Sunday, June 3
If you’ve read my blog for a while you know that one of the things I love about full-time RVing is the necessity to move from camp to camp. Most of the year our camps change every fourteen days or less. The exception is in the winter when we take advantage of the benefits and rest that a Long Term Visitor Area provides.
The cycle of spring-summer-fall traveling in a loop around the western states of the U.S. with winter in the warmest areas of southern Arizona and California, well, that’s been disrupted.
No, not disrupted . . .
That denotes a negative action. The cycle has been revised. Temporarily. This spring-summer-fall the crew and I are “camped” inside our newly purchased house that we will share with my younger sister ,Nancy, starting with her arrival in mid-August.
The Best Little Trailer takes a rest in the back yard.
(BTW, that metal structure in the next photo is one of a pair. They’re supports for clotheslines.)
Getting back to moving camp . . .
I love the rhythm of change that is part of the vagabond life.
Two weeks here, two weeks there, a different landscape, a new town, a winding road up a mountain, a straight shot through the sage, piney woods to creosote plain to golden grassland, riverside to desert wash, the screeching of magpies to a roadrunner’s coo, lupines to lilies, sunrise across the water, sunset beyond the ironwood tree, on and on and on . . . as changeable and wondrous as a newly unwrapped kaleidoscope in the hands of a kid on Christmas morning!
It’s great!
It’s so great that it’s addictive. Readers sense this and wonder if I’ll go bonkers staying at a house for three seasons and maybe more, while I putter on house projects and the crew and I fall into a daily routine with Nancy and her dog, Marg.
Without the annual loop through the west, camping both in familiar and new sites, will I become restless and bored? Will you?
As always, nature comes to the rescue.
Any urge to pack up, hitch up, and head out shrivels to nothing when temperatures are reaching toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit!
And as always, nature provides change right where we’re at.
The grapevines are fruiting up nicely.
The grapes are the only plants I’m watering these days. I don’t know if these hard beads will ever turn into luscious, juice-filled fruit, what with the intense heat, no rain (yet), and the way the sparrows are already picking at them.
I imagine that when the grapes ripen a bird bacchanalia will break out with much gorging and singing of avian bar room ditties.
“Ninety-nine clusters of grapes on the wall, ninety-nine clusters of grapes . . . . Take one down and strip it bare . . . Ninety-eight clusters of grapes on the wall . . . . ”
We do have a lot of grape clusters hanging on the lattice.
If they ripen well, maybe there will be plenty, both for the sparrows and for me.
For the first time I see yucca in bloom.
Formerly, while boondocking, I often saw the dried-up stage but never the fresh glow and lushness of new blossoms.
They’re quite beautiful accented with leaves of mesquite and against an Arizona blue sky!
The clusters, like that in the next photos, crown the top of stalks five feet tall or more that shoot up from the yucca fans below. This creates perches for birds, while in bloom or afterwards when dried. (In previous posts I showed a few pics of birds in yucca clusters.)
The cluster below is about three feet from its top to its bottom.
As exquisite as any bride’s bouquet!
~ ~ ~
It’s tempting to remove the “old” stalks.
Eventually I probably will take a few out from the plants in the front yard to neaten our face to the street. After all, we ARE in a neighborhood. For now, they stay.
One yucca in the back yard has four old stalks next to the new one.
~ ~ ~
The birds use them as look-out points and sun-bathing stations. It’s relaxing to sit on the porch and watch the birds on the gently swaying stalks.
~ ~ ~
The mesquite flowers fade and green pods appear!
As a homeowner I’m supposed to groan at the prospect of raking all the dead pods that inevitably will litter the ground. I don’t care about that. I’m more interested to see if any creatures find them delicious. I suspect the beans are very fortifying, if not toxic. I’ve never heard of people eating them.
Hmm. . . more stuff to research . . . Change is good for the ol’ brain cells.
.
You see what I mean?
Nature brings change to our little plot of land in southern Arizona. From what readers and locals tell me, there’s plenty more to come, especially if we get lots of rain in the imminent monsoon season.
I look forward to those changes, just as I anticipated new camps in diverse places.
And I’ll be sure to share them here!
rvsue
FLASHBACK!
The Perfect Tow Vehicle and Best Little Trailer on their own peninsula:
Antelope Flat boondock, Forest Road #619, east side of Flaming Gorge, Utah — September 2014
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