I told you it would grow back...

As I mentioned in Yardwork..., I knew the grass would grow back and the pruned trees would actually fill out and grow more. It is now a little less than 2 months since the yard was cleared and a little over a month since our first Monsoooooooon! rain. This is what the land now looks like. I didn't shoot from every similar angle, but you can get the general idea.

This is just east of the driveway as you approach the house.

This is the same area after you turn into the driveway.

And this the the west side of the driveway, i.e. the house side.

Here we've gone to the end of the driveway and turned around facing south.

This is the ditch on the south side of the property. We are facing west.

This is from the road.

This is farther west on the road. Some areas don't grow back as profusely as others.

This is from the road and a little west of the house.

This is the dividing line between the Natural Open Space on the left (west) and what we can manage on the right. You can't see the stake anymore due to all the growth.

This is the area just east of that, closer to the house with the drain field to the right side of the picture.

This is the mesquite tree with all the action. You will see some of that at the end of this posting.

The infamouse rockpile with the west edge of the drainfield.

The rain barrels from the east side of the house.

And from the west side.

The area between us and the north neighbors. We're facing west here and standing close to the rain barrels.

The courtyard. We gotta get this graveled, paved or something as soon as the monsoon is over this year.

The Mexican garden area.

Now for a few close ups. This is that barrel cactus in the right of the Mexican garden area. Lots of things are blooming for the first time this year and some for the 2nd. This is an example of a 2nd bloomer.

This prickly pear now has fruit on it. I like them just as much with the fruit as with the blossoms. The ocotillo is growing up through the prickly pear. It's the only one we have now, but we really like them and have more on our landscape plan. Most of the year they look like dead thorny sticks, but when it rains they are covered with tiny leaves.

Now for a bird diversion:

About 2 weeks ago, I was out walking Cisco around 4 in the afternoon and saw this Turkey buzzard in a tree snag close by. They are usually up and flying when it's hot, but maybe it was too hot that day.

After we passed him, I figured he would fly away, but when we got back to the house I discovered he hadn't, so I took lots of pictures through our windows.

He spent only a minimal amount of time closed up and then he decided to spread his wings.

From the time I first saw him do this until he closed up again was about 5 minutes. That sure seemed like a long time for him to hold his wings out.

A few days later, late in the afternoon, this female cardinal flew from that action mesquite right into one of our windows. She didn't hurt herselft too badly and I got these pictures after she went back to the tree.

So that's the latest from LMMM. Trout came home to a very green landscape due to the rains. We've had dark skies, lightning and thunder since he got back but not a lot of rain. Still our rain barrels are totally full, so if the monsoon stops soon as predicted, we will have some rain water to use for awhile on our few plants.

Spring Fever -- Wks 37-38, March 9-22, 2008

We don't have a lot to show at the house for the last couple of weeks. We've been in the project management doldrums with things having to go in a certain order interrupted by family responsibilities keeping the plumber away from the house. However, that seems to be settled now and I think we will be moving on.

We did get some decisions made, though, and as I prepared this, I realized how many.

We picked our Talavera sinks for the master bath and the guest bath. I don't have pictures of them, but Trout's is the same pattern as the gold "feather" tile at the left of this grouping. This is sort of what his vanity tile will be like, but with more variety in the field tile and the feather tile will be set diagonally.

My vanity tile pattern is a little less complicated, but between Trout, Vicki (the other half of Meadow Briar Homes) and me we decided on a sink that has all the colors of the pattern tile -- and more! We were leaning toward just a blue and white sink but decided that was too plain.

The sink we picked for the guest bath has prickly pear in the bowl and is trimmed with the same terra cotta peacock feather design as is in these tiles we'll be using for the guest bath.

While noodling around at an online lighting source, Lamps Plus, I found this vanity light with sconces that match for the guest bath. It can be mounted with the shades up or down and I think we'll mount it with them down. If our local lighting provider can't get it, we will order it online. I love the way the scrolls sort of match the scrolls in the "Maya" border tile for the guest bath -- even down to the place where they are "banded" together.

