It’s October, now, which in the Phoenix area is usually a time of celebration. The Killer Heat is over. Or not quite as bad, at least. The high today, Oct. 2, is forecast to be 102ºF. Better than 118º anyway. Our rainy season, the “monsoon”, is usually done by now, as well. What started out as a dry monsoon in 2025 went out with a bang, with two or three days in a row of Noah’s ark-worthy rains that caused major floods in parts of the state and soaked our thirsty soil so much that the 25-foot-tall acacia in our back yard couldn’t hold on any more and keeled over, roots in the air. The canopy on this tree is so huge that about half our large yard is covered in tree. The photo above is Dear Husband measuring the trunk and preparing to call someone to cut it up and haul it away. I’m sad, because I loved that tree and the amazing shade it offered. We had an arborist out this morning who wants to charge $1200 to do the job. It’s the same company who charged $350 to take out a standing tree for us three years ago. This one has a much wider canopy, but is it THAT much wider? We’ll get a couple more quotes and see how the world stands now.
Yesterday we had a guy out to assess our garbage disposal, which had quit working. Is it fixable, or do we need a new one? Lovely, polite fixer-guy takes out an Allen wrench, gives it a couple of twists underneath, and voila! That’ll be $100 please. Annoyingly, Husband had tried that previously, but his wrench was too small, apparently.
This is the joy of home ownership, one piddly, annoying thing after another, especially after you’ve lived in the same house for 40 years. You just have to keep on patching. At least the house is paid for! Thank goodness for Dear Husband, though. I’m having enough problems making progress on my novel manuscript as it is.
I hope you’ll visit here on Oct. 20 to catch this month’s Tell Me Your Story featuring the wonderful Mark de Castrique, a fellow Poisoned Pen Press alum and the author of twenty-four novels: seven set in the fictional NC mountain town of Gainesboro, nine set in Asheville, five in Washington D.C., one science thriller in the year 2030, and two mysteries written for Middle Graders and set in the Charlotte region. I love hearing how authors came to write what they do, and Mark certainly has a great story! Don’t miss it!
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