Casual Friday – 7/10/2015

On Fridays I join Aimee of Aimee Writes for Casual Friday, a post with “no structure, no prompts, no rules, anything goes.” Check out her blog here and join us in Casual Friday if you would like.

Last week I mentioned a new yellow blossom in the garden but I confessed that I did not know what it was. Turns out it yarrow. It commonly grows around here and I should have been able to identify it.  Ours had been planted in that spot 3 years ago but it had never blossomed. This year when it finally bloomed I did not recall that we had planted it and I did not recognize it.

Our neighborhood was blessedly quiet over the Fourth of July weekend. We could hear distant booms from the municipal fireworks but fortunately we did not have a lot of people in the neighborhood setting off fireworks. That meant it was a quiet and calm time for our dogs.

The noisiest time of the whole weekend was my Saturday morning mile walk with my dog. We are usually out of the house walking at 5:45. On Saturday I slept late so we didn’t get out of the house until 7:00. By this time the neighborhood–and the neighborhood dogs–are waking up. During the portion of our walk through the residential area, dogs in one yard after another  starting barking as we passed their yards. It caused quite a stir in the neighborhood. It reinforced why I prefer walking so early at the break of dawn when all is quiet.

My sister and I decided to relax by playing board games. I looked high and low for my Scrabble game but I could not find it. I don’t believe I have played it since I moved 4 years ago. It is completely possible that it was a casualty of the move.  We ended up playing Rummikub, another game that we have not played for a long time. Neither of us remembered details of the game. We know we played it before a long time ago, but as we played it we still didn’t remember anything about it. Part of the aging process? I often say I learn something new every day, which becomes more and more true when I can’t even remember those things I used to know.

View of the Open Space From the Back Deck

We had crazy weather this week with a lot of rain. I never tire of the rain since in the great Southwest we don’t have the quantity of rain I was used to during my early years in Wisconsin. This year, though, many people I know are having trouble with flooding in their yards because we have had atypical wet weather. The ground is saturated so they are having flooding that they never experienced before. I am fortunate in that my house is built into a hill and we are at the highest point on our little cul-de-sac. Our entire lot slopes downhill towards the back so all rainfall will flow downhill and not accumulate. Although my house is a single story, the back deck is at second story level. We have a flight of stairs leading down to the back yard. Right beyond our back fence is an open space which is lined with trees up  to my property and then an arroyo (ditch) works its way through the trees. The arroyo is usually dry, but with the storms of this week we have had water rushing through it several times.

On Wednesday we had a sudden, fierce hail storm. I was in my office working away and all of sudden there was a loud roaring noise. It turns out that it was hail hitting the windows in all the offices on the west side of the building. The noise was deafening. We all had a bit of damage to our vehicles with a few dings on the hood or roof that had previously not been there.

My hope for everyone is another happy and relaxing weekend.

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