We had to make a final decision on the refrigerator and freezer so Dave could frame in the area around it. This is how that turned out, although I'm not sure you can really see much in this picture. The space it fits in is bordered by the 2x4 at the right edge and the multiple 2x4s on the left.

I had been dithering about this for a long time, debating with myself on whether to spend a lot of money or go with Sears Kenmore Elite for this set. After a final look at Consumer Reports and in person, I decided that none of the other options were really much better and certainly not worth the extra money, so we will have this unit in our kitchen. The freezer is on the left and the fridge is on the right. They are counter depth (24") like the one we had in WA. I have come to despise full-depth refrigerators with the freezer on the top after living with two different ones the past 3 years. If you want to see what this is like inside, go to your local Sears store. I'm sure they will have them on display.

When I had to commit to the fridge/freezer, I decided I might as well go ahead and make the commitment to the other appliances I'd picked out in the past. So we will have a Sears Kenmore dishwasher (Trout's favorite appliance)...

...a GE Monogram gas cooktop...

...a Best by Broan rangehood...

...and a GE thermal oven/micowave combination.

That was the extent of the decisions we had to make away from the house, but they were pretty significant.

Back at the house, I worked with Dave on the design of the tile around the master bath tub. The design will use the tiles below plus some dark blue trim tile. The stars are the "field" tile, the pictographs (and there are two other images besides the hand) will show up in a few places and the swirls and espadas patterns will make a double border.

So here's how the base of the tub looked without the tub in it. For inspection purposes, Dave had to tile that. It was a new requirement of the county's. We've been hitting a lot of those on this project.

And here's how it looks with the tub in. Yes, the tub actually is holding water. That's a good sign.

Here's a closeup of some of the tile. It looks absolutely fabulous in person.

If you were worried, the guest bath tub also holds water. Because it's not dropped into a platform like the master bath tub, it didn't have to have any tile around it for the inspection. In fact, Dave moved the temporarily framed linen cubbies away from the back of it for the time being.

Lani and Kelly hadn't been out to the house in awhile. Her mom (who is my age) bought Lani's step-father, Gary, a ride in a WWII trainer plane at Ryan Field. We met the whole family there, I took pictures, of course, and we had lunch before everyone came out to see the house. Gary (Trout's age) was a local developer and he was very impressed by the quality of work being done in the house. He said Dave and Vicki were doing a great job.

Lani loved our semi-industrial windows and doors. Here she is getting brought up-to-date on the fireplace by Trout.

She took a picture of Trout and me with it.

On the other side of the room the corbel brackets for the kitchen bar turned out really well, we think.

And Trout's excited about the spread of the light from the SolaTubes in the shop. It's just what he hoped for. They don't have the lenses on them yet, so you can really see the area they will cover in this picture.

I don't have any pictures to show, but something else he's excited about is a spur-of-the moment decision to put a mesquite floor in his shop office. He and Kelly went to a wood source down near Tombstone who had some old, well-aged, mesquite tongue-in-groove flooring laying back in a corner. He said they could have it for a very good price, so they snapped it up.

He may also replace the exterior door to his office and the one to the understair storage with a mesquite one. With the termites in this area, I'm not so sure the wood floor is a good idea, but it's his man-cave and he paid for it (and will pay for the mesquite doors since there are already two doors there that are part of the house contract), so it's up to him. He can reuse one of those contract doors for the door into the shop from the office. I don't know what we'll do with the other one.

Now for those of you who may have been curious about the Ryan Field thing, here's the plane. I love the way you can see the prop in these pictures even though it was running. I could actually see it through the digital camera lens, but not just with my eyes.

And here's the pilot. Not exactly like Lee, eh?! Both pilots had pony tails. The other one's was gray.