have had a number of summer guest visits.  Here swimming with ‘Kissa’ (aka Lenna, Helen, or physics professor from Temple U. in Philadelphia);

Noah also visited for a few days.  He helped me play my yearly game of Tennis:

I forgot what Helen and Noah were talking about at this pool dinner.   Kind of looks like Helen is saying he can climb a tree if he wants a coconut and Noah is saying he doesn’t care for coconut:

And everyone else is pondering the fact that we don’t have a coconut tree.

Abbey and Colin got back from the trip to Europe just in time to come over and watch fireworks with us.   Mom, your telescope works great for fireworks!

Nick and Chloe just finished a long weekend with us.   We did several hikes:

Per usual hiking protocol, Nick catches an animal, here a scary black gue spewing grasshopper:

And then he eats it:

And then wonders if the scary black gue will eat away his finger:

We swam (duh).  This is a one person pool toy, but can work with 2 if you don’t need to breath much:

Played games:

Went to a movie (I wore Nick out on a long hike, so Chloe game him a ride to the theater):

And relaxed:

That first mystery photo was from a bag of potatoes that Boris and Irena found in their pantry when they got back from a 3 month trip:

The second photos is what you get if you let Bruce over-water a golden barrel cactus, then you let Helen dissect it into a smelly and deadly work of art:

Looking forward to see folk at the Hyalite retreat!

Bruce