We’ve been steadily working our way through lots of tasks associated with settling into our new park model. On May 20th we finally got all the pieces together to install our new weather station in it’s temporary place. Eventually we plan to attach it to the deck on our addition but since construction on that hasn’t started yet, we mounted it on a 2 x 4 which we strapped to the power pedestal in front of the house.
It’s a fun weather station that records wind speed and direction and rainfall and of course temperature and humidity. It has a little solar panel on the top that runs a fan to try to keep the heat from building up when it’s sitting in the sun. You can hear it whirring away but it still overestimates the temperature when it sits in the sun.
Earlier in the week I’d made a trip to Home Depot (which as been really crowded even now that everything else is opened up) and bought a couple of 20” pots, some potting soil and a pre-planted flower arrangement of what I think are Calibrachoa. I put the flowers in one pot and planted Red Sails leaf lettuce in the other.
The 20” pots seem to be high enough to keep the bunnies at bay and by putting this pot on the leeward side of the front steps it’s protected from the wind too.
On May 22nd, the bunny was back posing for me on the driveway. This time I even got their whiskers.
That afternoon, Walter and I took a stroll through the neighborhoods near the clubhouse while the laundry was chugging along in the laundromat.
The roses were really starting to put on a show—especially the miniature ones.
These were newly planted in a yard that the folks had been working on for several weeks.
The little miniature roses can be so sweet.
While the bearded irises were past their peak there were still a few putting on a show.
The peonies don’t last long but they sure are pretty.
There were a few full sized roses in bloom too.
This rose is slightly bigger than a miniature but smaller than a full size. And I love the way it displays colors like the old-fashioned climbing rose, Jacob’s Coat.
Some tidy fleabane (Erigeron concinnus) had taken up residence (like a weed) in one of the gravel parking areas.
Around the next block there were roses that you could easily have thought were peonies.
This is a really popular shrub rose that lots of folks have in their yards. They were just loaded with flowers.
The standard tea roses were just starting to bloom. There were pink ones.
And yellow ones.
And more of that variegated miniature that I love so much. Isn’t she pretty in a boisterous sort of way?
The lady who teaches the barn quilt class had just planted a pretty little garden in front of her house.
We wandered across the grassy area along the main drag and found a nice bench in front of the larger of the ponds and sat and enjoyed the view.
Then we wandered on back towards the club house passing a nice patch of dianthus.
And the first daylily of the season. It was so small that I suspect it’s a Stella del Oro which is very popular just about everywhere.
Coreopsis does very well here and it had just started to bloom too.
Last but certainly not least, there was a lovely white peony in bloom.
The next day we took a drive around the White Mountain Lake area and stopped at a nice patch of wildflowers along Silver Creek Drive.
There were Gunnison's Mariposa Lily (Calochortus gunnisonii).
And scads of Upland Larkspur (Delphinium nuttallianum).
The New Mexico Thistles (Cirsium neomexicanum) were all in full bloom.
There were Toadflax-Penstemon (Penstemon linarioides) too.
Rose Heath (Chaetopappa ericoides) seems to be pretty common in this area.
And there are a whole raft of different fleabanes in bloom. I think that this one is Spreading Fleabane (Erigeron divergens).
The verge was entirely covered with these little tiny flowers which turn out to be Rattlesnake Weed (Euphorbia albomarginata).
That evening, Mother Nature provided us with a lovely sunset off to the west.
We took a stroll through our neighborhood on Sunday May 24th. Every day there are more flowers in bloom. The irises are almost done but they are being replaced by roses.
There were a number of red single roses in bloom.
And our old favorite the shrub rose that makes so many roses all at once.
Here’s a shot of just one branch-full.
Red Hot Poker is a perennial that does very well here. They were just starting to bloom.
The roses in the Back 40 Park were just starting to bloom too.
But the biggest show was being put on by the Showy Evening Primrose that was blanketing the back of the park.
The last of the irises were mostly purple
Or blue.
This lovely yellow-pink rose was just opening.
And there was some yarrow just starting to bloom too.
Here’s another lovely single rose that I spied in someone’s yard.
On Memorial Day some of the residents got together and organized a golf cart parade. They decorated their carts with flags and drove around the neighborhoods beeping their horns.
There were about 20 of them so there was a lot of beeping and a lot of smiles and waves.
One of the fun things about being on a lake on a golf course is that people regularly miss the green and hit the water. Since this is an executive golf course, they use these funny lightweight balls that float. Last year, one of our neighbors policed the lake and fished out over 700 balls over the summer. This year, he’s not here. So we’ve take up some of the slack and have a new summer sport: Golf Ball Fishing.
The green has this long pole (a 10 ft piece of PVC) with a half of a pickle ball attached. You dip it into the water and get it under the golf ball. And voila!
