Yesterday morning I did serious work at the tree trough, accomplishing one last raking and trimming before the water arrival.  Now there are half a dozen more piles back there, STILL waiting on our organics can.  (Guess I will call Monday and see if there's a target date for its delivery.)  There's no way all of the piles will fit into the can, and the sooner I can start filling it the fewer weeks those piles will sit around waiting for a windstorm to redistribute them.

I remembered to top off the pool before irrigation, and then got started on dealing with the hot tub cover.  In order to get the tub up and running this season the first order of business had been to remove the tarp we'd bungie-corded over it.  Because our tub has the "benefit" of full afternoon sun, I'd needed to protect the actual vinyl cover from those destructive rays.  

Since I'd purchased the heaviest one I could find, I was surprised (and dismayed!) when it literally disintegrated in my hands; obviously it had been no match for our intense Phoenix sun.  

But even worse, that had allowed serious damage to the actual vinyl cover, which now sports a huge network of cracks.  Yesterday I got started treating it with ArmorAll in hopes of  preventing any further deterioration.

On Friday I'd gotten a bottle of ghost pepper sauce Marcie had whipped up (for Alex, not me!) and yesterday she delivered some habeneros and Thai peppers for him, grown at her daughter's garden up in Oregon.  

Brownie was tail-wagging happy to have his friend Latina visit, and I was relieved to see how gently he treated her.  I'd been a little concerned beforehand because Brownie and Vera have become quite exuberent during play - but he remembered to "play nice" with his tiny friend.

 Irrigation went quite well and everything got a deep soak, though it did require monitoring thoughout the initial 30 minutes.  I would think I finally had removed all the huge clumps of of grass, weeds, sticks from the gates when it would run clear for a bit - but then there here would come more clogs.  As I may have mentioned, the monitoring is no big deal when we are scheduled during the day, but it certainly it will be no fun should we end up with a middle-of-the-night time slot this winter.

The hot tub chemicals arrived yesterday, though I will have to wait a day or so for the 'flood' to recede and the tub is no longer an island before I can do anything with them.  (No morning soak today for the same reason.)  

The house numbers for the garage door have been shipped, though they do seem to be taking their sweet time arriving.

Speaking of sweet time, when I gave Wanda a call yesterday to check up on her she was just getting ready to bake some of her wonderful chocolate cake.  When I mentioned how well my low sugar "diet" has been going, she asked if that meant that I did not want some of the cake.,,

After I stopped laughing, I asked her how long she'd  known me?

My wallet has been falling apart for a long time, so I've been keeping an eye out for a new one any time I've been out and about.  

Who'd have thunk it'd be so hard to find a similar one to replace it?  On the 'net I eventually I settled on a wallet that "would do" and plunked it into the cart.  It was not cheap to being with, and then once tax (bad enough) and shipping (even worse) were added I really didn't like the total, and so left my cart sitting there on the site.  

After daily e-mail reminders from Magellan for almost a week about my "unattended" cart, today I got an offer for NO tax and NO shipping.  Guess I was right to wait!  

Did not get a good night's sleep and was up way too early, but at least it's finally starting to get light out.    Today's agenda is not terribly exciting because it's heavily skewed toward weeding....