Something unexpected always happens.  Cameras needed for blog pictures get packed.  Dogs try to roust intruders only to learn that javelinas bite.  Cats decide to join their servants in bathtubs before checking for water. 

One lesson to be learned is not to become enamored with your projected schedule.  Another lesson is patience.  If you can't get Project A completed because you need to order a tool, chill out and look for Project B.  There's always one hanging around somewhere.  And finally,  accept that sometimes you'll just have to change the project scope.

I thought that by now I'd have the planter in my kitchen demolished.  Being a city girl, I didn't realize how much time I'd spend fighting a decade's worth of weed incursion.  My goal for this year evolved from "kill the weeds" to "reduce the weeds and encourage wild grass."   Grass coverage has increased by about fifty percent, so I count that as a success.

Grass (or weeds) on rocky, irregular ground can pose a fire danger.  Lawn mowers and even most lawn tractors are designed for level suburban lots.  String trimmers are the weapon of choice for the state highway department, but I can't swing a heavy one and the one I can manage couldn't handle the tough weeds. 

Research time!

Husqvarna, Poulet, DR  and other manufacturers make string trimmers on wheels, designed for exactly the situation I faced.  The best reviews (and the best prices) aree on http://Amazon.com  

If my original plan had stayed on track, I'd have a semi-shiny kitchen by now, but I wouldn't have learned about string trimmers and our lot would be a vista of dry weeds.  

By the mid-June, most residents of the desert are ready for October and dropping temperatures.  Grass near sidewalks withers from the heat and electric bills soar into the stratosphere as people huddle inside.

Then the monsoons arrive.  Humidity transforms air into a smothering blanket.  Fluffy white clouds wander across formerly empty blue skies.  They multiply and grow into thunderheads looming higher than Mount Everest.  They bring rain.  Some days there are only spatters, great drops of mud.  Other days, the heavens open and pour down floods of rain.  Dry rivers fill and drivers accustomed to dry asphalt, fishtail into each other.

And weeds grow from zero to sixty (inches) in under five days.   I sigh and pull out the weed sprayer.  I spray and spray and spray, because after ten years of neglect, we have that many weeds.  But I also learn.  Some weeds curl up and die politely.  Others claw their way into the earth and give me the leaf.  (Those I hit again.)  I'm not an advocate of monoculture, but jimson weed, goatheads and nightshade relatives are not welcome on my property.

You'd think  it would be simple to deal with rampant vegetation, but it's not.  Home Depot, Lowes, etc offer a wide assortment of weed sprays and sprayers.  What you should buy depends on your requirements.  Do you have a small area?  Do you want everything dead?  Permanently dead?  Do you want to kill just grass or just weeds?

Most sprays come in two forms - concentrate and ready-to-use.  If you need  to spray a small area, the ready-to-use may work for you.  However, if you have a city lot or more and room to store a hand sprayer, concentrate is usually much less expensive.  Note - don't buy the cheapest sprayer.  I find the Round-up one gallon sprayer offers a better combination of price versus performance. 

In the area of sprays, I tend to use Roundup or Ortho's Weed-b-Gone.  We don't need to sterilize the soil for a year, so I'm not up on what works well in that area.  (Roundup does offer a product, however.)   Grass-b-Gone is handy when  Bermuda tries to invade a flower bed, but I've only seen it in ready-to-use quarts.  

If you're mixing spray from concentrate, don't over-dilute the mixture.  My preference is to add up to fifty percent extra to make sure the weeds die.  Also, if the weeds aren't obviously dying after a couple of days, I spray them again.  If that doesn't work, I use another spray because  Roundup resistant weeds have been developing.  (The formulas for Weed-b-Gone and Roundup seem to be different.)  If the third time isn't the charm, I get out my hoe.  Those weeds are NOT going to multiply. 