Success!
Some areas are easier to get to than others. I got to try to reach a ball way out in the lake with LOTS of rocks in the way.
Success here is not falling in AND getting the ball out.
We don’t do it every day. And sometimes we don’t manage to get the balls before wind drives them under the rocks. But it can be a fun thing to do now and then.
When we first got access to our new house, our intention had been to go out and order a new bed. However, the Stay at Home Order had closed the mattress store we wanted to use. So we brought our old inflatable bed up and used it. When the store finally re-opened, initially they would only deliver to your curb (not in your house). But finally on May 15th, they were willing to deliver and set up a bed. So we went in an tried out beds and ordered one. The bedroom isn’t very big and we had discovered that a queen-sized bed made getting around it pretty hard. So we ordered a full sized bed, only to discover that those are considered a special order now! Okay, it was going to be 2 weeks, no problem. Then on the night of May 27th, we began the night with a slow silent leak. Oh joy. We pumped up the mattress and went to sleep. By 1:30 am the bed was really soft, so I got up and pumped it up again (we have a little electric pump) and decided to sleep on the floor thereby hoping to extend the life of this batch of air. As I settled in to go to sleep on top of a pile of pillows I heard a hissing sound. Oh oh. I reached under the mattress pad and felt around and found the hole. It was not a little hole any longer. But if I kept my finger on it, it stopped hissing. Being as how I was not willing to spend my night with my finger in the dike, we gave up. I slept on the floor and Walter slept in an easy chair in the living room until the sun woke him up and he came back to share the floor with me.
The next morning this is what the mattress looked like. If you put your hand on it, you’d hit the floor very quickly. The pillows are on the bed up there by the wall. You just can’t see them because they’ve sunk to the floor.
So we did some research and went to town and got a patch. We applied it and waited 3 hours. Meanwhile I called the mattress store to ask if our mattress had arrived since it was due that day. Ummm, no. In fact, they have supply issues. A number of their suppliers shut down and they now don’t have some of the pieces that they use to make the mattresses. Ours hadn’t even been started yet so it would be at least another week. Okay. So we did some research to find another inflatable bed (thank you Walmart for having lots of them) in case the patch didn’t work. It looked great but when we inflated the bed, it just bubbled up and leaked and adding more patches didn’t help. So we drove into town and I got us a new Full-sized inflatable bed that comes complete with its own pump built in.
It's been great and we’ve slept well so it was a good investment at $58 plus tax. Our only request is that it live long enough for our new REAL mattress to get produced and shipped from Denver to Show Low!
Around dinner time on May 30th, I noticed that there was a rainbow out over the 15th hole. I went outside to take a photo and it had disappeared. But by the time I got back inside it slowly re-appeared. It wasn’t a rainbow. It was a sprinkler-bow! And it comes and goes as the sprinklers cross the green.
Our little lake is in habited by a number of very large catfish and carp. They were clearly planted here years ago. Sunday May 31st, Walter went out to fish out a golf ball (which had disappeared under the rocks by the time he got to it) and discovered that one of the catfish and had met his maker and passed on.
From his coloring he’s clearly a catfish not a carp. He was probably 20” long—a big fish!
Later that morning I took a walk around the neighborhood (in a different direction than usual).
Just around the corner near the tee box for the 16th hole there was a lovely patch of Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). It’s pretty but it’s a really hard weed to get rid of.
The Red Hot Poker plants were in full bloom in a number of yards.
And the Stella del Oro daylilies were blooming up a storm.
There were more lovely red single shrub roses in bloom.
And the front garden of one house was entirely carpeted with Showy Evening Primrose.
I crossed the main drag (Juniper Ridge Resort Road) and stopped to take a photo of the larger of the ponds that dot the area.
While I was at it, I took a photo of the nifty big white clouds starting to billow to the east (we had lots of thunder and lightning that night but no rain).
Then I made my way up the ‘hill’ which is really just a rise to the Top of the Hill Garden where there were LOTS of roses in bloom.
I’ll not bother to give commentary. They’re just pretty, okay?
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Along with another red one.
And there was a very nice patch of purple salvia.
A little further along on my walk I found this pretty little yellow rose bud.
Life here at Juniper Ridge is finding a new normal. I swam laps in the pool on Friday as I did laundry and was the only one there. They’ve stowed away all the pool furniture so they don’t have to sanitize it after each use (but you can bring your own if you want). But the pool is open and the water was lovely. The Pottery Studio opened on June 1st—limit of 6 people in the studio at a time and masks are required. We’ll be working as Gate Hosts (waving folks with stickers in and giving maps to visitors) on Tuesday afternoons. The card rooms remain closed (no big deal to us but a loss for many folks here) and there will be no singing. We make up for that by singing together in our kitchen most every evening.