Tiles

Weather: Temperatures started rising into the 90s on Wednesday, and the shrubs that were planted this spring had to be given additional water. The seeds and bedding plants all have stopped growing, and some are shrinking in size. The area corn is no more than 2' high. I think the flourishing squashes must have been transplanted, rather than grown from seed. Most of them are in the shade.

Local evergreens continuing to turn brown. Apparently, the water from the winter and spring hasn’t penetrated to their root levels. This is even the case with one man who floods his yard.

Last useful rain: 7/13. Week’s low: 42 degrees F. Week’s high: 97 degrees F in the shade. Smoke came mainly from the Naranjo Fire near Cuba.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, lilies, daylily, red-tipped and Arizona yuccas, fernbush, Spanish broom, sweet peas, Russian sage, blue flax, hollyhocks, datura, bouncing Bess, squash, yellow yarrow, coreopsis, blanket flowers, white cone flowers, cultivated sunflowers; ripe apricots falling on ground

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Trees of heaven, buffalo gourd, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, yellow mullein, velvetweed, Queen Anne’s lace, plains paper flowers, goat’s beard, Hopi tea, gumweed, toothed spurge, golden hairy asters, wild lettuce, native and common dandelions

What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior and miniature roses, catmints, lady bells, calamintha, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, sidalcea, coral beard tongues, sea lavender, coral bells, Dutch clover, white spurge, tomatillo, pink evening primroses, Saint John’s wort, Mexican hats, white yarrow, chocolate flower, plains coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, purple coneflower; pansies that wintered over

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia much shrunken, nicotiana, pansies

What’s reviving/coming up: Leaves on ragweed and native sunflowers becoming visible

Tasks: One man cut his hay. I cut the alfalfa near the crab apples with the string trimmer for the second time this season. I thought about clearing the dead stems from the walk, but realized the leaves dry and blow into the nearby grasses.

Failing hoses had to be replaced. I think the problems were caused by the heat, but I’m not sure exactly what happens. The plastic gets brittle, rather than flexible. I suspect it also expands, so the water holes get smaller. Thus, when the same amount of water goes through that flowed when it was cooler, it puts more stress on the holes. The ones that fail are always near the inlet fittings. I suspect that area gets damaged during manufacturing, and so is the weakest spot when the heat rises. It still means, when the hoses are most necessary, they are least reliable.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, geckos seem larger this year, sulphur, monarch and cabbage butterflies, bumble bees, dragonfly, crickets, grasshoppers, hornets, mosquitoes, small ants

Weekly update: The heat melts my resolve to work outside everyday. My body keeps aging and no longer responds when I think about going out to work at daybreak. When my muscles are willing, the air is too warm. Thus, only critical tasks gets done.

This week I looked for work in the shade. The forsythia was ignored for years because the black locust got so near, the thorns kept me away. Then, when it crowded the olive family shrub, I let the forsythia alone so it could muster its resources in its own way.

The locust is gone, and the Forsythia intermedia is recovering. I spent one morning sitting under it clipping dead wood. That kind of work is hard on the wrist, and so I can’t do it again for a week. In the meantime, the shrub can continue to grow.

The only other shady place is on the northwest side of the house where I need to cut more peaches that are weighing down the tree. However, that uses the same tools and same muscles, so I have to alternate working on the Prunus persica with the forsythia.

The peach is near the house, where the some tiles I placed near the foundation blocks to carry away water have been disintegrating. Saltillo tile is not made for the outdoors. When I bought it, I was told to buy a particular type of sealer and apply several coats. I put it on both sides, but I’m not sure if every tiles got the same treatment. I’m never as systematic as I should be.

Anyway, all that was more twenty-five years ago. There’s a place where the porch connects to the house that has no eave trough. I could never find anyone competent willing to do the work. So, water comes down in winter, then freezes and melts. The tile tops became pock marked, and some cracked.

I’ve been saying I needed to replace the broken tiles, but I also said that’s winter work. It can be done anytime, and work hours in the summer are few.

Well, this week, I changed my mantra, and began replacing tiles.

When I removed tiles, I discovered they had delaminated on the underside. I realize that’s not technically true, since I don’t think tile is created in layers. But, the effect was the same. Pieces broke off horizontally.

I used the chisel to pry up the pieces that then had buried themselves in the dirt. Next, I used the drywall trowel to relevel the ground. Water that seeped through the cracks had eroded the nearby dirt, leaving humps in the center.

As I mentioned last week, cracks attract seeds. The sprouting plants push tiles farther apart, and perpetuate their problems. Thus, when I reset tiles, I also filling up the spaces.

That will be fine, until I get down to the section where the electric and telephone wires enter the house. The ground post created an area that couldn’t be tiled. The blue flax moved in. Since the Linum perenne kept dying out in the bed where I planted it, I left them. Now, when I get to that area, I’ll have to figure out how to move tiles without destroying too many of the plants.

Notes on photographs: All pictures taken 13 July 2019.

1. Plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) is an annual that was included in a sample seed mix that was sent by one nursery. None of the other seeds germinated, but a couple of these floated in water to places they like and bloomed. Last year I bought a packet of the seed, and scattered the seeds with the perennial lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) and blanket flowers (Gaillardia aristata) seeds whenever I cleared a space. The winter must have been idea for it, because a number came up this year.

2-5. Saltillo tile.