Scorpion Hunters

My husband and our neighbor Shane forged a bond early this summer over their mutual dislike of scorpions. Together they are…. the scorpion hunters. On their nightly hunts they kill and collect scorpions saving the neighbors and their children from a fate undeserved. There are many ways to kill scorpions, but my husband’s favorite is smashing them with the end of the screw driver. His second favorite way is to burn them (apparently favorite way of many fellow scorpion hunters) as is necessary when they retreat into cracks. Fortunately, this year it is forbidden to bring the pregnant females into the house and dissect them – apparently a favorite past time for Shane as well.

Like most scorpion hunters Erkan (my husband) and Shane are equipped with the usual gadgets: black light, flame thrower, and squishing device. The area they cover is vast. Not only do these fearless hunters search and protect their own homes, but they survey the walls of all those living near them in an effort to extinguish the vermin. At the end of each night they tally up their kills and in true engineering/nerd fashion my husband enters the number into an Excel spreadsheet for future reference. I don’t know what Shane does, but as an inventor of unique items I am sure he is engineering a device capable of mass scorpion destruction. May they continue to protect those who are unable to protect themselves.

Black Thumb of Death

Water, water, water and water your yard if you live in the Valley of the Sun. And if you live in Maricopa, fertilize, fertilize and fertilize because they built your house in the desert. I have always considered myself to have a green thumb, but since we have moved to Maricopa (aka armpit of Arizona) it is more like the black thumb of death. Every shrub I planted the first winter here died (about 20). Three orange trees – dead. Now my beloved plum trees planted in the spring of this year – dying. Five previously beautiful red flowering plums. Sadly, even my roses which usually go nuts in the summer are barely productive. The grass was brownish and slow growing as well. What I have learned the hard way is unlike where I grew up (on the west side), plants here in Maricopa need constant fertilization. I suspect the water isn’t as nourishing here as it is on the west side either. The water here is so “hard (super high mineral content)” we have to use CLR to clean our shower everyday. The water sucks, its windy, far away from everything, it stinks…sorry I am getting a little carried away. Since this posting is about the yard I won’t go into how much I don’t like Maricopa….moving on.

Now I have come to the realization plants in Maricopa need more than most and therefore I fertilize every two to three months. I fertilize the grass twice based on the seasons: winter and summer. So far this has worked out well. Our winter grass had died off initially last winter (as it had the winter before)-- unbeknownst to me it needed fertilizer. I had never fertilized a winter lawn prior to living here in lovely (sarcasm) Maricopa. We applied the fertilizer the landscaper recommended and Voila! The yard looked fantastic for the remaining two months of winter. I applied it to the ailing summer grass a few weeks ago and it is a lush thick green carpet now.

As for my ailing plum trees – I am trying everything I know (which is very little) and a product called Super Thrive the Home Depot expert recommended. According to the package each dose “packs a super punch” of vitamins and such that plants need to grow. Supposedly you will see two years growth in one year. It has been one week and two applications with no visible results with the plum trees. However, it maybe my imagination (which my husband says it is), but the other trees look like they have grown. We have six Sisso trees which are extremely water loving and have been doing quite well here. They line the perimeter of the backyard and I hope one day they will provide massive amounts of shade as the sun is even more hostile here in Maricopa (did I mention it is also very windy?).

As for the plum trees, I hope they are lying dormant due to the hostile elements and will be strengthened in the cooler months to come—if only they could last until then. Did I mention summer is longer in Maricopa?

Yes, I Did Graduate From College

Articulate means to speak clearly and distinctly. Since the birth of my second child I have noticed my ability to be articulate is absent. Point in case I have to read and reread my posts for grammatical accuracy and proper spelling. I am certain this is related to child rearing….or is it early memory loss? Could it be the lack of sleep or constant preoccupation? It is very frustrating for me as well as my husband to carry on a conversation due to the lack my ability to finish a sentence. He just said to me yesterday “can you try to finish your sentences?” – and in case you read the quote imagining he said it in a kind and loving way….stop. It was dripping with sarcasm and disdain. I understand it can be annoying to have a conversation with someone who can only speak in one syllable words and short incomplete sentences. I am sure he feels he is speaking with a child. I understand because sometimes his occasional emotional immaturity makes me feel like I am speaking to a child as well. But I digress…

Occasionally I miss the old me who could use multi-syllable words correctly without thinking. Now if I want to use a big word I really have to think about it, what it means and am I using it correctly – by the time I have thought it all out the moment has passed and once again I haven’t completed a sentence. I hope by the time I outgrow this phase I haven’t moved into a new phase known as old-timers-syndrome. However at least I will have a real excuse for not being able to remember anything -- for now people just wonder how I graduated from college.

Another Plant Butchered

My husband has struck again.  It started out as a simple trim around the base of the shrub and ended up looking like a tree branch sticking out of the ground.  He did this to the tree next to our driveway as well.  Basically the shrub was dying due to lack of water.  We fixed the dripper so it would get adequate amounts, but it needed a little trimming to help it look healthier since it was loosing all the leaves.  My husband starts out with good intentions but then something just snaps in his brain --he can't stop himself.  As I was watching him do it I saw his eyes starting to glaze over.  I cautioned him to slow down repeatedly telling him the shrub was starting to look, well, not very pretty.  He looked like he was going to stop so I turned away and busied myself with cleaning up the yard, but when I turned back it was to late.  He had hacked off so much of the top it was not recognizable as a shrub and looked more like a fine from the HOA.  I had to literally take the clippers out of his hands.  It was more like prying really.  I hated to do what I had to do next but there was no choice -- it had to be cut down to only inches so that it could grow back and not look like some homeowner got carried away on pruning.  Words cannot express the shock over this "little trim" gone bad.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then these pictures should say it all.  The picture on the top left is a plant of similar size to the one my husband cut down (2nd picture down on left).  The only difference is the healthy one is greener and a sage.  The third picture on the left is one of the trees in our front yard and the one he has been forbidden to touch.  The fourth picture is the tree he tried to "trim" and left looking somewhat deformed.  In conclusion, my husband is good at so many things, but he is never allowed to trim any plant on our property ever again.

I ♥ Craigslist.com

I just found out today that Flexa, a Denmark company, is no longer selling their bed products in the United States. Their beds are really cool since they start out for a toddler and can be modified well into young adulthood.  It really sucks for us since we only have their basic bed (with cave, pockets and chalkboard), which incidentally we got for free from craigslist.com.  I have been scrambling today to find the accessories we would like to have in order to make our son’s bed a low-loft-with-slide. I called the Las Vegas store and they only have two of the four items we want.

A quick search of Craigslist.com (I always thought it was gregslist) and I found someone selling a low loft bed with two of our wanted items (extension legs and ladder) right here in Phoenix. An even more thorough search and I found all the parts we need on Craigslist.com for much less than in the store. Unfortunately, they are in other states. I have been aggressively making offers to the owner of the bed with the parts we need here in Arizona and have even offered more than half of what they are asking for the bed -- just for the parts.  One would think she couldn’t refuse and as such I am eagerly awaiting her reply to my latest offer. In the meantime the owners of the parts in the other states have agreed to ship me the items if I pay for shipping (we will see how that goes).

There are two things I really like about craigslist.com:  you can pay much less for an item you want than if it were new and you help the environment by recycling items instead of buying more (and more and more...which is something we Americans are really good at next to gun ownership).