Expect this to be a never-ending process.  Birds and the wind transport weed seeds.  You can't win, but you can keep them beat back.   When that happens, you'll finally be able to kick back on the patio, drink a lemonade and enjoy the view.

A little scope creep is normal, but after our carpenter mentioned the need for a plumber and Mick reminded me that I needed someplace for my antique gas stove, I began to think this project might entail more than I expected.  I had no idea...

We learned the answer after the plumber showed up.  Not, as you might suspect, when he assessed moving the pipes.  Nobody knew then how big the project was going to become.  The true extent became apparent  three days after he began jackhammering the concrete slab and discovered a damp spot near the water pipe.  (Running galvanized pipes through concrete slabs has to rank right up there with aluminum wiring as bad ideas for residential homes.)    That's when he discovered how far the leaking and cracked sewer pipe extended. - clear across the kitchen with a couple collapsed sections of Orangeburg (rolled tarpaper saturated with more tar) out near the septic tank.  I had a crew of six jackhammering, hauling broken concrete and digging outside for over a week!  The corner of the kitchen that had been filled with the breakfast nook looked like a junk pile:



After demolition was finished, the plumbers replaced the old pipes with plastic (guaranteed to outlast my lifetime), poured concrete inside,  and shoveled back the dirt outside. The sole exception was a two foot section near the kitchen wall stuffed with bricks and sand.  (The plumbers were unable to replace the entire sewer line due to a utility closet.  That will be demolished later.  To avoid the need to jackhammer an access hole to the joint between new and old pipes, I requested a temporary filler.)  The "small" project got to my expected stop point (studs up and wallboard hung) a week later.

So what did I learn from this project?
1.  Spend more time planning. 
2.  Walls are more complex than we think.  Multiple systems (plumbing, electrical, heating/air conditioning) can be involved in any modification.
3.  Unexpected and expensive problems can emerge at any time;there was no way to project the sewer problem before the plumber started work.  
4.  Make sure you have some money laid aside for surprises.
5.  Ask around to know the names of some reliable tradesmen in your area; you never know when you will need them.
6.  Be flexible. 

What's next on the agenda?  The arrival of my stove!

Folks who have lived in the low desert for a while have experienced our five seasons: spring, hot and dry, hot and wet (aka monsoon), omigod it's hot and dry again and fall.  At altitudes of thirty five hundred feet, the seasons differ only by being slightly cooler. 

This year, with our erratic schedule, I've managed to lose only three plants up in the mountains - and all of those were attacked earlier by ants or rabbits.  Since mid-June, however, the chrysanthemums have been wilted every time we show up at the hacienda. 

The cause is obvious: plants, people and air conditioners usually suffer most in June and late August/early September.  Kiln-like temperatures suck out moisture, leaving skin and leaves limp and papery.  Successful gardening demands - even in the mountains - that one water at least once a week and water deeply. (Note:  An early morning  tour of the green areas of Phoenix demonstrates most people'slack of familiarity with this concept.  Automatic sprinklers pop up every morning, spray for a half hour and disapper until the next morning.  This does not develop deep roots.) 

To slow the evaporation of water from the soil, you might consider mulching.  Gravel coordinates with desert plantings; for herbs and fruit trees, I use composted mulch from Walmart at $1.98 per bag.  Once I used some plastic mulch -  and the dog ate it.  Learn from my mistake and avoid this stuff.  Another mulch to avoid with pets is cocoa fiber mulch (http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoamulch.asp).  Of course, it appears that javelinas like my Walmart mulch, but neighbors tell me the critters pretty much eat anything.

