Yearning

It's dawned on me that I do not belong where I live. I'm like a stranger in a foreign land. It's not time to leave yet, but one day - when we do leave - I need to live near water.

As a kid, our parents used to take us different places for summer vacations - Jersey shore, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire. Each summer a different spot for a week. We would rent a little cabin and explore.

One of my favorite spots - ever - was Squam Lake in New Hampshire. I read about Squam Lake on other blogs, because the Squam Art Workshops are held there every year. One Day.....

If you ever saw the movie - On Golden Pond - it was filmed there.

I remember a family photo of myself - as a pensive 11 year old - sitting at the edge of a dock. I wonder where that picture is?

In the meantime, please enjoy these pics of Squam Lake -

by native vermont studio.

by nature photographer.

Frogs in the Pool!!!

It's monsoon season - all of a sudden - here in Tucson Arizona. Monsoons are huge thunderstorms, and can be torrential, with very damaging winds, thunder and lightning. The dry riverbeds and washes can flood, very quickly.

Monsoon season brings out all kinds of critters.

There's the poisonous desert toad. They are bigger than a man's hand, and whatever you do - DON'T let your dog near them. If your dog licks them, they can die. If YOU lick them, you can hallucinate.

Tarantulas. I haven't seen any yet. Any day now.....

Scorpions. Black widow spiders. Snakes. Don't I just love living here?

BUT, today, we have new visitors.

Frogs.

In the pool.

TONS of them.

What am I going to do with them??

I need to turn on the filter, so the pool can get cleaned. There's quite a bit of debris after last night's storm. But can I? Will the filter scoop up all the froggies?

And, where did they come from? Did they drop from the sky during the storm? Some of them like hanging out in the filter bucket ---

And some of them like getting piggyback rides on each other. Hmmm. What ARE they doing?

And what am I going to do to keep them from swimming in my pool all summer??

Monsoon Flood

Our last year in Philadelphia, it rained 18 weekends in a row. In Tucson, when it rains, it's a BIG event. Right now, it is monsoon season. Incredible thunder storms that can do amazing damage in a very very short amount of time. All throughout the southwest, there are 'washes', that are dry, 99% of the time. And then the rains come, and the washes fill with water, FAST rushing water. Sometimes, for the big washes, they close the roads. They've built bridges over the really really big washes, that turn into major rivers (30 feet deep, it can get). We love monsoon season.

Except it can get scary. Like when the lightning hits 10 feet outside your door, and when your yard turns into a river. Our dirt road has a wash that comes in just across our driveway. It makes a turn, and then continues on the other side of our horse arena. The road becomes impassable.

Next time, I'll get pictures of that. There was too much lightning to venture out to the end of the driveway. So here's some shots of my flooding desert yard, taken from the relative safety of my porch. The water ended up coming right up to both my back door and my front door. I was starting to think about sand bags.

This all happened just before dinner. After dinner, the worst seemed to be over. My 15 year old wanted to go to a friend's house. I offered to drive him. His friend just lives 5 minutes away. My younger son came with me.

Then, we couldn't get home. Every road we tried was flooded, including the "front" way into our road. I ended up going way around, and thankfully those roads were not as badly flooded.

Oh, and our garage flooded. Reminds me that I need to have a yard sale. Or just call the Salvation Army, I want to get rid of all the junk.

Before it floods again.

UH OH

The well is dry. Not as in, the creative well. NO, the Real Well. The one that holds the water. The 10,000 gallon well, that pumps the water for our house from the Tucson aquifer. So that we have glorious spring water that comes out of all our faucets. Not anymore, no spring water here.....
Isn't it weird? Our water comes from a well. We share the well with 3 other houses. And there's a problem. There's a leak, or the pump isn't working, or there's a crack in the pipe 700+ feet down.
So the water guy came today, to fill the well. He filled it 3 times, with 2000 gallons each time. And between the 2nd and 3rd trip to fill it, the water level dropped. Where did it go? Not to my house, not to the house that nobody is living in yet cause it's under construction, to the house on the corner that also has nobody living in it full-time?
All I can see are dollar signs. Flying away....or should I say floating away......on the water that is NOT coming into my house. I'm told it could be close to $10,000 to fix it. Possibly.
Maybe. Um, I do not have that kind of loose change right now. So I did not sleep last night. And cannot forsee sleeping until I have water again.
SIGH

so just to prove that the creative well isn't dry yet, I'm showing pictures of little Russian Matroyshka dolls that I sewed onto felt and then put pins on the back. Just little pins....I'm going to need to sell a LOT of them to pay for my water.

SIGH