It seems to me that it's been hotter than it ought to be for longer than it ought to be. It's been hot everyday since we returned from the Boundary Waters - almost a month. That's summer in the desert, I guess. I guess last year was mild. If we weren't watering, our place would look like this picture. No, it's not as hot as Phoenix, thank god. Yesterday it was 101 according to Mr. Blog's weather underground calculations. Yes, it's a dry heat. Yes, it's nice in the shade, certainly nicer if all you have to do is sit under the portal sipping a cool drink, but we were working in the yard. I was sort of amazed to come home from buying clavos (big rustic nails) at Ghost Town to find Mr. Blog in the backyard chipping up sticks and branches. What got into him? We're on an every other week schedule for irrigation and we irrigated last Sunday so we weren't planning on irrigating this week. In the afternoon, Mr. Blog announced that the water was up (Dennis was irrigating - two weeks in a row! Naughty man.) so he was going to open our ditch gates because what the hell. So we ended up getting an unexpected, much appreciated, dose of water late in the day. I spent my time in the rose area pulling mud and weeds out of the bottom of the ditch to clean it out and also to make moats around some of the slope-ier plants so that water wouldn't instantly run off. Mr. Blog was a Getting It Done machine - chipping, irrigating, putting funny hardware on the adobe shed doors - polishing turds. I say that because the doors themselves are falling apart - crooked - and creaky weaky, but now, thanks to the industry of Mr. Blog, the doors have gothic hinge straps and ring pulls. They are much improved. Maybe you can polish a turd after all. Go, Mr. Blog!