In the lower areas of Arizona,  water is a vehicle for carrying salts.  Watering slowly converts desert soils into caliche - a claylike deposit that dries like concrete.  Even with watering deeply, salts often build up, choking roots.  I used to buy sulfuric pool acid and spray it on my lawn with a hose sprayer.  When planting, I poured it in the holes and added water, creating giant  mud floats.  But, alas, sulfuric pool acid is no longer sold and the gardening stores don't carry it, either.  I now resort to a product called Dispersul, lentil-sized sulfur pellets.  Dispersul has gotten expensive - twenty dollars for fifty pounds, but spring, summer and fall applications keep my plants and lawn looking green with minimal work.  Look for it at nurseries; Walmart and the lumber giants don't carry it.  If you want a pleasant drive followed by an interlude in a new-fashioned general store, Dale's Town and Country (  http://www.dalestownandcountry.com/)  out in Surprise, Arizona carries Dispersul at lower prices than the nurseries.  Plus, you can shop for high quality pet food, a new shirt or a hostess gift. 

I needed a place to store my cowboy hats.  (Yes, I have that many.)  Being practical, I checked out the closet in my workroom.  Battered wall, no ceiling - I can fix this.

Because there are walls, making a ceiling was easy; I measured, bought a piece of plywood, ordered some new "tin" ceiling tiles off Ebay, purchased some paneling glue, nails and metal snips and began.  I'm not a weight-lifter, so I bought thin (3/8 inch) plywood knowing I'd have to clip off  and file the ends of  the nails on the backside.  Guys can get by with 5/8 inch plywood and no nail clipping.

Ceiling tiles should be centered; this site has some info on setting up the intial tile runs:
http://askville.amazon.com/start-tile-retiling-room/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=9862962

After the centering lines are drawn, apply glue to the back of the center tile, tamp it down and proceed until you must cut tiles.  Set a whole tile right side up  in one of the partial openings, mark the edges to be cut with a Sharpie and proceed as you did for the whole tiles.  When all the tiles are set in place, use a hammer and nail set to punch holes in the corners of the tiles.  Nail the tiles to the boards (no more than 3 nails at a time, if you need to clip them.)  This keeps the tiles in place if the glue fails.  With a little luck, you will have a surface that looks like this.

 

Having built the ceiling, I prepared to install it - and discovered disconnected heating ducts and a lot of unused space.  A friend of mine told me the difference between contractors and do-it-yourselfers is that contractors hide their mistakes.  Yep, the guy who built our house was a contractor. 

We started pulling out the piles and ran across this:


How a pair of briefs got into a conduit in a semi-sealed space, I don't want to know.  After seeing this, I figured it was time for a cold beer.  Reworking the closet wall can wait for a few days.  It does make  me wonder what other secrets await discovery.

After losing a couple of skirmishes, the ants returned to devastate my peach tree, a chrysanthemum and a clump of society garlic.  They laughed at the assortment of chemicals I purchased from Walmart and Home Depot.  I’d dump Spectracide granules at the current entrance to their underground kingdom and return the next morning to a litter of ant corpses.  Meanwhile, the ants would merely transfer to another entrance and continue demolishing the greenery
.

It was time to get some serious anti-ant munitions, time to visit the weapons expert of Bug Stop at 28^th Street and Thomas in Phoenix.  They stock high-end products that are effective.  Years ago, a tenant tried to start farming gourmand mice; consumer mouse baits didn’t appeal to these critters.  Bug Stop turned me on to blue blocks chock-full of grain and Warfarin.  Immediate end to mouse problem.

Once again, Bug Stop scored with MaxForce.  After two applications, the ants disappeared.  Gone. All the exits were silent.  After all the other attempts, I would find a new entrance boiling with activity.  This time there was no new entrance, no attrition, not even dead ants.

Moral of the story:  If “drugstore” brands don’t work, do some research to figure out where the pros buy bug killer/cleaning products/tools/ etc.  Then dig deep into your wallet.

After spending most of my time up in Globe, coming down to Phoenix feels like voluntarily climbing into a heated pizza oven.   Temperatures have been below normal and I still bake!  But the Phoenix house won't paint itself; I asked. 

If you're like me, after a few hours outside, you wilt.  For rehydration, you can slug down some Gatorade or Powerade - or you can go natural.

