We got the house exterior painted this summer, top to bottom and all the folds. It necessitated a peel-down, contraction, cleansing, and renew of everything outside. Our dwelling’s kombucha, wash and facial. The entire house looks 10 years younger!
Next came the lawn. I’m so glad that’s gone, constant maintenance of the sprinkler heads hopelessly spraying alkaline water and surviving direct sunlight in AZ. Grass is not meant to thrive here, weeds and ants are. I got pleasure shutting off the system for two months until our install date.
We had this fountain out front that we turned off after a year in the house. It became the porch’s version of the covered pool table: a dumping ground for injured cactus. We filled the spaces sloppily with rip-rap and 10 years of shell collecting in Mexico. It all got emptied one hot afternoon when Alana and I were home during the teachers’ strike.
An idea emerged…
We needed some elevated bases. We had a lot of leftover paint, and a spill-welcoming back yard!! This took G and ‘lana hours under an EZ-Up and old t-shirts. Dirtbag Dadcamp.
The scorpion was mine. We’ll never see him again, but it pleases me to know he’s down in there.
We also had this concrete fish. Since 2000, when we moved into our Mesa house, which also had a ridiculous fountain. Our first month in Mesa, a heron stood lazily in the fountain and gobbled up the koy fish one-by-one. Then the pond rotted, inexorably grinding down Beckie’s patience for rebuilding pumps and mucking. We finally filled it in to secure a tenant during the Great Recession in 2010. I don’t know how the fish survived that purge. He’s really really heavy, he sat unpainted in a corner for another 7 years.
And was reborn. It took me as long as the cinder blocks did the girls; I was constantly consumed with curtailing their creation of a SuperFund site. Painting during triple digits is a dumb summer remodel. Fine brushes gum up, paint skims sticking become colored landmines. ead grass wafts into an actual image-filter gumming up fine brushes. My parenting skills validated by Alana voluntarily cleaning the continuum of gummy brushes, without being asked even twice. Can you open and seal 10 cans, prep a workspace, and not get spattered? We went 13 days without a workplace accident. When I do with the girls where they don’t know, and come away more knowing, is good parenting.
And this claw. One Monday morning there was a big dinosaur skeleton along the highway median. Still there Tuesday and Wed. Wednesday night Alana and I detoured home from soccer practice, only to find it was gone! Scavenged by a wayward paleontologist!! Thursday I retrieved the only remaining fossil half a mile further south.
welcome home, claw!
Our house is finally xeriscaped!
