Muchacho Polaco

In preparation of pavers around the pool deck, I had to remove a tree trunk fron a tree I removed last year. Why do people plant trees near structures?

The challenge was not only the wall, but the roots were near the pool return lines.

It was going well until I jack hammered into one of the three return lines causing a flood and total disaster.

I spent a weekend digging around the trunk to expose the roots and then Matt came over yesterday and we spent the day getting that thing out. What a nightmare, but after a few hours with a sawzall, chainsaw, jack hammer, axes, and pry bar, we got it out.

The damaged pipe caused a major loss of water, so I just drained the pool as we intend to repaint it again this year. We used 7 gallons last year and it looked spectacular for a few months.

I just finished power spraying it and this is what it looks like a year later.

We celebrated Charles’s 60th birthday last Saturday. Matt and Dana hosted. Julie put together a very nice private blue grass concert.

This little beast is trouble. He has a lot of terrible habits to break. But he has his moments of cute, like when he sun bathes in his favorite pool lounger.

Comparing fotos to last week it seems there was a decent amount of growth, especially with the lettuce. I also planted more lettuce in the rockwool with no expectation they would germinate, but they did and did so quickly.

This succulent is beautiful. It loves full sun in the tripple digits and does just fine with below freezing temps. As we are finally on full approach to Spring, it is beginning to blossom.

We went to Olivia’s photo exhibit last night downtown Tucson in Barrio Viejo. We have never been to this part of town and it was beautiful. Michael went with us.

We have never had septic before. We know very little about it. We were told to clean it every three years, so here we are. The smell is something awful.

I bought another little starter system weeks ago. Seeing a different layout than a bucket was helpful. I’d really like to build a system out of PVC.

I started out with some habaneros and the others are all lettuce.

The lettuce that I started in the bucket weeks back has been doing really well.

My sister surprised me with a gift from my past today! This was my first SLR back in the 80s when I was in cadets. I used to load my own film and develop my own fotos.

It is so foreign now. She got me some film as well. I loaded up some black and white and took my first couple of shots moments ago. Film is not cheap and you have to wait a long time to see the results!

Here’s my camera shelf. I need to take more photos!

I found this app for my phone that connects various dog rescue groups. I’ve been looking at it for week. On Sunday I found a couple dogs I thought we should at least go see. So we got in the car early and drove an hour north to Casa Grande. Those dogs were not for us, but we found two others that were.

This guy was called Rex and he was such a calm little guy.

This was Klaus, with three of his siblings.

They seemed like a good match and although had never been together, played well in their yard. So we decided to bring them home. On a Sunday afternoon. Before me leaving out of town for a week for work. We didn’t think that through well. It has been 2 days now and a rough transition. They are great dogs, but it’s a bit much for Yun to deal with alone.

We renamed this one “Berlin”. Rex was a really lame name. He clearly has some shepherd and is perhaps a bit of Husky (they call these Shepskys).

This one we now call “Rome”. He is an intimidating one, but affectionate.

We tried to avoid anything that looked like Scout or Tila so as not to compare them. I think we were succesful with that.