The following is my favorite summertime picker-upper.

Mix up a batch of orange juice with calcium and chill it.  When you need a drink, pour a half glass of orange juice and top it off with cold club soda.

The drink is festive and the club soda adds tang while diluting the orange juice enough to allow rapid  absorption of its nutrients.  (Undiluted orange juice contains too much sugar; you should not drink it when you are hot.)

Swarms of army ants, marching through steaming jungles, regularly show up on TV nature shows. However, most folks don't realize we have our own ravenous insect hordes in the Southwest - harvester ants.  I'd heard of the critters, but life in the asphalt jungle doesn't prepare one for the reality.  Besides, even insects are too smart to settle in areas where people welcome summer by frying eggs on sidewalks.

So, after a week down in Phoenix, when I returned to the mountains, I was astonished to discover two out of three thriving chrysanthemums were suddenly twigs.  "Danged rabbits," I said as I walked over to examine the damage.  Wrong.

Red ants about three-fourths inch long covered the ground.  One climbed on my shoe and I shook my foot.  A few minutes later, it  bit me. War had been declared.  Friends gave me their recipes for getting rid of the pests.  

"Dump a gallon of gas on the ant-hill," one suggested.  "Flip a lighted match onto the anthill and run like heck."

"No, there are too many exits for that to work," another said.  "What you need to do is feed them gunpowder for a week, pour a pile on the ground to make a fuse, and light it.  When the ants explode all over your yard, you'll discover how big the anthill really is."

"Thanks," I said and headed for the local nursery.  I remembered using Diazinon years ago; it had been insect death in granular form.  Unfortunately, somewhere in time, my favorite poisoin had been banned.  (Someone probably fed it to their spouse, although I can't imagine how; the stink alone could stun at ten paces.)  So I picked up some yellow stuff that  is supposed to kill an ant mound within a week, sprinkled it on the mound and prayed. 

With a project house, questions continually arise.  What project do I tackle next?  Where does one get parts for seventy-year-old windows?  How do I fit in my washer and dryer?

Initially, we thought the last question had been answered; the mudroom next to the breakfast nook already had water, gas and electrical connections for a laundry room.  Then I got out the tape measure.  Washer - twenty-seven inches.  Space - tweny inches. 

Obviously, it was time to tackle a small project - moving the interior wall next to the breakfast nook.   There shouldn't be any difficulty moving  wallboard and studs, right?  Not right.

The first indication I had miscalculated came when I realized I'd have to remove the breakfast nook.  No problem; my main nickname is Demolition R Us.  With hammer, crowbar and circular saw, I transformed two-thirds of the bench into fire barrel fodder.  My regrets were few.  Although attractive, the bench was uncomfortable and designed to obstruct all access to the window next to it.  The remaining third, I figured would be a handy resting area for while, but its days were numbered, too.




Oops.  Forgot the floor.  Upon this discovery, I figured pulling up a few layers of vinyl tile on chipboard would be easy.  After all, I did the same thing a couple of months earlier.  The job would be messy, but I had the technique mastered.  I  grabbed my trusty scraper, pried up a few square feet of flooring and encountered a plywood subfloor.  Plywood doesn't come up in nice chunks like deteriorating chipboard. After indulging in a few choice words, I set my circle saw to a very shallow cut and scored the plywood,  effectively adding a  "Tear on dotted line" feature.

About this time, Mick moseyed in and asked, "Where are you planning on putting your Chambers stove?"

I thought a while.  "Against the new wall."  I sat on the remaining section of bench and realized it had to go, too. 

Scope creep was beginning.

Imagine a dog with more intelligence and curiosity than sense and you have our chow chow, known to Facebook friends as Roofdog due to his exploration of a neighbor's rooftop. We are lucky he doesn't have thumbs; his fascination with locks coupled with his escape artist abilities would make him a danger to refrigerators everywhere. << MORE >>