Homicide

I spent most of my adult years in the Pacific NW where there's 9 months of rain and 3 months of dry.  About 4 days after the rains stopped, everybody was out watering lawns and plants.  Didn't seem like there was such a thing as too much irrigation.
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Now I live in the desert; very dry, very hot.  Seems logical that you'd have to water the living crap out of everything virtually every day.  Right?  Wrong!  The plants are different, the soil's different, it's a whole 'nother shooting match entirely.  Cacti have attitude: 'Go ahead, dumb ass, water me once a week, see what happens.'  What happens is they quickly become sullen and lethargic.  Keep it up and it's, 'Up yours, sucker.  I'm outta here.'  Game over.  Post mortem: homicide.  Weapon: water.  Perpetrator: me.
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Homicide victims are not noted for their photogenicity and cacti are no exception.  Pix of the survivors are considerably more appealing.  Here are 3 that have yet to succumb to my ministrations.

Golden Barrel Cactus

Echinocactus grusonii

Tubac Prickly Pear

Opuntia macrocentra/violacea

Century Plant

Agave americana

Doggerel 2

Readers' comments were positive on the first doggerel, so here's another one.  Gotta warn you: this one really stinks!

MANURE!

This was written for, and first read at, the Delaney family reunion in July, 2005.  My siblings and I relate to manure as only one-time farm kids can.  It’s audience participation: listeners are encouraged to shout 'MANURE!' where indicated.

Making hay is our biggest chore,
Three crops each summer, sometimes four.
A hundred tons a year or more,
And all will end up on the floor.  MANURE!

It comes in varied shape and size,
Horse apples, sheep pellets, large cow pies.
Whatever the size or configuration,
I’d much prefer constipation.  MANURE!

It splats and plops, oozes and flows,
It covers floors and walls and clothes.          
It’s on our shoes, our shirts, our hair,
It permeates our underwear.  MANURE!

We fork it from the gutters,
And wipe it off the udders.
We shove it here, we pile it there,
It tears our eyes and fouls the air.  MANURE!

The spreader flings it wide and high.

And as it plops down from the sky,

We cower on the tractor seat,
And shower in that fragrant treat.  MANURE!

On the day I turned eighteen,
I left to make the college scene.
It’s over finally, in the past,
I’m outta’ here, I’ve forked my last.  MANURE!

In ending this, I should mention,
In case you haven’t paid attention,
Though perhaps I’m just a picky chap,
I’m really not that fond of crap.  MANURE!

Mike Delaney  
6-20-05
All rights reserved.

Doggerel

Sporadically, very sporadically, I'm inspired to write bad poetry.  I call it doggerel - for reasons that will soon become obvious.  Also sporadically, I inflict these literary gems on innocent, unsuspecting friends and relatives.  Since returning to LHC, there's been a lack of breaking news and exciting adventures to report but I feel obligated to post something.  So, here's a doggerel.

HOLEY WOMEN

The barbaric trend in female fashion,
Is body puncturing, with a passion.

Like members of the Zulu nation,
They glory in self-mutilation.

The holes are for attaching things,
Chains and pins and studs and rings,

To noses, tongues, lips and nipples,
A host of dangling participles.

Studs and metal everywhere,
Living ads for ACE hardware.

Do they think they’ll win men’s hearts,
By punching holes in body parts?

Maybe some guys like to squeeze,
Women holier than Swiss cheese.

But I feel this fashion’s overrated,
I still like mine unperforated.

Mike Delaney

6-30-05
All rights reserved.

HEAT!

Last night at dinner I asked Trish, 'What's the highest outdoor temperature you've ever experienced?"  She wasn't sure but guessed that current high temps (108-115) in LHC were likely the highest.  They are certainly the highest I've ever 'enjoyed'.
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That said, I'm actually enjoying them more than I anticipated.  Well ......... okay, maybe tolerating them better than I anticipated is more accurate.  It's that dry heat thing, don't you know.  'Dry heat' is something of an ongoing joke, oft-mentioned with a dash of sarcasm.  But, I'm here to tell you, it's real.
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As you know, heat index reports the 'feels like' temp, based on actual temps, humidity levels and, I suspect, a bit of smoke and a mirror.  LHC is very dry - often dryer than Death Valley - and the heat index is typically 5-7 points below actual temps.  More humid parts of the country boast (?) heat indexes that can be 20+ points higher than actual temps.  We hit several such places in our summer travels (OK was the worst) and you know what?  You can have 'em.  All of 'em.
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Back to the original question, what's your personal high?  The high for this coming Thursday in LHC is supposed to be 119: that'll be a new record for us.  After considerable soul searching, deep thinking and internal debate, I've decided that I will not aspire to higher achievements in this particular field of endeavor.

Recap

For those into meaningless statistics and trivia, I offer this recap of our summer travels.  Number of:

1. States we hit: 23

2. Provinces: 5

3. Days: 80

4. Miles we towed the trailer: 8719

5. Miles we put on the pickup: 11263

Comments:

1.  Halifax, NS was my favorite place in Canada.

2.  Canada touring is spendy.  We've now seen the places that interest us, doubt we'll visit again, with the possible exception of Vancouver and Victoria.

3.  Generally speaking, Canadian folks seem louder and more raucous than their neighbors to the south - and less privacy conscious.

4.  Lake Powell is fantastic: put it on your 'must do' list.

5.  This blog is ongoing.  Stay tuned.

Day Trip

Finally, after 10 days of cooling our heals, we were ready to go sightseeing again.  You get kinda road weary after 10000 miles in the saddle.  Today, we did a day trip loop and viewed 3 nearby national monuments.

Montezuma's Castle N M.  Trust me, Montezuma had nothing to do with it.  Some confused early settler thought that Aztecs lived here.  He/she was 1000+ miles and 200 years off the mark.  Regardless, the name stuck. 

The first question that pops into your mind when you look at it is 'how'd they get up there?'  It's 100' above the valley floor.  This plaque helps.

Actually, this was home to a mixed bag of natives from the Hohokam and Southern Sinagua cultures.  It was occupied for about 300 years until 1400, when for unknown reasons, they boogied on down the trail to places unknown. 

Montezuma Well N M.  I guess this was named by the same idjit.  It's a collapsed limestone cavern fed by underground springs that produce a tremendous volume of water.  The natives dug mile-long canals from this sink to irrigate their crops.  The water stays a constant 76 degrees year round.  Note the cliff dwellings in the upper left corner.  The well is similar in nature to the cenotes of the Yucatan but in this case, the surfacing water was caused by erosion rather than a humongous asteroid.  

Tuzigoot N M was our last stop.  The word means 'crooked water' in Apache.  It's a hilltop pueblo that had 77 ground floor rooms and numerous upper story rooms - how numerous we don't know because the ground floor is all that remains.  I didn't take any pix cuz I couldn't find a good angle to capture the thing.  Here's a link with pix: http://www.nps.gov/tuzi/index.htm

Rocks

Took another hike in the granite dells near our campground and took these up close and personal pix of the rocks.

There are hundreds of balanced rocks in the dells, many appear so delicately balanced that a mere flick of the finger would send them tumbling.

Another balanced rock.  It's really tempting to give them a shove - but I didn't.

The patterns in the rocks are interesting, too.  Not being heavy into geology, I don't know what causes these striations and at the moment I'm too lazy to google it.